Month: April 2024

Here is a vintage track from back when Brian Eno was collaborating with members of Cluster:

Hearing stuff like this at the time was quite the revelation.

Cheers.

The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that only 29 percent of American voters believe Donald Trump will be “fit to be president” if he is convicted in the Stormy Daniels hush money case. In fact, only 58 percent of Republicans think he should serve again in the Oval Office if he’s loses the case. I could be wrong, but I actually believe these results underestimate the likely impact. Trump desperately needs a hung jury and mistrial.

But I don’t discount his chances of getting one. The survey also finds the general public highly skeptical that the proceedings in New York, which began with jury selection on Monday, are legitimate. Only a third of Americans believe Trump did anything illegal. Even fewer think Trump is getting or can get a fair shake in court. This actually extends to all four criminal cases against him.

Yet, a cloud of doubt hangs over all the proceedings. Only about 3 in 10 Americans feel that any of the prosecutors who have brought charges against Trump are treating the former president fairly. And only about 2 in 10 Americans are extremely or very confident that the judges and jurors in the cases against him can be fair and impartial.

Now, the jury pool in Manhattan is probably less skeptical about the criminal cases against Trump than the nation as a whole, but it’s clear that he’s succeeded in convincing the majority of people that he’s the subject of a politicized judicial crusade. Nowhere is that impression stronger than in the Stormy Daniels case, as it’s highly doubtful a felony case would have been brought against a less prominent and provocative politician.

But that doesn’t mean Trump is innocent or that a jury won’t find him guilty. Most of the case is extremely easy to understand and there’s no room for innocence. He obviously filed false business reports in an effort to conceal payments to Daniels, in violation of law. If he continues to maintain (in or out of court) that he did not have an affair with Daniels, that’s only going to hurt his credibility and compound his problems. It’s doubtful he can convince anyone that his purpose in concealing the affair was wholly unrelated to his desire to win the 2016 election. And that’s really what his lawyers need to do, because felony convictions hinge on his state of mind. The false business records on their own are only misdemeanors, which haven’t been charged.

The simplicity of the story is probably why only 22 percent of those surveyed believe Trump did nothing wrong, which is fewer than in the election theft cases or the classified documents case. It’s just that a higher percentage think his behavior was unethical but not illegal. And I think that really shows the limitations of opinion polls, because the truth is many people think he did something illegal but too inconsequential to deserve arrest and consequences, certainly on felony counts. There’s no obvious way for them to answer this poll, except to say he behavior was merely unethical.

And that’s also how the jurors are going to decide their verdict. He obviously is guilty, but maybe he should get a pass because the punishment is too harsh. Trump only needs one juror to act as a spoiler, and they don’t necessarily have to be some MAGA holdout. It’s up to the prosecutors to convince the jurors of the worthiness of their case, and they’re starting from a losing position if this polling can be believed.

A verdict is expected in six weeks, and that’s somewhere around 25-30 days that Trump will be a defendant in court. If he gets a mistrial, he may largely recover from the impression that makes on the electorate, but it’s going to be damaging either way. People will get used to thinking of him as a criminal, and the facts of the case are the furthest thing from flattering.

If he is convicted, I’m curious when sentencing will take place. I anticipate that the judge will not be in a merciful mood after contending with Trump’s antics for a further six weeks, plus the post-trial period before sentencing. There’s a non-zero chance he will have already have incarcerated Trump for repeated violations of his orders. This is the real wildcard, because a well-behaved defendant with no prior convictions would not be sentenced to jail time on these charges. But that’s going to be the choice the judge faces, as we all know.

If he’s sentenced to prison at the end of this process, I expect most people will feel he’s earned it through his contemptuous behavior. In other words, even if they didn’t begin believing Trump was getting a fair shake, they’ll understand by the end that the judge had ample justification.

At least, that’s what I hope. I don’t want jury nullification in this case, and I don’t think Trump should get probation when Michael Cohen went to prison for his role in the Stormy Daniels payout.

It’s a matter of despondency for me that Donald Trump is leading in the polls, or even that his campaign has a pulse, but as Nate Cohn of the New York Times notes, Joe Biden has been moving in the right direction since his State of the Union address. And if I am going to be an optimist, which is my preferred disposition, I’ll note that this is the predictable outcome of 2020 Biden voters coming back to him as the election draws nearer. In other words, Trump’s polling advantage has largely been an artifact of his stronger hold on his base, but that doesn’t mean his base has grown above the level that lost him the popular vote eight years ago and the Electoral College four years ago. Most non-Trump voters from 2020 are still going to be non-Trump voters in 2024, even if they’re not saying they support the current president quite yet.

Jonathan Martin writes for Politico Magazine that “It has been close to an open secret in the diplomatic corps that America’s allies and adversaries are anticipating a Trump restoration” which explains why British former Prime and current Foreign Minister David Cameron recently visited Mar-a-Lago. This makes sense looking at the polling data, even if Biden is narrowing the gap. But Martin sees strong headwinds to Trump’s campaign beyond the obvious legal ones that will come into focus beginning with his Stormy Daniels trial that begins on Monday. In particular, there’s the abortion issue which strongly favors Biden, as well as Trump’s inability to even try to reach out to Nikki Haley’s supporters and united the GOP. And, of course, there’s the candidate himself who is often his own worst enemy.

Still, the latest New York Times/Siena poll shows the American electorate views Trump more favorably than Biden, which is unfathomable and deeply dispiriting. I think we have to get to work on this campaign doing what we can each do individually to help. It’s therapeutic if nothing else, and I do think that Biden will ultimately be a lot stronger in the end because his base will come home. He has to do what he can to make sure it does.

The global wheat supply proved remarkably resilient in the face of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and that’s fortunate because before the war Ukraine was responsible for six percent of global wheat exports. It was the seventh biggest exporter of wheat, fourth biggest of barley and the largest for sunflower seeds. One reason the world hasn’t gone hungry is that Ukraine shipments have continued:

Ukraine exported 5.2 million tonnes of grain and maize in March [2024], 5.8 million tonnes in February and 5.3 million tonnes in January. Before Russia’s invasion in 2022, the country was sending about 6.5 million tonnes abroad every month.

…After Russia pulled out of the Black Sea Grain Initiative (or “grain deal”), it said it would view any vessel bound for Ukraine as a potential military target.

Few cargo ships dared to go to Ukrainian ports, and monthly grain exports fell to just over 2 million tonnes in July, August and September 2023.

However, Ukraine has since established new export routes.

Between the end of the grain deal in July 2023 and the end of February 2024, it shipped about 20 million tonnes of grain to 42 countries, according to the country’s vice prime minister Oleksandr Kubrakov.

This is despite 30 Russian attacks on Ukrainian grain ports and storage facilities since the deal ended.

I mention this because it demonstrates that Ukraine knows how to supply food, which makes it odd that it suffered one of the more brutal famines of the 20th Century. Referred to as Holodomor, which means “death by hunger” in Ukrainian, it resulted in several million starved Ukrainians. The first cause was that Josef Stalin’s agricultural collectivization program thoroughly disrupted the farming economy, but Stalin exploited and exacerbated the shortages to put down Ukrainian rebellion. This is only one of Stalin’s notorious crimes, but it’s the primary reason his death toll at least rivals Hitler’s. It’s a prime piece of evidence for why Stalin has gone down in history less as the man who stopped Hitler and more as a monster. It’s probably true that Stalin did not set out to cause a famine, but his policies had that predictable effect, and he then used famine as a weapon.

Fast-foward ninety years and we see this:

The director of the U.S. Agency for International Development told lawmakers this week that a famine is underway in northern Gaza, which has been devastated by six months of Israeli military operations and is the part of the territory most cut off from aid.

The director, Samantha Power, is the first senior American official to say publicly that famine has begun in the Gaza Strip, where aid agencies and global experts have warned for months that nearly all 2.2 million Palestinians would soon face extreme hunger.

President Joe Biden has certainly seen this coming, and he does not want to go down in history with Stalin. That’s why he began screaming bloody murder about Israel opening up food supplies to Gaza a couple months before we reached this point. It’s why a month ago he announced his plan to build a temporary port in Gaza. The Israeli government has been dragged kicking and screaming to make concessions, but it has proved too little and too late to prevent the onset of genuine famine in the north of Gaza.

In the immediate aftermath of Hamas’s brutal attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant announced a total siege of Gaza, which was understandable in the midst of Israel’s horror and surprise. Gallant said “no power, no food, no gas” would be allowed to reach the Gaza Strip. Biden warned Israel not to be consumed with rage and repeat the mistake America made in response to the 9/11 attacks. It did not take Biden’s advice.

While food and gas were eventually supplied it the face of international pressure, the current famine is a direct result of Israel’s policies. You can argue that Hamas could have stopped the famine by releasing the hostages and surrendering en masse, and that’s quite possibly true, but Hamas is otherwise powerless to import food.

So now Uncle Joe Biden is at risk of being compared to Uncle Joe Stalin, as the author of weaponized famine. That’s because Israel could not conduct its war in Gaza without U.S. support and supplies. The other major supplier of arms to Israel, Germany, has it’s own history with genocide, and it spent Tuesday at The Hague defending itself:

Germany denied accusations on Tuesday that it was aiding genocide in Gaza by selling Israel arms in a suit to the top U.N. court by Nicaragua reflecting mounting legal action in support of Palestinians.

Germany has been one of Israel’s staunchest allies since the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas militants and retaliatory offensive. It is one of its biggest military suppliers, sending 326.5 million euros ($353.70 million) in equipment and weapons in 2023, according to Economy Ministry data…

…Lawyers for Nicaragua have asked the ICJ to order Germany to halt arms sales to Israel and resume funding of U.N. Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA.

They argued Berlin has violated the 1948 Genocide Convention and international law by supplying Israel while aware there was a risk of genocide.

After Tuesday’s hearing, Nicaraguan ambassador Carlos Arguello told journalists that the case at this preliminary stage did not hinge on the amount of Germany’s military aid but simply its existence.

The U.S. Government knew famine was coming and it has genuinely attempted to prevent it, but it was not successful. As for Israel, I am greatly sympathetic to the security challenges they face and I do blame Hamas first and foremost for instigating this phase of the conflict and showing total indifference to the resulting catastrophe for the Palestinian people. But they are using famine as a weapon, and this cannot continue with U.S. support for their war efforts.

The concessions they have made in recent weeks are inadequate, and a change of leadership is urgently required. Biden as well as U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer have already said as much, but we’ve reached a point now where famine has set in, and Netanyahu needs to go.

I haven’t dropped any jazz your way in a while, and this piece by Miles Davis is one of my all-time favorites:

There are tunes that are just timeless, and this is one of them. Cheers!

In August 2018, the Wall Street Journal wrongly reported that then Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg had accepted an immunity deal to testify against Michael Cohen in the Stormy Daniels hush money case. Adam Davidson of New Yorker used the occasion to unveil his profile of Weisselberg, making all kinds of conclusions that never bore fruit because, although he was granted limited federal witness immunity to talk to the grand jury, Weisselberg never agreed to become a cooperating witness.

This didn’t help Cohen, however, who on August 21, 2018 pleaded guilty to “five counts of tax evasion, one count of making false statements to a financial institution, one count of willfully causing an unlawful corporate contribution, and one count of making an excessive campaign contribution at the request of a candidate (Donald Trump) for the ‘principal purpose of influencing [the] election’.” In November 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to the U.S. Senate about his work on the Trump Tower Moscow deal, about which I’ve written extensively.  Cohen ultimately spent over two years either in prison or under house arrest.

As for Weisselberg, in January 2023 he began what would ultimately be a little over three-month prison term in New York’s infamous Rikers Island prison. He had pleaded guilty to 15 counts of grand larceny, criminal tax fraud and falsifying business records. On Wednesday, morning, he headed back there in shackles.

Allen Weisselberg, a retired executive in Donald Trump’s real estate empire, was sentenced on Wednesday to five months in jail for lying under oath during his testimony in the civil fraud lawsuit brought against the former president by New York’s attorney general.

Weisselberg, 76, pleaded guilty last month to two counts of perjury in connection with the suit. He admitted lying when he testified he had little knowledge of how Trump’s Manhattan penthouse came to be valued on his financial statements at nearly three times its actual size.

…Weisselberg, wearing a black windbreaker and a surgical face mask, declined to address the court during the brief sentencing, which lasted less than five minutes. He was swiftly escorted from the courtroom in handcuffs following the proceeding to begin serving his sentence.

The prosecutors and judge went easy on Weisselberg, citing his age and willingness to admit wrongdoing, and importantly they did not require him to testify in Trump’s criminal trial related to the Stormy Daniels case which is scheduled to begin next week. Considering that he’s now a convicted perjurer, perhaps that’s not too consequential, as his testimony isn’t necessarily believable. Of course, that’s also true of Cohen who will be a key witness.

These two men were at the center of the Stormy Daniels coverup, as Davidson described in his 2018 profile of Weisselberg:

In a recording that Michael Cohen made of a conversation he had with Donald Trump about a payment to keep secret an affair, Cohen described setting up a shell company to pay hush money during the 2016 campaign to Karen McDougal, a woman who claimed to have had an affair with Trump. This week, Cohen pleaded guilty to violating campaign-finance laws, in part by setting up this secretive payment. He said that he knew at the time that it was illegal to secretly make a payment for campaign-related activity, but he did so anyway at Trump’s direction. Strikingly, Cohen makes it clear on the tape that Weisselberg also knew about the shell company and payment. “I’ve spoken to Allen Weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up,” Cohen explains to Trump.

The secret payments to McDougal were part and parcel of that same scheme set up to pay Daniels for her silence, for which Cohen went to jail. Since Cohen admitted the ‘principal purpose’ of the scheme was “influencing [the 2016] election,’ it is highly relevant to the charges Trump faces now. Manhattan District Attorney General Alvin Bragg Jr. has brought 34 counts of Falsifying Business Records in the First Degree against the former president. Trump is accused of committing these crimes “in order to conceal damaging information and unlawful activity from American voters before and after the 2016 election.”

To be clear, Weisselberg is now in Rikers Island for the second time, and both stints could have been avoided if he’d agreed to become a cooperating witness against his former boss, but neither conviction was related to the Stormy Daniels case. Cohen, however, did hard time for his role in the scheme while Trump, identified in Cohen’s case as Individual-1, was beyond the reach of the law because the Justice Department has a policy against putting a sitting president on trial. But Cohen and Individual-1 were equally guilty.

In any case, of the three individuals who were present in the 2016 meeting Cohen surreptitiously recorded in Trump’s office, only Trump has not seen the inside of the prison cell. Even if Trump is convicted in this case, that’s unlikely to change. In theory, Trump could be sentenced to up to four years in prison, but with his age and no prior convictions, he’d probably get probation. Of course, that assumes he doesn’t antagonize the judge.

New York attorney Matthew Galluzzo, also a former Manhattan prosecutor, said Trump’s chances of jail would increase substantially if he publicly denigrates the jury or judge and fails to demonstrate contrition for a guilty verdict.

“He risks jail if he loses badly,” Galluzzo said, “and if he disrespects the process as a ‘witch hunt’ and says the judge is biased and that ‘I didn’t do anything wrong.’ The judge might say, ‘Fine, do 90 days in Rikers and see how you like it.”

When you put it like that, I guess he might do some limited time, although that could place in him prison on Election Day, and I don’t know if Judge Juan Merchan wants to go that far. I think it’s fair to say that Trump is already on thin ice with Merchan. In late March, the judge “issued a gag order barring Donald Trump from commenting publicly about witnesses, prosecutors, court staff and jurors.” In early April, he expanded it after Trump went after his daughter.

Merchan issued the gag order last month at prosecutors’ urging, then expanded it last week to prohibit comments about his own family after Trump lashed out on social media at the judge’s daughter, a Democratic political consultant, and made what the court system said were false claims about her.

And if Merchan is at all like me, he won’t see a just outcome here if Trump is convicted and doesn’t doesn’t do at least some time. He’s the head honcho. Cohen and Weisselberg worked for him and committed their crimes at his behest. Why should they go to prison while he gets probation?

First, of course, Bragg has to win convictions, and that’s no sure thing.

While some legal observers consider the charges a reasonable use of New York’s penal code, others view them as a legally shaky effort to tie business fraud to attempts to keep information about Trump’s behavior hidden from voters…

…Bragg critics contend that he has stretched legal doctrine in a way that could make it difficult to persuade jurors to convict Trump. In New York, falsifying business records is a misdemeanor unless prosecutors can prove the defendant acted with an intent to commit another crime, in which case the charge can be elevated into a Class E felony, the state’s lowest-level felony count.

Trump’s guilt here isn’t in question, but there’s some novelty in how the crimes have been charged, so Bragg has some work to do to secure a conviction, and that’s assuming he get a jury without any MAGA destroyers who will never convict no matter the evidence.

At least it looks like the show will soon begin.

I looked around for a link to the five-page memo Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene sent to her colleagues Tuesday morning but, so far, I have been unable to locate one. Based on the news reports I’m seeing, she really laid into Speaker Mike Johnson, presenting a point-by-point case for why he completely sucks at his job. From appearances, she’s prepping the field to execute a motion to vacate the chair, which is the procedure that was used by Rep, Matt Gaetz to oust Speaker Mike McCarthy in 2023.

As you know, as soon as I saw the results of the midterm elections, I announced that the Republicans had not won a functional majority and that they would be forced to use Democratic votes to pay our bills on time and to avoid a government shutdown. For this reason, I suggested the Democrats seek to find a compromise Speaker who would serve as the leader of this functional majority. But the Democrats preferred to let the Republicans twist in the wind. First, the Dems watched with glee while McCarthy struggled to win the votes to become Speaker. Then they refused to rescue him when he was challenged, which was just desserts for McCarthy acting as if he was the leader of a partisan Republican majority rather than a mostly Democratic bipartisan caucus of bill-payers and appropriators. Finally, the Dems didn’t lift a finger as the Republicans found it nearly impossible to settle on a successor to McCarthy.

When the Republicans finally landed on the far right Mike Johnson of Louisiana, the Dems simply went about their business, forcing Johnson to bypass his own Rules Committee so that he could pass bipartisan legislation mostly supported by his political opponents. This wasn’t really a choice for Johnson anymore than it was a choice for McCarthy. It’s just math. The caucus that pays the bills and passes the spending bills is the true majority, and that majority is made up of a very large plurality of Democrats. The alternative for McCarthy and Johnson was never to be tougher negotiators. It was national credit default and an endless, fruitless government shutdown.

I don’t know how much of this Taylor Greene truly understands. But she acts like the conservatives have been betrayed when they’ve actually just put impossible demands on their leaders. What I think is clear though is that she is a Russian agent, or at least indistinguishable from one, who is most concerned that Russia subjugate Ukraine. Therefore, she threatened to make a motion to vacate the chair after Johnson passed appropriations bills, but she will only actually pull the trigger if he puts a bill funding Ukraine on the floor. She is from the Michael Flynn wing of the Kremlin/GOP, and the Democrats will probably have to decide whether to save Johnson or let him go down like McCarthy.

It’s not the easiest call, actually. But there’s also a question of whether Johnson would even be willing to serve as the formal leader of a Democratic caucus. Because, to be clear, if he needs Democratic votes to be Speaker, then he’ll no longer be the leader of the House Republicans, even if most of them vote for him. In a way, not much would have to change. He’s already suspending the rules to work with the Democrats. But as a bipartisan Speaker, he’d be answerable to the Democrats who saved him. In truth, the Dems shouldn’t even make the offer without a power sharing agreement in hand. But it could be that rewarding him from funding Ukraine makes sense if he’s willing to become their poodle.

I’m not sure how this will shake out but at least Matt Gaetz senses what I am suggesting.

It is not clear whether Ms. Greene’s arguments will persuade her colleagues, including some other hard-right members who have voiced skepticism about a second move to oust a speaker. Representative Matt Gaetz, the Florida Republican who led the charge to remove Mr. McCarthy, for instance, said that when he made his move in October, “I made a promise to the country that we would not end up with a Democrat speaker.” With the Republican majority in the House having dwindled down to one precarious vote since then, Mr. Gaetz said, “I couldn’t make that promise again today.”

In her letter, Ms. Greene said that would not happen unless more Republicans retired and the party lost its majority, or Republicans voted for Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the minority leader.

It’s not true that this is likely to result in Jeffries becoming Speaker. Either the Democrats save Johnson with whatever conditions that entails, or some bipartisan compromise Speaker is chosen (probably a moderate Republican acceptable to the Dems) or the Republicans unanimously elect another Speaker to replace Johnson, although that may prove impossible with no votes to spare.

It’s a mess, but should at least provide entertainment.

I should be fully sympathetic with Colby College professor Nicholas Jacobs’ article in Politico Magazine on the Democrats’ myopia about rural America, but sadly I find the piece extremely unsatisfying.

I get his impulse for writing it. He’s a political scientist and statistician who has looked very deeply into rural attitudes in an effort to explain political behavior, and he sees a lot of progressive commentary that isn’t supported by or runs counter to his research. In particular, he’s reacting to the publication of Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman’s new book White, Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy. More generally, he’s concerned that Democrats are making their political problems worse with this type of commentary. And that’s bad because he ultimately does agree that American democracy is on the ropes, and to preserve it the Democrats need to win elections.

Jacobs spends an inordinate amount of effort making a semantic attack on the word “rage,” comparing it unfavorably with the descriptor “resentment.” I ultimately don’t think the distinction does much to advance his point, which is mainly that white rural voters don’t actually express more sympathy for political violence than their urban counterparts. And of course he makes the usual observations that it’s a mistake to cherrypick the most extreme rhetoric to blast an entire population and that even rural America has plenty of people who vote for Democrats. What this doesn’t address is that the political movement that rural America fervently supports is led by a man who most definitely does stoke political extremism and violence.

Aside from these quibbles, Jacobs follows the arguments I’ve been making since I did my first post-election analysis in 2016, which is that the Democrats absolutely have to halt and reverse their collapse in rural areas and small towns, and that insulting the people who live there is about the worst way to accomplish this. One thing I value in his piece is his treatment of Democrats’ confusion over why rural voters simply don’t respond to the Democrats’ efforts to improve their condition. What he argues, essentially, is that rural values related to self reliance and local autonomy make them undervalue government assistance of all types, whether it’s the dole or it’s infrastructure investment, provision of health care, or protecting the environment. In other words, the Democrats cannot simply create better policies to fix their problems in rural America, nor will doing a better job selling what they’ve already done work as some magic elixir.

I agree with all of this, although doing stronger antitrust enforcement combined with a major sales job is still my recommendation. This is in part precisely because getting people affordable health insurance and prescription drugs won’t move the needle as much as it should. What rural voters need to see is people fighting for their way of life, and the best way to aid their self reliance is to help them compete with the monopolies that have destroyed their local entrepreneurial opportunities.

But Jacobs really flails when he tries to offer ideas for what the Democrats should do, rather than on what they should stop doing.

He begins well by saying the Democrats should start by “acknowledging the profound geographic inequities that exist in the U.S., and that those inequities are a powerful motivator of political behavior.” That’s really what my antitrust argument is all about, even though monopolies stifle everyone’s economic advancement, not just rural and small town people. But Jacobs doesn’t suggest anything concrete. He just suggests the best way to acknowledge geographic inequities is to stop focusing on racist attitudes which exist everywhere. My stance is acknowledging something without doing something about it is just lip service, and rural voters have had far too much of that.

And Jacobs seems to agree.

At this point, the onus falls on Democratic officials and candidates to do something different because they are the ones losing rural voters election after election.

But what he calls different is really little more than adopting a more sympathetic view:

On specific issues, this politics would acknowledge that rural and nonrural Trump voters see issues through different lenses, even if, come Election Day, they are voting the same way; you have to talk to them differently. On immigration, it would mean accepting the fact that, in some communities, particularly those with financial challenges, concerns about the social burden of immigration is not always an expression of hate. It would look at a data point on distrust in media and seek out a reason — perhaps a self-critical one — for why rural people are the most likely to feel like news does not portray their communities accurately. It would speak directly to the challenge posed by artificial intelligence and technological progress that, once again, will likely concentrate benefits among those who have already benefited and leave rural communities behind. It will see the moral costs as well as the economic costs of those developments — the end to heritage industries, the pollution of the land, the erasure of rural dignity — and recognize how demoralizing it is to be told that they should just learn to code “ for God’s sake.”

And it would give agency back to the 1 in 5 Americans who call rural areas home, not through a lengthy list of policy correctives but through a politics of empathy and shared authorship and civic engagement. Is that really so hard?

Look, if Jacobs’ aim here is to get Democrats to stop attacking rural voters if they want their votes, them I’m generally in agreement, although not to the extent that deplorable behavior gets a pass. But this isn’t much of a sales job. If Jacobs is right and tone is more important than policy, there still has to be a plan to convince people that the Democrats are on their side. Muting criticism may be a prerequisite, but it won’t get that done by itself.

There are hints in Jacobs’ piece about where to look for a better sales pitch. Let’s begin with one finding from his research:

What rural communities may desire are empowering strategies that allow them to shape their own future — support that bolsters local leadership, encourages community-driven initiatives and provides the tools and resources necessary for them to address their specific challenges in a manner consistent with their values.

Again, what better way than to tell them we’re going to work day and night to help them create small business jobs? That we’re focused on helping them own businesses rather than work for them, or work for their neighbors rather than some corporate board off on Wall Street?

Consider the fact, as I discuss in my book, that rural Americans are the most likely to say that if given the chance, they would never want to leave their community, while at the same time they are the most likely to say that children growing up in their specific community will have to leave in order to live productive lives. Could any single policy solve that dilemma?

What policy could better address this than antitrust with a focus on addressing regional inequality? Do you think rural parents who want to see their grandkids won’t approve of a sales pitch aimed at allowing their kids to have financial opportunities in their home communities?

Another thing Jacobs doesn’t address is that the lack of a left-wing populist alternative means that rural communities have fallen prey to a right-wing populist cult. This is how fascism happens, and this is why white rural America is a threat to democracy. We can’t insult our way out of this, on that Jacobs is correct. But we can’t just be more respectful either. We have to actually deliver something new and compelling that these voters haven’t heard before, or at least since the New Deal was ascendant.

A Polish citizen named Damian Sobol was among the seven World Central Kitchen employees killed by Israeli Defense Forces’ drone strikes while working to deliver aid to starving Gazans on Monday. On Friday, the Israelis attempted an explanation. It’s hard to assess its credibility, but it ultimately takes responsibility for making a grave error. It also amounts to a strong denial that the killings were deliberate. Of course, it’s not easy to believe that the three cars, which were clearly identified as belonging to World Central Kitchen, were targeted by mistake. In addition to being clearly marked, the IDF was well-informed of the food delivery mission and admits that they were closely monitoring every movement through aerial surveillance.

Nonetheless, Israel’s ambassador to Poland, Yacov Livne, posted on social media that only the “extreme right and left in Poland” were making the intentionality accusation and that “antisemites will always remain antisemites, and Israel will remain a democratic Jewish state that fights for its right to exist. Also for the good of the entire Western world.” It did not go over well.

A new diplomatic crisis between Poland and Israel has erupted following the death of a Polish aid worker in Gaza, with the Polish president denouncing a comment by the Israeli ambassador as “outrageous” and the Foreign Ministry in Warsaw saying it was summoning him for a meeting…

…Polish President Andrzej Duda called the comment “outrageous” and described the ambassador as “the biggest problem for the state of Israel in relations with Poland.”

Duda said authorities in Israel have spoken about the tragedy “in a very subdued way,” but added, “Unfortunately, their ambassador to Poland is not able to maintain such delicacy and sensitivity, which is unacceptable.”

Prime Minister Donald Tusk, while a political opponent of Duda’s, voiced a similar position on Thursday.

He said that the comment was unacceptable and had offended Poles and that the ambassador should apologize.

“If the ambassador decides to make public appearances in our media, he should use this opportunity to offer a simple, human apology,” Tusk said.

The deputy foreign minister was quoted in Polish media as saying that Livne was summoned to a meeting on Friday morning.

Think about what’s happening here. The Israeli ambassador is summoned to receive a formal reprimand for giving offense to the people of Poland. And what was the offense? The offense was that a mourning people who have good reason not to trust the word of the Israeli military were accused of hating Jews if they did not wholeheartedly accept a dubious explanation.

One thing to consider here is that if people actually take what Ambassador Livne wrote as true, they have the choice of maintaining their position and accepting that they are antisemites. Here’s the formulation for that: “I think the drone strikes were part of a deliberate Israeli policy to discourage food aid to the Gazans, and if that makes me an antisemite then I am an antisemite.”

My position is that I am skeptical of the IDF explanation and do not accept it as the gospel truth. That in no way makes me an antisemite. I choose to take offense at Livne’s accusation rather than to either change my view or embrace his characterization of my doubt. Furthermore, I am concerned that others might choose the path I described, and form anti-Jewish beliefs in response.

People cannot be bullied into believing things they find implausible. And that is why the antisemitism charge should not be used as a method of persuasion. True expressions of antisemitism should not be tolerated and must be called out, but that actually becomes difficult to do when false or mendacious claims are common.

It’s bad enough when critics of Israel’s government are accused of antisemitism irrespective of the tone and tenor of their critiques. But here there is a clear pattern of killing aid workers, and a six-month history that has led to famine. Israel is resisting all efforts to prevent starvation in Gaza, and that cannot be wholly unintentional. The result of the strikes is that the World Central Kitchen and other organizations have suspended food assistance programs, and that seems to be consistent with the Israeli government’s goals.

But even if we accept their explanation, it amounts to an admission that the rules of engagement are so loose and poorly supervised that mistakes like this are inevitable. They have cashiered two officers and reprimanded others, but they must immediately shift to stopping the famine if they don’t want to be held responsible for it. It seems like the most antisemitic thing you can do is to give a bad name to Israel by committing genocide.

What’s remarkable about this Polish incident is how well it demonstrates that the antisemitism charge has lost its power, and no one is more to blame for that the government of Netanyahu.

While I was in Puerto Rico, I did my best to avoid the news, but I did check the headlines at least once a day, and I don’t remember seeing even one article about the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. As I tried to get myself back up to speed yesterday, I did not encounter a single mention of the upcoming trial. But this morning my computer crashed for some reason while I was in the other room making coffee. And when I rebooted, it reset an open window of the home page of The Hill and I saw their headline about Chuck Schumer moving quickly to dismiss the charges.

Senate aides say they expect Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to immediately dismiss the impeachment charges against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas after the House impeachment managers present them next week.

One Senate GOP aide said Schumer is expected to schedule a vote on a motion to dismiss or a motion to table the charges…

…A Senate GOP aide who requested anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter said Mayorkas’s impeachment won’t take up much time on the Senate floor.

“There’s not going to be a trial. I don’t think we’ll even get a resolution” to govern the floor process, said the aide.

I guess this doesn’t come as much of a surprise to top media rooms around the country which explains why they’re treating the whole subject as a non-story, but it’s a minor surprise to me. I thought the trial (and a subsequent verdict) might be unavoidable under the current interpretation of the Constitution and the rules. I thought Schumer would truncate the trial down to virtually nothing rather than just toss the case out unheard.

But consider that the Senate’s most conservative Democrat, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, has stated that the case against Mayorkas is “ridiculous” and he “just want[s] to get rid of it as quick as possible.” Consider also that Utah Republican Mitt Romney has indicated he will support dismissal. In fact, it’s possible that a motion to dismiss or table will get a handful of Republican votes.

It’s astonishing that the House Republicans have impeached a member of the cabinet and the Senate Republicans are basically fine with tossing the accusations in the garbage. The case is so weak, I think they’d prefer not to have to pretend they take it seriously. As Republican Susan Collins of Maine said, Mayorkas was merely “carrying out the [legal] policies of the White House.”

In a way, you could consider Senate Republicans’ complicity in dismissal a major story. But how do you make a story out of something like that? Headline: Senate Majority Leader dismisses impeachment articles without trial and literally no one cares!

If no one cares, they why should the reader care?

And how do things get to a point where something like this can happen? I follow politics closely, and I honestly cannot explain with any specificity what Mayorkas is supposed to have done wrong. But he was impeached, and that’s supposed to be taken seriously, right? I mean, I’d be inclined to agree with Speaker Mike Johnson.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and the House impeachment managers urged Schumer in a letter to hold a full trial on the Senate floor.

“We call upon you to fulfill your constitutional duty to hold this trial,” they wrote. “To table articles of impeachment without ever hearing a single argument or reviewing a piece of evidence would be a violation of our constitutional order and an affront to the American people whom we all serve.”

It speaks volumes that this appeal, which is rock solid on its own terms, simply is not compelling to the Senate Democrats, several Senate Republicans, the media, and likely the public. And it’s because they impeached the man for no discernible reason.

What kind of madness has overtaken us?

The sane thing here will prevail and the Senate will not waste its time.