January 29, 2020

Jared Kushner: Palestinians Have Never Done Anything Right in Their Sad, Pathetic Lives

The First Son-In-Law
Jared Kushner: Palestinians Have Never Done Anything Right in Their Sad, Pathetic Lives
The first son-in-law has warned Palestinians not to “screw up this opportunity” at peace that he’s so graciously given to them.
By Bess Levin
January 29, 2020


Last June, more than two years after his father-in-law assigned him the task of bringing peace to the Middle East, Jared Kushner held a big kickoff conference in Bahrain to unveil the economic portion of his plan—and it did not go well. For starters, Palestinian leadership boycotted the entire event, which they felt was missing a few key details, such as, just as an example, a plan for control of the West Bank and Palestinian statehood. Kushner, ever the real estate agent, gave a speech in which he spoke of transforming the Gaza Strip into a tourist destination, failing to mention Israel and Egypt’s 12-year blockade of the Hamas-controlled territory, in addition to Israel’s 52-year-long occupation of the West Bank, which restricts trade and labor movements. When the Boy Prince of New Jersey touched on politics, it was to offer the savvy take that if everyone just stopped “doing terrorism,” it would “allow for much faster flow of goods and people.” Not surprisingly, the whole thing was panned by experts, one of whom described Kushner’s plan as “the Monty Python sketch of Israeli-Palestinian peace initiatives.” Undeterred, Kushner got on a call with Arab and Israeli reporters and, putting on his salesman cap, explained that his vision was 100% workable, if Palestinian leadership would stop being so “hysterical and stupid.”

Was this the greatest way to convince people to get on board? Probably not! Yet, incredibly, Kushner apparently thought it was exactly the right approach, and we know this because on Tuesday, after the White House unveiled its full vision for peace in the Middle East—which calls for no evacuation of settlements, limits Palestinian presence in Jerusalem, and includes no path to statehood beyond the vague mention of a “future State of Palestine”—he repeated it again, except this time he cranked the a-hole from a 12 to a 45.

Appearing on CNN, Kushner told Christiane Amanpour that critics of his plan—of which there are a comically huge number—must “divorce [themselves] from all of the history” and focus on the deal he has outlined for them. And speaking of history, Kushner posited that if this whole thing fails, it’s not going to be because a glorified slumlord somehow didn’t get it right, but because Palestinians are morons who don’t know what’s good for them. Sayeth Kushner:



Don’t worry, there’s footage of Kushner making this statement so it can be played back for all eternity:
https://twitter.com/i/status/1222267596210343940

more...

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/01/jared-kushner-peace-plan-palestinians

January 29, 2020

John Bolton Is a Shark, and There's Blood in the Water

https://truthout.org/articles/john-bolton-is-a-shark-and-theres-blood-in-the-water/


John Bolton Is a Shark, and There’s Blood in the Water
Senate Republicans now face a brutal Hobson’s Choice: Allow Bolton’s testimony or ignore him at their own peril.
By William Rivers Pitt, Truthout
Published January 29, 2020



snip//

The damage will be extreme no matter what transpires. So what, exactly, is Bolton’s game here? I can hazard a few guesses, beginning with one vital caveat: John Bolton is not your friend. He is not in this to help Democrats, or because he has suddenly seen the light.

Bolton isn’t doing this to see Trump convicted. Only a miracle can make that happen, and miracles are in short supply nowadays. Instead, Bolton wants Trump and all his people weakened, so that foreign policy can be put back in the hands of Bolton’s neoconservative pals. Trump has proven to be an impediment to that, but Trump bared his throat to Bolton when he messed with foreign policy for political gain while Bolton was in the room. This takeover would be a terrible outcome, but Bolton stands many long miles away from seeing that dream realized.

In the meantime, Bolton surely also wants revenge for the way Trump treated him last September, and like Yeats’s rough beast slouching toward Bethlehem, his hour has come round at last.

The Bolton Shark is patrolling these waters. Senate Republicans bared their throats, too, by embracing Trump’s absurd reality-bending defense: Everything Bolton bore witness to never happened, and if it did, there was nothing wrong with it. If these senators have any remaining wits about them, they will swim for the shore just as fast as they’re able by cutting their losses and voting to allow the testimony. Trump can’t save them anymore, not after this. According to reports, even he expects witnesses, including Bolton, will be called.

Bolton’s testimony will in all likelihood be deeply damaging, but senators who approve the testimony will at least be able to say they voted for a “proper proceeding,” and didn’t participate in the all-out bag job this impeachment trial was shaping up to be before Bolton’s fin broke the surface. It will hurt, but not as much as if Bolton is allowed to drag his revelations out for the next eight months, which he almost certainly will if he is denied a hearing. It’s the classic Band-Aid dilemma writ large: A quick rip or a slow peel?

Bad choices all around. Maybe Senate Republicans should make better friends next time.

January 29, 2020

Trio of Dem senators considering vote to acquit Trump

Trio of Dem senators considering vote to acquit Trump
A handful of moderate Democrats could deliver Trump a bipartisan impeachment vote.
By BURGESS EVERETT
01/28/2020 07:25 PM EST


A trio of moderate Senate Democrats is wrestling with whether to vote to convict Donald Trump in his impeachment trial — or give the president the bipartisan acquittal he’s eagerly seeking.

Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Doug Jones of Alabama are undecided on whether to vote to remove the president from office and agonizing over where to land. It’s a decision that could have major ramifications for each senator’s legacy and political prospects — as well shape the broader political dynamic surrounding impeachment heading into the 2020 election.

more...

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/01/28/trio-democratic-senators-consider-acquit-trump-108130?fbclid=IwAR1g6CEpQWsuFMhlW7UYcB7M6F_RNyJn9lpsHQwUI929To-E7FA5zCjB93w

January 29, 2020

Trump administration 'rolling back women's rights by 50 years' by changing definitions...

The Trump administration's change could have significant repercussions for millions of domestic violence and sexual assault victims
Trump administration ‘rolling back women’s rights by 50 years’ by changing definitions of domestic violence and sexual assault

'I was massively surprised and really shocked. It’s quite scary how quietly it’s happened. It’s a massive step backwards. We have literally gone back to the 70s,' says academic

Maya Oppenheim
Women's Correspondent @mayaoppenheim
Thursday 24 January 2019 17:47


Donald Trump’s decision to change definitions of domestic violence and sexual assault has rolled back women’s rights by half a century, campaigners have warned.

The Trump administration quietly changed the definition of both domestic violence and sexual assault back in April but the move has only just surfaced.

The change could have significant repercussions for millions of victims of gender-based violence.

The Trump Justice Department’s definition only considers physical harm that constitutes a felony or misdemeanour to be domestic violence – meaning other forms of domestic violence such as psychological abuse, coercive control and manipulation no longer fall under the department’s definition.

more...

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/trump-domestic-abuse-sexual-assault-definition-womens-rights-justice-department-a8744546.html?fbclid=IwAR2JGwSwW-eKdhsuJGySNWtP5NCGW96Or4kPM56x1YoTwvx2UHOP21VGOIw

January 29, 2020

Netanyahu to Fly to Moscow to Update Putin on Trump Plan

Not the Onion. Peace plan. Yea, that's it.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-28/netanyahu-to-fly-to-moscow-to-update-putin-on-trump-plan

Netanyahu to Fly to Moscow to Update Putin on Trump Plan
By Yaacov Benmeleh
January 28, 2020, 7:47 AM EST


Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will fly to Moscow on Wednesday to update Russian President Vladimir Putin on the details of the U.S. administration’s peace plan, a spokeswoman for the premier said.

Netanyahu’s trip comes amid signs that Putin may pardon Naama Issachar, a 26-year-old Israeli woman imprisoned in Russia on drug-smuggling charges.

A decision to free Issachar, in detention since April, could bolster Netanyahu, who’s been indicted on corruption charges and is fighting for his political survival at the country’s third election in less than a year in March.

President Donald Trump is due to unveil his plan to settle the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians later on Tuesday.

January 29, 2020

Reading Buttigieg-A former teacher's perspective

https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/reading-buttigieg

Reading Buttigieg
A former teacher’s perspective
By James T. Kloppenberg
January 28, 2020


Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg. (Chuck Kennedy / Courtesy of Pete For America)

snip//

As he has been saying since he was an undergraduate at Harvard, Buttigieg believes that the challenge facing Democrats is to engage with people across the nation, people with very different cultural values, by connecting the aspirations of our politics with “the richness of everyday life.” Otherwise the party might be able to satisfy self-righteous coastal elites, but it will continue to fail to generate majorities in diverse communities across the nation. It is paradoxical that the sharpest criticism Buttigieg has received has come from just those coastal elites, particularly members of his generation and younger, while his greatest strength has come from older voters, many of whom are tired of the familiar contenders and ready to welcome this likeable newcomer. The divided perceptions of Buttigieg between younger and older left-leaning voters itself illustrates some of the mistrust and animosity that he has identified as one of the Democratic Party’s deepest problems.

One of the striking features of Buttigieg’s hundreds of campaign appearances has been their consistency. He does not appear to worry about tailoring his appeal to any particular group; his message has been the same wherever he goes. His consistent emphasis on bringing together different American voters around a common agenda does not depend on demonizing others. Instead, he lays out his own vision of a nation committed less to individual success and unregulated free enterprise than to the values of compassion, strength, and morality that he articulated almost two decades ago and continues to cherish. Residual dissatisfaction with Obama, the belief that he squandered the few opportunities he enjoyed by wasting too much time and energy on conciliation, also helps explain the uneasiness of many young people on the left when they hear Buttigieg use that language rather than Warren’s or Sanders’s calls to battle.

Buttigieg laughed when he admitted to me that he did not expect, when he declared his candidacy, to be the “the religion guy.” His frequent invocations of his Christian faith strike me as sincere rather than strategic. When he discusses climate change, he talks about our duty to be stewards of God’s creation. When he discusses immigration and poverty, he invokes the Beatitudes. When he discusses gender and sexuality, he says his own orientation is not his choice but that of his creator. Everyone I have talked with agrees that nobody—by his own account even including Buttigieg himself—was aware he was gay until shortly before he came out during his campaign for reelection as mayor of South Bend. The cultural and legal changes that made his marriage as well as his reelection possible have been so rapid that we can forget he would have been ostracized at St. Joseph High School had he come out as a teenager in the 1990s. As far as I can tell, no one who knew him at Harvard or Oxford, including his male friends Sitaraman, Warren, Rahman, and Liscow, and his female friends such as my students Roxie Myhrum and Sandhya Ramadas, had any inkling of Buttigieg’s orientation. I saw only one reference to the subject in his Crimson columns: “public morality includes acknowledging the humanity and rights of homosexuals, though peddlers of hate invoke it to do the opposite.” Obama, Cory Booker, and Elizabeth Warren have also spoken frequently about the link between their Christian faith and their progressive politics, but no Democrat in recent decades has spoken about the connection more often, more forcefully, or in relation to as many particular issues as has Buttigieg.

The most durable goal of American democracy has always been the common good, not the rights of individuals or the good of particular segments of the population. Buttigieg shares that commitment. I find it odd that it infuriates so many Democrats, who do not share his belief in the possibility of constructing a shared public interest through democratic deliberation. Yet that ideal is deeply rooted in American history. When skeptics express their concern that a thirty-eight year old has the experience necessary for the presidency, I remind them that another champion of the idea of the common good, James Madison, was thirty-six years old in 1787, when he played a pivotal role at the Constitutional Convention and wrote his perennially influential essays in The Federalist. Youth does not necessarily mean immaturity, nor—as we see demonstrated every day by our president’s tweets, taunts, tantrums, boasts, and recklessness—does good judgment necessarily come with age.

Despite his considerable strengths, Buttigieg is of course highly unlikely to be elected president in 2020. But we could—and possibly will—do worse. Whatever the outcome, Buttigieg has shown sufficient strength to suggest that he will be a figure to reckon with for decades to come. As he is fond of pointing out, he will not reach the age of the current president (or, one might add, some of his rivals for the Democratic nomination), until well after 2050. Buttigieg’s intelligence, calm, quick wittedness, idealism, and hopefulness all remind me of Obama’s most notable characteristics. Unfortunately, any Democrat elected president in 2020 will almost certainly face a House of Representatives as polarized as the one that stymied Obama throughout his two terms in office and a Senate as stubbornly partisan as the one that now protects Donald Trump from the consequences of his corruption. Like Obama, though, and unlike the most strident of his critics on the left, who see Buttigieg as nothing more than a moderate who lacks convictions, he understands that hatred and intransigence are not the cure for what ails American politics. They are the disease.

January 28, 2020

The Bolton Bombshell and the Unwaveringly Pro-Trump G.O.P.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-trumps-washington/the-bolton-bombshell-and-the-unwaveringly-pro-trump-gop

Letter from Trump’s Washington
The Bolton Bombshell and the Unwaveringly Pro-Trump G.O.P.
By Susan B. Glasser
January 28, 2020

snip//

At any other moment in Washington in my lifetime, I would have predicted with absolute confidence that the Bolton revelation would force Republican senators to switch their position and support witnesses. And not just a few, but almost all of them. But this is now, and the unthinkable and inconceivable have become increasingly routine. Here it was, the proverbial smoking gun, right in the middle of the trial, crucial evidence that Trump, his advisers, his lawyers, and his enablers on Capitol Hill knew about and were trying to suppress. Just last week, Trump’s legal team told senators that “not a single witness with actual knowledge ever testified that the President suggested any connection between announcing investigations and security assistance.”

In fact, the President and his aides knew that Bolton had done more than suggest it. He had put it in writing, sent his account to the White House on December 30th, and was prepared to raise his right hand and swear to it under oath. But we have had so many smoking-gun moments in the last few years. This is the post–“Access Hollywood” tape G.O.P., which elected as President of the United States a man who bragged of grabbing women by their genitals on tape, just a few weeks after the recording came to light. In the Ukraine scandal, we have seen this process repeat itself. Facts emerge that show the President’s actions to be inappropriate, outrageous, and clearly, straightforwardly wrong. At first, even Republicans on the Hill seem to waver. But again and again and again they find a way to accommodate themselves to the unpleasant new information, to rationalize and to justify.

On Monday, after watching all this play out, Amy Klobuchar, the Minnesota Democrat who has been forced to forego Presidential campaigning in Iowa in order to attend the Senate trial, said that listening to the Trump defense was like a visit to an “alternative universe.” But Monday proved once again that this alternative universe has become the new normal in Trump’s G.O.P. It is not the exception but the rule. The post-Bolton-bombshell Republican Party will be largely the same as the pre-Bolton-bombshell Republican Party.

January 28, 2020

Poppycock, pettifogging, and foul calumny: Trump's team tries it all in Senate trial

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/1/28/1914595/-Poppycock-pettifogging-and-foul-calumny-Trump-s-team-tries-it-all-in-Senate-trial

Poppycock, pettifogging, and foul calumny: Trump's team tries it all in Senate trial
Mark Sumner
Daily Kos Staff
Tuesday January 28, 2020 · 9:27 AM EST



Monday saw Trump’s defense team roll out the big guns. Not Alan Dershowitz’s universally panned effort to apply legal-ish terminology to an argument that Fifth Avenue could fill up with bodies, and Donald Trump still wouldn’t be subject to impeachment. Not even the multiparty pile-up effort to use the Senate floor as a proxy for what Trump tried to extort from Ukraine, by delivering a prime-time smear of Joe Biden. No. The really big guns on Team Trump were reserved for denial, as Pat Cipollone, Jay Sekulow, and crew plunged madly on, ignoring the fact that their case was thoroughly sunk by weekend revelations.

Not that there was ever a case to begin with, since the evidence of Trump’s actions in Ukraine was overwhelming and public. It might be tempting to feel some pity for a legal team charged with defending Trump against the idea that he was trying to involve a foreign government in the 2020 election, when he has—more than once—appeared before cameras to request exactly that, and expanded the scope of his crimes by dragging China into the mix. If that weren’t bad enough, White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney stepped in front of cameras to declare that, yep, it was true, every word of it, so … “Get over it.” Against that backdrop, pitiful is the best that can be achieved.

Still, Team Trump worked hard on Monday to make pitiful seem like a high-water mark they were not even interested in reaching. Across the day, they took a tripartite approach: denying Trump did anything wrong, smearing Joe Biden, and declaring that abuse of power is not impeachable in roughly equal—and equally bad—portions.

snip//

Overall, the day was an embarrassment top to bottom. Much of it, particularly Dershowitz, wasn’t even the fun kind of embarrassment. It didn’t rise to the ranks of so-bad-it-was-good. It was just bad. It was so bad that—other than the GOP- and Trump-pleasing section of Biden-smearing—it’s difficult to recall a single salient point, just hours after they stopped talking.

In any case, the real case on Monday wasn’t happening in front of Mitch McConnell’s carefully aimed camera. It was happening offscreen, where Republicans were trying desperately to calculate whether giving Trump the quick acquittal that he wants—a move that had seemed like a sure thing on Friday, despite a crackerjack case from the House managers—was still such a slam dunk. Republicans always knew that going along with Trump was going to make them part of the conspiracy. They just didn’t know it was going to be this damn obvious.

January 28, 2020

Scarborough Reacts To Starr, Calls Trump Defense Team 'A Confederacy Of Dunces'

https://crooksandliars.com/2020/01/scarborough-reacts-starr-calls-trump

1/28/20 6:32am
Scarborough Reacts To Starr, Calls Trump Defense Team 'A Confederacy Of Dunces'
He ripped into Ken Starr for shameless hypocrisy in service of Trump.
By Susie Madrak
VIDEO @ LINK~


Joe Scarborough went off on an extended rant this morning, starting with pompous Ken Starr's performance yesterday. He said Starr dug up the corpse of irony and ran over the headstone.



Then he started comparing himself to James Brown.



He's right. Just as theater (and after all, that's all Trump cares about), the defense of the Reality TV President was a snooze. Self-righteous Ken Starr just doesn't have that oomph anymore, especially in light of his rape-scandal coverup at Baylor University.

And Pam Bondi, aka Bribery Barbie? Here's a woman who, after taking a large "contribution" to drop a slam-dunk prosecution of a Trump University case, was set up with a plum lobbying job by Trump that pays $100,00 A MONTH, and for her big national TV debut, she comes up with a glittery dress that looks like something your maiden aunt would wear to a family wedding reception at the local VFW. Also: Let's be kind, and say the woman is not rhetorically gifted.

Oh hell, let's not. She sounded like a terrified substitute teacher facing a rowdy high school class. It's not even that she lied the entire time -- she wasn't good at it! Trump needs to recast these clowns, or his ratings are going down fast.

January 28, 2020

"This Is Kavanaugh All Over Again," Say Republicans. They're Right.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/01/this-is-kavanaugh-all-over-again-say-republicans-theyre-right/

3 hours ago
“This Is Kavanaugh All Over Again,” Say Republicans. They’re Right.
But not for the reasons they claim.
Tim Murphy


The bombshell allegation that President Donald Trump explicitly told his national security adviser that he would withhold military aid to coerce Ukraine into investigating the Bidens has sent Republicans scrambling for a new set of talking points. They quickly found one.

“This is Kavanaugh all over again,” Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) told reporters on Monday. Soon it was the company line.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1221848184902815744
Barrasso, in his quest for a recent parallel, has stumbled upon a very good one—though not for the reasons he’d suggest.

Republicans are framing the revelation—from a book manuscript by former national security adviser John Bolton obtained by the New York Times—as a last-minute gimmick, a desperate attempt to change the rules of a game that’s already in progress. Bolton can’t be trusted, and besides, it’s way too late! The House had its chance to get Bolton on the record, the argument goes, and the Senate should not let the development sidetrack it from a case that’s already been laid out. Otherwise you risk losing control of the whole process and creating a partisan spectacle that needlessly tarnishes the reputation of a good man. (The good man, to be clear, is Donald Trump.)

This is, as Barrasso intimates, the basic story Republicans have told themselves about Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings for more than a year. Kavanaugh was on his way to confirmation when Christine Blasey Ford came forward to allege that he had sexually assaulted her when they were both teenagers in Washington, DC. Under pressure, the Republican-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee agreed to hold a new hearing to question Blasey Ford and Kavanaugh.

But the lesson of the Kavanaugh hearings wasn’t the effectiveness of Democratic gamesmanship; it was the power of stonewalling. Blasey Ford was unambiguous about what had happened (“indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter,” as she put it), and offered a roadmap for further investigation. But none of it mattered, because Senate Republicans did not want to know what had really happened. They were not interested in figuring out, definitively, whether their nominee for the Supreme Court had sexually assaulted someone, and whether he was lying about that or anything else (for instance: his drinking). They did not want to uncover information that would change their minds, so they constructed an elaborate public ritual to help them not find out.

Rather than get to the bottom of it, they lashed out and hunkered down. South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham’s famous tirade turned the latter half of the Kavanaugh hearing into a spectacle, and when the committee did agree to reopen an FBI background check into Kavanaugh, the result was an investigation in name only—an evidence-gathering process designed to prevent the collection of new evidence. As Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick wrote last year:



Maybe this isn’t quite Kavanaugh all over again. There’s still time for senators to call an audible. But Republican senators locking arms to block the examination of new evidence—while resting their entire case on the absence of such evidence? It sure sounds like a show we’ve seen before.