Month: May 2021

Former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti helpfully explains the peril Rudy Giuliani finds himself in and the reasons he might turn against Donald Trump. I find no fault in his analysis, but I’m finding this saga strangely unsatisfying. I didn’t expect to feel this way. I’ve been eagerly waiting Giuliani’s imprisonment ever since he first started adventuring over to Ukraine. You’d think I’d be ecstatic to read about how screwed he is after the FBI raided his home and office and seized his electronic devices.

I think the main thing bugging me is that this is that it’s all revolving around an alleged violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Among the things Giuliani has done that are deserving of prison time, neglecting to register his activities is very far down the list. He’s a straight-up hustler, and his day typically involves jumping from one hare-brained effort to fleece people out their money to another. This is what I want exposed, not that he lobbied the president on behalf of Ukrainian oligarchs without signing the proper forms.

I won’t complain if he’s convicted of serious crimes even if I think they’re the wrong crimes, but what I want more than justice is for people to learn what this man is all about.

Of course, with Giuliani, large and small crimes intersect. For example, his “work” for Fraud Guarantee had something for everyone. It was a fake company offering a fake product that payed Giuliani a half a million dollars to do nothing. Who paid Giuliani? According to a separate federal indictment, an unidentified Russian businessman was responsible. The Russian delivered a pile of money, the indictment claims, “to gain influence with U.S. politicians and candidates.”

When I wrote about this in 2019, I repeatedly called it “the biggest political scandal in American history.”

Here’s the thing. The issue I have with how this is being covered is that it’s being framed as a technical violation as if everything would have been fine if Giuliani hadn’t tried to hide what he was doing and who was paying for it. But he was doing two very serious things. The first is that he was working for a fraudulent company that was ripping off investors. The second is that he was being paid by friends of Vladimir Putin to help cover up what the Russians did in the 2016 election and blame it on Ukrainians.

Let’s not forget, either, that he was also serving as a personal attorney to the United States. And that president was asking him to do the exact same thing. Trump probably did not tell Giuliani to try to enrich himself while he was in Ukraine trying to exonerate Russia. That was typical free-lancing from an inveterate grifter. But he did want Giuliani to damage Joe Biden, and that’s what caused the first impeachment trial for Trump.

Giuliani finished off his public career by pushing phony election fraud claims and inciting an insurrection “trial by combat” against the U.S. Government.

So, forgive me if I’m a bit impatient reading about how he’s guilty of unregistered foreign lobbying. He might turn against Trump, but the crimes as so big here they almost defy imagination. Both he and the ex-president betrayed their country in ways that no one thought possible. It’s the scale and improbability of their crimes that offer their best defense. It seems almost brazen to even accuse them of doing what they did, but they did it and I don’t want to see it treated as a technical offense.

The Pew Research Center has done an extensive analysis of news coverage during Biden’s first two months in office. They specifically looked at differences between media outlets that were aimed at (1) a left-leaning audience,  (2) a mixed audience, and (3) a right-leaning audience. Here is one finding that caught my eye.

In the first 60 days of the Biden administration, all three media outlet groupings were much more likely to frame their stories around the president’s policy agenda than his character and leadership skills…Four years ago, around three-quarters of stories about the new Trump administration (74%) were framed around the president’s leadership and character, with very little difference among media groupings.

Of course, that is understandable given that Trump trafficked in conspiracy theories and name-calling while rarely (if ever) talking about specific policies.

The coverage of Biden also differs sharply from how the media treated Hillary Clinton in 2016. Of course, she lost the election, so we never got the opportunity to analyze how the media would have covered a Clinton presidency. But the Berkman-Klein Center at Harvard found this when comparing coverage of Clinton vs. Trump in the run-up to the 2016 election.

The media focus was on the so-called “Clinton scandals,” while covering the issues Trump was talking about (ie, immigration). That was true even though, as Jennifer Rubin noted, “Hillary Clinton is the most exonerated politician ever.” By my count, she has been cleared of four major attempts to smear her reputation: (1) Whitewater, (2) Benghazi, (3) emails, and (4) the Clinton Foundation. But other than an opinion column like the one from Rubin, the accusations against Clinton still hang in the air and are often used by her critics on both the left and the right to claim that she ran a terrible campaign.

It is impossible to quantify how much the difference in coverage of Biden and Clinton is the product of sexism. But it is also impossible to ignore the fact that the media was quick to debunk the claims about Biden being corrupt, but lingered endlessly on similar claims about Clinton. Neither were based on any solid evidence. That seemed to matter a whole lot less when the target was a woman.

Markos Moulitsas has done something that rarely happens with media figures. He wrote a column about the fact that he was totally wrong in his initial opinion about Biden during the primaries. In that piece, he noted this difficult fact:

Black voters in South Carolina took a look at the field, considered America’s relationship with race and gender, and said, “Nope, we ain’t chancing it. Getting rid of Trump is our number one priority, and the old white guy is the safest bet getting there.”

It hurts so much to admit it, because it says things about America that we all wish weren’t true (mainly, that we still have a long way to go on equality), but not only were they right to place all the chips on Biden, but he may very well be the only Democrat who could’ve beaten Trump last year. By virtue of his race, gender, and sexual orientation, Biden avoided the visceral, vitriolic hatred that conservatives muster up for anyone that doesn’t look or love like them.

None of this is meant as a critique of Biden. By all measures he is an older white man that is championing the cause of equality over the challenges posed by sexism, racism, and classism. But we can still mourn the way that the media is treating him differently than they did when a woman ran for president…and be better prepared for the next time.

What does the American Confederacy have in common with Hitler’s Nazi regime?

Both Germany in World War II and the Confederacy in the Civil War were essentially white supremacist states bent on enslaving millions of other people based on racist ideologies. Both were unconditionally and catastrophically defeated. After the wars, both viewed their militaries as apolitical and not motivated by racist ideologies. Indeed, many in both societies viewed their veterans as having fought to defend their country and its values valiantly, resulting in the myths of Germany’s “Clean Wehrmacht” and the South’s “Lost Cause.”

In Germany, there is much more of an emphasis on honoring the victims of the Nazi regime than the soldiers who died fighting for it. But it’s still possible to find memorials to the country’s war dead–most prominently, the official “Mother With Dead Son” statue in Berlin. Tellingly, though, Stuttgart unveiled a memorial in 2007 that honors “those who deserted from the German Army, including 20,000 who were executed as a result.”

In America, the South does not honor those who deserted, which is a shame. But it should be acceptable to acknowledge Southerners who fought and died in the war without dishonoring those that died on the other side or making apologies for the Confederacy. If Germany can do this for World War Two soldiers, America can do it for Confederate soldiers.

But this is as far as we should ever go. Mississippi celebrated Confederate Memorial Day on Monday–a state holiday. Governor Tate Reeves just declared April as Confederate Heritage Month. Then, Gov. Reeves went on Fox News to insist that there is no systemic racism in America.

Needless to say, the balance is all out of whack here. Where is the concern for the victims of slavery or those who died keeping the American Union together? You don’t have to disown the entirety of your history to do an honest appraisal of where you went wrong.

More than anything, this is why America can’t get past its problem with racism. Germany provides a good model that Mississippi could emulate. It would be nice if they would.

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be continuing with the castle scene. The photo that I’m using is seen directly below.

I’ll be using my usual acrylic paints on a 8×8 inch canvas panel.

When last seen the painting appeared as it does in the photo seen directly below.

Since that time I have continued to work on the painting.

This week’s changes center around the castle for the most part. The castle has now been overpainted and details added. Below, the reflection has been repainted as well as the shadow. Beyond these changes, the surrounding landscape has had some blue added to the area behind the castle and green elsewhere.

The current state of the painting is seen in the photo directly below.

I’ll have more progress to show you next week. See you then.