The generalizations about the late 1960s as being when the cultural pivot happened happen to be true

 Neo-neocon has been a blogger I have found confounding to read over the years. She's clearly smart and well-read. She has demonstrated depth in her addressing of many subjects. She commands my respect for being a convert to conservatism. I'm always interested in further investigating someone like that. 

But her blogging style has on more than a few occasions worn me out. She indulges freely in her pet obsessions, particularly ballet and modern dance. I don't care for good cultural observers and polemicists doing that when it's sports, music or even food. Set up a separate blog for that stuff. 

And she's nerdy as hell. She refers to old posts with a steel-trap memory for what she wrote when, and can even refer to sources she linked to in ancient posts. She sometimes comes across like a walking footnote. It gets tiresome. 

But when she nails it, she nails it. Such is the case, in the course of discussing last night's debate, when she - pretty successfully, I'd say - tries to pinpoint the moment in the late 1960s when it really changed:

The decline is in society at large, and I think it started in the late 60s. I was in college then, and I remember it well. It was surprisingly sudden. I started out in a world of rules and curfews and dress and behavior requirements, and then they were almost entirely gone by the time I emerged at the other end. It wasn’t just at school, either. Adults who had never uttered an expletive in public were suddenly eff-this and eff-that.

She's exactly right. Between 1965 and 1969, the guardrails came off.

Books have been written and will continue to be written about why this is so. I may someday write one myself, seeing as how I lived through it. Those were my formative years, in fact. Ages nine through thirteen. The value system my parent were trying to instill in me was no competition for The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix. 

The second, third, fourth-generation fruits of all that were on display last night, from all angles. From the Democrat embrace of progressive notions such as that the climate is in dire trouble, that gender is fluid and white people bear some kind of collective guilt, to Donald Trump's carefree use of vulgar rhetoric and his sybaritic past, we are living out the consequences of what we permitted to happen to our culture during that five-year period.

This must be grappled with at some point, or we will not have any sense of how we might repair the damage. 

 

The obligatory post-debate post

 There's not much I could add to the assessments already out there about the debate itself. Phrases such as "Americas was the loser" and "Wallace lost control" abound, and I concur.

Following-day takes have made for some good writing, which I always appreciate.

Matthew Walther at The Week was inspired to construct this priceless metaphor:

 It was like witnessing an argument about an arcane procedural rule during a senior bingo night at a nursing home in purgatory. 

There has been plenty of Trumpists whose lenses through which they viewed the proceedings are so Trump-colored that they sincerely think this was helpful to their cult-leader (or that Chris Wallace somehow kept it from being so). Some, however, have acknowledged what really went down. Michael Goodwin of the New York Post, who is generally a reliable shill for the Very Stable Genius, was forced to acknowledge that the VSG had outdone himself with regard to his signature self-sabotage:

Joe Biden was sharp and coherent enough, though he relied heavily on notes in front of him. He didn’t exactly raise the bar of decorum with his name-calling, alternately labeling President Trump a clown, a liar and a racist. Ho hum.

Yet the bulk of the blame falls on Trump, who came with a clear plan and executed it flawlessly. Unfortunately, it was a very bad plan.

From the get-go, the president was determined to rattle Biden by being a persistent interrupter, rarely letting the former vice president finish two consecutive sentences. On occasion, his interjections were smart, but mostly, they made him look boorish.

If you read my Precipice piece the other day called "Health Care Thoughts," you know that I said that the VSG is useless in this nation's debate about health care, and that he certainly doesn't understand free-market economics and how it could be applied to that subject.  Justin Stapley tweeted that point ably:

It's maddening that a moron like Trump is the defender of the conservative position on healthcare. He has no plan, he can't explain his position, and he's not even truly philosophically grounded in what the conservative argument is: free markets and consumer choice.

It's a little after noon in Wednesday as I write. Has the VSG made any attempt to walk back or "clarify" his "stand back and stand by" remark? Not that I've seen. And the Proud Boys are making hay with it big-time:

Outside of the debate, Proud Boys leader Joe Biggs saw Trump’s remarks as permission to “fuck” up the group’s foes.

“Trump basically said to go fuck them up!” Biggs wrote on Parler, an alternative social media network that courts conservatives. “This makes me so happy.”

 

Other Proud Boys leaders posted on Parler and Telegram, another social network popular with far-right figures banned, that they would follow Trump’s request to “stand down and stand by.”

 

“I will stand down sir!!!” Proud Boys national chairman Enrique Tarrio wrote on Parler. “Standing by sir. So Proud of my guys right now.”

In an interview with The Daily Beast, Tarrio predicted that “stand back, stand by,” would become a Proud Boys slogan. Earlier Proud Boys mottos have included “The West Is the Best” and “Fuck Around and Find Out,” a warning to the group’s perceived enemies.

“I think this ‘stand back, stand by” thing will be another Proud Boy saying,” Tarrio said.

Real nice.

Takes from around the world, as rounded up by the BBC, basically mirror the consensus here in post-America.

A taste of the British view:

The Guardian described it as a "national humiliation". 

"The rest of the world - and future historians - will presumably look at it and weep," the paper wrote, adding that Mr Biden was the only man who looked "remotely presidential" on the stage and saying that if Mr Trump was re-elected in November, "this dark, horrifying, unwatchable fever dream will surely be the first line of America's obituary."

From France:

"Chaotic, childish, gruelling" - that's how French newspaper Libération described Tuesday's debate. Le Monde agreed, calling it a "terrible storm", and saying that the president had sought to "push his opponent off his hinges" with constant interruptions and by mocking his answers.

From China:

The state-run Global Times called it "the most chaotic presidential debate ever" and noted that Mr Trump had taken "aim at China by blaming [it] for the raging Covid-19 epidemic and US economic woes".

Editor-in-chief Hu Xijin wrote on Twitter that the debate reflected "division, anxiety of US society and the accelerating loss of advantages of the US political system".

From India:

Hindi-language news channel AajTak accused both candidates of "mud-slinging", while broadcaster Times Now said the debate was "marred with personal jibes and political barbs".

But the strongest commentary came from The Times of India, the country's largest-selling English-language newspaper, which compared the debate to "mud-wrestling". 

"The US embarrassed itself before the world for 100 minutes," it wrote.

Last night's debacle causes me no anxiety, since my position is that whichever of these two completely unfit candidates wins, this country's downward spiral will continue. I would like to see the Senate remain in Republican hands, just so that there's some kind of check on the leftist agenda of identity politics and redistribution. Not that that agenda won't proceed to get implemented, though, with state and municipal governments, as well as corporations, civic groups and schools - even a lot of churches -doing much of the legwork.

You might ask, well, Mr. LITD, why do you continue to practice the dark art of opinion writing, then?

To give the actual principles an airing. If ever our civilization would give consideration to reversing course, it's going to need the lodestar that made advancement possible the first time. 

It's a worthwhile mission, I feel, even though it's quite late in the day. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The two really significant aspects of the VSG tax story

 Neither of them are the paltry - in many years, non-existent - tax payments he made. It may come in third in significance, but it's really between him and the IRS. Yes, the Left is going to have a field day with the rich-fact-cat-plays-by-different-rules angle, but bigger things are at stake. 

Before we get to them, though, let me say this about that: ultimately, the income tax is a morally objectionable way for the government to raise money. Now, before you conclude that oh-sheesh-I-knew-he-was-a-crank-who-wanted-to-waste-everyone's-time-with-impossible-proposals-based-on-excrutiatingly-theoretical-thinking-about-property-rights-and-the-individual-and-the-state, let me assure one and all that I realize the federal government needs a certain amount of money - for the functions specified in the Constitution. Like a military. (There, that should put to rest any suspicions that I have Rockwellian leanings.) I further understand that the national sales tax that would be the truly fair way to raise revenue is indeed for the foreseeable future a pipe dream. So we're stuck with the income tax. But we ought at least to recognize that a person's income is a form of property. And, yes, I will not retreat from my insistence that since government has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, it needs to exhaustively justify taking the first penny of anyone's earned money. Even if the person is a world-class jerk, like Donald Trump. Everyone has the right to keep what is his or hers, middle-class poor or rich. Otherwise, we are acting on class envy, the cornerstone of socialism. 

Far more significant, it seems to me, is what the tax records obtained by the New York Times show about the true magnitude of the VSG's wealth. It's not near what he's made it out to be and hasn't been for a long time, if ever. 

The reason this is significant is that it brings to the fore all of Trump's most distasteful qualities - his mendacity and his all-consuming need to be glorified. We've of course seen these traits manifest themselves in areas of official presidential conduct, and this reinforces the fact that he'll display those traits in any realm. He cares not whether what comes out of his mouth is in any way factual. And he's not sharp enough to devise a plan to keep himself out of trouble over it. 

The other most significant aspect is that can now be seen as a national security threat:

When President Trump speaks glowingly of brutal strongmen atop the governments in Turkey and the Philippines, remember that he’s making millions of dollars in these countries with the tacit approval of these authoritarian governments.

Trump’s personal finances depend on the goodwill of Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Rodrigo Duterte, who are not good guys.

Trump earned $73 million from his overseas businesses during his first two years as president, according to the New York Times. About $3 million of that is from Duterte’s Philippines, and about $1 million is from Erdogan’s Turkey.

Duterte and Erdogan are known for their offenses against human rights and liberal democracy. Duterte has been excoriated for extrajudicial killings, arbitrary imprisoning, and punishment of political dissent. Erdogan has severely restricted free speech and political dissent, locking up critics, and his regime has been accused of torturing or “disappearing” dissidents.

In a 2015 interview with Breitbart News, Trump was asked about Erdogan’s regime in Turkey, and he said, “I have a little conflict of interest because I have a major, major building in Istanbul, and it's a tremendously successful job. It's called Trump Towers — two towers instead of one, not the usual one, it's two. And I've gotten to know Turkey very well, and they are amazing people, they're incredible people, they have a strong leader.”

Trump is right: This is a conflict of interest. Trump should have unloaded all his foreign business operations upon coming into office, and Congress should have passed a law forcing him to.

Trump personally profits from authoritarian and unreliable regimes. If Trump took actions that upset Erdogan, such as threatening sanctions in response to human rights abuses or getting in the way of Erdogan’s designs on Kurd-controlled regions, he could be harming his own profits by provoking a response from Erdogan or simply by weakening a regime that is friendly to Trump’s business.

It’s crucial to remember that businesses in a place like Turkey are more dependent on the government than are businesses in freer economies such as the United States and the United Kingdom. State-owned banks in Turkey have been propping up businesses, especially tourism.

The worries here apply to the Philippines as well, where Duterte exercises tight control over foreign business operations. He could easily cut off Trump’s businesses if Trump were to upset him.

The president shouldn’t be in a position to lose or gain millions depending on the good favor of a foreign leader, and it’s even more corrupt when the foreign leader is himself a corrupt and abusive authoritarian.

On a related note, it seems that we're just at the outset of the Brad Parscale meltdown story.  Apparently many Trumpists working to get the VSG re-elected had taken note of Parscale's profligate ways as campaign manager.  And this weekend's suicide attempt / demonstration of violence toward his wife were not the first time he's pounded brewskis shirtless by the pool since his demotion:

Donald Trump's ousted campaign manager Brad Parscale began his new role focusing on 'digital strategy' with a beer in hand and enjoying the sun poolside at his $2.4 million Florida home. 

The ousted Trump 2020 campaign manager retreated to his waterfront Florida home after being ditched, where he and his wife hosted friends Friday for poolside drinks. 

Shirtless and with a Corona Light, Parscale looked more spring breaker than political operative, ditching his trademark blue suit for cargo shorts, shades and a stars and stripes safari hat. 

But his presidential employer still loomed large over the boozy party - in the shape of a Trump 2020: Make America Great Again flag flying overhead from a flagpole in the yard. 

Parscale learned his fate on Wednesday when Trump announced a shakeup of his re-election campaign on Twitter, installing former number two, Bill Stepien, as his new campaign manager. 

Parscale had overseen the disastrous rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which started with a claim a million wanted to attend, had to be moved amid a row over being scheduled for Juneteenth, saw empty seats, teens on TikTik trolling Trump with hundreds of thousands of ticket applications, and ended with campaign staff and Secret Service in quarantine for two weeks after some of them were infected with coronavirus. 

These are not favorable developments in a campaign season in its final weeks with the RCP average showing Biden and the VSG at 49.7 and 42.9 respectively. 

Republicans have no one to blame but themselves. They hitched their wagon to a con man who had gathered around him a sleazy band of sycophants and in the process squandered much of their arsenal of superior arguments about what the United States is and how to extend its blessings more widely. 

Freedom is set to shrivel yet more.

It is very late in the day.  

 

Biden's disdain for originalism

 In an earlier post this morning (I've been on a posting tear so far today; it must be the coffee), I said that after giving the matter much thought, I'd concluded that the nomination, hearings and confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett of a similar originalist should occur before the November election. I gave my reasons.

We can now add to those another great reason: Joe Biden would / will be a disaster in the matter of judicial appointments:

Supreme Court nomination hearings have gone from serene to savage, thanks largely to Joe Biden.

As head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he presided over the infamous Robert Bork hearings. His smearing of Bork for his original-intent judicial philosophy transformed hearings for Supreme Court nominees into bloody ideological battles. Henceforth, all conservative nominees were subjected to “Borking.”

Brutal to Bork from the start, Biden treated him not as a serious judge but as a stooge for what Biden called the “Reagan-Meese” agenda. Biden’s transparently unfair treatment of Bork was so bad even The Washington Post editorialized against Biden at the time:

While claiming that Judge Bork will have a full and fair hearing, Senator Joseph Biden this week has pledged to civil rights groups that he will lead the opposition to the confirmation. As the Queen of Hearts said to Alice, "Sentence first—Verdict Afterward."

How can he possibly get a fair hearing from Biden, who has already cast himself as the role of prosecutor instead of a juror in the Judiciary Committee? If there is a strong, serious case to be argued against Judge Bork, why do so many Democrats seem unwilling to make it and afraid to listen to the other side?

In a forecast of what his own judiciary would look like, Biden opposed Bork not because he lacked the legal credentials to be on the court – Bork was considered one of the leading legal scholars in the country – but because Bork didn’t conform to Biden’s view of a good judge as a leftwing legislator from the bench.

Biden lectured Bork: “Will we retreat from our tradition of progress or will we move forward, continuing to expand and envelop the rights of individuals in a changing world which is bound to have an impact upon those individuals’ sense of who they are and what they can do?...In passing on this nomination to the Supreme Court, we must also pass judgment on whether or not your particular philosophy is an appropriate one at this time in history.”

Bork parried that judges aren’t supposed to interpret the law in light of the current political zeitgeist but according to its original meaning. “If a judge abandons intention as his guide, there is no law available to him, and he begins to legislate a social agenda for the American people,” said Bork. “That goes well beyond his legitimate powers. He or she then diminishes liberty instead of enhancing it. The truth is that the judge who looks outside the Constitution always looks inside himself and nowhere else.”

But Biden didn’t listen. He scoffed at Bork’s originalism and played dirty. Borrowing a page from Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), Biden portrayed Bork as a wild-eyed Puritan prepared to break down bedroom doors. In his memoir Promises to Keep, Biden congratulates himself for this low strategy. He recalls testing his portrayal of Bork as an enemy of “privacy” at a mall in Delaware: “People who knew me would walk up and say, ‘Hey, Joe,’ and I’d ask them if they thought married couples had the right to use contraception. They looked at me like I was crazy. ‘Of course!’ And when I asked why, none of them said the right to privacy. They all said, ‘The Constitution.’”

This emboldened Biden in his gross caricature of Bork. Biden was in effect punishing Bork for not revising his jurisprudence to accommodate the left’s agenda of cultural change.

Democrats and Project Lincoln conservatives like to frame Biden as a beacon of moderation and decency juxtaposed against the bombast and chaos of Trump. Biden is no such thing. His capacity for nastiness is well-documented, and this is probably Exhibit A. 

 

John Bolton is vindicated

 When impeachment hearings were underway, John Bolton came in for a great deal of castigation for not testifying to the House. Some people I greatly respect and with whom my views align called him a coward and said he was motivated by greed.

I've always had immense admiration for John Bolton. His motivations throughout his career have always been noble. He has served this country well over many decades. 

And now the story of what happened earlier this year is seeing the light of day:

The Trump administration again looks terrible and former national security adviser John Bolton looks significantly better after the delivery of a remarkably informative letter from the senior official who reviewed Bolton’s recent book.

On behalf of Ellen Knight, the former senior director for records access and information security management at the National Security Council, attorney Kenneth Wainstein sent the 18-page letter to lawyers for Bolton and for the Justice Department, which has threatened Bolton with criminal prosecution for allegedly publishing classified information.

The letter makes clear Knight’s contention that no classified information remained in Bolton’s book, The Room Where It Happened. Its unambiguous subtext is that President Trump’s team again politicized and abused freedom of speech guarantees and national security in a naked bid to avoid embarrassment to the president.

In a passage that has received far less attention, Knight refutes the widespread public impression that Bolton’s greed for profits led him to withhold important information from the Ukraine-related impeachment investigation and the trial of Trump. Instead, Bolton repeatedly tried to get permission to release the information but was denied.

Already, too few people have credited Bolton for essentially begging the Senate to subpoena him so he could testify under oath without risking legal repercussions. Knight’s letter shows that Bolton also tried other means to provide the desired information for the public good.

“On one occasion when [Bolton’s lawyer] requested that Ms. Knight’s staff prioritize the Ukraine chapter in the manuscript for prepublication review to make it publicly available during the impeachment trial, the then-Deputy Legal Advisor [Michael] Ellis instructed her to temporarily withhold any response,” the letter stated.

In other words, Bolton was not trying to withhold the information for purposes of book profiteering but because he did not yet have notice that it was unclassified. He was convinced it was unclassified and wanted permission to discuss it. But without clearance and without a subpoena, he would have put himself in legal jeopardy by setting it before the public.

Considering that the politicized Justice Department is now threatening criminal prosecution for releasing the information six months later, Bolton was right. But he tried, in multiple ways, to provide the relevant material.

Knight, via lawyer Wainstein, also portrays Bolton as acting “in good faith” throughout the process, rather than acting without regard to national security secrets: “Ms. Knight always felt his intention was to cooperate with and complete the review.” 

While the letter largely portrays Bolton in favorable terms (other than being “gruff and demanding,” which is his well-established reputation), it makes the Trump administration look awful. Again and again, it worked to slow down the review process without any explanation or attempt to cooperate with Bolton or consult with Knight. Though Knight was a trained career official who had overseen 135 prior prepublication review requests, the White House assigned Ellis, a newly appointed official with no background in such reviews, to overrule the determinations she and her staff made in the course of many hundreds of hours of painstaking work.

I would hope that this restores Bolton's good standing as a conservative and a national-security asset. I'm not looking for any mea culpas, just acknowledgement of facts now in evidence.  

 

 

True to form, the Very Stable Genius is fouling his own nest once again

I realize that polls show the majority of Americans think that filling the Supreme Court vacancy ought to wait until next year. There are respectable arguments for that position. 

I've concluded otherwise. After much deliberation, I've concluded that the nomination of an originalist judge - hopefully Amy Coney Barrett - and hearings (if the Senate deems them absolutely necessary; if the nominee's public evisceration in that forum can be avoided, that would be good) and confirmation should occur before Election Day, and let the chips fall where they may. 

Mind you, it won't happen in a vacuum, though. Washington Dems as well as radicals on the streets will be at maximum meltdown. 

As far as this being some kind of dastardly move, it is no such thing. There's plenty of precedent for this situation (Congress controlled by one party, the White House controlled by the other).

More importantly, there are only two laws covering this situation, both of them in the Constitution. All else is posturing and politics.

Amy Coney Barrett is a brilliant jurist and a human being of great depth. She would be excellent. I had hoped Trump would choose her when he went with Kavanaugh instead. She'd be an incredible asset on the Supreme Court.

But, true to his cycle of making one laudable move and ruining it with three or four boneheaded moves, the VSG is sullying what should be a win for conservatism by casting doubt on the election process:

President Donald Trump reiterated Thursday that he may not honor the results should he lose reelection, reaffirming his extraordinary refusal to commit to a peaceful transition of power and prompting election and law enforcement authorities nationwide to prepare for an unprecedented constitutional crisis.

Trump escalated his months-long campaign to undermine the legitimacy of the Nov. 3 election with a series of comments Wednesday that, taken together and at face value, pose his most substantial threat yet to the nation's history of free and fair elections.

In recent days, the president cast doubt on the integrity of vote totals. He said he might not accept the results if they show him losing to Democratic nominee Joe Biden. He said it was imperative to quickly fill the Supreme Court vacancy created by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg because the nation's high court could determine the winner of the election.

And when asked directly whether he would commit to a "peaceful transition of power," Trump responded, "We're going to have to see what happens." He went on to suggest that authorities "get rid of the ballots," an apparent reference to the huge uptick in votes cast by mail amid the coronavirus pandemic, adding that, if they did, "there won't be a transfer [of power], frankly. There will be a continuation."

Trump reaffirmed his views Thursday, saying on Fox News Radio that he would agree with a Supreme Court ruling that Biden won the election but that short of a court decision, the vote count would amount to "a horror show" because of fraudulent ballots. There is no evidence of widespread fraud.

Later Thursday, as he left the White House for a campaign rally in North Carolina, Trump reiterated to reporters, "We want to make sure the election is honest, and I'm not sure that it can be."

The Left will paint this scenario as Trump being solely motivated by wanting a conservative SCOTUS majority to settle any uncertainty surrounding the election - and they may well be right.

Two things about that:

Barrett, or whoever the nominee is, must make very clear - and this would be one useful thing about hearings - that she or he will not be leaned upon by the VSG or anyone else, and will consult the Constitution and the Constitution only in deciding any matters related to the election

Donald Trump would be wise to shut his damn mouth. But I'm indulging unrealistic hopes here. The VSG never does wise.

 

The Very Stable Genius attempts to bribe older voters

 There's been some drift on the Right, among both Trumpists and actual conservatives. away from the free-market orthodoxy that has always been one of the three pillars of the conservative worldview. Trumpists have been fine with tariffs, for instance (even though they have failed to produce the trade results that the VSG has promised.) Among actual conservatives, a strain of economic thought has arisen that posits that a sort of sociological view is needed, one that takes into account dislocation and the changing nature of labor.

My view is that conservatism by definition is about immutable principles - things that don't change. I stand by my LITD First Law of Economics: A good or service is worth what buyer and seller agree that it is worth, period. No other party has any business being part of coming to that agreement, most certainly not government. 

Any other scheme smacks of central planning, no matter how fancily it's dolled up. It always comes down to a proclamation that "we have to do something for such-and-such sector of the population." The question that looms, then is always, "Who is 'we'?" I'd like to suggest that sovereign individuals are best suited to determine their own destinies. This remains true even as advances in technology, the proliferation of global supply chains and more diverse populations come about.

One person on the Right - I'm using that term very, very loosely; he was a Democrat as recently as 2009 - who is definitely not a free-market advocate is Donald Trump. 

The guy has a lot on his plate these days: the Supreme Court vacancy, continued urban unrest, the ongoing pandemic, and, of course, the upcoming election. But in the middle of all that, he's found time to hatch a scheme the purpose of which is clearly to curry favor with the senior demographic:

 President Donald Trump said that Americans in the Medicare program for the elderly and disabled will be sent $200 discount cards for prescription drugs within weeks, potentially putting cash in their pockets ahead of his November re-election.

“Nobody’s seen this before. These cards are incredible,” Trump said Thursday in a speech outlining what he called an “America First Health Plan” in Charlotte, North Carolina. “The cards will be mailed out in coming weeks. I will always take care of our wonderful senior citizens.”

Trump didn’t explain in his speech what program or authority would allow the government to provide the cards. Assuming they are sent to 33 million Medicare beneficiaries, the figure Trump used, the cards would cost about $6.6 billion.

Money for the cards will be drawn from a demonstration program Medicare uses to test new payment systems and other projects, and the cost will be offset by future savings generated from new price cuts Trump has ordered for drugs bought by Medicare, according to a White House official. The cards can be used for prescription drugs co-pays, the official said, but didn’t elaborate.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services referred questions about the cards to the White House.

Trump is struggling to secure the votes of older Americans with less than six weeks before the election. Several recent polls indicate his re-election opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, is tied or leading Trump among people 65 and older, a turnabout from 2016 when the president won the senior vote by a comfortable margin. 

Per the line above that I have emphasized with boldface, isn't this the sort of thing that needs to come out of Congress in the form of a passed bill?

James C. Capretta, writing at The Bulwark, says that this is just the latest attempt by the VSG to look like a hero to the senior set by lowering their drug prices, and that every stab he's made at it is extraconstitutional and incoherent:

According to the New York Times, in July and August, President Trump pursued one last (and probably illegal) gambit with the pharmaceutical industry to deliver lower prices to consumers.

He and his aides used the threat of pricing tied to an international benchmark to coerce the industry to agree to provide direct assistance to Medicare beneficiaries. The Times reports that major  pharmaceutical companies were prepared to pay for $150 billion worth of cost-sharing relief for senior citizens if the administration halted its price-benchmarking plan. It is not clear from the story how the drug companies could provide such assistance under current law.

That wasn’t enough for Trump. He and his aides wanted drug discount cards—worth $100 apiece—delivered in October to every Medicare beneficiary. Medicare has 62.6 million enrollees in 2020, so this scheme would have required a one-time, $6.3 billion payment from the companies.

The industry’s negotiators balked at this request, and the deal fell through.

Two points are worth emphasizing about this remarkable episode.

First, this extraconstitutional behavior would have shocked the political world had it been attempted in a previous era. The executive branch was trying to force a private industry to pay for direct assistance to public program enrollees, one month before a national election. It seems not to have occurred to anyone at the White House that perhaps this was a matter that required legislation and a legitimate federal appropriation. If Congress wanted to create such a program, and make the industry pay for it, it could do so by imposing a tax and using the proceeds for this purpose.

Second, Trump and his aides seem incapable of deciding what it is that they want on drug costs. If the reporting is accurate, the industry was prepared to pay for substantial pricing relief for seniors, and thus deliver a victory for the president at a crucial moment in his term. And yet the administration couldn’t take yes for an answer. Top White House officials insisted on a request that was so outlandish that the industry had little choice but to reject it. The collapse has left the president with nothing to tout on drug pricing.

This latest failed negotiation with pharmaceutical companies fits a pattern. The president came into office saying he would deliver where his predecessors fell short, by lowering prices paid directly by consumers. But he has yet to put in place any meaningful reforms, in large part because he and his aides have never settled on a coherent plan and pursued it consistently. This is a recurring theme of his presidency, and reveals the limits of governance by instinct, erratic improvisation, and the roar of the crowd.

His fevered focus on winning the election is making for ever-crazier moves. I sure hope some folks in the House and the Senate muster the spine to speak out about this. 

 

 

Breonna was supposed to be the clear-cut case

 Unlike the situations concerning George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks, Jacob Blake and Daniel Prude, the deceased wasn't loaded on hard drugs and/or drunk, wasn't resisting arrest, and was in the company of her boyfriend, neither of whom had criminal histories. 

But due to some leaked documents that have come into the hands of Louisville's WAVE-TV news we now know some facts that give us a clearer picture.  

It turns out she wasn't shot in her sleep in bed. She and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker,  heard the knock on the apartment door - that's right, the cops knocked - and they both got out of bed and Walker drew his gun and fired, apparently thinking it was intruders. But a police officer is trained to return fire when shot, as Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly was. In the ensuing return fire, Taylor died in the hallway.

And there's more to the profile of Taylor than just that she was an EMT with no record.

You see, there was an ex-boyfriend who was still in the picture. His name is Jamarcus Glover, and he's currently on the lam. He skipped a court appearance on some drug charges in July and there's a warrant for his arrest. 

(Why did this new boyfriend not object to Taylor still be in close contact with Glover? Wouldn't most guys insist on a clean break?)

Why did police go to Taylor's apartment in relation to the Glover warrant? Well, you see 

An excerpt from the leaked report showed that on Feb. 14, 2020, Glover's car was towed for a parking violation. According to the report, Glover tried to file a complaint against the officer and gave Taylor's phone number as his own. Six days later, detectives from the Place Based Investigation team verified through a database that Glover was using Taylor's home address -- 3003 Springfield Drive -- as well. The PBI squad was the group of detectives assigned to investigate Glover.

Then, on Feb. 24, the report further verified the link between Taylor's home and Glover.

“Detectives received Jamarcus Glover’s bank records from Chase Bank,” the leaked report stated. “On these bank statements, Jamarcus Glover used 3003 Springfield Drive #4, Louisville, KY 40214 as his mailing address.”

For them no longer being an item, Taylor sure let Glover use her car a lot:

The leaked report stated that on Jan. 2, the PBI team saw Glover pull up to 2424 Elliott Avenue, a suspected drug house, in Taylor's car. The team was conducting surveillance on the home which was described as a "trap house," meaning drug deals allegedly took place there. The report included pictures of Taylor's car at the scene.

Then, the next day, the report revealed transcriptions of recorded jailhouse conversations between Glover and Taylor in which they talk about Adrian Walker, another suspect in the case, and the third person named in the Taylor warrant.

"You talk to Doug (Adrian Walker?)" Glover asked Taylor.

"Yeah, I did," Taylor responded. "He said he was already back at the trap."

In another conversation between the two just two hours later, Glover thanked Taylor for checking on him.

"When you're around I stress more ... ," she is quoted as saying. "I just always be worried about you ... not like you and b****, but just period with the police, like all kind of s***."

In separate phone calls on Jan. 3, the conversations ended with each telling the other that they loved each other, the documents stated. Also, from January 2016 to January 2020, Glover called Taylor 26 times from jail. Another inmate called her seven times during that period.

She loved Glover in January. By March she already had a new bedmate. 

Glover was still coming to Taylor's apartment in January. A lot. To pick up packages.

According to the new information, once LMPD's tech team installed a GPS tracker on Glover's red Dodge Charger, the device indicated six trips to the 3003 Springfield Drive address in January 2020. LMPD's surveillance efforts also produced pictures of Taylor at 2424 Elliott. The report included never-before-seen images of Glover picking up packages at 3003 Springfield.

Taylor was handling Glover's finances in March.

The documents also included copious amounts of transcriptions of recorded jailhouse phone calls made by Glover, several of which were made to the mother of his child. On April 24, Glover told the woman, whom WAVE 3 News has chosen not to identify, that officers “took my car ... They got that bank statement out the armrest, boom it got Bre’s address on there.”

In transcribed conversations from the morning of March 13, hours after Taylor was killed, Glover told the woman that Taylor had $8,000 of his money.

“Bre got down like $15 (grand), she had the $8 (grand) I gave her the other day and she picked up another $6 (grand),” he said, according to the documents.

Then, a moment later, he told the woman that "Bre been handling all my money, she been handling my money ... She been handling s*** for me and cuz, it ain't just me."

And later, "I can walk in that house (Bre's) and go directly to whatever it is no problem with it," Glover said, according to the documents.

So the Kentucky Attorney General announced that the police involved in the gunfire exchange at Taylor's apartment would not be charged with anything, and, once again, a major American city erupts in civil unrest, including the shooting of two police officers.  

The whole situation makes for one less false narrative for the identity-politics militants to use to insist that we have yet another round of "difficult conversations" about "systemic racism."

She was up to her eyeballs in trouble over drugs and violence, just like the four men - who happened to be black- whose shooting have led to a summer of societal breakdown. 

 

 

 

 

 

Friday roundup

 Former national security advisor H.R. McMaster tells CBS's Scott Pelley that the Very Stable Genius has sided with the Taliban over the Afghan government. 

Andrew Sullivan on the way social media's algorithms hold your hand and make sure your confirmation biases are reaffirmed and that pesky challenging viewpoints don't clutter up your newsfeed.

Yuval Levin of the American Enterprise Institute says that it's important for us to think deeply about just what the Constitution is:

To think about the Constitution legalistically is to see it simply as a set of rules to be applied and interpreted, ultimately by judges. This view obviously makes sense up to a point. Judges have a foremost role in constitutional interpretation, and the Constitution is, in some of its most crucial respects, a form of law. But this view is easily taken too far, and so can encourage an excessively lawyerly constitutional practice that comes down to a search for technicalities that justify various uses of power and so narrows our understanding of what political life involves.

Now, mind you, he's not advocating for any kind of loosey-goosey living-document perspective:

This kind of broader constitutionalism is an extension of, not a substitute for, an originalist approach to judicial interpretation. Reading the text as it was written is the judge’s job, but the judge is just one constitutional actor, and not in every instance the appropriate or decisive one. Our grasp of that truth has been degraded over time, and our contemporary over-emphasis of legalistic and policy-oriented constitutionalism is the result of a kind of deformation of our constitutional culture, driven in part by some peculiar notions of the functions of the judge. Understanding how that has happened should help us see that a recovery of our constitutional order will depend on more than just appointing good judges. It will depend on our recovering a richer and more complete understanding of who we are as a people, and so of what our Constitution really is.

A new project of Principles First called The Pillars can help a citizen take this broad view. The first installment provides brief summaries of the contributions of great Enlightenment figures (and my heroes) to humankind's understanding of ordered liberty: Burke, Locke, Montesquieu, Sir William Blackstone and Adame Smith. Future installments will move the reader through successive eras and the thinkers about freedom associated with each.

Kurt T. Lash at Law & Liberty says universities need to do less "contextualizing" of Thomas Jefferson and  put more focus on the thunderous documents he penned - not just the Declaration of Independence, but the Northwest Ordinance, which laid out a path for a slavery-free American future.

Maybe if self-identified conservatives spent more time pondering the above principles, American politics would be less subjected to the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Laura Loomer, writes Kimberly Ross at ArcDigital. 

An excellent essay at The Bulwark by Matthew Stokes looks at the effect that not having to dress like a grown-up professional to work in the wake of the pandemic is having on our mindset not only about work but our approach to life in general.

David Wurmser at Fox News says that the tectonic shift underway in the Middle East is rapidly diminishing the relevance of Palestinian foot-stamping: 

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. . . . dismissed the agreements signed at the White House as “a distraction” by Trump from the coronavirus pandemic and complained that the Palestinian issue was not addressed.

This is an absurd argument that fails to recognize the historic importance of the agreements signed Tuesday to advance the long-sought goal of peace between Israel and its neighbors. Certainly, much remains to be accomplished, but the agreements with the UAE and Bahrain are highly significant.

In truth, the real abandonment of the Palestinian people has come from their own leaders, who refuse to make a peace with Israel that would lead to a vast improvement in the lives of the Palestinians with new opportunities for trade, jobs and regional cooperation. 

Two years ago, Trump critics also blasted his decision to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, claiming this would end any chances for peace. They were proven wrong by the UAE and Bahrain.

At the core of the European diplomatic slight, the American left’s dismissiveness, and the symbolic but irrelevant launching of missiles by terrorists in Gaza was the belief that the resolution of the Palestinian issue is a precondition to advance regional peace.

And yet, four peace treaties reveal quite a different pattern. President Trump understand this, which is why he pursued peace between Arab nations and Israel rather than giving Palestinians a permanent veto of all efforts to end 72 years of Arab hostility toward the Jewish state.

Importantly, a major driver of the decision by the UAE, Bahrain and hopefully more Arab nations to normalize relations with Israel is the threat the Arab World sees from Iran, which is hostile not just to Israel and the U.S. but to Sunni Muslim Arab states. It makes sense for the Arab nations to join with Israel and the U.S. as allies against the Iranian menace.

Apparently neither Hamas, which started right in with a rocket barrage aimed at Israel after the deal was signed, nor Fatah, get the message:

The Palestinian Authority will sever ties with any country that opens an embassy to Israel in Jerusalem, a top Palestinian official warned on Sunday, after Serbia and Kosovo announced that they will be doing so in the near future.

“Palestine will sever its relations with any country that will move or open its embassy to Jerusalem,” PLO Executive Committee Secretary-General Saeb Erekat tweeted on Sunday.

The US is within days of topping the 200,000 COVID-death mark. 

 

 

 

 

Donald Trump, master of self-sabotage

 Any conservative, regardless how objectionable he or she finds Donald Trump , is going to have to concede that he occasionally gets something right. The latest example is the signing of peace agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the foreign ministers for the two Arab nations came to the White House for a signing ceremony, and it was a fitting event. Certainly, it was the culmination of a lot of communication and heavy lifting among the parties actually agreeing to peace, but it happened on Trump's watch and he signed off on anything having to do with the US role in orchestrating the deals. If one doesn't acknowledge that, one is far too invested in narrative.

That said, the question must be asked, why isn't this dominating the current news cycle?

It's not too hard to figure out. The guy is his own worst enemy. He consistently poisons the well, fouls his own nest. I've long said that there's been a cycle to his presidency. One laudable move, followed by three or four embarrassing or downright rotten utterings or stunts. 

The ABC town hall was full of cringeworthy moments, but perhaps the most glaring was when he was asked why he didn't level with the American people about the severity of the coronavirus threat.  There's no question that he did so. Bob Woodward has it on tape. Well, he answered the question by saying, "I didn't downplay it. I actually, in many ways, I up-played it [which isn't even an actual word], in terms of action. My action was very strong."

That must be why a country with 4 percent of the world's population has 20 percent of its COVID cases.

Speaking of mangled language at the town hall, at one point, he said that eventually society will develop  "like a herd mentality" to fend off the virus.

At a rally in Michigan, in the course of talking about keeping the American people "calm," he said that, when London was being bombed by Germany in the early 1940s, Winston Churchill would frequently go up to a roof to give speeches. No, Mr. President, that was CBS correspondent Edward R. Murrow, and they were news reports. Churchill gave speeches in Parliament, but they were bracing messages to the British people to be prepared for very hard times.

Then there was the rally in Nevada at which he made it clear he doesn't give a flying you-know-what about no stinkin' Constitution:

During a rally in Minden, Nevada, Trump predicted he would win reelection and carry Nevada, a state he lost narrowly in 2016.

“After that,” Trump said, “we’ll negotiate,” asserting that he’s “probably entitled to another four after that” based on “the way we were treated.”

The comments echo ones Trump made during a rally in Wisconsin in August, in which he stated he would win four more years and “go for another four years” because “they spied on my campaign,” likely referencing his unproven “Obamagate” theory.

Michael Cohen, Trump’s former fixer-turned prolific critic, has argued that Trump’s comments should not be disregarded as humor, instead asserting that Trump believes he should be the “ruler” or “dictator” of the U.S. and wants to “change the Constitution.”

Cohen predicted that, were Trump to win reelection, “he is going to automatically day number one start thinking how he can change the Constitution for a third term, and then a fourth term.”

This is just in the last few days. Of course, we could go back further to the revelations in Woodward's book about his man-crushes on the world's autocrats and dictators, and his contempt for the US military's generals, or Trump's ordering Attorney General Bob Barr to come up with a list of "anarchist jurisdictions" to be denied federal funds already allocated to them.

This self-sabotage may be the most compelling argument for the Very Stable Genius's fundamental unfitness to be president. He's incapable of a coherent thought process, and if there's any job in the world for which that's an imperative quality, it's his. 

Which is not to downplay the particulars enumerated above. 

The bottom line is that the sum total of it grossly outweighs good moves like yesterday's signing ceremony. It's not worth it to put the country through this other stuff. 

This dude needs help

 The nice men in the white coats are here, Mr. Caputo:

The top communications official at the powerful cabinet department in charge of combating the coronavirus made outlandish and false claims on Sunday that career government scientists were engaging in “sedition” in their handling of the pandemic and that left-wing hit squads were preparing for armed insurrection after the election.

Michael Caputo, 58, the assistant secretary of public affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services, said without evidence that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was harboring a “resistance unit” determined to undermine President Trump.

Mr. Caputo, who has faced criticism for leading efforts to warp C.D.C. weekly bulletins to fit Mr. Trump’s pandemic narrative, suggested that he personally could be in danger.

“You understand that they’re going to have to kill me, and unfortunately, I think that’s where this is going,” Mr. Caputo, a Trump loyalist installed by the White House in April, told followers in a video he hosted live on his personal Facebook page. Mr. Caputo has 5,000 Facebook friends, and the video has been viewed more than 850 times. It has been shared by 44 followers.

The department said in a statement: “Mr. Caputo is a critical, integral part of the president’s coronavirus response, leading on public messaging as Americans need public health information to defeat the Covid-19 pandemic.”

Mr. Caputo said Monday, “Since joining the administration my family and I have been continually threatened” and harassed by people who have later been prosecuted. “This weighs heavily on us, and we deeply appreciate the friendship and support of President Trump as we address these matters and keep our children safe.”

Mr. Caputo delivered his broadside against scientists, the media and Democrats after a spate of news reports over the weekend that detailed his team’s systematic interference in the C.D.C.’s official reports on the pandemic and other disease outbreaks. Former and current C.D.C. officials described to Politico first, then The New York Times and other outlets how Mr. Caputo and a top aide routinely demanded the agency revise, delay and even scuttle the C.D.C.’s core public health updates, called Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports, that they believed undercut Mr. Trump’s message that the pandemic is under control.

Those reports, deemed “the holiest of the holy” by one former top health official for their international respect and importance, have traditionally been so shielded from political interference that political appointees see them only just before they are published.

Mr. Caputo on Sunday complained on Facebook that he was under siege by the media and said that his physical health was in question and his “mental health has definitely failed.”

“I don’t like being alone in Washington,” he said, describing “shadows on the ceiling in my apartment, there alone, shadows are so long.” He then ran through a series of conspiracy theories, culminating in a prediction that Mr. Trump will win re-election but his Democratic opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr., will refuse to concede.

“And when Donald Trump refuses to stand down at the inauguration, the shooting will begin,” he said. “The drills that you’ve seen are nothing.” He added: “If you carry guns, buy ammunition, ladies and gentlemen, because it’s going to be hard to get.”

My mental health has failed, but pay great heed to my warnings about the election aftermath.

Whether this guy is still in his position by the end of the week will tell us about the overall health of this administration - and the Trumpist movement.