"Regime Change"

This is a great question, and it's not rhetorical:

Someone on that stage can destroy Tulsi's entire candidacy right now by bringing up her association with Assad. Why they don't...I don't know. #DemocraticDebate

— Wajahat Ali (@WajahatAli) October 16, 2019

It could be because Representative Tulsi Gabbard is not considered a serious threat to attain the nomination, an explanation suggested by the fire aimed at Senator Warren, who has steadily been gaining momentum and is considered by betting markets to be the most likely nominee. Or there could be an additional, or different, reason. 

Nevertheless, while unfortunately no candidate in Tuesday's Democratic debate dared bring up Gabbard's association with Assad, Anderson Cooper's failure to ask an obvious question of the Hawaiian was, in a different way, at least as egregious. Cooper asked

Congresswoman Gabbard, last week you said that American troops should get out of Syria now. You don't agree with how the president handled the withdrawal. What would you have done differently? How would you have pulled out troops without the bloodshed we're seeing now?

Gabbard responded

Well, first of all, we've got to understand the reality of the situation there, which is that the slaughter of the Kurds being done by Turkey is yet another negative consequence of the regime change war that we've been waging in Syria.

Donald Trump has the blood of the Kurds on his hand, but so do many of the politicians in our country from both parties who have supported this ongoing regime change war in Syria that started in 2011, along with many in the mainstream media, who have been championing and cheerleading this regime change war.

Not only that, but the New York Times and CNN have also smeared veterans like myself for calling for an end to this regime change war. Just two days ago, the New York Times put out an article saying that I'm a Russian asset and an Assad apologist and all these different smears. This morning, a CNN commentator said on national television that I'm an asset of Russia. Completely despicable.

As president, I will end these regime change wars by doing two things -- ending the draconian sanctions that are really a modern-day siege the likes of which we are seeing Saudi Arabia wage against Yemen, that have caused tens of thousands of Syrian civilians to die and to starve, and I would make sure that we stop supporting terrorists like Al Qaida in Syria who have been the ground force in this ongoing regime change war.

After Elizabeth Warren took a shot at the question, Pete Buttigieg (figuratively and literally) confronted Gabbard, and it was on, with

Well, respectfully, Congresswoman, I think that is dead wrong. The slaughter going on in Syria is not a consequence of American presence. It's a consequence of a withdrawal and a betrayal by this president of American allies and American values.

Look, I didn't think we should have gone to Iraq in the first place. I think we need to get out of Afghanistan. But it's also the case that a small number of specialized, special operations forces and intelligence capabilities were the only thing that stood between that part of Syria and what we're seeing now, which is the beginning of a genocide and the resurgence of ISIS.

Meanwhile, soldiers in the field are reporting that for the first time they feel ashamed -- ashamed -- of what their country has done. We saw the spectacle, the horrifying sight of a woman with the lifeless body of her child in her arms asking, what the hell happened to American leadership?

And when I was deployed, I knew one of the things keeping me safe was the fact that the flag on my shoulder represented a country known to keep its word. And our allies knew it and our enemies knew it....You take that away, you are taking away what makes America America. It makes our troops and the world a much more dangerous place.

Responding, Gabbard contended

Yeah, absolutely. So, really, what you're saying, Mayor Pete, is that you would continue to support having U.S. troops in Syria for an indefinite period of time to continue this regime change war that has caused so many refugees to flee Syria, that you would continue to have our country involved in a war that has undermined our national security, you would continue this policy of the U.S. actually providing arms in support to terrorist groups in Syria, like Al Qaida, HTS, al-Nusra and others, because they are the ones who have been the ground force in this regime change war? That's really what you're saying?

It continued with

COOPER: Mayor Pete -- Mayor Buttigieg?

BUTTIGIEG: No, you can embrace -- or you can put an end to endless war without embracing Donald Trump's policy, as you're doing.

GABBARD: Will you end the regime change war, is the question.

BUTTIGIEG: What we are doing...

GABBARD: What is an endless war if it's not a regime change war?

COOPER: Allow him to respond. Please allow him to respond.

BUTTIGIEG: What we are doing -- or what we were doing in Syria was keeping our word. Part of what makes it possible for the United States to get people to put their lives on the line to back us up is the idea that we will back them up, too.

When I was deployed, not just the Afghan National Army forces, but the janitors put their lives on the line just by working with U.S. forces. I would have a hard time today looking an Afghan civilian or soldier in the eye after what just happened over there. And it is undermining the honor of our soldiers. You take away the honor of our soldiers, you might as well go after their body armor next.

This president has betrayed American values. Our credibility has been tattered.

Nonetheless, Buttigieg acquitted himself well in the manner of optics. Understanding that an empty attempt to appeal to patriotism can be the last refuge of scoundrels, he claimed Gabbard chose to "take away the honor of our soldiers, you might as well go after their body armor next." No one ever lost a vote by wrapping himself in the flag of "the troops."

Substantively, on seven (7) occasions, Tulsi Gabbard mentioned "regime change war" and once "regime change wars." Once she charged "Donald Trump has the blood of the Kurds on his hand, but so do many of the politicians in our country from both parties," The mayor might have criticized her for the moral equivalence of equating American politicians with Bashir al-Assad, but with bothsiderism a crucial part of the centrist creed, that was not tempting for Buttigieg.

Yet, Cooper was not quite up to the challenge, failing to ask Gabbard what she meant by "regime change" or "regime change wars."  Fact-checker Daniel Daleassessed the accuracy of the congresswoman's claim here, summarized as

The story of American involvement in the Syrian civil war is complicated and difficult to assess. The US military intervention in Syria has been debated since it began -- but Gabbard's claim that American forces were engaged in a "regime-change war" cuts against what US officials have said about American policy in Syria. Some US-backed militias have fought the Syrian government, but US troops were there to help defeat ISIS.

A candidate for President whom some people have attacked as being cozy with Assad maintains that the USA has conducted a war which "has caused so many refugees to flee Syria" while a fact-checker writes "there is no evidence to suggest that American forces were engaged in an effort to overthrow Assad." There should have been a further examination of Gabbard's view, which contrasts radically with that of the American military and political establishment and would prompt a dramatic restructuring of Mideast policy.

Admittedly, that would have taken a few minutes away from the discussion, closing the debate, of how everyone should be given a hug, maybe hold hands, and be nice to each other:

Oh, sweet Jesus. Having destroyed this debate, Anderson Cooper is now setting the debris on fire. ELLEN DEGENERES????????????????????
Kill me now.

— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) October 16, 2019

 Next up: how Warren and Sanders are failing.

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LeBron James, As He Is

On Christmas Day, I wrote that Huffington Post had reported the previous day

The Los Angeles Lakers star apologized Sunday for sharing a “getting that Jewish money” lyric from the rap song “asmr” by 21 Savage.

“We been getting that Jewish money / Everything is Kosher,” (LeBron) James typed onto his Instagram story entry.

“Entourage” producer Doug Ellin and others online took offense, informing the superstar that the words reinforced a harmful stereotype.

In his mea culpa, James said he thought the words were positive.

Mr. James, it was clear, was either stupid or a bigot and I suggested that he is not stupid. I still believe that. However, whatever his unfortunate thought processes

“I don’t want to get into a word or sentence feud with Daryl Morey, but I believe he wasn’t educated on the situation at hand and he spoke,” James said before a preseason game Monday. “And so many people could have been harmed not only financially, physically, emotionally, spiritually.”

His comments come less than two weeks after Morey tweeted an image captioned: “Fight For Freedom. Stand With Hong Kong.” He quickly deleted it and apologized, saying he “did not intend my tweet to cause any offense to Rockets fans and friends of mine in China.”

However, backlash toward Morey and the NBA has continued. Chinese fans and the team’s partners in Beijing have expressed outrage at the NBA executive for backing the Chinese-ruled region, where protesters have for months been holding pro-democracy demonstrations that have led to violent clashes with police.

James later clarified in a tweet that he was not commenting on Morey’s tweet itself ― or “the substance” of the tweet ― but rather on the GM tweeting something political without thinking about the consequences.

“I believe nobody stopped and considered what would happen,” James said in a two-part tweet. “Could have waited a week to send it... I do not believe there was any consideration for the consequences and ramifications of the tweet.”

Shorter James: maybe Morey is right but it doesn't matter. I have a swoosh to protect.

Or maybe James isn't motivated by his ability to reap hundreds of millions of dollars more through his association with Nike. In December LeBron promoted the song with lyrics including "We been gettin' that Jewish money, everything is Kosher (On God), bought myself a 'Ventador and bought my bitch a Roadster(Straight up)."  Now he is defending against criticism a government which has placed an estimated one tothree million Uighurs, most of them Muslims, into concentration camps.

It is not a good look for LeBron James, an apologist for anti-Semitism and concentration camps. Also not a good look: if of twelve Democrats on the stage tonight in Columbus, no one speaks out against the regime in Beijing.

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Turn The Tables

And the winner of the Democratic debate on Tuesday night will be..... the candidate who (almost) follows Jennifer Rubin's advice. The pro-Biden, pro-Buttigieg neo-conservative columnist writes

Biden’s campaign has yet to call for the Trump children to take the same pledge as Hunter Biden, but it really should consider going on offense. Ivanka, Jared, Eric and Donald Trump Jr. are the poster children for familial corruption.

Tuesday’s debate is the perfect forum for Democrats to end the double standard that serves to shelter the Trump clan from scrutiny for continuing to perpetrate massive conflicts and self-dealing while targeting Joe Biden and his son, who have done the right thing in promising to raise the bar on ethics if Biden wins. It would be a good idea for all the Democratic candidates to promise that their own adult children will follow Hunter Biden’s example. Most important, it is time to shame the media and Congress into investigating the corruption going on as we speak. Ivanka, Jared, Eric and Donald Trump Jr. have been given the kid glove treatment by the media and Congress (the latter for fear of generating sympathy for the Trump offspring!). That needs to end.

Rubin is responding to the report from Bloomberg that "Hunter Biden is stepping down from the board of a Chinese-backed private equity company and promising to forgo all foreign work if his father, former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, is elected president in 2020.”

Before we lionize Hunter (or Joe) Biden, we must acknowledge that Hunter, a lawyer and hedge fund manager, had no experience pertaining to Ukraine when he took the $50,000 per month position as a member of the Board of Directors of a fossil fuel company.   He was tapped for one reason and one reason only and thereby jammed up his father, who had not foreclosed the possibility of running for President of the United States of America... against a guy who rails about "the swamp."

Nonetheless, GOP charges against Joe Biden pertaining to Burisma are false and reprehensible, and demonstrably so. Thus, it is time for the Democratic candidates, and the debate an ideal time for one Democratic candidate, to support the Bidens. That would not be Hunter Biden,  who was no juvenile, and while children are not responsible for the sins of their fathers, a father is not responsible for the sin of his adult son.

The candidate would benefit by promptly, at the earliest possible moment, making it clear that he (or she, of whom there are fewer) differs on several matters with the former vice-president but not on this. It would be done- as Rubin seems to understand- not by playing defense but by going on offense. Hunter Biden may be a bad seed- but Donald Jr. and Ivanka are definitively stinking, rotten seeds.

As Rubin implies, the Trump family has set records for greed, self-dealing, and endangering national security by pursuing business ahead of the national interest. Additionally,  she argues, the Trumps "have been given the kid glove treatment by the media and Congress (the latter for fear of generating sympathy for the Trump offspring!). That needs to end."

Go ahead, Democrats: criticize the media.  It's a classic of the GOP playbook, a tried-and-true strategy. Observing this, Democrats have been conned into thinking that journalists and media personalities are their own friends.  Perhaps in part for this reason, the Democratic National Committee, stung by criticism that it put its thumb on the scale for its leading candidate in the 2016 primary season, has been largely,unforgivably, silent.  

But when thrown a hanging curve, swing. Criticizing the media simply is not done by Democratic politicians or interests groups. There is a hungry constituency, one waiting for Democrats to stand up for themselves as a party, a unit, and in this case, a family.

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Donald Russia Acts Again

Maryland senator Chris Van Holland and South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham (two days before video below)

released a bill Wednesday that threatens a series of economic sanctions against Turkey for its incursion, and Van Hollen claimed Sunday that “momentum is building for the Congress to act” amid the dayslong Turkish assault.

“Congress is going to first call upon the president to do the right thing, but since we can't count on that, we will have this bipartisan legislation that will impose very stiff sanctions on Turkey until they stop their aggression and withdraw their forces,” he said.

Van Hollen also blasted Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s announcement Friday that Trump would sign an executive order granting the Treasury Department, in consultation with the White House and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, “very significant new sanctions authorities” against Turkey.

While Mnuchin warned the administration “can shut down the Turkish economy if we need to,” he stressed that “there are no sanctions at this time” against Ankara.

“For God's sakes, what are they waiting for, right? People are being killed right now,” Van Hollen said Sunday.

It took a while for some of us to figure it out, but now we have a pretty good idea what they were waiting for because  

Commander of Kurdish forces in #Syria to US official:

"I need to know if u are capable of protecting my people, stopping these bombs falling on us or not... If not, I need to make a deal w/Russia & regime now & invite their planes to protect this region”https://t.co/WmhracL2qs

— Robert Malley (@Rob_Malley) October 12, 2019

We are capable but Donald Trump is not willing, and that commander probably realizes by now that the President of the USA is eager to expand Russian influence in the Middle East. Speaking on Wednesday, the President 

seemed unconcerned by warnings that thousands of other ISIS fighters — and thousands of their family members who are held in separate facilities in the region, including many who still sympathize with the extremist group — could escape amid mounting chaos.

"Well they're going to be escaping to Europe, that's where they want to go, they want to go back to their homes," Mr. Trump said at the White House.

That should do wonders for the European security.   It's as though Vladimir Putin, always on the lookout to bust up the European Union, had suggested to his Washington friend that there is no better way to punish European nations, a prime aim of President Trump, than to invite ISIL terrorists to travel west into the European mainland.

Trump's motivation is increasingly becoming clear.  But even during campaign 2016, Slate's Franklin Foer recognized

Having a friend in the Kremlin would help Trump fulfill his longtime dream of planting his name in the Moscow skyline—a dream that he pursued even as he organized his presidential campaign. “Russia is one of the hottest places in the world for investment,” he once said. “We will be in Moscow at some point.”

The next thing you know, he'll get himself photographed in front of a Russian battleship. Oh, wait- he took care of that on Sunday morning:

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Suddenly, Now Is Time To Keep Silent

Steve Kerr was trying to avoid being controversial when, drawing a false equivalence between the use of the AR-15 for murder in the USA and the mainland Chinese regime, he excused the latter.

But when guys are outspoken, court controversy, and go on the offensive, they leave no doubt, and who they stand with.

Houston Rockets' general manager Caryl Morey simply tweeted "fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong" and veteran sports journalist Stephen A. Smith, aghast at Morey's public support for liberty, vigorously remarked

What happened to us as a society? I'm talking about this addictive, insatiable appetite to express every damn thing. What were we doing before Twitter? I got a damn cold. I'm sick and it still drives me crazy. What the hell were we doing before Twitter?

You mumbled something under your breath in the privacy of conversation with friends or whomever. Does it have to be disseminated to millions? What the hell is wrong with us? I don't understand it. And anybody who curtails your speech, they're like an oppressor, right?

Well, if they're so oppressive, what the hell are you taking their money for?

But Morey is not taking their money, any or all of which would be taken by the guy Morey works for, the team owner:

Listen....@dmorey does NOT speak for the @HoustonRockets. Our presence in Tokyo is all about the promotion of the @NBA internationally and we are NOT a political organization. @espn https://t.co/yNyQFtwTTi

— Tilman Fertitta (@TilmanJFertitta) October 5, 2019

That is the fellow who wouldn't mind a little blood money from the Communist- uh, er- mainland Chinese.  Yet, Smith continued

This is the thing that drives me nuts. I had one idiot stop there and say to me "I mean, years ago you wasn't comlaining when Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fist." I said "wait a minute. First of all, they were black.  Secondly....

Wait right there. "Houston, we've had a problem here" and it's not Morey, though later he deleted his tweet under pressure.

The issue should not have been how Smith and Carlos were born- black- but what they were doing and the values it reflected. The Morey/China matter may have been the first time that the outspoken Stephen A. (as he is affectionately known to many admirers) had any problem with an individual "express(ing) every damn thing."  Over the course of his career on radio, ESPN, and as a newspaper columnist, Smith has assertively given, usually shouted, his opinion with no reluctance that it be "disseminated to millions." 

More quietly, with the eloquence of a trained actor, in 2014 the sports personality would not have his speech curtailed when Donald Sterling, then the owner of NBA's LA Clippers, expressed racial bigotry in the privacy of a conversation with a friend, as Smith now advocates.  After explaining why Sterling's remarks would have bothered and offended blacks, on ESPN he argued (beginning at 4:41 of the video below)

You have a head coach who is now also in control of basketball operations, who is black.  You have no problem saying these things because they're making you money.  But you don't really want them around. They're basically labor to you. It's been validated. It's been substantiated forever. He has to go. He cannot be an owner in the NBA.

Back then, Stephen A. Smith had no problem with publicizing his opinion to a large audience in opposition to a guy who made reprehensible remarks privately.

His perspective obviously has changed radically. It may be because, as he himself put it, "first of all, they were black." (That applied to Tommie Smith and Juan Carlos, also to the subject of Sterling's comments.)  Though race- an inherited characteristic- is likely a factor, there may be others, such as an antagonism toward Twitter, on which he appears to be fairly active, privately mumbling with 13,800 followers and others.  

Steve Kerr made a foolish remark. However, you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows, and with Stephen A. Smith it blows toward hypocrisy.

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The USA Is Not Mainland China

Formerly a good off-guard in the National Basketball Association, Steve Kerr is currently a good head coach with many championship rings from the Chicago Bulls (as player) and Golden State Warriors (as coach).  The son of a man murdered by Islamic terrorists, he is anti-Trump, thoughtful, and somewhat of a gun safety activist. However, that does not make him immune from espousing moral equivalence as when, in an otherwise very civil and reasonable news conference, he responded to the umpteenth question about mainland China and the NBA by stating (beginning at 12:24 of the video below)

But people in China didn't ask me about, you know, people owning AR-15s and mowing each other down in the mall.

I wasn't asked that question, so we can play this game all we want and go all over the map- and you know there's this side of the issue and that issue. The world is a complex place and there is more gray than black and white. I realize what's popular these days is to make it black and white and you're either good or you're evil and it's convenient to do things that way.

There is a lot of murder in the USA, mass murder, murder among close relatives, and murder in the streets. But that partly comes not from a restriction of freedom but from an excess of freedom, or at least a misinterpretation of one among the Bill of Rights.  Condoned by some in government, it is not carried out by the state. But when it comes to the ethics of the regime in Beijing, it is largely black and white, and it comes down on the side of evil. And for the government which has made concentration camps a thing again

.... the vision of high-tech surveillance — precise, all-seeing, infallible — that China’s leaders are investing billions of dollars in every year, making Xinjiang an incubator for increasingly intrusive policing systems that could spread across the country and beyond....

Developed and sold by the China Electronics Technology Corporation, a state-run defense manufacturer, the system in Kashgar is on the cutting edge of what has become a flourishing new market for technology that the government can use to monitor and subdue millions of Uighurs and members of other Muslim ethnic groups in Xinjiang...

A New York Times investigation drawing on government and company records as well as interviews with industry insiders found that China is in effect hard-wiring Xinjiang for segregated surveillance, using an army of security personnel to compel ethnic minorities to submit to monitoring and data collection while generally ignoring the majority Han Chinese, who make up 36 percent of Xinjiang’s population.

It is a virtual cage that complements the indoctrination camps in Xinjiang where the authorities have detained a million or more Uighurs and other Muslims in a push to transform them into secular citizens who will never challenge the ruling Communist Party. The program helps identify people to be sent to the camps or investigated, and keeps tabs on them when they are released.

This is not Luxembourg or the Netherlands, Japan or even Botswana. It is despotic mainland China, and the allure of mass profits has proven too powerful for Ivanka Trump and numerous western corporations to resist. In the annals of villains in this story, Steve Kerr is only approximately 997 out of 1,000 (Ivanka in the top 10) and would deserve the benefit of any doubt there is. And if Steve Kerr has not been up to the task of speaking truth to power, time is running out for someone in the NBA to do so.  

Next up: someone who deserves no benefit of the doubt.

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Social Responsibility Lacking

There was a time when NBA players cared about injustice,such as when

Several players on both the Cleveland Cavaliers and Brooklyn Nets, including LeBron James, Kevin Garnett, Kyrie Irving and Deron Williams, wore black "I Can't Breathe" T-shirts during pregame warm-ups Monday, following in the footsteps of Chicago Bulls guard Derrick Rose who wore the same shirt in a game Saturday to show support for the family of Eric Garner.

A couple of years earlier

It was the morning of Game 5 of the Warriors' 2014 first-round playoff series against the Los Angeles Clippers. Four days earlier, TMZ had published voice recordings of then-Clippers owner Donald Sterling making racist statements to his mistress, V. Stiviano, throwing the NBA into a tailspin....

The NBA's players were appalled. They threatened to boycott playoff games if new NBA commissioner Adam Silver didn't get rid of Sterling quickly and definitively.

"There's no room for that in our game," LeBron James, then of the Miami Heat, said the morning after the tapes were released. "Can't have that from a player, we can't ever from an owner, we can't have it from a fan, and so on and so on. It doesn't matter if you're black, white, Hispanic or whatever the case may be. We can't have that as part of our game."

Sterling was forced to sell his team and was banned from the the league for life. However, social activism goes only so far with multi-millionaire athletes when the NBA has billions of dollars riding on its deals with the nation popularizing the concentration camps. Now massive protests by Hong Kong residents rile mainland China and

As the dispute between the NBA and China escalated, one of the first on-court stars to speak publicly was 2018 most-valuable player James Harden.

“We apologize. You know, we love China. We love playing there,” Harden said from a Houston Rockets practice in Tokyo. Standing next to All-Star teammate Russell Westbrook, he added, “For both of us individually, we go there once or twice a year. They show us the most important love.”

The athletes are not the primary forces which are enabling and bolstering the Beijing butchers. Activision Blizzard and Apple are more worthy of condemnation, and the NBA's office itself bears responsibility for the league's response to the hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong residents demanding greater liberty. Still, as Donald Sterling learned, when King James (LeBron) and other superstars- such as Adidas spokesperson and NBA offensive juggernaut, James Harden- speak, commissioner Silver and the owners listen.

Which is only one reason this is disgusting:

Black athletes speak about police injustice in community dynamics they know firsthand: white fans/media silence them.

Black athletes remain silent on foreign geopolitical situation 13,000 miles away they admittedly are not versed in: white fans/media accuse them of cowardice.

— Full Dissident (@hbryant42) October 9, 2019

Whatever isolated tweet there may be in a nation of 350 million people, there have been relatively few about the apathy of black athletes; only about athletes.  Black NBA players have been criticized because they are the majority of the players in the NBA and, to an even greater extent, the majority of the superstars. The media asks them about trending topics because fans and the general public wants to know what they believe.  Nobody cares what DonteDiVincenzo thinks.

When the roster of companies which profit off their business with China include Boeing, Proctor & Gamble, General Electric, Visa, Coca-Cola, Wal-Mart, Johnson & Johson, Ford. GM. Starbucks, and Papa John’s, things must be kept in perspective. NBA players can be only a part of the solution but have considerable influence, when they assert it, over league policies. And ascribing racial motivation to their critics only strengthens the regime in China and excuses their enablers in the USA's corporate sector.

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