Zorro
Zorro's JournalThe useful idiot from Louisiana
A few weeks ago, I wrote about Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) showcasing the “typical shell game” of Republicans on impeachment: Eliminate the importance of the “quid pro quo,” muddy the waters of the president’s motive and distort the impeachment process itself. Since then, the senator from Louisiana has taken his pro-Trump spin to a new level: repeating Russian disinformation without a care.
On Sunday’s “Meet the Press,” Kennedy began his interview with host Chuck Todd with a mea culpa for recently misstating that Ukraine, not Russia, hacked Democratic National Committee computers in 2016. One would think such embarrassment would lead one to be more cautious in his claims about Russia, Ukraine and the 2016 election. Not so with Kennedy. Instead, he told Todd:
I think both Russia and Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election. I think it is has been well documented in the Financial Times, in Politico, in the Economist, in the Washington Examiner, even on CBS that the prime minister of Ukraine, the interior minister, the Ukrainian ambassador to the United States, the head of the Ukrainian anti-corruption league, all meddled in the election on social media and otherwise. They worked with a DNC operative against the president.
Unsurprisingly, Kennedy’s summary of those articles bears little to no resemblance to the actual facts. For example, the Politico article that Kennedy cited reported only that “Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office" and by highlighting former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort’s close ties to Russia. And Politico notes that those efforts “were far less concerted or centrally directed than Russia’s alleged hacking and dissemination of Democratic emails.” Similarly, Kennedy noted that “a Ukrainian court ruled that Ukrainian officials had violated Ukrainian law by meddling in our election and that was reported in The New York Times" — without mentioning that a higher court later canceled that ruling.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/12/02/useful-idiot-louisiana/
King Charles I was executed by his parliament. There's a lesson there for Donald Trump
If, as the saying goes, “the past is prologue,” consider this:
On Jan. 30, 1649 (is that past enough?), Charles I, King of England, laid his head down on the executioner’s block and was put to death. The charge against him, after nearly a decade of civil war, was treason for making war on his own people. The jurors who convicted him were parliamentarians, and they found him guilty of pursuing his own interests rather than the interests of the country.
We should take more than passing note of this long ago event, not because anyone would advocate that our own leader should meet such a violent end, but rather because it helps explain a central conflict that continues to roil both British and American politics: the clash between the executive and legislative branches of government.
Drawing upon legal precedents such as the Magna Carta, Parliament in the early 17th century had been asserting its own authority more and more in the face of increasing demands of a monarchy that believed in its divine right to exclusive rule. Parliament had one significant weapon: the power of the purse. Under Charles I, Parliament exercised that authority by refusing to fund the king’s foreign policy as he wished, an act of defiance that provoked the king to dissolve Parliament and rule alone for 11 years. His opponents referred to that time as the “Eleven Years’ Tyranny.” Historians, striving to be more neutral, call it the Era of Personal Rule.
Later, when Parliament was reconvened and the conflict grew even more heated, Charles accused five members of the House of Commons of treason. Attended by armed guards, he entered Parliament to arrest them, but they had already left the chamber, and the speaker for the first time asserted his obedience to the House rather than to the king.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2019-12-02/opinion-what-do-donald-trump-boris-johnson-and-king-charles-i-have-in-common
John Simon, Wide-Ranging Critic With a Cutting Pen, Dies at 94
John Simon, one of the nation’s most erudite, vitriolic and vilified culture critics, who illuminated and savaged a remarkable range of plays, films, literature and art works and their creators for more than a half-century, died on Sunday in Valhalla, N.Y. He was 94.
His death, at Westchester Medical Center, was confirmed by his wife, Patricia Simon.
In an era of vast cultural changes, Mr. Simon marshaled wide learning, insights and acid wit for largely negative reviews and essays that appeared in New York magazine for nearly 37 years, until his dismissal in 2005, and in The Hudson Review, The New York Times, Esquire, National Review, The New Leader and other publications.
In a style that danced with literary allusions and arch rhetoric — and composed with pen and ink (he hated computers) — he produced thousands of critiques and a dozen books, mostly anthologies of his own work. While English was not his native language, he also wrote incisive essays on American usage, notably in the 1980 book “Paradigms Lost: Reflections on Literacy and Its Decline.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/25/arts/john-simon-dead.html
Trump isn't running in Britain's election. That hasn't stopped him from getting in the middle.
Donald Trump just can’t seem to stay away from British politics. He’s fired off comments on topics including Brexit, his low opinion of a British ambassador, and how his Trump-branded golf course in Scotland “furthers U.K. relations.”
So there’s little surprise that the American president is playing an outsize role in Britain’s upcoming elections — for good or bad, depending.
In Britain, more than any other country aside from the United States, Trump has sought to bolster his political allies and trash his detractors.
In so doing, he has blithely crossed traditional red lines. In late October, Trump phoned in to a talk radio show hosted by a friend, Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage, to dump on leftist Labour Party head Jeremy Corbyn.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/trump-isnt-running-in-britains-election-that-hasnt-stopped-him-from-getting-in-the-middle/2019/11/29/d4973fee-0bb4-11ea-8054-289aef6e38a3_story.html
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