Three not-exactly-reassuring foreign policy moves by the VSG

Maybe this could all work out well, but I'm not betting the mortgage payment on it.

The administration has inked an agreement with the Taliban that is supposed to result in  fundamental exchange in its behavior for a withdrawal of US troops:

Per the report, the hinges on the Taliban meeting several major commitments. These include breaking with al Qaeda, the Islamic State, and other terrorist groups, and maintaining the reduction in violence seen over the last week as well as negotiating a separate power-sharing agreement and cease-fire with the Afghan government. If the conditions are met, the US will make an initial troop reduction from about 13,000 to 8,600 soldiers.

On March 10, the Taliban, called the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan” in the agreement, will begin negotiations with the Afghan government. On that date, the US will also review its sanctions on the Taliban with the aim of eliminating them by August 27. If the Taliban meets its commitments, the US would withdraw all of its troops within 14 months.

While most Americans are understandably tired of the 19-year war, in its rush to declare victory and leave, the Trump Administration seems to be making the same mistakes that the Obama Administration made in leaving Iraq. Back in 2011, just ahead of presidential elections, Barack Obama unilaterally withdrew American forces from Iraq. The Obama Administration failed to negotiate a status of forces agreement that would have allowed an American contigency force to stay in the country. Three years later, American combat soldiers were back in Iraq to fight a growing ISIS insurgency.

And the clumsy handling of another situation may have ramifications beyond the immediate region:

Tensions had been building for weeks in Syria by late January when forces loyal to Bashar al-Assad launched an offensive on the towns surrounding the last rebel-held stronghold in the country, the city of Idlib.

The Russian-backed Syrian government offensive represented, according to Turkey, a violation of the “ceasefire” agreement Washington helped broker between the nations and non-state forces competing over Northwestern Syria. The attacks had unleashed a new wave of refugees streaming toward the Turkish border, numbering now almost 1 million strong and once again threatening to destabilize Europe. More importantly, Turkey warned, its positions were at risk of being targeted by Syrian forces, and they would retaliate if necessary. And on February 3, six Turkish soldiers were killed by Syrian artillery. Turkey responded, striking 54 military targets inside Syria, reportedly killing at least 76 Syrian soldiers.

But the fighting did not stop. The cycle of attacks and retaliatory strikes between Syria and Turkey accelerated. Five Turkish soldiers were killed on February 10, to which Turkey responded by shelling Syrian targets. Two more soldiers loyal to Ankara lost their lives on February 20, yielding another proportionate response. On February 22, Turkey destroyed 21 “regime targets” after it lost its 16th soldier this month to Assad’s forces. All the while, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned both Assad and his logistical partners in Moscow that his country would not tolerate these attacks forever, and Turkey would be “everywhere in Syria” if it needed to be.

This violence may have climaxed on Thursday in a staggeringly brazen escalation when at least 33 Turkish troops died and 30 more were wounded in an airstrike. Once again, Erdogan’s retaliation was proportionate, attacking Russian and Assad regime strongholds near Latakia with missiles. But the time for proportionality may be coming to an end. Since the collapse of the 2019 ceasefire in January, Ankara has warned the Syrian government that it has until the end of February—this weekend—to halt its advance on Idlib. “We plan to free our besieged observation towers, one way or another, by the end of this month,” Erodgan said this week. The slaughter of scores of Turkish forces has surely only hardened his resolve.

Turkey claims that the strike was attributable to the Assad government, but Russian warplanes supporting the advance of Syrian forces are more likely to blame. You can see why Erdogan would run reluctant cover for Moscow. There are no guarantees that a low-intensity conflict between a member of the NATO alliance and Russian forces won’t spiral into a more dangerous series of increasingly violent confrontations.

This is now the most dangerous period of the conflict since Turkey shot down a Russian warplane in 2015 in the earliest days of Moscow’s military intervention on behalf of its besieged client in Damascus. As it did in 2015, Turkey immediately invoked Article IV of the NATO alliance treaty—a provision that compels member states to enter into emergency consultations, a prerequisite for triggering NATO’s mutual defense provisions in Article V. The Atlantic alliance was able to talk Turkey off the ledge in 2015, but the West can produce few inducements that might convince Ankara to endure these deadly assaults on its soldiers and sovereign dignity indefinitely.

None of this should come as a surprise. This is what American disengagement looks like. The United States beat a hasty retreat from Northern Syria last year—a political, not strategic, decision that seemed justified only by the president’s frustration with America’s modest footprint in that lawless part of the world. In its wake, America left behind a fiction of a “ceasefire” arrangement, the fragility of which was apparent to most observers even as the administration was celebrating its achievement. Even if the deal was doomed to fail, said its more candid supporters, so what? This was not America’s fight; it’s time to let the rest of the world fight its wars and get America out. Well, mission accomplished. 

And let's review the recent history of how the DNI / acting DNI position has been filled. Joseph Maguire was deemed insufficiently personally loyal to the VSG because he wouldn't finger the whistleblower during the impeachment proceedings last September.  He was recently replaced by Richard Grennell, who most recently has been the US ambassador to Germany, and prior to that was a political operative. No intelligence credentials on his resume. But he's about as yay-rah-VSG as you could ask for. Alas, he only has a few weeks left in the position, due to the provisos written into the "acting" status. So who has Trump put forth for the permanent position? Another unfailing loyalist: 

The concern about Ratcliffe is that he’s not just a yes man but is being chosen *because* he’s a yes man. He was nominated for this job once before, you may recall, seemingly for no better reason than that he’s an aggressive advocate for Trump during Intelligence Committee hearings. He doesn’t have any field intel experience, just what he’s gleaned in five years as a member of the Homeland Security and (later) Intelligence Committees, plus some limited work on terrorism cases when he was a U.S. Attorney. (He was accused last year of padding his resume on that point.) That’s why he ultimately withdrew last summer: Even Senate Republicans were concerned that he had been nominated not because there’s good reason to think he’d be effective in the job but because he’d be a yes man, the sort of person who’d eagerly carry out political vendettas for Trump against “disloyal” intelligence deputies and clean up, or even suppress, intel that the president found “unhelpful.” Richard Burr, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, reportedly dialed up Trump last summer and urged him to rethink the Ratcliffe nomination.

In naming Texas Rep. John Ratcliffe to be Director of National Intelligence, Trump ignored a warning from Republican Sen. Richard Burr, the chairman of the intelligence committee, according to Congressional aides familiar with the matter. Burr told the White House last week that the move would inject more partisan politics into the work of the intelligence agencies, said the sources, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the matter.

Last year it looked like Ratcliffe would be DOA in a confirmation hearing, so he withdrew. The Senate’s composition hasn’t changed meaningfully since then so presumably he’s still DOA. So why renominate him?

Here’s where the cunning comes in. Trump knows that this is an election year. He knows that his approval rating, both within his own party and across the population, is about as high right now as it’s ever been. (Coronavirus may change that soon, but never mind.) He knows that Republican voters just circled the wagons around him on impeachment and are ready to circle those same wagons tighter as we proceed towards the general election. All of that being so, Senate Republicans may be materially less likely to cross him on Ratcliffe’s nomination now than they were eight months ago. Does Romney want to cast another “traitorous” vote against Trump so soon after the Senate trial? Does Susan Collins want to piss him off with his voters in Maine watching her closely? Does Burr want to cause a rift with the president in North Carolina, one of the most important swing states this fall?

The odds of the Senate meekly confirming Ratcliffe have improved and Trump knows it. So he’s calling their bluff. I dare you to reject him.

But here’s where it gets even more cunning. Trump may be viewing this, correctly, as a “heads I win, tails I win” situation thanks to a loophole in federal law on executive branch vacancies. The law was written in the belief that presidents would always prefer permanent appointees as a matter of basic stability and sound constitutional practice. You want someone at DNI or DHS or HHS or wherever? Just send the nomination over to the Senate and they’ll vote up or down. And until Trump, presidents did approach the matter that way. Trump doesn’t care about stability, though; if anything, he appears to enjoy volatility in government. He seems to prefer acting directors since they can be shuffled around according to his whims. They may even be more prone to behaving like yes men than permanent appointees are because there’s a chance that the president will formally nominate them to the permanent position if they’re especially obsequious.

These are classic examples of the fact that Trump's only core principle when it comes to the conduct of policy of any type is unwavering personal loyalty. He doesn't think about alliances, geographic regions, tapping the nation's best expertise, or what the national interest is beyond a fourth-grade notion of "winning."

Hey, as he is fond of saying, we'll see what happens.

 

A bonus-content video for the LITD Patreon community

It's here.

It's about how that post from last Tuesday about not tolerating Trumpist mischaracterization of who we are clearly struck a nerve.

Yesterday's Senate vote: self-worship exposed

Have you heard any attempt by Democrats to explain this?

Senate Democrats today blocked a request by Republicans to vote on a bill that would stop infanticide and provide medical care and treatment for babies who are born alive after botched abortions. The vote to stop the Democrat filibuster needed 60 votes but Democrats stopped the chamber from getting enough.

The Senate voted 56-41 to end the filibuster and allow a debate and vote on the bill itself with Republicans supporting a vote on the anti-infanticide bill and Democrats opposing it. This is the third time Senate Democrats have blocked the bill to stop infanticide as 60 votes are needed to end the filibuster. (See vote tally at the end of the article)

During the debate, Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska noted how pro-abortion Democrats refused to stand up and explain why they would block a vote to save babies from infanticide.

He said, “I urge my colleagues to picture a baby that’s already been born, that’s outside the womb gasping for air. That’s the only thing that today’s vote is actually about. We’re talking about babies that have already been born. Nothing in this bill touches abortion access.”

If Democrats in general, and Democrats in the Senate in particular, are aware of the polling numbers showing that most Americans, even most pro-"choice" Americans, are definitely not cool with late-term abortions or denying care to someone born anyway in a botched abortion, why would they do this?

My hunch is that the entire party is so beholden to identity politics that any gesture that could be remotely construed as detrimental to the feminist piece of that puzzle is radioactive.

It took me years to be able to take a square look at feminism. I came of age just as the Gloria Steinem-Robin Morgan-Germaine Greer-Betty Friedan wave of it was breaking over our society. It made a great deal of sense to me at the time. How come it took so long for women to get the vote? How come women automatically take their husbands' last names? And so forth.

But in the midst of that wave of feminism, along came Stephen Goldberg's Inevitability of Patriarchy, and I began to reconsider. Years later, as I commenced my serious faith walk, I came to see that there is an architecture to this universe that includes distinctly male and female traits and patterns of relations between males and females that are detectable in pretty much all species of animals.

Women house the next generation of the species. The uterus is designed to provide a safe, warm, nourishing environment for people at the most vulnerable stage of their lives.

Also, women are designed to have the desire to nurture stirred up within them when they so house such a person.

At the core of feminism is a resentment against the identity nature has imposed on females.

You see this played out in modern arguments that pro-"choice" public policy in a given state is good for that state's business climate. "Get in on the action" is the message. You're a woman with ambitions. Don't be hampered by some inconvenient gestation going on inside of you.

It's a mutation of God's design, a design by which he has imbued a woman with a special kind of love that comes alive when a new life forms inside of her.

And, of course, if she has already chosen to refuse to express that kind of love, if her child survives what she intended to do to it, it's still a bother to her; it's just now outside of her, breathing the same air as all other human beings already born. That's a small matter once she - we - have concluded that the life is expendable.

Ultimately, it's about love of self over love of the one kind of being in the world that one ought to have the most intense and intimate kind of love for. It's self-worship.

We continue to give the middle finger to God. His patience will not last forever.

Trumpism's disingenuous mischaracterization of who we are and what we're about

We can't let this kind of thing slide. Guys like this know exactly what they're up to.

I'm speaking of Larry O'Connor's Townhall column today. Its title is about as inartful and blatantly on-the-attack as is conceivably possible: "Failed Never Trump Pundits Don't Speak For You, But MSM Can't Get Enough of Them." Note especially the term "failed." O'Connor has clearly made the Very Stable Genius's construct of the world as being divided into winners and losers his own.

The accompanying photo, of Bill Kristol, is an utterly predictable touch. It's true that Kristol has pretty much joined the ranks of that sector of the spectrum inhabited by those who object to Trump and who have also abandoned conservatism.

Wait; isn't he a featured speaker at the upcoming Principles First summit?

He is. Summit organizer Heath Mayo has already been taken to task over this, and his response is that those gathering all have at least a history of embracing conservatism, and therefore deserve a place at the table for a discussion on what conservatism is, if it is distinct from Trumpism. Mayo says that the variety of figures invited will make for disagreement by design. If Principles First were to establish an exclusionary policy at the outset, it becomes yet another brand or tribe, which puts a lie to its very name.

Recall also that when Kristol posted his infamous tweet about however provisional the status is, we are all Democrats now, his Bulwark cofounder Charlie Sykes responded, "Not me."

Then there's this unsubstantiated lumping-together of Kristol with two figures who are readily distinguishable from him:

The arrogant, hubris required to lecture life-long Democrats as to how wrong they are for not following the advice of Bill Kristol, Jonah Goldberg, and Stephen Hayes was amusing to witness for those of us on the pro-Trump right (that would be pro-conservative, Republican right to most normal observers). We've been living with this pomposity for years.

I've been fairly closely following Goldberg's and Hayes's launching of The Dispatch, and advising Democrats on who to nominate as a presidential candidate has not been anything close to a major theme of the discourse there.  I realize that a Townhall column imposes word-count restraints, but some portion of O'Connor's verbiage really needed to be devoted to backing this claim up.

He then addresses a point that those of us who find Trump objectionable but take pains to be responsible about it (It's a good thing I'm not bound by a word count here. I might have had to consider the Never Trump broad brush.) have been raising of late - namely, that Trumpists seem awfully preoccupied with us, for a group so ostensibly minuscule.

His response begins with playing the victim card and deteriorates into outright slander.

First, the victim card:

You were awful to us. You continue to be awful to us. Many of you actively worked to marginalize us and silence our voices in the media during and after the election.

And when you were proven to be monumentally wrong about everything in the 2016 Election, you never apologized to us or your audience and you never even acknowledged we got it right.

Just what is it you "got right?" What had been the focus of our objection - Trump's bombast, narcissism, pettiness, lack of depth or humanity, his recklessness, inconsistency,  and worldview based on deals and winners and losers - has been demonstrated with pretty much daily regularity since we raised it.

Now, the slander:

You supported the removal of the president twice over the past three years.

First, for being "Putin's stooge." And when your hand-picked Inspector Clouseau Robert Mueller found no evidence supporting your fever dreams, you never acknowledged you were wrong about the entire Russian-collusion hoax. Then, for the Ukraine impeachment fiasco, that was always doomed from the start after President Trump released the actual transcript of his phone call with President Zelensky.

Along the way, Never Trumpers, you revealed who you really are. When you could have supported Republican Devin Nunes, you chose to support Democratic hack Adam Schiff, and you've never acknowledged you were wrong when Inspector General Michael Horowitz's report confirmed Nunes' veracity and Schiff's duplicitousness.

Let's take the above-mentioned Goldberg and Hayes - although we could easily use any number of other figures, such as David French, Kevin Williamson, Mona Charen, Susan Wright, Peter Heck, or Noah Rothman, to name a few. Where is evidence that any of these people obsessed over supposed Russia-China collusion or "supported" Adam Schiff?

Then O'Connor sends an unmistakably thuggish signal:

Even worse, through it all... you've never paid a price.

In Trumpworld, there's a price to be paid for expressing a viewpoint that is non-Trumpism but lays claim to the conservative mantle.

The rest of the piece is an expression of resentment that anyone with this viewpoint gets television exposure.

I have been disinclined lately to take on particular figures in polemical pieces. It's not as if my combativeness flame has gone out; I've just been reexamining the state of my heart in light of an increased focus on prayer. I'ver also been thinking a great deal about how our society has pretty much forgotten how to extend grace.

But something this - well, rotten - can't go unaddressed.

Did you notice something about O'Connor's piece? He makes no attempt to consider that principles might be driving those he characterizes as Never Trump. Has he not thought it through that far, or is he reluctant to provide his readers the opportunity to set aside cynicism and contemplate what might have really prevented these folks from climbing aboard the Trump train?

Do not permit yourself to be falsely portrayed.

I guess I chose this particular piece because it distills the chicanery found in myriad similar pieces. While I'm not going to embark on a crusade of responding to each one, occasionally it's crucial to set the record straight.

Yet another figure who has seen the VSG's machinations up close

The admiral takes great umbrage at what was done to his friend, and is gravely concerned for what it portends:

Retired four-star Admiral William McRaven, who orchestrated the SEAL raid that killed 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden, staunchly defended acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire while warning that Donald Trump could be jeopardizing national security to satisfy his own “presidential ego.”

In an Washington Post op-ed, McRaven explained how his personal relationship with Maguire, a former SEAL, goes back for more than four decades and he praised his friend’s honor and integrity. Maguire was reportedly “berated” by Trumprecently, when he briefed the president as well as House Democrats that Russia, as it did in 2016, was already conducting clandestine interference in the 2020 election.

Maguire’s tenure as acting DNI has been complicated ever since he took over the agency last summer in the wake of the resignation of Dan Coats, who was effectively forced out by Trump for frequently contradicting the president’s narrative. Maguire, as acting intel chief, also testified during the House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry last fall, where he refused to say if he had discussed the Ukraine whistleblower with Trump.

“Like most of these good men and women, he came in with the intent to do his very best, to follow the rules, to follow the law and to follow what was morally right,” McRaven wrote about Maguire. “Within a few weeks of taking the assignment, he found himself embroiled in the Ukraine whistleblower case. Joe told the White House that, if asked, he would testify, and he would tell the truth. He did. In short order, he earned the respect of the entire intelligence community.”

McRaven then turned to call out Trump.

“But, of course, in this administration, good men and women don’t last long,” he added in a not so subtle shot at the president. “Joe was dismissed for doing his job: overseeing the dissemination of intelligence to elected officials who needed that information to do their jobs.”

The retired admiral then unleashed the big guns.

“As Americans, we should be frightened — deeply afraid for the future of the nation,” McRaven warned. “When good men and women can’t speak the truth, when facts are inconvenient, when integrity and character no longer matter, when presidential ego and self-preservation are more important than national security — then there is nothing left to stop the triumph of evil.”

What do you want to bet the VSG has already tweeted about this? I cringe with hesitation about checking my Twitter feed?

 

Is Bernie going to be allowed to get away with this drive-by smear of the Israeli government?

First, a point of clarification that the linked article doesn't address. Bernie's employment of the term "racist" is a misuse. Racism means a belief that particular races are superior or inferior genetically speaking relative to others.

It may seem like nitpicking, but I don't think so. On general grounds, as a writer, I do not like to see the sloppy misuse of terminology take hold in public discourse. It's the first step toward widespread imprecise communication, which eventually makes it impossible to get one's point across.

This is particularly so in the case of the racism charge, given the causal way it's lobbed these days.

Bernie here is actually accusing the Israeli government of bigotry. Israelis and Palestinians are of differing ethnicities. but they belong to the same race.

That said, it's still a spurious charge.

Consider:

Over the decade of the Netanyahu governments—as Israel’s left-wing daily Haaretzreported a year ago—

The number of Arab Ph.D. candidates in Israel has more than doubled….

 The number of candidates rose from 355 in 2008 to 759 in 2018….

 In the same period, the number of Israeli-Arab students in master’s degree programs rose by 90%.

Currently, 6.7% of Ph.D. candidates in Israel are Arab citizens of Israel, up from 3.5% in 2008. Though this rate is still significantly lower than their part in the general population—which stands at 20%—the Council of Higher Education’s Planning and Budgeting Committee defined these statistics as a “revolution.”

There has also been a significant rise in the number of Arab students studying for a bachelor’s degree. Between 2010 and 2017, [it] rose from 26 thousand to 47 thousand.

Just the other day the Washington Post—not exactly a shill for the Netanyahu government—reported on “a recent effort by Israel to improve living conditions in East Jerusalem and better integrate the Arab population.”
The Israeli government, says the Post, has 

...designat[ed] nearly $50 million to upgrade waste and sewage systems as well as enhancing transportation and adding classrooms. There has also been a push for more Arab schools to adopt the Israeli curriculum, including Hebrew instruction…. [T]here has also been an easing of the process for approving building permits….

Meanwhile, there has been an increase in East Jerusalem residents obtaining Israeli citizenship…. Last year, about 1,200 Palestinians were granted citizenship, the most ever…. Most Palestinians living in Jerusalem hold residency cards allowing them to work in Israel and receive state benefits.

If this is racism, it’s a strange form of it. 

Now, Gaza? Not much that can be done there, except for Israel to gird itself against the daily rocket barrages and close off tunnels wherever if finds them. Hamas is in such complete control there that there's not a lot of opportunity to lift the ordinary residents out of the poverty into which their leaders have delivered them.

But it's a different story in the West Bank:

As for the West Bank, it’s been relatively quiet over the past decade—not least because tens of thousands of West Bank Palestinians work jobs within Israel and in Israeli West Bank communities that pay three to five times better than Palestinian Authority jobs, and also offer benefits that PA jobs lack entirely.

Will this go unaddressed by the media and Bernie's fellow Dem candidates?

The Very Stable Genius is an economic illiterate - today's edition

There's this tweet:

Has it occurred to him that the farmers wouldn't be in their current pickle if the free market hadn't been tampered with?

And "massive tariff money" is a ripe bit of hyperbole.

Is it massive enough to be fully funding this level of expenditure?

The Trump administration gave more taxpayer dollars to farmers harmed by the administration’s trade policies than the federal government spends each year building ships for the Navy or maintaining America’s nuclear arsenal, according to a new report. A National Foundation for American Policy analysis concluded the spending on farmers was also higher than the annual budgets of several government agencies. “The amount of money raises questions about the strategy of imposing tariffs and permitting the use of taxpayer money to shield policymakers from the consequences of their actions,” according to the analysis.

Larry Kudlow, can you not exert any persuasion over this guy? Or, God forbid, have you swallowed the Kool-Aid, too?

What's the most important qualification for any job in Trumpworld? Loyalty to the VSG

This appointment of Richard Grennell as acting director of national intelligence is not going over well:

President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he has named Richard Grenell, a staunch loyalist, as acting spy chief.

"I am pleased to announce that our highly respected Ambassador to Germany, @RichardGrenell, will become the Acting Director of National Intelligence. Rick has represented our Country exceedingly well and I look forward to working with him," Trump tweeted. 

Trump also thanked outgoing acting director Joseph Maguire "for the wonderful job he has done, and we look forward to working with him closely, perhaps in another capacity within the Administration!"

News of the pick, which was first reported by the New York Times, comes as Trump faces a March 11 deadline to nominate a new director of national intelligence or name a new acting spy chief as federal law prevents Maguire from serving beyond that date.

Even in an acting role, Grenell's lack of intelligence-related experience is likely to unsettle the US intelligence community, which has endured repeated attacks from the President since his 2016 election win over the Russia investigation and later the whistleblower complaint that gave way to the Ukraine impeachment inquiry, which made Trump just the third president in American history to be impeached.

But it does not appear that Trump is looking for someone with deep intelligence experience in the role -- a former senior White House official described Trump's decision as "filling the gaps" following the impeachment acquittal, sensing disloyalty in Maguire, and filling that position with somebody he sees as sufficiently loyal. Trump is "looking for a 'political' who will have his back," the former official said.

However, the move is raising concerns even among Trump allies who have been quick to point out that Grenell's primary qualification appears to be his loyalty to the President. 

One source close to Trump told CNN they were surprised by the pick, noting Grenell has zero intelligence-related experience.

And another Trump adviser described Grenell as "out of his league" for the acting DNI job, adding that some in the administration are "embarrassed by his behavior." Previous holders of the DNI job have served in the intelligence community, the US Senate and senior levels of the military. Grenell, on the other hand, does not boast a resume with similar credentials despite his stint as the US ambassador to Germany. 

"Everybody came into (the DNI job) with a relevant understanding, of which this guy has none," said Bob Litt, former ODNI general counsel, who called the move "extremely dangerous."

"This is a President who has loathed and feared the (intelligence community) since before he was inaugurated and he views them as a deep state hostile to him seeking to undercut him and he'll seek to undercut them," he said. "Clearly the important thing here is the President feels Grenell will do his bidding."

He seems like a sharp enough fellow, and before the Trump phenomenon occurred, he seemed to have a skill for articulating conservative positions on whatever the topic of discussion was. But it's true he has nothing of an intelligence nature on his resume. He's been a political consultant. That's it.

 The above-excerpted CNN story alludes to "[h]is track record in Germany [having] raised some concerns." I wanted to find out a little more about that, and his Wikipedia bio gets into some of the details:

In May 2018, within hours of taking office in Berlin as US Ambassador, Grenell offended diplomats and business leaders when he tweeted that “German companies doing business in Iran should wind down operations immediately.”^[29] The tweet was widely perceived as a threat, with the Foreign Minister of Luxembourg, Jean Asselborn, commenting that "This man was accredited as ambassador only yesterday. To give German businesses such orders … that’s just not how you can treat your allies.”^[30] The leader of Germany's Social Democratic Partystated that Grenell "does appear to need some tutoring" in the "fine art of diplomacy", while the Die Linke party urged the Merkel government to summon Grenell to explain his comments.^[30]

In June 2018, Grenell stirred controversy by telling Breitbart News, "I absolutely want to empower other conservatives throughout Europe, other leaders."^[31] It was viewed as anti-establishment.^[32][33] This was described as a breach of diplomatic protocol and a breach of Article 14 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which requires ambassadors to be politically neutral in the domestic politics of the countries where they serve.^[34][31] Prominent German politicians called for Grenell's dismissal.^{[35][36][37][38]} Martin Schulz, former leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, said, "What this man is doing is unheard of in international diplomacy. If a German ambassador were to say in Washington that he is there to boost the Democrats, he would have been kicked out immediately."^[35]

Grenell was a regular contributor on Fox News's Tucker Carlson Tonight during the first few months of his Ambassadorship in Germany. In November 2018 he made an appearance where he repeated his criticism of Angela Merkel's immigration policies and compared her unfavorably to the recently-elected Chancellor of Austria Sebastian Kurz, whom he claimed "won in a very big way" because of his strict stance on immigration. The magazine Der Spiegel called it a "thinly veiled call for a change of government in Berlin".^[34]

In December 2018, during the affair surrounding Der Spiegel journalist Claas Relotius, Grenell wrote to the magazine complaining about an anti-Americaninstitutional bias ("Anti-Amerikanismus") and asked for an independent investigation.^[39][40] Grenell wrote that "These fake news stories largely focus on U.S. policies and certain segments of the American people."^[41]

In January 2019, Grenell told Handelsblatt that European companies participating in the construction of Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline are "always in danger, because sanctions are always possible". The Trump administration has long opposed the Russian-backed Nord Stream 2 — a pipeline for delivering natural gas from Russia to Germany.^[42] Within that context he also sent letters to German companies involved in the construction of said Nord Stream 2, threatening sanctions.^[43] In response, Angela Merkel's successor as leader of the Christian Democrat Union, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, stated that "The American Ambassador operates in a, shall I say, somewhat unusual diplomatic manner."^[44]

Der Spiegel published a profile of Grenell on January 11, 2019, using interviews with 30 “American and German diplomats, cabinet members, lawmakers, high-ranking officials, lobbyists and think tank experts". The magazine claimed that "Almost all of these sources paint an unflattering portrait of the ambassador, one remarkably similar to Donald Trump, the man who sent him to Berlin. A majority of them describe Grenell as a vain, narcissistic person who dishes out aggressively, but can barely handle criticism." The profile claimed that Grenell is politically isolated in Berlin because of his association with the far-right Alternative for Germany Party, causing the leaders of the mainstream German parties, including the Chancellor herself, to avoid contact with him.^[34] The sources claimed that Grenell "knows little about Germany and Europe, that he ignores most of the dossiers his colleagues at the embassy write for him, and that his knowledge of the subject matter is superficial."^[34]

A disrupter in the Trumpian mold.

And I doubt that the search for someone to officially fill that position is going to turn up a lot of first-tier possibilities.

Pardon-palooza - initial thoughts

The VSG has been on a tear:

President Trump on Tuesday exercised his pardon power, granting clemency to or commuting the sentences of nearly a dozen people convicted of crimes, including former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and junk bond pioneer Michael Milken.

Trump also referred to himself as the nation's “chief law enforcement officer,” a title typically reserved for the attorney general.

On Tuesday morning, the White House announced Trump’s pardoning of former San Francisco 49ers owner Edward DeBartolo Jr. for his involvement in a 1998 corruption case against former Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards. Ohio pastor Darrell Scott, a longtime Trump supporter, told the Associated Press that he submitted “a package” to the president advocating for DeBartolo’s pardon.

Speaking on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews before boarding Air Force One en route to a fundraiser in Beverly Hills, Trump announced that he had commuted Blagojevich’s sentence. The former governor is serving a 14-year sentence on federal corruption charges.

And this:

A lawyer for Julian Assange has claimed in court that President Trump offered to pardon Assange if the WikiLeaks founder agreed to help cover up Russia’s involvement in hacking emails from the Democratic National Committee. 

Assange’s lawyers said on Wednesday that former Republican congressman Dana Rohrabacher offered Assange the deal in 2017, a year after emails that damaged Hillary Clinton in the presidential race had been published. WikiLeaks posted the stolen DNC emails after they were hacked by Russian operatives.

The claim that Rohrabacher acted as an emissary for the White House came during a pre-extradition hearing in London.

Rohrabacher says that White House staffers, including John Kelly, were concerned that if he got direct access to the president to pitch this, is "would look like collusion."

Ya think?

The Very Stable Genius can't get our of his own way.

Still, he's amassed such power since his acquittal that he figures he can knock a few service sets off the shelves as he swaggers his way through the china shop without it being a big deal.

That's scary.

My latest over at Precipice

Here's the link. 

It's entitled "The Inaugural Address I'd Give Next January If I were To Be Elected President This November."

It rocks if I do say so myself.

Barney and Clyde - Season 2, Episode 4

Your fortnight-long wait is over! Episode 4 Season 2 is here! Welcome back to the Libation Station! Pour yourself something bracing and pull up a stool and join us for an hour of examination of matters on the nation’s plate. Clyde provides the libertarian perspective, Barney the conservative view.

In this installment, we discuss

1 - You'll Never Be Woke Enough: Joachin Phoenix's bizarre speech at the Oscars
2 - Meanwhile, Back in Athens: A local property Tax referendum has us pondering the broader implications of property taxes and whether their fundamental existence means that property rights don't exit.
3 - The VSG Unleashed: Trump's behavior since his acquittal
4 - No Room for Moderates: Bernie's rise to become the top contender among the Democrats.
Until Next Fortnight.... Stay vigilant about your freedom!

A short video for the LITD Patreon community

 . . . in which I sort out the gradations within opposition to the Very Stable Genius and within support for him.

"Never Trump" is a useless term for two reasons: one, that horse is out of the barn. He's the president. Two, there are gradations of anti-Trumpism, ranging from leftist opposition, which is because they're mad he beat a Democrat (admittedly exacerbated by his repellant personality) to formerly principled conservatives tempted to support a Democrat because they've put the binary-choice angle front and center to responsible conservative opposition. 

Then there are gradations within Trumpism, ranging from those similarly motivated by the binary-choice scenario through the his-good-moves-outweigh-his-bombast viewpoint, to to slavish cult worship.

You'll find it here. 

The UN needs to be dismantled yet this afternoon - today's edition

They're not often this blatant about it:

The depraved totalitarians, nefarious barbarians, two-bit gangsters, odious scoundrels, and bigoted scum who run the United Nations recently set up a new “database” to help anti-Semites around the world target Jewish businesses in the disputed territories of Judaea and Samaria — businesses that offer economic opportunities for Palestinians that pay higher than most other jobs in the West Bank.

In no other international dispute — and there are hundreds of them — does the United Nations target peaceful civilians or institutions. Certainly in no place do they work to destroy the businesses of noncombatants based on their ethnicity or religion. The 112 companies on the U.N.’s list are run and staffed, no doubt, by people with diverse viewpoints, at least some of whom likely support the creation of a Palestinian state. All of them create jobs, products, and services that foster cooperation.

None of this matters to the U.N. The “boycott, divestment, and sanctions” (BDS) campaign, now supported by the U.N., is a coordinated international effort committed to the elimination of the Jewish state, bringing together dictators, theocrats, terrorist organizations, Communists, the “international community,” and at least one of presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’s top surrogates. The movement targets Jews under the guise of anti-Zionism, which remains the predominant justification for violence, murder, and hatred against Jews in Europe and the Middle East. 

That is one warped worldview.

Trump administration folks usually wait to get this candid until they leave

Wednesday, in the course of a post on the double whammy of the Roger Stone sentence-reduction controversy and Trump "musing" that the Pentagon might want to take disciplinary action against Lt. Col Alexander Vindman, I sad this about Attorney General William Barr:

I'd tried hard to see Barr as one of the few remaining principled figures in the Trump administration. I was mightily impressed with his speech at the Notre Dame Law School last October, in which he defended our society's Christian underpinnings against militant secularists. He was well-regarded around Washington. His confirmation hearing for his first stint as Attorney General in 1991 went smoothly, with both Democrats and Republicans speaking well of him.

But he seems to have come under the VSG's sway. Trump's been leaning on him just like he did Jeff Sessions. And now a precedent has been set. The independence of the Justice Department is always going to be in question.

But maybe not. He showed some noteworthy spine in this ABC News interview:

In an exclusive interview, Attorney General Bill Barr told ABC News on Thursday that President Donald Trump "has never asked me to do anything in a criminal case” but should stop tweeting about the Justice Department because his tweets “make it impossible for me to do my job.”

Barr’s comments are a rare break with a president who the attorney general has aligned himself with and fiercely defended. But it also puts Barr in line with many of Trump’s supporters on Capitol Hill who say they support the president but wish he’d cut back on his tweets.

“I think it’s time to stop the tweeting about Department of Justice criminal cases,” Barr told ABC News Chief Justice Correspondent Pierre Thomas.

When asked if he was prepared for the consequences of criticizing the president – his boss – Barr said “of course” because his job is to run the Justice Department and make decisions on “what I think is the right thing to do.”

Most folks wait until they've left the administration to talk like that.

I just don't think he's an out and out lapdog.

People love to come to immediate conclusions and then filter everything else that they encounter through that confirmation bias.

Another such conclusion is that the jury was tainted because the fore-lady, Tomeka Hart, a former school-board chair in Memphis, has been found to have strong objections to Trump.

Not so fast, says David French in his newsletter, which I get in my email. He sets the table by acknowledging that she does indeed have some pretty strong views:

One of the jurors, a woman named Tomeka Hart, wrote a Facebook post defending the four prosecutors who withdrew from the case in protest after their superiors at the Department of Justice reversed their sentencing recommendation (more on that below).  The instant Hart outed herself, conservative journalists combed through her social media history and found that she’s not just a Democrat, she’s a former Democratic congressional candidate, a frequent donor to Democratic campaigns, and before the trial tweeted multiple times not just against Trump but also about the Mueller investigation.

But check out the exhaustive questioning Hart went through when she was being selected:

Neither the law nor the known facts support the claim. At least not yet. The law does not require judges to sideline potential jurors who have strong political beliefs. Democrats can sit in judgment on Republicans, and Republicans can sit in judgment on Democrats. The key question isn’t whether a person is partisan but rather whether they’re capable of setting aside political bias to decide questions of fact fairly and impartially. And, believe it or not, this happens all the time in the United States of America. It’s happened in my own cases. Moreover, the jury selection process (called voir dire) provides attorneys with a limited number of peremptory challenges—which permit attorneys to strike jurors without showing cause—and ample opportunity to challenge jurors for cause. In the Stone case, the trial court struck at least 40 jurors for cause (38 in response to the defense team’s initial requests and two more after a request for reconsideration).  The voir dire process is vitally important. If the prospective juror discloses all relevant material facts in response to questions from the judge and/or opposing counsel, and the judge is still satisfied that the juror can set aside any political bias to render a fair verdict, their decision will rarely be reversed. If, however, the juror is deceptive in voir dire, then the defendant may well be denied a fair trial. In a 1984 case called McDonough Power Equipment v. Greenwood, the Supreme Court succinctly explained the standard: We hold that to obtain a new trial in such a situation, a party must first demonstrate that a juror failed to answer honestly a material question on voir dire, and then further show that a correct response would have provided a valid basis for a challenge for cause. The motives for concealing information may vary, but only those reasons that affect a juror's impartiality can truly be said to affect the fairness of a trial. Did Hart truthfully answer every material question on voir dire? If so, then these “revelations” aren’t revelations at all, and the likelihood that they could form the foundation of a new trial are slim to none. Fortunately, there’s a transcript of the oral voir dire, and the transcript does not help Roger Stone.  Hart (identified only as Juror 1261, but identifiable by her statement that she ran for Congress and other biographical details) was questioned by the trial judge and by defense counsel. After first asking questions about Hart’s prior service on a grand jury, the judge asked a series of key questions: THE COURT: You've also indicated a fair amount of paying attention to news and social media including about political things? PROSPECTIVE JUROR: Yes. THE COURT: And when we asked what you read or heard about the defendant, you do understand that he was involved in Mr. Trump's campaign in some way? PROSPECTIVE JUROR: Yes. THE COURT: Is there anything about that that affects your ability to judge him fairly and impartially sitting here right now in this courtroom? PROSPECTIVE JUROR: Absolutely not. THE COURT: What is it that you have read or heard about him? PROSPECTIVE JUROR: So nothing that I can recall specifically. I do watch sometimes paying attention but sometimes in the background CNN. So I recall just hearing about him being part of the campaign and some belief or reporting around interaction with the Russian probe and interaction with him and people in the country, but I don't have a whole lot of details. I don't pay that close attention or watch C-SPAN. THE COURT: Can you kind of wipe the slate clean and learn what you need to learn in this case from the evidence presented in the courtroom and no other source? PROSPECTIVE JUROR: Yes. THE COURT: You actually have had some interest in Congress yourself? PROSPECTIVE JUROR: Yes. THE COURT: Does the fact that this case involves allegations of not being truthful to Congress, is that something that you think that the nature of the allegations alone would make it hard for you to be fair? PROSPECTIVE JUROR: No. The prosecution declined to ask Hart any questions. Then, defense counsel had its turn: MR. BUSCHEL: Did you ever work for anyone in Congress? PROSPECTIVE JUROR: No. MR. BUSCHEL: You've worked on campaigns for Congress people running for Congress? PROSPECTIVE JUROR: I ran for Congress. MR. BUSCHEL: You ran for Congress? PROSPECTIVE JUROR: I worked on my own campaign. MR. BUSCHEL: And you have friends who worked for other congressmen? PROSPECTIVE JUROR: Yes. MR. BUSCHEL: Do you have any political aspirations now? PROSPECTIVE JUROR: I don't know, not federal. MR. BUSCHEL: What might they be? PROSPECTIVE JUROR: My home state in Tennessee. No local. MR. BUSCHEL: Just recognize that there might be some media— What are your aspirations? PROSPECTIVE JUROR: I served, can I just say I served in political office in Memphis in a local office on the school board. So I, one day I wake up and say I run for, you know, office again in Memphis to impact education. One day I wake up and say no way in the world would I do that. So I don't have an immediate plan to run for office. MR. BUSCHEL: The fact that you run for an office, you're affiliated with a political party. Roger Stone is affiliated with the Republican party, Donald Trump. You understand what I'm saying and getting at? PROSPECTIVE JUROR: I do. MR. BUSCHEL: How do you feel about that? MR. KRAVIS: Objection. THE COURT: Can you make that question a little bit more crisp? Is there anything about his affiliation with the Trump campaign and the Republican party in general that gives you any reason to pause or hesitate or think that you couldn't fairly evaluate the evidence against him? PROSPECTIVE JUROR: No. MR. BUSCHEL: Thank you, ma'am. THE COURT: All right, you can step out. R. BUSCHEL: Thank you, ma'am. THE COURT: All right, you can step out. (Prospective juror leaves courtroom.) THE COURT: Mr. Buschel, you have a motion? MR. BUSCHEL: No. THE COURT: Okay, let's bring in the next juror.

So it's a little early to shout "Bingo! She was biased!", which is what Trump basically did via Twitter, which is what has Barr irritated.

And so it goes in VSG world.