Month: July 2019

When I watch the Democratic Party’s presidential debates, I do it through the lens of electability. I don’t mean that I evaluate the individual candidates in terms of how electable I believe they are relative to each other, but more that I look at the presentation as a whole. How does the party come off? Is what they’re selling going to play in the Philadelphia suburbs? Is it going to play in the more rural parts of Pennsylvania where Donald Trump rolled up an insurmountable lead on Hillary Clinton?

In suburban Chester County, Pennsylvania, where I live, the single biggest employer is Vanguard, a major financial services company. The third biggest employer is the international medical device-maker Siemens. Pharmaceutical companies Johnson & Johnson and Endo are also in the top 50, along with three different hospital systems and a couple of other health care companies.

It’s a problem that the financial services, pharmaceutical, and health care industries come under such strong attack in these debates because many see it as a personal insult and others simply see it as a threat to their livelihood. I know this firsthand because I live with the people who work in these industries and I hear how they respond. It’s these people who were nodding along with the centrists in Tuesday’s debate as they engaged in a cage match with Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

Suburban Democrats in this area are still tax averse, which means they are receptive to the message that the more liberal candidates are engaged in fairy tale promises on how they’ll finance their proposals. And, while the suburbs are now incredibly diverse, they were still established in a time of white flight from the city and have a legacy of being among the most persistently Republican-controlled counties in the country.  It’s fair to say that the white population here has become tolerant and accepting of non-white immigrants, but the changes are certainly causing some anxiety and discomfort for a lot of people. The president’s racism is a huge loser overall here, but when he trashes a city like Baltimore it also resonates with a lot of folks who are terrified of the violence in Philadelphia. The Democrats’ positions on decriminalizing the border and offering reparations for slavery are probably huge losers in the suburbs, too.

As for the rural areas of the state, these policies are positively toxic. The offer of free college and college loan forgiveness are so out of touch that former Senator Rick Santorum was positively gleeful during the post-debate coverage on CNN, and I had to reluctantly agree with him.

Even before watching the debate, I wrote for my subscribers that “Trump is Losing the Suburbs but the Democrats Might Hand Them Back”.

The Democrats are doing their damnedest to lose suburban support with some of their more extreme health care and immigration rhetoric, and some nominees would add to that the demonization of anyone who works in the insurance, pharmaceutical or financial services industries. Trump may very well do even better in rural areas than he did in 2016 when his shocking victory was almost entirely explained by his unanticipated strength there. To offset that, the Democrats need to more than match him in the suburbs, and they seem to be hellbent on playing with fire with that crucial slice of the electorate.

Remember, too, that the Democrat can run up much bigger numbers in places like Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles and San Francisco without it helping in the Electoral College at all. The battle will be won or lost outside of Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Columbus, Cleveland, Charlotte, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Tampa, and Orlando.

Trump knows what he needs to do to win again even while getting crushed in the popular vote. But he can’t do it alone. His strategy is losing him too much suburban support. The Democrats should not do things that hand that support right back to him.

That fear did not dissipate after what I witnessed Tuesday night.

I thought the best moment of the debate came when Elizabeth Warren grew exasperated at criticism from her right and stated, “I don’t understand why anybody goes to all the trouble of running for the president of the United States just to talk about what we really can’t do and shouldn’t fight for. I don’t get it.”

Overall, I think she manages to do a much better job than Bernie Sanders in presenting her ideas in ways that are broadly palatable in both the suburbs and in more rural areas. But even she engaged in some rhetoric that is going to greatly assist Donald Trump in making a second run at Pennsylvania.

I continue to believe that Trump has lost Pennsylvania and probably any realistic chance of being reelected. But the Democrats are making me very nervous because their message isn’t tailored to winning here, at all. Joe Biden, who is almost an honorary senator in Pennsylvania, is pretty much bullet-proof in the Keystone State, so these alternative candidates need to show they won’t put a sure thing at risk by pandering to voters who won’t decide the election while Trump stays laser-focused on just the voters who will.

His message is designed to polarize the electorate racially and drive his numbers in all-white counties through the roof, while bludgeoning the Democrats in the suburbs for their “socialism” and disrespect. It worked once before and it probably won’t work again. But it could.

I don’t know why anybody goes to all the trouble of running for president and then risks an easy win.  All the Democrats need to do is occupy the center because Trump has abandoned it. And, yet, they seem to prefer to want to make this a white-knuckle affair.

I personally agree with much of the more troublesome rhetoric and political positions on the merits, but it’s not suited for the politics of the moment.

Sometimes being a good dad means being a bad blogger, which is why I skipped the debates in favor of Iron Maiden with my son (full disclosure: this wasn’t a difficult choice).

On the other hand, I’ve sure seen the fallout on Facebook and Twitter. I gather there was some disagreement about health care.

From what I’m seeing on social media, “deep divisions” is an understatement. And for the life of me, I do not understand why. I’m seeing people vowing they will “never ” vote for someone who supports Medicare for All over more Medicaid expansion, and vice versa. God forbid you support a public option—you might as well admit you’re a neo-Nazi who wants babies to die, but only after Jeffrey Epstein’s had a round or two with them.

These are just random samplings. I’m far too lazy to go through the whole list of objections, counter-objections, accusations, hurt feelings, and overall whiny-ass-titty-babyism. Instead, here’s a little truth.

I have chronic asthma, and currently no health insurance. I was smart and stocked up on meds, knowing that my coverage was ending. Because I live in a state that didn’t expand Medicaid, I’m jumping through a whole bunch of hoops to re-establish residency in Pennsylvania, where I probably qualify. That means I’ll be low-balling my income—as you do when you freelance—and likely owing taxes—with interest and penalties for late payment, naturally—as a result. My steroid inhaler, which I use twice a day to keep the wheezing away, used to cost $300/month back in 2013, the last time I had no coverage. I have no doubt it costs more now. I need to do these things simply so I can continue to breathe properly.

As a bona fide middle aged person, I’m now wearing bifocals. Do you have any idea how much it costs to get your vision checked out?

I need a crown on one of my molars, after a filling dropped out a few weeks ago. I didn’t have the time then to get it placed, but the dentist told me it would likely take up my coverage for the entire year. I sure hope nothing happens to that tooth while I’m uninsured, because I don’t just have a big fuckin’ pile of money lying around that I can dip into at a moment’s notice.

Look, I get it. The Affordable Care Act is kinda sucky. It does some things really well (poor and sick people who couldn’t get insurance can get insurance now!) and some things not so well (Why am I changing insurance plans again? Why is my deductible so high? Why does this silver plan suck so bad?).

I think debate is good. Heated debate is good. Disagreement is fine, health care is a big thing.

But this “my way or the highway” shit I’m seeing from some folks (the loudest ones, of course) is nonsense. As someone who’s directly impacted by the discussion, let me say it clearly: I don’t give a flying fuck WHAT model health care takes, as long as it WORKS.

Medicare for All? I am 100% in favor of that.

A public option like what we fought for during the Obama years, only to have the president himself turn his back on us? I am 100% in favor of that too.

Expanding Medicaid in more states and making more people eligible? Yup. I can get behind that.

My stance is Whatever’s clever.

It is the correct one, and all of the screaming babies threatening not to vote, hurling insults and invective,and stomping their feet are wrong.

If we lose this election, we’ll likely wind up with no health care at all.

Hi music lovers!

Some early Aphex Twin to start things off:

Since I always program these to start at midnight, I thought it appropriate to open with some night music. Feel free to add vids of your favorite tunes in the comments below. Booman’s been having fun adding some Grateful Dead. There is no theme other than eclecticism.

The jukebox and bar are open. Have a good time and be responsible (we can do both).

Cheers!

The Associated Press sent some reporters out to talk to suburban women in an effort to see how they’re reacting to President Trump’s winning personality. All of these types of stories are completely unscientific, but the general feel they got from talking to women outside Philadelphia, Detroit and Denver is that Trump is losing a lot of female suburban support with his racist attitude.

This is basically a no-brainer, especially if you actually live in the suburbs like I do. Suburban schools are so diverse now that pretty much every white kid has a bunch of “people of color” as friends. This is certainly true of my son, and I’d have to be some kind of complete miscreant to voice support for the president and still think my child would be welcome at birthday parties. The country has changed since the time of White Flight, and the price Trump will pay for looking to run up his numbers in all-white small towns and rural America is a worse shellacking in the nation’s suburbs.

Yet, that still doesn’t mean his plan can’t work. The Democrats are doing their damnedest to lose suburban support with some of their more extreme health care and immigration rhetoric, and some nominees would add to that the demonization of anyone who works in the insurance, pharmaceutical or financial services industries. Trump may very well do even better in rural areas than he did in 2016 when his shocking victory was almost entirely explained by his unanticipated strength there. To offset that, the Democrats need to more than match him in the suburbs, and they seem to be hellbent on playing with fire with that crucial slice of the electorate.

Remember, too, that the Democrat can run up much bigger numbers in places like Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles and San Francisco without it helping in the Electoral College at all. The battle will be won or lost outside of Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Columbus, Cleveland, Charlotte, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Tampa, and Orlando.

Trump knows what he needs to do to win again even while getting crushed in the popular vote. But he can’t do it alone. His strategy is losing him too much suburban support. The Democrats should not do things that hand that support right back to him.

After Mueller’s testimony before Congress, I was pretty despondent. I turned it off, to be honest. Marty was similarly unimpressed.

This morning, the New York Times’ Michelle Goldberg arrived at a very different conclusion.

Last Wednesday, after Robert Mueller’s terse and sometimes halting congressional testimony, conventional wisdom quickly congealed: Mueller’s performance had made Donald Trump’s impeachment far less likely. “Robert S. Mueller III’s disastrous testimony has taken the wind out of the sails of the Democratic impeachment drive,” wrote Marc Thiessen in The Washington Post. CNN’s Chris Cillizza declared Mueller’s testimony “a bust — at least when it came to generating momentum for impeachment.”

Less than a week later, it’s clear that these hot takes were wrong. At no point in Trump’s wretched rule has impeachment appeared more probable. Indeed, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee, which would oversee impeachment hearings, argue that an inquiry into impeachment has already begun. An inexorable confrontation between the House and the president has been set in motion.

I need to get the words “Chris Cillizza is always wrong” tattooed somewhere on my body. Maybe somewhere really sensitive, so I don’t forget. He is always wrong. I remember reading the original article (no, I am not going to link to Cillizza), and should have taken heart then.

Goldberg continues.

Perhaps even more significant than the growing number of calls for impeachment is a lawsuit filed by the Judiciary Committee on Friday. The filing, demanding access to grand jury material from the Mueller investigation, says that the committee “is conducting an investigation to determine whether to recommend articles of impeachment.” In other words, the Judiciary Committee, which would oversee any potential impeachment, announced, with surprisingly little fanfare, that an impeachment inquiry is already underway.

That seems to be quite different from “a bust.” Now if only someone could tell Nancy to get out of the way.

For Generation X folks like myself, the first real impeachment controversy arose because of the Boland Amendment. Named after Massachusetts Democrat Ed Boland, it was actually four amendments, attached separately to the Defense appropriations or continuing spending resolution bills of 1982, 1983, 1984, and 1985, that prohibited the use of any money set aside for the CIA or Pentagon to overthrow the government of Nicaragua. The language changed a bit over time, but the gist remained the same. By 1984, Congress had become aware that the Reagan Administration was using the National Security Council to circumvent their ban, so they expanded the wording of the amendment to reflect that:

“No funds available to the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Defense, or any other agency or entity of the United States involved in intelligence activities may be obligated or expended for the purpose or which would have the effect of supporting, directly or indirectly, military or paramilitary operations in Nicaragua by any nation, group, organization, movement or individual.”

The Iran-Contra affair was a direct result of the administration’s efforts to get around this language. As already mentioned, the effort to oust the Sandinistas was moved into the National Security Council which had a different funding stream than the Department of Defense or the CIA. When Congress moved to ban the NSC from spending money for the Contras as well, they convinced the Israelis and Saudis to provide the money. In the midst of that subterfuge, they also came up with a plan to sell weapons to Iran in an effort to get them to convince Hizbollah to release American hostages held in Lebanon. But they took the money from the Teheran arms sales and sent the portion they didn’t divert into their personal Swiss bank accounts to the Contras.

No one seriously contended that this had been legal. There were the usual protestations that the president should be free to set foreign policy, but eventually it was conceded that everything had not been by the book. The question was what should be done about it. In the end, the answer was nothing. Even those who were convicted for their role or cover-up of the affair were pardoned by President Poppy Bush on Christmas Eve 1992, just before he left office.

I’m reminded of this history when I think about the Senate’s failure to override President Trump’s veto of their prohibition on making arms sales to Saudi Arabia for the purpose of waging war in Yemen.

The Senate on Monday failed to override President Trump’s vetoes of resolutions blocking his arms deal with Saudi Arabia, marking the latest setback for critics of Riyadh.

Senators voted 45-40, 45-39 and 46-41 on the override attempts, falling well short of the two-thirds majority needed to nix Trump’s veto.

GOP Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Mike Lee (Utah), Jerry Moran (Kansas), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Todd Young (Ind.) voted with Democrats to override each of the three vetoes. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who missed the first two votes, joined them to support overriding the third.

Congress was trying to exercise their authority under the Arms Export Control Act (AECA). Under the provisions of the act, the administration must notify Congress of significant arms sales and provide them enough time to hold a vote of disapproval.  In June 2019, President Trump ignored this requirement.

Trump in June publicly announced the arms deal, estimated to be worth more than $8 billion, using an “emergency” provision in the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) to bypass the 30-day congressional notification requirement.

The administration has argued the emergency declaration was justified based on what it described as heightened threats from Iran and said a better use of Congress’s time would be to try to help negotiate an end to the years-long Yemen civil war.

It was backed up by most Republicans, who are wary of damaging the U.S.-Saudi relationship despite frustration over the Yemen war and the death of Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi.

While the Republicans went along with this, many were furious about how it was done.

To understand the full context here, it’s important to understand that Congress has already taken the unprecedented step of using the War Powers Act to ban further American involvement in Yemen’s civil war.

The House of Representatives voted on [April 4, 2019] to end U.S. military involvement in Yemen’s bloody civil war in a historic measure that sets the stage for a showdown between the White House and Capitol Hill over the president’s ability to wage wars without congressional approval.

It marks the first time in history that legislation invoking the 1970s-era War Powers Resolution, aimed at reasserting Congress’s role in U.S. wars abroad, passed both the House and Senate. It now heads to President Donald Trump’s desk, where most officials expect the president to veto the measure.

The vote was on a bipartisan resolution, though it largely fell on party lines, with only 16 Republicans joining Democrats in favor for a final tally of 247 to 175.

The Senate passed a coinciding resolution in March to end U.S. support for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen by a vote of 54 to 46, well short of the two-thirds majority required to override a presidential veto.

Of course, the veto is a legitimate and constitutional tool. President Trump wants to continue give the Saudis weapons, just as he wants to give them nuclear technology. If Congress wants to stop this, they have to override the veto and they don’t have the votes or the will to accomplish this.

But, what if they did?

What if they overrode Trump’s veto and banned these weapons sales, and then Trump went ahead and found a way to get around the ban as Reagan did with the Contras? Would Congress actually do anything about it?

My guess is that they would not.

And let’s consider why Congress wants no further part in the civil war in Yemen.

For months, lawmakers and the Trump administration have engaged in fierce debates over whether the U.S. military should continue supporting the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen as it fights Iran-backed Houthi rebels. The issue centers on the devastating humanitarian toll of the conflict, where nearly half the population, some 14 million people, are on the brink of famine, and some 22 million Yemenis require humanitarian assistance. Yemen is now considered the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, due in part to a deadly bombing campaign by the Saudi coalition that has indiscriminately targeted civilians and reduced to rubble some of the developing county’s vital infrastructure.

“The death toll is mounting, and our country’s hands aren’t clean,” said Scott Paul, an expert on Yemen with the humanitarian organization Oxfam America.

It’s one thing for Congress to oppose an ongoing American role in the war and yet not be able to muster the numbers to impose their will on the executive branch. It’s another matter for them to actually impose their will, as was done in the 1980’s with respect to Nicaragua, and then have that will circumvented and ignored.

The bottom line is that Congress seems helpless to stop our involvement in wars it opposes despite its power of the purse. And that means the American people, through our representatives, are also powerless.

Not that it makes up for any of the times Bill Kristol has been wrong or the way he got so many innocent people killed in Iraq, but his organization, Republicans for the Rule of Law, has a good ad up. They rip Russian asset and traitorous piece of garbage Mitch McConnell a new asshole for refusing to protect our elections from Putin. Moscow Mitch is pretty upset about all the attention, so it’s worth sharing for that fact alone.

Again, none of this makes up or cancels out the fact that Kristol told lie after lie, leading us to invade Iraq, get a lot of people killed, leave American soldiers with mentally and physical disabled, and ultimately breeding the kind of cynicism that resulted in the election of Donald Trump. But it ain’t nothin’ either.

Image courtesy of Matt Johnson

I don’t know why, with all the technological prowess humans now possess, we seem to be so unconcerned with the fact that we might go the way of the dinosaurs. We just barely missed getting blasted by an asteroid as big as the one that leveled 770 square miles of Siberian forest in 1908.

This asteroid wasn’t one that scientists had been tracking, and it had seemingly appeared from “out of nowhere,” Michael Brown, a Melbourne-based observational astronomer, told The Washington Post. According to data from NASA, the craggy rock was large, an estimated 57 to 130 meters wide (187 to 427 feet), and moving fast along a path that brought it within about 73,000 kilometers (45,000 miles) of Earth. That’s less than one-fifth of the distance to the moon and what Duffy considers “uncomfortably close.”

“It snuck up on us pretty quickly,” said Brown, an associate professor in Australia with Monash University’s School of Physics and Astronomy. He later noted, “People are only sort of realizing what happened pretty much after it’s already flung past us.”

We don’t want to get hit by rocks this large.

“It would have gone off like a very large nuclear weapon” with enough force to destroy a city, [Brown] said. “Many megatons, perhaps in the ballpark of 10 megatons of TNT, so something not to be messed with.”

In 2013, a significantly smaller meteor — about 20 meters (65 feet) across, or the size of a six-story building — broke up over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk and unleashed an intense shock wave that collapsed roofs, shattered windows and left about 1,200 people injured.

Solving this problem isn’t easy. It requires, first of all, much more advanced notice than we received in this case. Then it requires technological solutions that haven’t yet been invented. We might be able to use a spaceship’s gravity to deflect the asteroid off a collision course, or maybe we could attach solar sails to speed it past us. Either way, we’d have to be able to intercept it at a considerable distance, which means we’d need ships on standby the way NORAD has planes on standby to protect American airspace.

But we’d rather bitch at each other about religion and holy lands and whether or not it’s okay to kneel during that national anthem. We’re lucky we still have a chance to have better survival skills than the dinosaurs, but so far I see no evidence that we do today.

In this bizarro world we’re suffering through in the era of Trump, a backbench congressman can say some of the dumbest crap ever uttered in a nationally televised committee hearing on a Wednesday and get appointed as the director of national intelligence on a Sunday.

John Ratcliffe represents the 4th District of Texas, which is estimated to be the fifth most conservative district in the country. In the 114th Congress, only Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado compiled a higher rating with Heritage Action then Ratcliffe.

During Robert Mueller’s testimony on July 24th, Ratcliffe “auditioned” for the National Intelligence directorship position by launching a ludicrous attack that every decently sentient human immediately realized was illogical.

Texas Republican Rep. John Ratcliffe delivered a sharp rebuke to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s handling of obstruction of justice in his report.

During Mueller’s testimony on Capitol Hill July 24, Ratcliffe said the entire section went beyond the rules for special counsels and broke with the presumption that a person is innocent until proven guilty.

“You wrote 180 pages about … potential crimes that were not charged or decided,” Ratcliffe said. “Now respectfully, by doing that you managed to violate the most sacred of traditions of prosecutors not offering extra prosecutorial analysis about potential crimes that are not charged.”

Ratcliffe emphasized, “You didn’t follow the special counsel regulations. It clearly says write a confidential report about decisions reached. Nowhere in here does it say write a report about decisions that were not reached.”

I could easily spend 3,000 words explaining why this doesn’t make sense, but I’ll try to be very concise. Number one, Robert Mueller was required by the clear language of the statute that created his office to provide the attorney general with “a confidential report explaining the prosecution or declination decisions reached by the Special Counsel.”

That word “declination” means that Mueller had to give some rationale for why he did not charge the president with crimes. So, “he wrote 180 pages about potential crimes that were not charged or decided” because he had no alternative if he wanted to abide by the law.

As for Mueller not reaching a decision on whether the president committed obstruction of justice, he had his reasons which I will get to. What is obvious is that he made a decision not to charge the president with obstruction of justice. He “declined” to charge him, and therefore explained why he declined to charge him, as required by law. But he made these explanations in a confidential report. The decision to release redacted portions of the report was not made by Muller, but by attorney general William Barr. That’s why this next part is nonsensical.

“Now respectfully, by doing that you managed to violate the most sacred of traditions of prosecutors not offering extra prosecutorial analysis about potential crimes that are not charged.”

This reasoning can give a person whiplash. The principle that Rep. Ratcliffe was trying to apply is that prosecutors who investigate people and then decide not to charge them with a crime should not release any derogatory information to the public since the person will not have any formal opportunity to defend themselves. But that doesn’t mean the prosecutors cannot discuss the derogatory information privately among themselves or with the attorney general in a confidential report explaining why they did not bring charges.

Again, it was William Barr who released this derogatory information, not Robert Mueller. But, more to the point, the entire reason that Mueller did not accuse the president of obstructing justice is because he concluded that he was not allowed to prosecute him for it and that it would therefore be unfair to make a legal accusation that the president would have no way to defend against. In other words, Mueller honored the very principle that Ratcliffe was misappropriating by declining to make a formal finding of obstruction despite the fact that he clearly stated that he could not exonerate Trump or clear him of the charges. He made it crystal clear that Trump can be charged with obstruction of justice as soon as he is no longer president.

His reward for this was to be accused of not doing it by the least senior member of the minority on the House Intelligence Committee.

It is obviously absurd to ask a prosecutor to investigate a person who he is not allowed to prosecute. Under those circumstances it’s flat-out insane to say that he cannot even describe crimes uncovered during the investigation unless he charges those crimes. If we follow that through, Mueller could have discovered that Trump was a serial killer who had buried bodies in the Rose Garden and he wouldn’t be allowed to tell anyone about it. But, one more time for emphasis, Mueller didn’t tell Congress or the public about the skeletons he uncovered. He told William Barr.

Rep. Ratcliffe did his bit at the hearings, grandstanding with this risible pretzel logic, and now he has his reward.

President Trump announced on Sunday that Dan Coats would step down as the director of national intelligence after a fraught tenure marked by tension with the Oval Office, and he tapped one of his staunch defenders, Representative John Ratcliffe, to take over the country’s expansive network of spy agencies…

…Mr. Trump met with Mr. Ratcliffe on July 19 to discuss the job, but the hearings just five days later offered the congressman a chance to essentially audition for the president, who enjoyed watching him grill Mr. Mueller, according to people informed about the process…

…Mr. Ratcliffe…hammered Mr. Mueller for saying he could not exonerate Mr. Trump on obstruction of justice, declaring that such a determination was beyond his mission.

“I agree with the chairman this morning when he said Donald Trump is not above the law,” Mr. Ratcliffe said. “He’s not. But he damn sure shouldn’t be below the law.”

I am not a big fan of Dan Coats but he was a reasonable choice to serve as the director of national intelligence. He didn’t get along with Trump primarily because he has at least one foot rooted in reality.

In recent months, Mr. Coats discovered that it was difficult to align himself with the president — particularly on Russia. Mr. Coats saw Russia as an adversary and pushed for closer cooperation with American allies in Europe. Time after time, the White House sought to weaken Mr. Coats’s language regarding the Kremlin.

A secret report by Mr. Coats about interference in the 2018 midterm elections contained a harsh assessment about Russia’s efforts to influence the American public by stoking conspiracy theories and polarization. But the public statement, edited by the White House, contained little of the tough language.

Russia was just one example. Coats has been blindsided over and over again during his time trying to coordinate the country’s intelligence product for the president (see, e.g. North Korea and all things Jared Kushner).

Coats’s departure is really just a significant advance in an already ongoing purge of the intelligence community of anyone who might but the country’s interests before the insane interests of the current president of the United States.

Now Trump will have someone in charge of the entire intelligence community who is completely partisan and has been marinated in the fever swamp of right-wing media.

[Ratcliffe] had little intelligence background before arriving in Congress even though the law requires “extensive national security expertise” for the position, and intelligence veterans expressed alarm at what they worry was the politicization of the position.

“The ability to tell truth to power was the traditional qualification for the director of national intelligence,” said Dennis R. Blair, another former director under Mr. Obama. “More recently, sucking up to power seems to be what is expected.”

…Some Republicans, however, privately expressed concern, including Senator Richard M. Burr of North Carolina, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who cautioned the president’s advisers that he considered Mr. Ratcliffe too political for the post, according to people familiar with the discussions. Mr. Trump disregarded the warning.

And I’ll just leave you with this, because it’s the bottom line:

Douglas Wise, a former C.I.A. officer and deputy head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said the appointment could pose an “existential threat” to the agencies. “Intelligence has to be candid, truthful and accurate even if it is unpleasant and does not confirm to the biases of the president,” he said.

There will be nothing candid, truthful or accurate about the information Ratcliffe provides Trump or Congress. He has been appointed specifically to put an end to that sort of thing.

Don’t get me wrong. This is a perfectly good essay about Donald Trump’s racism by Jonathan Chait. I just can’t imagine writing something like it myself anymore because there is no joy in going over the same things over and over again, and it’s insane to think it will be bring a different result. At this point, it just seems like serving the regular customer as the corner table of the diner the exact same breakfast he’s ordered for the last thirty years straight. Yes, I know he will eat it and come back tomorrow for more, but what’s really in it for me beyond that?

What’s more insightful is the piece Daily Kos Elections published on Sunday. Of particular interest is the map they created showing the predominant self-reported ancestry of every federal congressional district in the country. When you’re looking at it, keep in mind that this is just the “most-reported” country/region of origin, so it can be a majority or more often a simple plurality. For example, don’t conclude that over 50 percent of the people in House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff’s CA-28 district are Armenian.

Can you tell that Texas was annexed from Mexico in 1845 and that “California and a large area comprising roughly half of New Mexico, most of Arizona, Nevada, and Utah and Colorado” were ceded in 1848 with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo? Those areas (with the exception of Utah) are red today not only because of recent Mexican immigration, but because they were originally part of Mexico. How many tea bagger and Trumpistas are even aware of this?

Black of African-American is the most commonly reported ancestry in the South because of slavery. Some northern urban districts (like Baltimore) are plurality or majority black today because of the northern migration after the Civil War. Likewise, Irish-Americans predominate in New England, Germans in the northern Midwest, and Scots-Irish (who seem to call themselves “Americans”) in Appalachia because of 18th and 19th-Century immigration patterns.

Today’s America is a product of yesterday’s wars, immigration patterns, and laws about human bondage and civil rights. Virtually every congressional district on that map tells an unsurprising story if you know your American history. And, collectively, they show how initial settlers (like New England’s Protestant Congregationalists) were overwhelmed by later settlers (like potato-famine fleeing Irish-Catholics). You can see how the Mormons took over Utah, and how the Cherokees were driven out of the southeast and into Oklahoma.

All of these people are “real Americans.” In fact, most Americans today are a mix of several of these groups. I have ancestors who came over on the Mayflower and ancestors who arrived from Northern Italy and signed their name with an ‘X.” My mother’s maiden name is probably a misspelling of her great-grandfather’s home town.  I have German ancestors who settled the town of Berlin, Pennsylvania. If I had to estimate, I’d guess that I have more German ancestry than anything else, but I don’t even know that for certain. If I had to answer the question, I’d be tempted to just say “American.”

I’m as white as ghost because none of my forebears, as far as I am aware, came from anywhere south of the Italian Alps. Yet, I wouldn’t be shocked if a genetic biologist discovered I have a black or Mexican or Native-American ancestor. The history of America and the settlement of the West involved a lot of mixing of groups, much of which was never formally acknowledged in any government documents. This is as true of the black population as any other–perhaps more so. Only racial laws that discriminated against people who were as little as one-eighth black have kept us from recognizing that the black population is as genetically diverse as the white population.

President Trump thinks about genetics with the same degree of scientific literacy and rank prejudice as earlier 20th-Century anti-Semites and eugenicists. He’s an idiot.

But we knew that.

I don’t need to keep saying it.