Month: June 2023

It occurs to me that as a Pennsylvanian, it really shouldn’t matter to me too much if Oregon splits in half, with the eastern portion joining Idaho. There’s a general interest I have in the welfare of all people, and I think the more Americans live in places that respect their civil and reproductive rights the better, but I sympathize with conservative-minded Oregonians who don’t want to be politically dominated by coastal liberals.

The problem is that due to our stupid Electoral College system, I would be directly impacted by this change. A larger Idaho would have more Electoral College votes and a smaller Oregon would have fewer. This would make it marginally easier for a Republican to win the presidency even without a single voter changing their preference. It’s possible that the outcome of a close election could hinge on the difference. So, even though I could theoretically be persuaded that an expanded Idaho would create more cohesive political units, I have to oppose it for selfish reasons.

I’d far prefer to oppose it solely for high-minded reasons, like my concern for vulnerable communities, women’s reproductive freedom and the health of the environment. This is just another example of why we should scrap the Electoral College.

The change isn’t likely to happen anytime soon, but it’s not out of the question.

A grassroots movement to redraw Oregon’s border is gaining traction after voters in 11 rural, conservative counties approved measures this year that would start the process of seceding from the blue state and joining Republican-dominated Idaho.

In Oregon’s Wallowa County, just eight votes separated those who support the Greater Idaho movement from those who oppose it last week, the county clerk said. Tuesday is the deadline to resubmit ballots that either did not have signatures or had signatures that did not match county records…

…The question posed to voters would not result in an immediate redrawing of the border; instead, it would initiate regular county meetings to discuss secession. Legislators in both states would have to agree on a formal plan to move the state border, which would then require the approval of Congress.

I should note that there’s a definite White Christian Nationalist flavor to the Greater Idaho movement even if advocates don’t always make that explicitly clear. It’s related to the preexisting State of Jefferson movement, a plan hatched in 1941 to carve a new state out of portions of California and Oregon. It also shares obvious cultural similarities with the American Redoubt movement, which is a White Christian survivalist cult focused on riding out the apocalypse in a geographical area encompassing Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming along with eastern parts of Oregon and Washington.

I have no interest in empowering these folks, so that’s another reason I don’t support splitting Oregon in two. But, in principle, I don’t think there’s anything sacrosanct about our country’s state borders. Just as House of Representatives districts are regularly redrawn to account for changes in population and to (in theory) create more coherent political units, we can periodically adjust populations between states. But we shouldn’t have to consider the presidential implications of such changes. Each case should considered on its own merits, and ideally should be decided with the consent of the people who live there.

The Beach Club at Mar-a-Lago has a 132 foot by 50 foot pool but it’s pretty far away from the main buildings of the complex. The primary pool measures 100 feet by 50 feet and is easy to see in aerial pictures of the twice-impeached, once-indicted ex-president’s luxury compound. Now, maybe if I were a pool maintenance guy this would make some sense, but looking at the layout of the place, it’s hard for me to picture how you can manage to accidentally flood a room containing the servers that keep the surveillance video footage.

An employee at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence drained the resort’s swimming pool last October and ended up flooding a room where computer servers containing surveillance video logs were kept, sources familiar with the matter told CNN.

While it’s unclear if the room was intentionally flooded or if it happened by mistake, the incident occurred amid a series of events that federal prosecutors found suspicious.

I mean, I don’t know where they normally pump the water when they drain the pool, but a normal resort would hire professionals, not rely on some rando on staff. And there’s generally municipal rules about how and when you can do this.

If you just start siphoning water out of your pool with a garden hose, you could end up costing yourself a lot of time, money, and grief. Many municipalities have their own rules about how, when, and where someone can drain their pool, and you need to abide by those rules.

For instance, most municipalities will require you to run your pool water through your home’s sewer cleanout line so it will flow to a water treatment plant. Others might allow you to send all that water down the storm drains that line your street. Municipalities may also have water chemical composition regulations. Some may require the water to be chlorine neutral, which would necessitate a lot of chlorine neutralizer.

Now the guy who took the water out of the pool and put it in the server room just happens to be the same guy who randomly decided to help Trump’s “body man” move boxes containing highly classified documents around just before Trump’s lawyer had to comb through them to comply with a subpoena from the Department of Justice. Unfortunately for these two individuals, their efforts were captured on surveillance tape, so this is a rather big coinkadink.

Prosecutors from the special counsel’s office have focused their obstruction inquiries around Trump, Trump’s body man Walt Nauta and a maintenance worker who helped Nauta move boxes of classified documents ahead of federal agents searching the property last summer, and potentially others, sources told CNN.

The sources say that the maintenance worker is the person who drained the pool that led to the flooding of the IT room where the surveillance footage was held.

Of course, maybe the resort’s “sewer cleanout line” just happens to be located right next to the resort’s servers. Could happen. Maybe the servers are stacked right along with the noodle and ring floats and the giant inflatable swans. Maybe the computer tech guys and security staff wash beach towels in their spare time.

Seems like the FBI should be able to establish what degree of plausibility, if any, this story has, and I’m sure a jury can do the same. Sadly, it appears that the servers emerged unscathed and no surveillance was damaged in this particular episode, although there’s still a concern that someone monkeyed with the archives in some other way. In fact, the concern is about the same dude and goes back a few months before the flooding incident.

The Washington Post reported last week that the employee was questioned repeatedly by investigators after he was seen on video footage helping another Trump aide, Walt Nauta, move boxes into a Mar-a-Lago storage room on June 2, the day before a top Justice Department official arrived with FBI agents to collect classified material in response to the subpoena.

Authorities have also examined events in mid-July surrounding a different subpoena, which sought footage from security cameras on the property. Around that time, the employee allegedly had a conversation with an IT worker at the site about how the security cameras worked and how long images remained stored in the system, the person familiar with that aspect of the investigation said.

The employee later told investigators that the conversation was innocent and was not about trying to hide anything from authorities, saying that he didn’t know at the time about the investigation or subpoena, according to another person familiar with the probe.

But those answers were met with skepticism, people familiar with the situation said.

I have to say that “skepticism” is the most appropriate word here. And it appears that Trump will most likely be arrested at some point this week. He sent a small squad of lawyers to talk to Special Counsel Jack Smith on Monday in an apparent last ditch effort to keep their client from being charged with serious felonies that carry years and years of prison time. That might work if Trump was considering taking some kind of plea agreement, but what are the chances of that?

Buckle up.

Do I think the Bible should be removed from public Elementary School libraries, as has now been done in one district in Utah? No, absolutely not. On the other hand, I don’t think third graders are going to sit down and start plowing through Genesis or the Gospel According to Matthew. In other words, I don’t see much direct impact from the decision, but that’s not really the point. In this case, the point is that the Bible contains stories of violence, rape, murder and incest that may not seem age appropriate for grade schoolers. Responding to a parent complaint, the “72,000-student Davis School District north of Salt Lake City removed the Bible from its elementary and middle schools while keeping it in high schools.” A decision on whether to do the same with the Book of Mormon may be in the pipeline.

I guess this decision is a result of the Davis school board wishing to maintain some kind of intellectual consistency. And, if so, score one for the anonymous complainant who was no doubt trying to make that exact point about banning books because of racy or violent or supposedly deviant depictions. I strongly suspect this isn’t the outcome they were going for however, as the more logical goal is to be rid of this new passion for censorship rather than adding another book to the banned list.

My strong preference is that people just fucking relax. This national panic about human sexuality and literature in our schools is leading nowhere good. Everything was pretty much fine the way it was, with schools stocking their library shelves without much thought and input from parents. Generally speaking, age appropriate books are going to be selected, and kids don’t need any more shielding from discussion of history or adult life today than they needed last year or the year before that. We shouldn’t be freaking out on the left about politically incorrect language in our classic literature, nor should the right be having a cow about so-called woke depictions that challenge their rigid ideas of race and gender.

Everyone needs to toughen up and have more faith in our children to figure things out for themselves. There’s murder and adultery in The Great Gatsby and there is murder and adultery in the Bible. At some point, everyone should get around to reading both because that’s part of being culturally literate. Put them in our libraries and leave them in our libraries, and let’s focus on something more important.

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be continuing with the Sedona, Arizona scene. The photo that I’m using (My own from a recent visit.) is seen directly below.

I’ll be using my usual acrylic paints on a 5×7 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.

Since last time I have revised the two green foreground areas closest to the viewer. With these changes the painting is finished.

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

I’ll have a new painting to show you next week. See you then.

After the turmoil introduced into American society by the election of Donald Trump in 2016, there was no hope that Joe Biden could get everything back to normal. My desire, however, was that Biden would at least bring a presidency that didn’t add to the chaos and dysfunction. In this, he has met my expectations. The Biden administration has so far set a modern record for lack of drama. We haven’t seen cabinet members resigning (or who should resign) for either ethical or performance-related reasons. We haven’t seen social media used to distract and divide. With the exception of the chaotic exit from Afghanistan, this administration has been a model of calm efficiency, and even that fiasco can rightfully be laid in large part on his predecessor’s footsteps.

Biden also offered the promise of a less partisan edge to our politics, and he’s delivered here too, even if he hasn’t performed any miracles. That he managed to navigate the crisis over the debt ceiling and bring it in for a landing with several days to spare is highly impressive. The final vote in both the House and Senate was bipartisan–so much so that it may allow Speaker Kevin McCarthy to survive decapitation by his own right flank, which is something I didn’t really see as very likely to happen. If the Freedom Caucus in the House really is truly tamed, that is a major accomplishment in restoring some sanity and functionality to Congress, and Biden will deserve a lot of credit for creating the environment and mechanism that made it possible.

As David Ignatius points out in the Washington Post, the president has repeatedly defied expectations about how much Democrats and Republicans could work together, “First with a bipartisan infrastructure bill, then with a modest gun-control measure, then with the bipartisan Chips Act, and finally with the budget agreement.”

It bothers me that Biden doesn’t seem to get much love or credit for these accomplishments, if public polling can be believed. It surprises me somewhat because I feel there was a real thirst for this kind of change after four years of Trump. That thirst is why I believed Biden would win the Democratic nomination in 2020 and the presidency, and yet there’s a sense in which he’s not really making either side happy and the middle isn’t making up the difference. He’s also just a cultural mismatch for the times. He defines Old School in an era that’s relentlessly churning out new ways to communicate, to get ahead, to make a name for oneself.

To me, I wasn’t looking for a champion of my values and priorities as much as a physician who could patch up our national wounds and give us some time and space to recover from the Trump Era. On that score, I have to give Biden the highest grades, even if it’s kind of an impossible task. In the end, he’ll only be successful if the American people ratify what he’s done and reelect him. I really hope they do.

There are certain themes with Donald Trump that repeat themselves. Sometimes what comes out of his mouth is amazing and astounding, but the motives underlying his actions are always predictable. Let’s recall that the last chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Trump was Mark Milley who had a premonition that his boss would attempt a coup rather than leave office peacefully. In the Spring of 2001, Milley began to talk to reporters about the steps he had taken to ensure that any illegal orders Trump might issue would not be carried out. He was also very worried about Trump attacking Iran, I guess as some kind of wag the dog desperation move to help him stay in power. As you might predict, Trump didn’t like seeing Milley boasting about working against his own commander in chief and he wanted to do what he always does–attack his critics.

His instinct was to argue that Milley was a liar and hypocrite. He knew he had in his possession some war plans for attacking Iran that had been drawn up by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and he wanted to use them to argue that it was Milley who had been urging war rather than himself. It didn’t matter that the plans had actually been drawn up early in Trump’s term by Milley’s predecessor, Joseph Dunford. Nor did it matter that the existence of the document was routine and in no way a recommendation or advocacy for launching an attack during the lame duck period of Trump’s presidency. The plan was to point to the war plans as a way of undercutting Milley.

But there were some problems with the plan. The ex-president wasn’t concerned that the whole line of argument was dishonest and bunk. But he knew the war plans were classified and he couldn’t share them. At a tape-recorded meeting “with people helping his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, write a memoir,” at his Bedminster Golf Club in July 2021, he lamented the fact that he hadn’t declassified the war plans when he still had the power to do so. This didn’t prevent him from lying to these writers about Milley, but it reduced the effectiveness of the lies.

Another problem was one Trump hadn’t sufficiently considered. He had no right to possess the war plans once he left office. In fact, the plans were classified as “secret.” When he apparently waved the plans around at the meeting, he was providing evidence of an ongoing crime. And he was doing it all in the name of falsely accusing Milley of being a hypocritical warmonger. When Meadows’ book was published, it dutifully reported this lie, while omitting the fact that Trump still possessed the documents (the tape recording reportedly captures papers rustling and suggests he was waving them about).

Mr. Meadows, in his book, appeared to echo Mr. Trump’s claim about General Milley.

“The president recalls a four-page report typed up by Mark Milley himself,” the book said. “It contained the general’s own plan to attack Iran, deploying massive numbers of troops, something he urged President Trump to do more than once during his presidency. President Trump denied those requests every time.”

The instinct to fabricate lies about his critics is so strong in Trump that is almost inevitable. But here it may significantly contribute to a successful prosecution against him for mishandling classified information and obstruction of justice. The incident undermines Trump’s strongest defense, which is that he’s simply too stupid to understand the law. He’s captured on tape acknowledging that, as president, he had to take some affirmative action to declassify information and couldn’t simply do it “by thinking about it.” And he acknowledges that there are limitations even once he’s out of office on what classified information he can share with those not authorized to receive it. There’s no question that he was violating the Espionage Act’s prohibition against retaining without authorization “documents related to the national defense that could be used to harm the United States or aid a foreign adversary.” These were war plans.

Finally, it may help the obstruction case because this wasn’t simply an example of a document being inadvertently boxed up as he left the White House and put in some storage area. He knew he had the Iran war plans and he knew he was obligated to turn them over. The National Archives and Records Administration had requested the return of all presidential records, including classified documents, the month before. A year later, in May 2022, the Justice Department obtained an official subpoena seeking all “documents bearing classification markings” that were still in Trump’s possession. It’s unclear when or if Trump ever turned over the war plans.

There’s a very compelling case here that Trump should be in prison. His violations of the law are obvious and why should he get a pass? But it also shows that his crimes are anything but harmless. His desire to use classified information to defame and slander his critics is on ongoing danger to national security. His willingness to share information with those not authorized to receive it is one problem, but his careless safeguarding of documents is another. This all needs to be adjudicate as quickly as possibly before Trump is a candidate for office on any ballot.

Hopefully, it will turn out that Trump’s own pettiness, dishonesty and vindictiveness in the Milley case will be what ultimately seals his fate. It would be poetic justice.