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About six inches. Quiet type. Anyone know his name?

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From the New Republic, a stirring and disturbing statement:

Both in content and in context, the official transcripts of Donald Trump’s January phone calls with Australian Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto—which were leaked to The Washington Post and published Thursday—depict a president whose very presence in high office is destabilizing, and whose continued service constitutes a dangerous crisis.

We learn, in intimate and excruciating detail, the ways the president’s mental limitations make basic requirements of the job (such as understanding what allied leaders are talking about) impossible for him. We see not for the first time that Trump will lie about anything, even when he knows, or should know, that foreign governments can produce evidence of his deceit.

…When a president can no longer serve faithfully, there are means available to Congress and the cabinet, through the impeachment power and section four of the 25th Amendment, to remove him.

Pushing Trump out of office would be a politically destabilizing event in its own right, perhaps more acutely so than handing the reins of government over to a cadre of generals and hoping for the best. But the processes are legitimate, and were created for precisely the kind of situation that confronts us today. It is often said that impeachment is a political process, but it is also a normative one. Or at least, it should be the norm that elected officials step in to protect the public from a president who is lawless and befuddled—even when the president happens to be from the same party.

When the Pentagon politely – but firmly – refused to follow Trump’s Twitter edict about transgender soldiers, I was torn in my reaction, as Brian Beutler clearly is, in his important essay.  On the one hand, I was happy that they stood by LGBT troops, who are just as capable of firing a gun as the next guy or gal. (My beloved godfather was gay, and he was a longtime and proud member of our Armed Forces, which he served with distinction.)

On the other hand, it was astonishing – and potentially disturbing – that the U.S. military leadership were declining to acquiesce to civilian control of the military, (clearly) because the civilian in question is a deranged criminal named Donald Trump.

The good news, in other words, is that we may not all soon be nuclear ash – as when Trump inevitably tries to set off a conflagration to distract from Mueller’s coming indictments.

The bad news is that the most powerful nation on Earth is now being quietly run by the military, and not many people have noticed.

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But now it’s too late, Unpresident:

Washington (CNN) Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller has issued grand jury subpoenas related to Donald Trump Jr.’s 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The subpoena seeks both documents and testimony from people involved in the meeting, CNN has learned. That meeting has drawn scrutiny since an email exchange beforehand indicated the Russians offered damaging information on Hillary Clinton. Mueller’s grand jury activity was first reported by The Wall Street Journal and Reuters.

 

Mueller’s team of investigators continue to look into whether President Donald Trump or any of his campaign associates colluded with Russia during the presidential contest.

If Trump makes a move on Mueller now, that itself will be evidence of one of the two crimes that Mueller is clearly investigating – obstruction of justice.

And the June 2016 meeting itself – about which no solicitor-client privilege or confidentiality claim can be made, because Trump’s idiot namesake son publicly released all those emails – is the evidentiary basis for the other crimes: a conspiracy to violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act; and/or soliciting or accepting a campaign contribution from a foreign national or foreign government; and/or – and this is the good one – actual treason.

With the convening of these grand juries, and the probative value of the evidence growing, my considered legal opinion is this:

Trump is fucked.

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For born unto you in this month was the Warren Child, and he brings you tidings of punk joy. 

Details about this weeks-long celebration will be forthcoming shortly. 

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The white supremacist who is running the Disunited States of America wants to abolish affirmative action.  No surprise there.

It is a surprise, however, when I sometimes hear this from otherwise-intelligent white people: “Why do we need affirmative action, anyway?  It isn’t fair.”

And I always provide them with President Lyndon B. Johnson’s address at Howard University on June 4, 1965:

You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you want, and do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please.

You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, “you are free to compete with all the others,” and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.

Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates.

This is the next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result.

For the task is to give 20 million Negroes the same chance as every other American to learn and grow, to work and share in society, to develop their abilities–physical, mental and spiritual, and to pursue their individual happiness.

To this end equal opportunity is essential, but not enough, not enough. Men and women of all races are born with the same range of abilities. But ability is not just the product of birth. Ability is stretched or stunted by the family that you live with, and the neighborhood you live in–by the school you go to and the poverty or the richness of your surroundings. It is the product of a hundred unseen forces playing upon the little infant, the child, and finally the man.

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Full disclosure: I hadn’t watched The National in a long time. It was just, well, boring. Sorry, Peter et al. 

These changes at The National are therefore smart – and needed.
I like that these people are mostly experienced journalists. I like that they will be working out of the regions. I like that CBC has abandoned the boring-old-fart approach to news that drove away lots of viewers like me. 

I am naturally biased, of course, by the fact that one of my closest friends is the managing editor of this budding journalistic enterprise.  I have a high regard for his news sense and his common sense. 

But I’d like this even if he wasn’t involved. It was time for some big changes at CBCs flagship televised news program. Not radical changes-for-change sake, mind you, but ones that reflect the way Canadian journalism needs to be delivered now.

This does that.

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So, there’s this quote in the Rolling Stone paean to Justin Trudeau:

“I wanted someone who would be a good foil, and we stumbled upon the scrappy tough-guy senator from an Indigenous community. He fit the bill, and it was a very nice counterpoint,” Mr. Trudeau says in the article. “I saw it as the right kind of narrative, the right story to tell.”

That’s the Prime Minister talking in the American magazine about his 2012 charity boxing match against Patrick Brazeau, a Conservative Senator who is part of the Kitigan Zibi First Nation in Quebec.

Lots of indigenous leaders are upset about that quote, and you can (hopefully) see why.  Stories here and here and here.

Indigenous leaders are quite capable of speaking for themselves, on this one.  They don’t need me. But there was something else about that quote that was kind of off-putting.

It sounded calculated.  It sounded like he was admitting to a manipulation.  It felt cynical.

Now, politicians do calculated, manipulative, cynical things all the time – Hell, some would say that’s all they do.

But Trudeau’s big mistake, here – along with sounding like he was singling out an indigenous leader for a literal beating, his soaring rhetoric about indigenous issues notwithstanding – was talking about strategy in the media.  He was talking about how sausages are made, in effect.

Kinsella’s Political Axiom, No. 142: don’t talk about how you make sausages.  Also: about sausage-making, do not talk.

Anyway.  Nanos tells us this morning he’s got nothing to worry about, and perhaps he doesn’t.  I would simply remind my Liberal friends that our greatest occupational hazard is – always, always – arrogance.

Arrogance is what gets us beaten in elections – although not, apparently, in the boxing ring.

UPDATE: He has expressed regret for the words he used. Here. Good. 

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