Time for Some Press Pooling Against Pompeo

Sometimes, the press shares. It isn't often.

The media are extremely competitive. Their goals are pretty simple: Get it right, and get it first. One runs into the other sometimes, and it's then that they lose street credibility.

But other times, it's the big picture we need to keep in mind: the very right of the press to function, to gather information and present it. Relative to government, it's the one protection we have to know and understand what our elected officials do so we either keep them elected--or not.

But the present administration has figured some things out. It utilizes and manipulates media to work against itself and, in effect, against us. Spreading disinformation has become an art form, and these people are good at it. An article about the ever-obsequious Rudy Giuliani in last Sunday's New York Times took a moment to explain it:

Shamelessness is not an art or even a skill. It's simply a way of operating in the world that informs all of your actions and interactions, for good or ill. It's a state of mind that [Giuliani] shares not only with [45] but also with a growing number of blatantly dishonest, nakedly opportunistic political figures. What creates the conditions in which such truly shameless figures can thrive? In 2020, the obvious answer is the rise of an all-consuming media ecosystem in which truth is no longer meaningfully litigated. The foundation of that system is partisan media outlets, which allow political leaders--whether [45] on Fox News, Boris Johnson in the Daily Mail or Jair Bolsonaro on the Brazilian network Record TV--to spread disinformation to their supporters with almost no pushback. But it's also enabled by more politically-neutral media organizations, which struggle with how to present the daily onslaught of false claims from public media, which makes no distinctions between truth and lies, and what you end up with is a political conversation without consequences that favors the most outrageous voices. If you reliably make over-the-top claims, you will be rewarded with attention, and Giuliani never fails to make over-the-top claims.

And, of course, so does 45, sometimes many times daily. He's a shyster/huckster who juggles exaggeration with true meaning, so in publishing such comments, one never knows whether he means them or not, and it's left to him as to whether to apply such meaning whenever he feels like it. This projects a kind of medium-warm fear that is never far from being heated to boiling over, as in, Maybe he does mean it. 

Everyone knows this. It keeps the attention right on him. And that is Job One of anyone who gets near him. And this article, written by Jonathan Mahler, points out that the mainstream media becomes the unwitting purveyors of this phenomenon, giving the worst possible person the best possible advantage.

So, too, is it with the unctuous, imperious Mike Pompeo, a 45-wannabe who has taken Mary Louise Kelly of NPR to his devious woodshed for supposedly lying to him about doing an interview the other day in which she challenged him to say exactly how he defended former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovich (who was very clearly not defended, because had he done his job and done so, he wouldn't be Secretary of State for long). He tried to humiliate her by making her point out Ukraine on an unmarked map (Kelly has a master's degree in European History from Harvard, so good luck with making her look bad), and then tried to tell the world that she pointed to Bangladesh, which I'm saying here is a damn lie. He's simply taken a page from 45 and utilized it. In backing him publicly the other day, 45, confirmed it.

But Pompeo's not finished. He's banned NPR on his next foreign trip. Press pooling is done for various reasons, but now would not be a bad idea to do it again.

To wit: Make a collective statement by saying what Admiral McRaven said to 45 when the latter took security clearance away from former CIA Director John Brennan: If you do it to him, you should do it to us, too, because we don't want to be involved with this. This is an embarrassment to our country.

At least a collective statement of support for Kelly would be in order. That would be getting up in his face to say: You're actually chicken, big little man, dishing it out without being able to take it. You are the snowflake, Jack. Then I suppose he'd only allow Fox and Breitbart on the plane, though, but the media can get their own transportation if they care enough. And with such reporters involved, the price would be small compared to being shut out from coverage.

But what's "being shut out" mean? If he tells Fox and Breitbart something that they get a 'scoop' on, then the mainstream media will spend the time checking it out and following up and saying it's the same nonsense that they're always putting out there. Their version of "truth" almost never actually is truth (as Rudy Giuliani has said, but that's to prepare us to ignore the mainstream press and rely on the shysters for non-information).

Prime example: The Iranian missile counterattack. First report: No casualties. Second report: 33 casualties. Third report: 33 brain injuries. Latest report: 50 serious brain injuries. And we still don't know who they are. It's an official, and officious, strategy of walking things back.

So who loses at all when Mike Pompeo spews nonsense on a flight? Nobody. It's just another way of saying that he'll tell someone whatever he wants, and just try to discover the whole truth. Just try.

It's a challenge which, I predict, is coming to the whole press from the whole 45 gang of thieves soon--especially if the Bolton intervention into the impeachment process bears fruit. It will signify a new level of fear: not from the press, but of it. It will spark a stifling of press freedoms that we have not yet seen. Just wait. It's right around the corner.

Our challenge to democracy may just be getting started. Its depths are relatively unfathomed, but may be accelerated in the aftermath of impeachment. That day is coming. But the press has to fight back. It has to. Backing away will just encourage these bullies, as it does for all bullies. We can't let the bullies win.

Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Where Was I When I Heard? School, Of Course.

The moment is etched and always will be.

Strange how certain events leave us with automatic memories: JFK, 9-11. And if you're an educator, particularly if you're one, it's today, January 28.

Because in 1986, on this day, the first teacher in space died. The Challenger's O-rings cracked, the fuel leaked out and ignited, and the seven astronauts went up in a horrific ball of flame in full sight of spectators just over a minute after liftoff.

People bring it back every year. They bring it back because a teacher, Christa McAuliffe, died going into space. A teacher would have returned with the best classroom lessons ev-er. There was excitement about it beforehand; the Reagan administration had finally cleared the way. We regarded it with such significance--not only a teacher, but a female. Everyone thought that was totally cool.

I learned about it from a late guidance counselor. It was during one of the lunch sessions. I had decided, in a rare departure from routine, to head down to the office to pick something out of my mailbox.

He was in the back of the office area, next to the copy machine. He saw me and knew I would like to know. "The space shuttle blew up," he said.

I started chuckling, waiting for the punch line. He sure looked dead-panned. "Oh, yeah?" I blurted with an expectation of it.

"No. It blew up," he said quietly.

I don't recall my immediate reaction, but it would have been something like OMG. I walked into the faculty lunchroom, up a couple of hallways.

Lunch time in a faculty room is usually a time of chatter, and probably not about the kids; it's a few minutes to step away from them. You usually talk about the kids during prep periods, when there's more time to flesh out things and get details. The chatter is normally upbeat and quickly stated, much like the pace of the rest of the day. There is laughter and heads shaking. But there is fast eating, too; nobody who has taught for more than a year will tell you that they find it easy to return to eating with a leisurely pace.

Not that day. Food went down slowly. I entered the room and nobody said a word. Teachers like talking to kids, to each other. It takes a lot to stun a bunch of them into silence.

But here's the part that I always found disconcerting and quite disappointing: It took quite a few years to get another teacher up into space. The naming of Christa McAuliffe came after a nationwide search and intense competition, so there must have been a few, even more than a few, teachers who were probably just as qualified as she had been. As obviously good as she was, it's difficult for me to believe that she was that far out in front of the second- or third- or fourth-best candidate.

Why didn't NASA send another teacher up into space as soon as it could, maybe even the next shuttle launch (though that took a while after intensive investigation)? Of all the tributes to McAuliffe, that might have been the best: Life goes on, science goes on, learning goes on. The bell rings, the door closes, and off we go again--just like it does every day in every classroom.

With the long delay, it had the feel that the original thing was something of a stunt. It diminished, instead of increased, respect for teaching. It gave it a label that became more garishly repelling with each year, connecting it with tragedy instead of what happens in science: Sometimes you fail. Then you pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again. Yes, it had the ultimate price. But we did go on, even losing another shuttle and its passengers in 2003.

There should be a teacher on every shuttle. Then, after a safe return, hold a classroom press conference where they would just, well, conduct class and say: Here's what happened. Here's what it means. Here's what we don't know yet but will if we keep going. I mean, is this cool, or what? Now, think-pair-share: Take two minutes, write down your first thoughts about the possibilities, and share that with the person next to you. We'll ask you what you've come up with.

Think reporters wouldn't dig that? Would be one great science class. And history. Science has a history, too, you know. Making it's pretty fun, I bet. I recently watched a NOVA show about the Cassini Project, which found unknown matter and atmosphere on Saturn. Watching the faces of those scientists was probably the most interesting: They missed the work, the team feeling, and wonder of it all. They teared up when recalling the eventual crashing of the spacecraft into the Saturnian surface. They were most alive when they were learning the most and had lost themselves within it.

It's still at the peak of the human experience, of life itself. We all need more of that, when learning helps us soar to the stars as Christa McAuliffe and those other astronauts showed us. With all else dragging us down, maybe we could answer our wonderings about fascinatingly uninhabitable planets we'll never see.

Who knows? It might help us reconsider what we need to do in saving our own.

Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark

Oh, Yes, Robert Ray. Let's Talk About Edmund G. Ross.

I'm not listening to every single minute of 45's defenders. I already pretty much know what they're going to say.

They're going to try to wrap the Constitution around themselves in pretentious blather, trying to get us to believe that they have it better in mind than Adam Schiff and the other House managers. If it's the Constitution, though, it's a version that's evolved poorly since 9-11, and by which 45's lawyers are trying to disguise his clear and unmistakeably high crimes against it with legal legitimacy.

They're doing it by pretending that the president has absolute immunity to reveal any information which might incriminate him in this trial. No president has had that privilege, not even close. Nixon tried but the Supreme Court turned him back.

The House managers decided not to wait for the Court to rule upon this obvious piece of constitutional extremism and impeach him anyhow. Clearly and obviously, 45 was playing for time, to get re-elected and utilize his admittedly effective power of persuasion to take care of the rest, much in the way of how the Mueller Report became reduced to ink and paper.

But John Bolton's getting in the way. Bolton's book says that 45 very definitively tried to hold up military aid to Ukraine until its president promised, and actually began, investigations of Joe and Hunter Biden, regardless of their legitimacy; he was in the room when it happened. The ensuing negative publicity would, it was hoped, have reduced Joe Biden's presidential campaign against 45 and smoothed the way for what would be a disastrous (far more than now, though disastrous enough) second term.

It's out there in print now--the report, if not the actual book. The Republicans are trying their best to reduce the impact by saying that all Bolton's trying to do is sell his book. But facts can be utilized by all kinds of authors to sell all kinds of books (which is exactly what I'm trying to do), so that's trying to boil tea with a single match.

Now the question looms: Shall Bolton be put on the stand? If so, shall others? If so, shall a majority of Senators subpoena 45 to turn over relevant documents?

That fate rests, and rests for the next four days when a vote will take place, in the hands of Republican Senators. (which isn't exactly true; see below) We know what the Democrats will say. Four Republicans must cross over and join them. They must respect what impeachment really means. They must respect the Constitution.

They must do what Edmund G. Ross did. Robert Ray, one of 45's lawyers, caught my attention when he sanctimoniously evoked Ross' name as being the single Senator who saved Andrew Johnson from conviction in 1868. He said, or implied strongly, that Senators had to follow his famous lead, vote to acquit 45, and uphold our sacred document.

Disingenuousness squared: In a sense, they have to do the opposite in defiance of a majority. The situation is quite similar, but the origins are reversed. In 1868, the veto-proof Republican Congress boxed Johnson into a political, and then legal, corner by passing over his veto the Tenure of Office Act, which demanded that the president ask the Senate whether to remove a member of his Cabinet. Nothing like this had ever been proposed, but since Johnson still had a number of appointees from the late Abraham Lincoln's Cabinet, they figured that those Cabinet members would refuse to do what Johnson told them, and then resist firing without consequences. Thus would Johnson's resistance to Congressional Reconstruction, now much underway, be thwarted at every turn and render the presidency completely helpless.

It was a commensurate, Congressional coup d'etat in real time and in plain sight. It was unconstitutional--indeed, the Supreme Court declared it so--but while in effect, violating it would expose Johnson to the trap prepared for him (though he himself said when he fired Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, "Very well. We want it in the courts."): impeachment by openly defying a Congressionally passed law, however unfair or power-grabbing.

Johnson was extremely unpopular and not without reason. He ran with Lincoln in 1864 for geopolitical reasons. He had a bad cold at the inauguration, had one or two too many whiskeys, and made a general ass of himself. He was from Tennessee--though Confederate, most of it was occupied at the time by Union troops--and favored a very relaxed treatment of Confederate troops and government officials after the war. This infuriated the Radical Republicans, who had the bloody shirt of freeing the slaves and avenging the murdered Lincoln to carry with them. Johnson used the 'n' word within hearing distance when meeting with the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Very much like 45, he had the social skills of a rhinoceros.

So when he was impeached, the House had a long, long list of grievances against him which made those of the present House managers seem genuinely polite. The public's support for Johnson was meager, nothing like the hard-core 38-to-45 percent who back 45 no matter what he does or why. Passions were inflamed. Who gave a hoot about Andrew Johnson? Send him home.

No less so than in Kansas, where Jayhawkers had fought to put slavery into the state's constitution in a pre-Civil War civil war nicknamed "bleeding Kansas." They lost, but the bitterness obviously lingered just ten years later. Anybody who stood in the way of removing Johnson would pay dearly.

Along came Edmund G. Ross, Senator from Kansas. Ross, who owned a newspaper, was known as solid Republican all the way. But the impeachment trial unsettled his conscience. He knew that what his cohorts were doing would ruin the Constitutional legal framework.

It did so for six other Republican Senators who crossed over and, despite their personal distaste for him, kept Johnson in office. Ross' notoriety came because he did not announce how he would vote until the very last minute. He 'saved Johnson' no more and no less than did the other six, but by waiting so long he brought drama upon himself he didn't need.

This is noted in John F. Kennedy's book Profiles in Courage, which was probably ghost-written by Ted Sorenson and to which Robert Ray referred. Ray noted how courageous Ross was. Indeed, but what he didn't add was that--

• None of the seven were elected to the Senate again; 
• Ross' Republican colleagues openly snubbed him on the street; and
• When he returned to Kansas, he and his family "suffered social ostracism, physical attack, and near poverty".

We have now come full circle. It is now not a Congressional coup but a presidential one that our Senators can pull us away from if they only would consider the damage to the Constitution and our way of life that a helpless Congress would create. The result of an acquittal, especially one without evidence that we have every right to see from the White House, would be a power grab of the presidency which, though building up through time (the same way Congress built up its power against Johnson through time; it didn't happen all at once), would now find a quasi-legal bulwark that would make 45 all but dictatorial.

Johnson ran for election later in the same year in which he was impeached, like 45 is doing, but with little if any power. He was quickly brushed aside and the nomination was given to Ulysses S. Grant. No such possibility exists today, with 45 commanding a degree of intimidation not seen in my memory, at least. The combination of an acquittal and no observance of subpoena powers might easily provide 45 with the wherewithal to manipulate his re-election, and even attempt to perpetuate his term of office for life.

We seem to be sleepwalking toward such a disaster. By Friday, though, we should know if a few Republicans wish to exude Edmund G. Ross' courage in at least demanding more evidence, which this event truly needs to be called a trial, due to what we now know about John Bolton. Will they do it on genuinely ethical grounds, or those associated with saving their political hides?

The latter would seem to be quite propitious, but we'll take it. What's different about the country at this particular moment is that significant cores of intense followers can be found on both sides in just about every state. So would these crossover Senators suffer the kind of abuse that Ross did? It's certainly possible. With the emergence of right-wing militia groups, it isn't out of the question.

We need four. I'm quite sure discussions are ensuing; maybe deals are being cut as you read this. Andrew Johnson survived with an absolute minimum of support in 1868; I'm not sure that merely four crossovers will work this time to save Congress from irrelevance. It would sure help if there were more. Political cover is now worth its weight in diamonds. Rumors fly; magical thinking has been rejuvenated. Or not. As I write this, we are less than eighty hours away from a showdown with what the Constitution means: how much, or how little.

"Millions of men cursing me today will bless me tomorrow for having saved the country from the greatest peril through which it has ever passed," Ross said shortly after suffering his crucible. He was eventually right. The press later honored him for saving the Constitution--"The country was saved from calamity greater than war," said one--and he was appointed territorial governor of New Mexico. All that took about twenty years, though. Deep passions die hard.

Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark

Kobe? Very Sad. Anybody Else Need Some Attention?

It's my blog, so I can speculate as I wish. Here are some speculations:

None of the 169 people who died earlier this month when Iran mistakenly shot down a Ukrainian jetliner were nicknamed "Black Mamba," and made money on the brand on t-shirts, caps, and other paraphernalia.

None of them were incredibly famous as athletes: at least, I haven't heard about that if they were.

Some of them might have had as much money as Kobe Bryant had when he died, but let's face it: It's doubtful.

A great many of them also had children and spouses that they leave behind.

Some of them might have made big mistakes in their lives. They probably did a gut check, did things better, and all of them went on until their lives were snuffed out of the sky by someone's miscalculation. Too.

I never saw their names. I never knew where they lived. I'm guessing they didn't have the kind of home Bryant and his family have had.

None of them, or perhaps not many of them, were considered a media "get" to pull in for an interview. None of them, or perhaps not many of them, walked the red carpet at the ESPY awards. I have seen no media clips, nothing on U-Tube, to the contrary.

I could be wrong about this. I have no verification. If I am, I'll put out a general apology right now.

Now let's talk. The deaths of Kobe Bryant, his daughter, a women's basketball coach, and six other people is a terrible tragedy because it certainly could have been prevented. The word is that "special permission" was given for them to fly their helicopter through dense fog. Couldn't it have waited?

Couldn't that Ukrainian jetliner, too, have waited to depart until the morning after a retaliatory missile launch was done by the Iranian government in response to the assassination of one of its leaders? Who put that plane up into the air? Nothing gets shot down until it's up there.

And why, oh why, wasn't there an international Day of Mourning for those 169 people? Why didn't damn near everybody reel in despair and sorrow for every single one of them? Nobody discussed burying any of them; it's been 22 days now.

And nobody discussed their governments' attitudes about the incident: Five of them were involved. It wasn't 24 hours before an ex-president and our present president made statements about Kobe Bryant's passing. One day later, the sports world is reeling with the strain.

Why did the shootdown happen? That's a good question. We know what was said, but like nearly everything this terrible administration says, it's been researched to be less than the truth. He was a dangerous guy, sure. But was an attack "imminent"? Not likely, as we've now been unofficially briefed by investigating media.

So why was he killed right then and there? Because we could. Because he was a bad guy. That should be enough.

Like it should have been enough for 45 to say that 33 of our military guys had "headaches" after Iran responded with missile attacks that had no direct hits. The attack seemed cosmetic and token, and might still have been.

Now, though, they are still in the hospital with brain injuries. Brain injuries after four weeks? That's serious, perhaps critical. It isn't likely that mere concussions, though painful and debilitating, are the single issue here. Nor can it be, since the number has now grown, magically, to 50.

To the best of our knowledge, they're all still alive, if only because it doesn't seem as if anyone's following their hospitalization. But we have no names. We don't know their families. We don't know where they live. And we don't know their conditions.

Nobody thinks about them. Nobody has put out a chain letter for them. Nobody has published any photos of them or their families. National security? Nonsense. They were at bases for weeks and months. They weren't at any secret installations.

What the hell is this? 45 knows us well. He distracts us because he can. Because it's so damn easy. Because we wander on a semi-attentive leash which can be jerked back by someone who can do so any old time he wants.

That includes the mainstream media, which is presently bathing itself in remorse for the passing of a great athlete. Okay, fair enough. He did have a strong impact upon his sport, whatever that has to do with the survival of humanity. Will we do the same when Hank Aaron or Willie Mays goes? How about Michael Jordan? Will they have to perish in a sudden accident?

This compares favorably with Princess Diana's death--sudden, tragic, explainable but bizarre--out of which magazines are still being printed and sold, going on a quarter-century later. Remember who else died shortly thereafter? Mother Teresa. Remember her televised funeral? You might, but it came and went swiftly due in no small part to the humility with which she lived (though I seriously doubt that Diana would approve of the over-wrought way her death was observed). How many magazines have been sold commemorating her? Evaluate, if you will, one's impact upon the world versus the other's.

May all the faithfully departed mentioned here, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. May our wounded military people fully recover. But may their stories be told, and told, and told.

And then we need to have a debate. Resolved: This is why democracy may fail. It relies now so heavily on the press freedom that so many of us claim is so vital but which we throw around so irresponsibly that it feels like a toy: great fun but so easily breakable. It, too, has wounded itself. It, too, needs a gut check. So do we.

Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark

Rep. Nadler: You Know What You Have To Do. You Have To Do It Now.

Rep. Gerald Nadler
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20005

Dear Rep. Nadler:

This reaches you, I know, at a very distressing time. You're part of the group of House managers who are litigating the impeachment of president #45 (I do not use his actual name as to prevent myself from increasing attention to his brand, which is the only thing he cares about besides himself). Your role in this has been enormous.

Not only are you chair of the House Judiciary Committee, which screened and arranged for the actual articles of impeachment to be devised and prepared for the Senate, but you also had to take on some of the more cantankerous Republican members of that said committee. "I'm not going to take any crap," you said, or words to that effect, about people who dished out a lot of it. You didn't, and lots of us out here are glad for that.

You've had inside knowledge of the vital information and the process involved in acquiring it. You've made no bones about what it all says: 45 is, and has been, betraying the American people in attempting to get the Ukranian president to announce an investigation into Joe and Hunter Biden, the latter of whom sat on the board of directors of a Ukranian oil company, the former of whom got the latter that position. The other side insists that 45 was in fact trying to clean up corruption, not commit it. You know better and you were one of the first to see the evidence.

You're from New York, so you wouldn't know me back here in Wisconsin. Please know, though, that you have my complete backing in your efforts. We need to get rid of this roguish monster, and each day he remains is a threat to the republic.

You have brought that thinking forward with you to the Senate. Which brings me to the current situation, and the current problem. Unfortunately, you've made yourself the center of it. It's not a good look, and the more it lingers the more it becomes obvious what must be done.

Hard-charging you are, sir, and up to the moment in question, it was bracing. Adam Schiff, the lead House manager, is brilliant, smooth and wonderfully thorough: when he's finished, there's no place for 45's lawyers to hide. You, on the other hand, dish it out the way you got it--ferociously and pounding away with precision. I can feel the bullet points being checked off in your mind as you deliver them. Your anger is very evident and certainly justifiable.

But I also think that that led to what you said that's now hanging out there, awaiting address. You accused the Republican Senators of helping a cover-up of the information we all know 45's hiding: witnesses who could attest to this true intent and documents further proving it.

But there you went a comment too far. Now you've infuriated the Republican Senators. Why? Well, there could be a number of reasons.

One, for instance, is the simple fact that you've insulted them. You've violated Rule Two of dealing with the U.S. Senate: No one not actually a Senator should ever insult them or the institution. I think it was Hakeem Jeffries who said that the Senate itself is on trial. He got right up to the line with that one, but your comment crossed it.

That may surprise some, seeing as how this is politics, and people get called things: It's the language du jour, in fact of any jour. And it's even constitutionally defensible, where it says in Article I that no member of Congress "shall be questioned" about what they say in the chamber. In other words, no matter how nasty, nobody can be sued successfully for it, just like in a courtroom (which this now is).

But that's not the point. You insulted Senators. They don't like it. They don't have to, thought some of them deserve it. And now you've put what might have been a tipping point to risk.

We all know that the Senate will be voting on whether to allow those witnesses and documents right after the president's lawyers will spend one or two or three days spewing their weak and insouciant nonsense of a defense, at which they hinted with amateurish disdain in their opening points. That's the door through which an actual trial, not a token, pathetic excuse for a trial, proceeds. Your side needs four Senators to cross over. The betting was about even that that might happen.

Now, though, there's this thing out there: Your insult. You've already called them unfair, even criminals, in their behavior. And for all we know they very well might be. But there's a chance that a few of them might not. The one Democratic Senator who suggested that, ironically, is the Democratic Minority Leader, Chuck Schumer.

How did he do that? Indirectly, but that's how nearly all things happen in the Senate: with shades and shadows. Bluntness, which you put on display, doesn't fly very often there. It gets grounded in nuance within the status of Senators, who insist upon how important they are (some of that being correct). They usually roam the room like lions, growling in whispering tones until they absolutely have to speak, exuding tonal grandiloquence but usually coming up a bit short, with the rare exception of Michael Bennet's great takedown of Ted Cruz a year ago today.

To them, it's quite enough that they actually have to sit there for all that time and listen, two tasks they almost never otherwise follow, for these many days. I mean, the nerve. But the Constitution still matters at least some of the time, so they sit and drink water and milk (the only two things allowed; not even coffee, which absolutely mystifies me), trying to stay awake while people like you lay out the House's case.

It's making them tired, Congressman, nearly as tired as you are. And tired means crabby and a bit sensitive. And then you come along and say, as much: You're a bunch of cheats and crooks. You're helping the president trash the Constitution.

To some of these people, it's absolutely true and they know it. But at this particular point, it doesn't matter, doesn't matter, doesn't matter. And the reason it may not matter is first, some of whom you're addressing in fact don't yet know what you're talking about.

That's right. Some of them haven't been following all those weeks of impeachment inquiry at all, or if so, have a very incomplete notion of what this is really about. This is about as crazy as the rest of all this, true, but it might just be so.

Let me suggest two reasons. First, Senators are busy. They're busy all the time. They have stuff. Of course, so do you, sir. But remember: they represent their entire states, and cut them this much slack: They have a bigger job than you do. So their concentration on impeachment might not have been very great at all up to this moment: Sen. Chris Coons, Democrat from Delaware, said as much last night on MSNBC. Incredibly, while some of them may have heard about the major activities that brought all of them here, they may be dealing with the major issues for the very first time: Angus King, Independent from Maine, told MSNBC last night that he jotted on his notepad as he listened to Schiff, This is more serious than I thought. Some of them not named Martha from Tennessee may be giving up their enormous egos and genuinely listening; more than one interviewed Senator has said so. It means that for a few of them, your comment completely ambushed them and came across as simply partisan and disgustingly so, considering the vital matter at hand. So for Lisa Murkowski of Alaska to say so, might actually be so, whether you like it or not.

Now let's bring in Senator Schumer for Reason Two. I caught something he said in an interview for MSNBC yesterday: That many of the Republican Senators have probably picked up their information about the inquiry and trial from Fox News. Fox News is the main propaganda wing for Republicans, especially hard-baked backers of 45. And as Schumer said, whatever comes spewing from that fountain is deeply biased.

Bias is not only is what is said, but also in what is not said, what is left out. So you did yourself no favor, sir, in implying to someone who's been following only Fox News' version of the matter, that just because they happen to have what they think they know from one very slanted source, that makes them fools and/or crooks. I'm guessing that this applies to more than one Republican Senator. Again, it may easily be so. But the word is that they were listening to the last 45 minutes of Adam Schiff's presentation yesterday, marvelously done as it was, with fair raptness. What you did might have gotten it a big step closer to being about as handy as table napkins--used exactly once, then permanently discarded.

Can Senator Murkowski be included within that sub-group? Who knows? Does it matter now?

There's just one way to reduce the swelling impact of your accusation: Apologize. Yes, it's against everything you want to do. It's against what's clearly emerging as stone fact. A bunch of them don't deserve it. And we all know you won't mean it. But you have to do it, Representative Nadler.

How do explain? Tell them you got caught up in the moment. Tell them that you really meant to say that about 45, but goofed, or that you didn't necessarily (key word) mean to put them into the same basket with him. And tell them that you meant no disrespect to the Senate, nor to anyone individually. They won't believe it for a minute. But then you're on record about that, too. And they need to hear it.

Without it, the Republican Senators will have absolutely no qualms about denying you what you could utilize to make a devastating case against their party's leader, whose neck they are very, very wary of exposing. Even so, after hearing the president's defense, they can simply say that they've heard enough and that we can dispense with all this in the next twenty minutes, thank you very much.

And without it, a no-vote on witnesses and documents can't really be answered with accusations of cover-up any longer. Taking your apology into consideration, though, other Democrats (including you) can say that Rep. Nadler just jumped the gun a little bit, when in fact the Republicans meant to stonewall all this all along anyhow. (They, of course, could say that your comment forced their hand, but that lowers their rationale to pettiness.)

And without it, the president's lawyers, who are good at smearing, innuendo and outright lies (Cipollone's statement about 45 not having the chance to defend himself, for instance) will dive-bomb your comment and incessantly pound away at it. Smear artists like the endlessly sanctimonious Ken Starr and the ethically convenient Alan Dershowitz are waiting in the wings to get at that tomorrow. Take it out of their hands with an apology.

I think you'll survive the flak, sir. There are prices to be paid if you do apologize, of course. There are others if you don't. I congratulate you on your great efforts to rid us of this awful individual, who diminishes what we all have stood for every minute he stands there and taunts us. Like you, I just want to give it every chance to succeed as much as it possibly can.

It's difficult, especially now, to rise above this slash-and-burn creep. All the more reason to do so.

Please think this over, sir. Give our country, the one we're used to having, the best possible chance. And do it soon. Thanks for reading this.

Sincerely: Be well, be careful, and I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark

Two People with Power. Two People Who Wield It. Two Injustices.

I wonder what he could have been thinking. Or maybe it was a she.

I'm referring to the member of the Baseball Writers Association of America, who have the duty of voting in, or not voting in, baseball players to the Hall of Fame. This one sticks out like toilet paper hanging from 45's shoe.

One of the players eligible this season was Derek Jeter, the great shortstop of the New York Yankees and Yankee team captain on many of its most successful teams. He played on more than one World Series champion. He had more than 3400 base hits, putting him in the top ten all-time. And from watching him off-and-on throughout his career, when he had the chance to get his team started or to continue a rally, he almost always succeeded in some way: He drew a walk, he stole a base, he got a hit, he moved a runner up a base, he did something. If he didn't reach base, some guy had to make a good play.

I rarely saw him fail. His 3,000th hit was a homer. The last hit of his career won a game in the bottom of the ninth. He exuded leadership by doing, not talking, in a city where leaders don't usually last long.

He was more than a shoo-in. His long-time teammate, Mariano Rivera, became the first unanimous Hall of Fame admittee last year. He was a terrific relief pitcher and another anchor of several championship Yankee teams. He deserved it.

So did Jeter who, like Rivera, stood for election for the first time. But out of 397 votes, Jeter got 396. Someone held out. Someone left him off the top of the ballot. If a brilliant pitcher deserves unanimity, then an everyday position player deserves it as much if not more.

What happened? What could this writer have had against him? Was it simply that he wanted Rivera to own that notoriety for as long as he could vote, so absolutely nobody else will ever be elected unanimously no matter what his clear and unarguable qualifications (like, maybe, Mike Trout someday)? Or did he have something against Jeter, who has to the best of my knowledge been associated with exactly no scandals or smudges against him in his entire, 20+ year career? If so, would it merely be his less-than-sterling record as a Miami franchise co-owner? Really? Or did the writer think that once unanimity had been achieved by someone, then future designations might be carted around willy-nilly, throwing out first-ballot selections like candy for the kids at parades?

Point taken, but think a minute. Here are other players who made the Hall of Fame, but didn't get voted in unanimously on their first ballots, either: Babe Ruth. Lou Gehrig. Hank Aaron. Ted Williams. Cy Young. Christy Mathewson. Ty Cobb. Rogers Hornsby. Stan Musial. Mickey Mantle. Willie Mays. Who could have had anything against them--as player, at least, which is the standard I thought was utilized to judge their fitness of designation--to have kept them off their first ballots the first time each of them stood for election? But someone did each and every time.

Whatever it is, it has to be a leader in high-ranked pettiness. It has to be someone wielding the power he (she) has just to throw it around, justice being completely irrelevant, I guess.

It doesn't say much about the Baseball Writers Association of America. But some groups maintain a kind of grudging just to make a point--that for some reason, even when things seem obvious, they don't want to be known as someone's pushovers. So they make up reasons and go with them. Instead of demonstrating institutional norms, though, they sometimes run the risk of looking pretty ridiculous, filled with pompous, token posturing instead of bathed in meaning. This would be another one of those times. Though comparatively speaking, the slight is indeed slight, the previous bar raised led to the ultimate comparison. Too bad.

That reminds me of someone else, in a much more important position, with much more at stake. That would be Mitch McConnell, who is also hiding behind a conjured sense of institutional norms to firewall the impeachment trial of 45 and, from this point on--as Jerry Nadler said last night, and he is spot on--has become the impeachment trial cover-up, and should be addressed as such from this day forward.

McConnell is running his contrived, greatly adjusted (for the situation) idea of institutional norms past the Senators. It's now become quite evident that McConnell and the Republican Senators had no intent on making the impeachment trial an actual trial--that is, with witnesses and documents subpoenaed from 45's White House. As an institution, the Senate power brokers can create their own ways of defining limitations that it need not have but which are conveniently created to avoid the advance toward a fair and just judgment.

To wit: McConnell's position on the House managers asking for the subpoenas is haughty. It presupposes that the whole exercise has taken place far too quickly, and that the Senate is being asked to do the House's job for it. That, on all levels, is preposterous, knowing what has transpired--that 45 has blocked all relevant information that the White House has compiled, including demanding that important people not give testimony--Mulvaney, Perry, Giuliani, and the like--and refusing to hand over any documents that might shed light on exactly what 45 did and why he did it. It kind of goes like this:

McConnell, et al: You went too fast. Your information is too limited. We can't tell anything. Nobody thinks you have a case.

House managers: We have plenty to prove guilt based on what we have, but it would sure work better if we knew more. The president knows more. You won't let us get at it.

McConnell: Why should we do your job for you?

House managers: You aren't. You're letting us do our jobs better. Who knows? The substance of acquittal might be in those documents or within someone's testimony. What would be wrong with that?

And there the conversation ends, because you-know-who is watching their every move and hearing every statement to tweet it into irrelevancy or the danger zone of non-support. So they walk through the motions of appearing to accept the House managers' clear and convincing evidence, keep saying that they don't have enough when everyone knows exactly why, and await the end of the next two days when they're in the clear and don't have to listen anymore.

Waiting for them is the vote on whether to admit witnesses or new documents. As long as they ride out the clock, as long as they can avoid or deflect reporters, as long as they don't get caught falling asleep on the Senate floor, they can then cast their token votes for blockage.

Then they get to say: The Senate did what it was supposed to do. It was asked to hear the charges. It did. Next.

They will be using that institution to get in the way of what should be taking place: A real trial, with the additional evidence and witnesses that everybody knows should be presented. Not only a disgusting sham, but now aiding and abetting a cover-up. Mitch McConnell coordinates it all.

There's always somebody, you know? Kind of like the way figure skating and gymnastics used to be judged in the Olympics, where nobody ever got a perfect score because nobody judging could ever possibly imagine a performance without a pinky out of place.

The ones giving the worse scores were always from one country, too: Russia.

Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark

Grafton and the Blues: Lost History Back on the Stage

Grafton, Wisconsin would be, for a variety of perfectly logical reasons, one of the last places that a company recording black blues music would have been established in the 1920s and '30s. Though few traces remain, we know it happened.

It was though someone tried to hide it. Most of the recordings were dumped into the Milwaukee River, near the Paramount recording studio, when it ended its business. Someone even tried to dredge them up in the '90s, and were unsuccessful. The river bottom buried them into history.

But Kevin Ramsey turned the information into a musical presentation at the Stackner Cabaret, affiliated with the Milwaukee Repertory Theater. Called Chasin' Dem Blues, it's playing now, through February 20. As someone who's writing about all the Graftons he can find including the one where he grew up, I just had to go.

It was an excursion into the history of the blues, which meant that we were absorbed in them front to end. Great fun with some songs you might have heard of: "Sweet Home Chicago," from "The Blues Brothers"; "Matchbox" which Ringo Starr sang on the Beatles' album "Something New"; "Motherless Child," sung by Richie Havens at Woodstock. They weren't played in quite the same way, but you can pick out the basic melodies nonetheless. Great singing, great piano, great guitar. The audience was invited to get involved--whoop and holler, get excited, sing along. Some of us, not quite as uptight or concerned about appearances, did so.

The Wisconsin Chair Company, created in Port Washington, Wisconsin, a few miles north of Grafton, in 1888, was responsible for the chain of events that led to the Paramount recording studios in the latter: Making chairs led to making cabinets to store 78-rpm records that led to the recording studio that created the records themselves. I would have liked to have known the thinking that went behind it. Perhaps we'll never know that.

Other questions remain. Why would black artists come up from Chicago through Milwaukee to little Grafton, which had about a thousand people at that time? Did no other recording sites exist? Were they so unknown that to make a name for themselves they had to risk going into places in which they might not have been accepted?

Really? Jelly Roll Morton, whose name made people swoon in New Orleans? And the Satchmo, Louis Armstrong? Really? They were there. They made music. Would no one have recognized them? It begs for someone to find their later relatives and ask if anyone knows why they felt they needed that place. Or would it be a matter of being under contract with Paramount, and being able to find someplace at least reachable by train? But that would mean that Paramount didn't have studios in either Chicago or Milwaukee, far more cosmopolitan areas.

That may not have mattered, either. This was the time of the Great Migration, the time in post-World War I America when hundreds of thousands of blacks moved north, hoping to escape the shackles of Jim Crow in the South and start again. It caused conflicts; Northerners were resentful of the waves of blacks taking jobs. Disturbances shook several cities, including a huge riot in Detroit. Discrimination also prevailed.

Other research done for reports that appeared on PBS indicated that the black artists that performed for those recordings would spend one or two nights in the old Grafton hotel, located well into the last century on a triangular corner comprised of 12th and Washington Avenues (the latter otherwise known as State Highway 57), steps from the Grafton State Bank, steps on which many high school kids, including Yours Truly, would hang out on summer nights in the '60s. (Both buildings are still there.) The musicians were kind of sneaked in so the remainder of the population knew next to nothing about them.

I think of that as sad. But others. too, must have understood the underlying attitudes--the ones that also led to the creation of a German-American Bund-sponsored summer camp for teens at the end of the '30s. It ended only after Milwaukee newspapers exposed it. That both of them took place in the same small town during the same decade--the Paramount studios disbanded in 1933--is a bit mind-bending.

For such a small place to be at the cutting edge of social change gives it notoriety most other small towns don't have--but the type most other small towns wouldn't like, either. Much is good about Grafton, Wisconsin, but to deny that it had a racially negative underpinning would be walking past the truth (also true about communities surrounding it, by the way).

Did that have anything to do with the destruction of the records? I wonder. What else could it have been? Could it simply have been that, with the eventual razing of the building, maybe someone ran into the collection, asked what to do with it, and someone else just said to get rid of them without realizing what they had? Or did they realize what they had and disposed of it with the worst of intentions--to consign what was genuine history to the deep?

Makes no sense. This was, and is, good music. Did it really matter that much who made it? But then, racism makes no sense, either.

These questions are worth pursuing. Meanwhile, I met Kevin Ramsey, who created and produced this story for the stage. Luck follows luck; since I saw this at a cabaret, conversations can more easily take place amongst attendees. The fellow at my table, like myself, had paperwork--I had a notepad, he a list of some kind of stats. Curious, I asked him about it. He said that he was the assistant sound producer. He pointed Ramsey out to me; he was across the room at another table.

I released some personality and sidled over. He's from Los Angeles, and was going to depart the next day. He has my card; I have his number. I hope he has time to talk.

Maybe there will be leads; maybe not. Maybe we have all that there is to know about the development of blues music in the first half of the 20th Century in Grafton, Wisconsin. Maybe that history which was lost or stolen from us will remain so. Kevin Ramsey had enough to create a delightful stage show out of it that's worth your while if you're around during the next month (and I wonder if it has legs to get elsewhere, like Chicago). Maybe that was his motivation after all--to find someone out there who has the willingness to pursue it.

Watch this space. You never know. I'll be back to you on this. Got places to go first, but I'll get there.

Today is Martin Luther King Day. When I had my sports column, I used to write something that connected sports to the black experience, serving it to several communities that had little to none (and, based on my history teaching, that I felt needed it and still do). It feels good and well-timed that I happened to see this show at the Stackner Cabaret the weekend before honoring someone who gave his life to the idea that, if we just forgot about everything else, we could learn to live with each other, that color of skin is just an accident of human development and absolutely nothing else.

Along 12th Avenue, just across from the old Grafton Hotel, there are piano keys painted onto the sidewalk. A society devoted to the awareness of this blues phenomenon has sprung up in Grafton, and it's probably how they got there. On the sidewalk, too, are the names of the more prominent blues artists who found their way to an otherwise nondescript place--and slipped away before it could be as famous as they would be. Kind of a fun way to observe it, though.

At least now it's in concrete. All things disappear in time, but this will take much longer. It's a dead-end street; there's almost no traffic, though the main drag is literally steps away. There's a memorial plaque that the society put up, too. It's along Green Bay Road, just offshore from the Milwaukee River and the reported site of the Wisconsin Chair Company. Few see it, but few bother it, either.

Maybe it's better that way. Be well, be careful, Happy MLK Day, and I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark

"1917," A Warning and An Endorsement of Sorts

I taught a course on American diplomatic and military history for about 25 years. I thought of it as an important course.

The American place in the world, especially since World War II, is unlike any other in world history. Even with two oceans separating much of the,  rest of it, the world has fallen under the influence of America for about 75 years. That it is now precariously shaky is the result of more than 45's incompetence and arrogance. This has been coming for a while now.

But it's just as important to see how we got where we are. And that had a lot to do with the fighting of wars themselves--how it was done, how it has progressed (if that's what you want to call it), and the aftermath.

I spent much of the course, I admit an imbalanced amount of it, on World War I. I described it, and I still do describe it, as one of the five most important events in human history. The world pivoted upon it and went into a totally new direction, one in which the United States was involved more deeply than at any other time, and remains so. And I told the students, and still believe, that World Wars I and II will someday be taught as a single war with a 20-year pause necessary for both sides to rearm and increase the carnage. All our problems in the Middle East begin with the First World War and the settlements that accompanied it.

The Vietnam War's foundation took place at the Versailles Peace Conference, too. Ho Chi Minh was there. He wanted his people to catch a break. The French wouldn't let him.

So when I saw the film "1917" the other night, it was with a fascination about how realistically Sam Mendes was going to portray what the soldiers had to go through on the Western Front. The answer: Very.

It helped that I had gone over the book All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque, many times before seeing the film. Though Mendes utilized his grandfather's accounts of the fighting to create the ghastly set, it could have evolved right out of the text of All Quiet: the utter devastation of No Man's Land; the endless barbed wire; trenches built like fortress cities after months of stalemate; the first tanks, considered unstoppable but also difficult to drive over large holes in the earth caused by endless shelling; dead horses and men with rats feeding upon them (the rats won this war, as I was fond of saying); soldiers killed by shells that dislodged enough dirt to bury them as well, then were dislodged again by other shells. I was almost disappointed that there weren't any gas attacks, except by 1917, three years into the war, both sides had neutralized each other with gas and had decided to pretty much forego its use.

At any rate, it helped for me to imagine what No Man's Land would look like. The phrase "utter depravity" can't explain it adequately. It hit me about as hard, if not more so, than the first twenty minutes of "Saving Private Ryan," which demonstrated the incredible slaughter of the first invasion wave hitting Omaha Beach on D-Day. And I knew what was coming, there, too, having read Stephen Ambrose's work D-Day.

The date of the story, April 6, 1917, was the date that Congress declared war on the Central Powers. The film's script doesn't mention it the next day, when a major attack was to have taken place; it's entirely possible that no one knew (I say this without a spoiler alert, because it will be pretty much irrelevant) or much cared. Their world had evolved to mass murder in a very small place.

Regardless, it would be nearly an entire year by the time a very unprepared American army would have managed to enter the slaughter. Even with the preparation time in which few Americans would be killed, we lost 115,000 dead. The armistice took place on Nov. 11, 1918, at 11 a.m. Doing the math, we still lost 190 killed per day. The British, French, Germans and Russians lost far more. The total reached about ten million. At the Somme, the British got 20,000 men shot in one hour.

You may easily say to yourself: Why didn't anybody stop this butchery, propelled not by some sweeping political concepts like democracy (though Wilson claimed it, U.S. trade was the point) against fascism, which drove World War II, but by simple national pride and the conjured sense of being slapped in the face? Except once it began, everybody knew that it was about the empires that existed and that, if their armies lost, would be lost or drastically reduced--which is exactly what the Versailles Treaty did, and led to the Second World War in an attempt to regain them.

Once it began, though, it was all being sucked into the vortex of the principle of meaningfulness: If we're going to lose this many guys, we'll have to continue on to win so it will have been worth it. And so they went on. Nobody could gain an edge; those reinforced trenches were both an indication and a symbol of the stalemate. Nobody was getting anywhere. It all lost its meaning.

"The war has ruined us for everything," said Paul Baumer, the storyteller of All Quiet on the Western Front. In a sense, that ruination continues to the present day--its utter nihilism, its insistence on the cheapness of life, its mockery of anything civilized, its cruel demands. The world has grasped some semblance of rectitude since, but it hasn't shown any signs of stopping the enormous buildup of armaments, including nuclear weapons, that by their very nature create the scenario of some kind of ultimate showdown, some Armageddon. It isn't a straight line, but it hasn't disappeared. And we have always been the leaders in that buildup.

So if you're going, get ready. If you haven't read up on it, take a friend. Heck, take one anyhow and discuss it. You'll see how it all began. It will, at times, be hard to watch. It should be.

Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark

Walking It Back: Deceive, Deflect, Delay--A Primer

So this is how it's done: walking it back.

When something wow-wee happens, you put it out there as stone fact. No frills, no perspective. It happened. So there.

You haven't told the whole story yet. Not close to it. That would take waiting a few days, and in that time, the pesky press would have the story and beat you to it. Rule 1 of news control: Get the basic story out there first. Don't be the ones to have to explain it. Let someone else do that.

Then, when the public has had a chance to absorb the shock of it, you gauge the shock. If the shock appears to last, then begin to explain.

If the explanation seems strong, so be it: People will likely accept it. But you still have the press to deal with, and their fact-finding is coming. Thus:

Step 1 of the Suleimani assassination: He was a bad guy. We killed him.

Step 2: He had bad plans for us. He was about to hatch them ("imminent").

Step 3: Let others ask how imminent they were. You say, "real, real imminent. We can't tell you how much because other things might be revealed. Secret stuff, you know."

And everyone goes, 'Sure. Makes sense. Cloak and dagger. Well, we got him anyhow.'

But then the rascals of the press reveal that you've had him marked for death since last August. That brings us to Step 4: Say it really doesn't matter how imminent it was. See Step One: He was a bad guy. He always was.

Nobody has specifically connected the what with the when. Why did 45 choose to go after him now? Because he wasn't actually in Iran so an invasion of their space couldn't be broached? Like, he hadn't been a at any other time?

Ridiculous. He did it to swerve attention away from the results of his other, numerous, incredible lies about Ukraine, for which he's been impeached and is now standing a show trial at which justice doesn't have a smudge of being served.

This is Iraq Revisited. Remember those awful Weapons of Mass Destruction? The threat of them? All that had to happen was the threat. That's all it should have taken. Anyone questioning it was called unpatriotic, as Cheney kept doing. The press dutifully reported it. No one knew the real truth, because it's far more difficult to prove that something isn't there because you can't prove what's in empty space because it's, well, empty. So the accusations remain, the press becomes mousey, and nobody gets to the bottom of it all.

Which is to say: There never were WMDs. In his speech to the nation announcing the start of the war (the night the bombing began), Bush-43 didn't mention the WMDs once. He just said Saddam Hussein was a bad guy.

Reason enough, I guess. And he was a bad guy. He tried to kill 43's dad. Since the UN had already tried to find the WMDs and had come up empty, there was nothing left.

It was time for Step 4, then: It didn't really matter whether there actually were WMDs or not. And for Corollary 1: If there are unsubstantiated rumors that support your non-factual claims but get you to where you're going, by all means don't quash them. Thus: Saddam had something to do with 9-11. We have no proof to give you, but he's a bad guy so it might be true.

So, too, with casualties. Report right away that the Iranian missile counterattack resulted in zero American casualties, as the Pentagon did. Report it after a reasonable wait, after which the average person wouldn't start asking if that hadn't been a bit premature. Lies are far more effective if told with excellent timing; that takes away vital questions. Maybe people will forget about it.

Turns out eleven Americans were hurt. Turns out they have concussions, at least. "Several were treated for concussion symptoms from the blast(s) and are still being assessed," said Capt. Bill Urban, spokesperson for the U.S. Central Command, in a statement yesterday.

Still being assessed: That means they could be hurt worse than just a concussion. A concussion is a brain injury. Some are as simple as that and with aspirin and a couple of days rest, they'll be fine, and let's hope so. But some are not.

"When deemed fit for duty, the service members are expected to return to Iraq," Urban continued. Well, yes. If they're all right, they're all right. Whenever. If. Maybe. But to suggest that they'll be right back where they were suggests that all will be well. You can look away now. Nothing to see here.

"All personnel in the vicinity of a blast are screened for traumatic brain injury and if deemed appropriate are transported to a higher level of care," he said. Well, duh. If they're hurt worse, they get more treatment. That's there to suggest a just-in-case-we-have-to-tell-you-something-worse. It may also be there because things are worse, they know they're worse, and it's now up to the Wait Machine to release that information, which may or may not get speeded up depending upon the awful, terrible press that might be asking someone else very relevant questions.

Are there lies inside that statement? No. Is there complete truth? Uh-uh.

With the military, it's a bit different. If something worse has happened, the Pentagon has 24 hours to find the next of kin and report it. That's sacrosanct. And if it knows, the press will back away until next of kin are notified. It's accepted practice.

But the original lie stands: No one injured. And here they've walked it back. Uh, we found some injured people now. We misspoke. We don't know how bad, but we think it's just concussions.

Eleven people, and they all have just concussions? Well, maybe worse. But let's not think about that right now.

And time passes. And other things happen, usually outrageous, and cause us to look away. And the emotionality of the potential loss fades. And we don't think it's so bad that 45 lied to us again.

Deceive, deflect, delay: repeat. It's how you walk things back. Whatever big-time news you hear from 45's people from now on, count on these three steps. They can do it in their sleep now. And they know that, as long as questions aren't asked by loyalists, they can count on their sleepwalking through it.

Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark

Is the Unitary Executive Theory Connected with Religion? Is the Pope Catholic?

Sometimes it takes a while to see connections. Sometimes it's what you hear, not what you see or read.

Happened to me the other day. I was listening to NPR's report on the upcoming impeachment trial, and the lawyers who are, according to Jay Sekulow, "raring to go" to defend 45. With the small amount of information at the other side's disposal--and the supposition that the refusal of their side to turn over anything, documents or people, somehow diminishes what they have to deal with--they might, like 45 himself, look better than they're supposed to.

But it's their backgrounds that made me pause. William Barr is Roman Catholic, and believes in the "unitary theory" of the executive, which is to say that, like 45 has bragged, the Constitution has actually meant that he can do just about anything he wants within the executive branch, never mind what previous presidents have or have not tried to do.

Pat Cipollone has been stonewalling information and people from the start of the suspicion that the president might have to undergo some kind of legal scrutiny (he got out there in front of it all and defends 45's interaction with Ukraine), so I'd guess he's probably a proponent of unitarianism himself. Pat Cipollone is Roman Catholic. He is 53. He and his wife have ten children.

Look, I have no right to snoop upon his private life, but--anybody with ten kids and is Catholic would probably have a very papal-centered viewpoint of birth control, which is to say, Pope Paul VI, who, in 1965, said that birth control was a no-no, never mind abortion or even condoms.

Cipollone, who Fox News commentator Laura Ingraham considers a friend, is the co-founder of the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast. The other co-founder is Rick Santorum, former Senator from Pennsylvania and staunch defender of 45, whenever possible, in CNN conversations.

In this week's New Yorker bio piece on Barr underline his Catholic connection, of which he does not flinch whatsoever. Barr and Cipollone have been on the board of directors of the Catholic Information Center, as has Leonard Leo, the executive vice-president of the Federalist Society, who has led the charge to put archconservatives on the federal courts and has been 45's chief guide on the selection of judges.

The Catholic Information Center--a rather benign-sounding title--is located on 15th and K Streets, NW, in Washington, DC, just blocks from the White House (just off 16th and H, though the address is, as we know, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.). Its website describes itself as a "Catholic intellectual hub that serves professionals in and around the DC Metro area." Its mission is to "help professional to live integrated lives of faith that bring the richness and beauty of Catholic teaching to bear on their professions and communities." To integrate one's life of faith to bear on one's profession? Again, sounds benign, almost blessed. But when expanded, it gives its adherents permission to crush the separation of church and state which this country has cherished through more than two centuries, especially when employed in government service, which undoubtedly some of its members are.

Other Catholics in 45's immediate orbit include acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney; National Economic Council director Larry Kudlow; and the very dislikable Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon.

Neil Gorsuch, the first of 45's Supreme Court appointees, is Episcopalian but was raised Catholic. And Brett Cavanaugh is Catholic. So is Chief Justice John Roberts, appointed by President Reagan, presently presiding over 45's impeachment trial. So is Clarence Thomas, appointed by Bush-41. So is Samuel Alito, appointed by Bush-43. Only Sonia Sotomayor, appointed by President Obama, is the only Democratically-appointed Supreme Court justice. She calls herself a "cultural Catholic." And so was the late Antonin Scalia, also a Reagan appointee.

(I was raised Catholic, too. But I left the church in early adulthood, seeing that its attitude toward women and women's rights--never mind its awful record of child molestation, which came to brighter light later on; try watching "Spotlight" and keep going all the way through the credits--was something I couldn't reconcile. I am now Presbyterian. Their decisions are very definitely not made by a single person.)

So. Six of the last nine Supreme Court appointees are Catholic, or have Catholic roots, and have been appointed by Republican presidents. What will happen when William Barr approaches the Court and claims that 45 has every right to prevent anybody else from seeing any documents associated with him, including members of Congress seeking to impeach and/or convict him, simply because he's the president and that's that? What will happen to his unitary theory that the president has complete power over the entire executive branch, that nothing, especially including the Justice Department, can hold itself astride it but not be directly answerable to it in the name of impartial justice?

We will see. But these are Catholics, who supposedly bend to the theory of the infallible pope. The head of the church is to be unquestioned on issues of faith. There's supposed to be a difference--a separation, as it were. But the concept of the singular, unassailable leader strikes deep.

Will William Barr continue to build a firewall against the checks and balances provided by the Constitution? Is the Pope Catholic?

Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark

How Another President Did It, Part 3: The League of Ordinary Nations

45 had no trouble choosing to assassinate a foreign leader. All it seemed he needed was the option of doing so, as news reports indicated. Some of his associates were shocked that he would pluck that out of the bag without consulting about possible consequences, but this is the way he is: He, in fact, is Alfred E. Neuman, whose favorite phrase was "What, me worry?"

Once the decision was made, it was just a matter of when. Apparently, Secretary of State Pompeo had recommended such an act weeks beforehand, so it's not as if the concept was freshly hatched. The justification has been vaguely stated in terms of the "imminent" danger of an attack that Soleimani had been planning--the specifics of which have still not been revealed. The word "imminent" is supposed to mean "about to take place," but these people have been playing with definitions for a while now.

But the moral issue has long been vetted. Remember, Obama had a chance to capture Osama bin Laden and bring him to trial, even though Clinton had already tried to kill him. Though Kennedy had wanted Ngo Dinh Diem to be safely transported out of South Vietnam and put into exile, he could not stop Diem's murder. And the CIA arranged for Chilean President Salvador Allende to be overthrown and murdered by a coup supporting General Augosto Pinochet in 1973.

Nevertheless, in "The West Wing," this particular fictitious president is struggling with the final decision of assassination. He's in New York City, ostensibly watching a Broadway musical. The hours turn to minutes. He steps out of the theater and into a foyer. His chief of staff, who must actually communicate the order if there is to be one, follows him because he has to know now:

President: Civilians get trials.

Leo: I know. He's not a civilian. So said the Attorney General.

President: They're gonna find out it's us. We're gonna make it look like the plane went down, but they're gonna find out it's us. I'm gonna be running for re-election while I'm fighting a war against Qumar.

Leo: (with some incredulousness) That's why you want to say no?

President: I want him tried.

Leo: That can't happen.

President: I understand.

Leo: Would it be helpful if I provided you a list of all the names--

President: What do you want from me?

Leo: Who is the monk that wrote: 'I'll always know the right thing to do. I think that the fact that I want to please you pleases you.' You have two minutes, sir.

President: This isn't a matter of religion.

Leo: Isn't it?

President: I recognize that here's evil in the world.

Leo: Exactly, sir.

President: Doesn't this mean we join the league of ordinary nations?

Leo: (again, rather incredulous) That's your objection? I won't have any objections to saying the pledge of allegiance tomorrow.

President: That's not my objection.

Leo: Sir?

President: It's just wrong. It's absolutely wrong.

Leo: I know. But you have to do it anyway.

President: Why?

Leo: Because you won.

President: (pausing for one last moment) Take him.

And he is taken. The president's right: The cover-up fails. The press does its job. All hell breaks loose.

So when 45 simply decided to kill Soleimani and didn't bother to hide it, were we better off? Is the bare bones admission that we've assassinated a bad foreign actor and managed to connect it with the deaths of our soldiers in Iraq starting more than a decade ago (and might have included a student from the high school where I taught, the son of a teaching colleague. He was killed by an improvised explosive device (IED) as were several hundred by such weapons. Soleimani is given credit for improving IEDs to be larger and more effective, as in the film "The Hurt Locker.") sufficient for us to walk away knowing that the war in Iraq was also fought against us by an Iranian who more than likely fought against Iraq in the mid-'80s, under the banner that the enemy of my enemy is my friend?

Is it "imminent" enough that we caught him in a vulnerable spot and got him? And is the obvious ruse of an inaccurate Iranian missile retaliatory attack enough to provide enough of a conclusion that for now, this matter is at an end? Does that sufficiently steal the thunder from the press, who can only now speculate upon the imminence, since for "security reasons" nobody else is going to know the "real" reason it was done? As if there actually is one beneath the surface appearance that, in the middle of an impeachment hearing, something of a similar magnitude had to take place in order for a severe distraction to work?

Beyond that, which is bad enough: What bothers me, and will continue to do so, is that 45 fairly leapt at the option provided for him by advisors to commit to the assassination, and would probably not have done so had he not known that it was on the table, although considered such a severe solution that he would obviously not take it (Considering 45's track record of temper loss, I'm not sure how anyone could have concluded that.).

Compare that to the admittedly fictitious president above, who fought ethical and moral restrictions until he simply couldn't any longer. Defenders might say: Never mind, snowflake. He reached the same conclusion anyhow. The guy was dirt. He had to be removed.

Such defenders might chortle that any enemy of ours has to beware that our reach is too long to hide anywhere, and that makes us safe. No, it doesn't, and we've known that for some time now. There's no way to know that such a person as 45, someone of that same knee-jerk reaction to everything he touches, had any thought that the same exact lesson might be delivered to us someday, not by Iran itself but by proxies it has all over the globe.

To the simplistic minded (like him) who would ask, What can they do to us? would be the simplistic answer: One hell of a lot. They can do it a little at a time. They can do it anywhere they want. They don't need to invade anyone or attack any ship. In a phrase from a later "West Wing" show: They can lie in the tall grass and wait. They can wait for years. They can wait until after 45 leaves office so the attack is tied to someone not at all responsible for creating the conditions behind it, which would be exactly what 45 would want and quickly try to explain away.

Here's a phrase that hasn't been used in a while: Dirty bomb. And the nuclear agreement with Iran has now been trashed.

Either way, the complete lack of perspective that reportedly informed 45's decision to go ahead with the assassination should be chilling. We have, in the most powerful position in the history of the world, someone who doesn't feel he needs to discuss or even consider whether or not such a score can even be settled. He's dead, right? True, but he's already been replaced. Iran launched missiles and missed? Uh-huh. Think they're just bad shots? (And it's now been confirmed that somebody pressed the wrong button and apparently shot down a Ukrainian jetliner the same night of the missile attack. All the more reason for concern. Those who create chaos cause chaotic reactions.) Or is that government, too, trying to placate its citizens to play a longer game?

Do you want a president who actually cares about all this, who considers this the loneliest decision, who is still filled with angst because while this is admittedly a bad person he's dealing with, he's still a person, a fellow member of the human race? Or someone who doesn't, who is too cold-blooded to hesitate, too anxiously gleeful to announce a "win" over an adversary? We have another chance to elect someone else this November. That's one of the questions that should be kept in mind.

Because once upon a time, we thought we had a country that was an outstanding exception: That acted on principles first; that believed that because it had moved the world by declaring and then winning its independence against a dominant kingdom; and that because it created a government that worked because no one could gain too much power at any one time, it became the model for many subsequent governments.

Once upon a time, we thought so. Once upon a time, we had reason to believe we would never belong to the league of ordinary nations. Once upon a time.

Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark

How Another President Did It, Part 1

I have the complete series of "The West Wing." I watch it now with wistfulness. We are so very far from the admittedly fictitious portrayal of life inside the White House. But the people who made it did their homework, and what they put on rubbed up against reality here and there, in terms of How Things Are Done. Outside of the personal issues, it had that genuine feel.

The series did depict how an assassination of a foreign leader might have taken place--at least, before this abomination of a president took stranglehold of all that is decent and good about our country's governance and consign it to the trash heap. I took a few minutes to find it, in Season 3.

It begins with a Situation Room meeting. The White House has learned that the Defense Minister of Qumar (fictitious Middle Eastern country), with whom the U.S. has had at least a diplomatic relationship, got caught trying to blow up the Golden Gate Bridge (Something that I believe Iran is now planning through its proxies, if they hadn't done so before. The phony and intentionally misguided missile attacks on our troops in Iraq is the same kind of ruse that this fictitious country fictitiously faked on facilities near the White House itself, hoping to draw our attention away while the real terrorism takes place across the continent. Iran knows better than to take on our firepower directly; they want us to think that it's all evened up now. It's not, and anyone with a sense of proportionality knows it.). The policy pursued is obviously on shaky, unprecedented ground, since this president has issued an executive order banning assassinations:

Leo McGarry, the President's Chief of Staff: Where did we get the wires crossed? He's meeting with the guy in the Oval Office.

Fitzsimmons, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: We didn't get the wires crossed. He was always gonna do that.

Leo: It wasn't cancelled?

Fitz: No way.

Leo: The White House cancels a meeting at the last minute.

Fitz: He's gonna have somebody testin' his food for a month.

The President walks in. There are eight people at the table, who stand. He says "hello" rather portentously. He knows why they're there.

CIA or Defense Dept. operative #1: Mr. President, we wanted to lay out some of the rules.

President (rather flippantly): There are rules to these things?

#1: Uh, yes, sir. The first one being the National Security Act, which says that only the President can trigger a covert action. This isn't a situation where you need to know as little as possible. The law requires that you know everything.

President: Doesn't the law require that I not assassinate someone?

#1: Yes. Political assassinations stand by executive order--two executive orders, as a matter of fact.

President: I know. One of them was mine.

Leo: The executive order was law but it was made up by the executive and the executive can ignore it.

President: Assume for a second I say yes. How do we do it? Fitz walks up to him with a gun?

Fitz: No, you can't do military.

President: Why not?

Fitz: The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 prohibits the military from civilian law enforcement--and it can't happen on American soil.

President (shaking his head slightly): The things we choose to care about.

CIA/Defense #2: Mr. President, I should mention that if you give the order, the law insists that you inform what we call the Gang of Eight. That's the leadership on (sic) both parties in both houses, and the chairpeople and the ranking members of the two intelligence committees.

President (cutting him off): If it can't happen here, then why do we care that (Qumari Defense Minister) was delivering himself?

Fitz: He's flying back tonight in his Gulfstream. The pilot will be one of our people. They'll experience a mechanical failure about 90 minutes into the flight, and set down in a remote airstrip in Bermuda. It's really not much more than a road in the grass.

President: The British say yes?

Fitz: Yes, sir.

President: How many over there know about this?

Fitz: Three.

President: And some people in Bermuda.

Fitz: Yes, sir.

Leo: This is as big as the club gets, all right?

President: Okay. Well, surely, this is the most absurd meeting I've ever sat in, and friends, that is saying something. (Gets up to leave; all stand)

Defense/CIA #3: Sir, will you be exchanging gifts with [minister] when you meet this afternoon?

President: Yeah, I'd imagine.

#3: We'd like you to give him this (reaches behind; brings a pen over to President)

President: What does the pen do, squirt poison?

#2: It's got a small recording device in there. He'll probably throw it in the trash, but you never know: You might get lucky. He sticks it in his breast pocket for the flight home.

President: (With a knowing look at Leo, he drops it on the table)

#3: Sir?

President: Tell them to put it in a box. (Leaves; scene ends)

Okay, so--This president is actually injecting some gallows cynicism into the situation. Would you be happy with that? Or is he trying to fight off the reality that even he can't believe he's now involved in? He's about to enter a high-stakes problem that by its very nature involves situational ethics. He's not happy about it.

Think, too, of the legal justification. This president has to pull an executive order he's already issued to justify an assassination. That means that the president has the power of life and death over someone who threatens the republic, no questions asked (although questions will be asked; back to you a bit later). No court has ruled upon it; it's based on intelligence. Are you happy with that? It doesn't make executive orders look very solid, does it?

For Congress to nullify a law it had passed, it has to go through the entire law-making process: committees, hearings, mark-ups. It takes months, but it's absolutely necessary in order for federal marshals to stop enforcing it. On the other hand, to nullify an executive order that has equivalent legal standing, all a president has to do is either sign a piece of paper or just shake his head. That looks, well, monarchical.

And someone has had to reach all the way back to 1878, to a law passed just after Reconstruction ended, to provide legal cover. No Congress has nullified it, so it's still enforceable. But it's now the 21st Century, and the reasoning behind it could be considered arcane. Isn't this the ends justifying the means, to put active meaning into words that grew to have none?

This will have three parts. Part 2 will be tomorrow. Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark

How Another President Did It, Part 2: Consider Yourselves Notified

We know now that 45 couldn't bring himself to meet with the Gang of Eight before launching his ill-advised (literally) attack on Iran's Soleimani last week. In this episode of "The West Wing," though, that president followed protocol. Although he wasn't at the meeting, his closest advisor was.

The idea, supposedly, is to prepare Congress for a tension-filled moment and hopefully to garner support for a difficult decision, as committing the nation to a warlike stance, even if temporary and even quick, is deemed necessary. Questions might be asked and answers might be provided. In any event, it's done according to the National Security Act. It's the law.

Note that in the last "West Wing" script featured, the president's advisory council said that "the law insists" that that meeting take place before whatever military action happens. In real time, 45 didn't bother. I'm quite sure he could make the excuse that, since few if any on the other side of aisle like or trust him, they'd be very likely to spill the beans and blow the cover.

The problem with that is that it would put the president into the position of saying that the other party, perhaps even his own in Congress, too, would actually go to the trouble of putting American lives at stake just to get in the way of his plans. That this smallness is typical of him doesn't advance the idea that the country, for at least a fleeting moment, can act as one, especially when national security is at issue. There were no leaks, for instance, when Clinton attacked Osama bin Laden in 1998, right before he was to be actually impeached. The Republican leadership must have been seething to have heard of such plans, and probably lurched out of the meeting incensed that Clinton might have been "wagging the dog" and creating a diversion based on national security. But to the best of my recollection, nobody leaked the information. The attack, though it failed, went on unannounced.

Nevertheless, here's the script of the Gang of Eight meeting. That it was supposed to take place on the very same day as the Situation Room meeting, the meeting with the Qumarian defense minister, now possibly marked for death, and his supposedly fateful, final flight, is taking a bit of dramatic license. But that's TV for you:

The Scene: A very small, very private meeting room, ostensibly in the White House. A single light hangs. In the room are the Gang of Eight; Leo McGarry, the president's chief of staff; and Fitzsimmons, the Chair of the Joint Chiefs. He says that based on 'overwhelming evidence,'

Leo: ....provided by foreign and domestic intelligence agents, the president has requested the intelligence finding you have in your hands right now. That finding has been signed off on by the directors of NSA, Central Intelligence....

Fitz: (jumping in)....subsequently submitted for review and approval by the National Security Advisor, Secretaries of State and Defense, the Attorney General, White House Counsel, and finally myself.

Member of Congress #1: How are you getting around 119.05?

Leo: The president's rescinding his own executive order.

Member of Congress #2: He's on U.S. soil right now. Why can't the FBI act on it? (The FBI hasn't been mentioned by anyone to this point)

Leo: The FBI's role is investigatory. They're not allowed to engage in police action.

Member of Congress #3: And the military?

Member of Congress #4 (seems like a very big player): Posse Comitatus. You're killing (minister).

Leo: I don't know (which is a lie or at least very disingenuous, because that's the purpose of the meeting. But POTUS hasn't actually decided yet.).

MOC #4: What does that mean?

MOC #2: Leo, when does the president give the green light?

Leo: At the last possible minute. Consider yourselves notified.

End of meeting.

Note:

• The purpose of the meeting is consultation, not approval: That would have to be done with the entire Congress. That obviously takes too much time and of course makes things way too public, so the decision is already made and the required consultation is taken.
• At least the Congressional leadership has a chance to actually ask questions, not criticize, although I can't imagine that everyone in the room during any of these situations has passed on the opportunity to do so. That being said, there are enough voices in the room (eight) to be able to cover most bases before the decision is actualized.
• The idea of the Constitution's checks and balances concept is flirted with but not exercised. The bottom line is that the president is taking action, like it or not, and he has to tell, not ask, someone in Congress. The law requires certain people to be in the room, no more and no less.
• Expediency is the most frequently offered explanation (and in this fictitious case, it certainly applies), but it matters little. Consulting with members of Congress beforehand is the closest offer to intragovernmental cooperation that can be made, but 45's decision to avoid that until afterwards even disposes with that pretense. He's got power, he's going to use it, and to hell with everybody else.

In these national security matters, would this be the best way to do things? One of the first reactions made after the Soleimani attack was the simple fact that Congress had not been previously notified. That's a violation of the National Security Act, plain and simple. Is it serious enough to be added to what might be additional impeachment charges?

Could that be answered in hindsight, based on results? Or is the principle enough? The House has now passed a measure under the War Powers Act, attempting to limit 45's immersion into any subsequent military action without Congress' approval. Even if enough Republican Senators manage to shake loose from the bonds they believe they are in and approve, it's hardly veto-proof. It seems futile and almost a waste, but well--Nancy Pelosi's doing what she can with the majority she has.

Let's wait and see what happened to our fictitious president, who still hasn't actually decided whether to engage in political assassination. He thinks he has to ask some questions himself, and he waits until that last minute to do so. That's also in direct opposition to what we have now. We'll also discuss that in Part 3 tomorrow.

Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

In for A Penny, In for A Pound: The New Hostage Situations

You just have to shake your head. It's so reminiscent.

In 1998, at the very cusp of being impeached, Bill Clinton ordered an attempted missile assassination of Osama bin Laden, who apparently was in a meeting in Sudan. Bin Laden, if you recall, tried to blow up the World Trade Center the old fashioned way in 1993 and roughed it up a bit, killing a few people. The missile missed him by ten minutes, though, and he came back to finish the job he started. 9-11 was the result. It killed more than a few people.

Now we have 45, waiting for Nancy Pelosi to deliver the House managers and the actual impeachment charges, coming up any day now. He has made a stunning attack upon perhaps the number two political/military leader of Iran, Gen. Qasem Soleimani, and succeeded. In doing so, we have made a serious step toward becoming the number one purveyor of terrorism in the world.

Of course, 45 never informed anyone about anything, never told Congressional leaders of either party. He was probably paranoid that it might have been leaked to the press, though that's pretty rare (In fact, Scotty Reston of the New York Times knew that Kennedy was about to send a force to Cuba in 1961, the infamous Bay of Pigs Invasion, and JFK asked him to sit on it until it was done. Reston complied. After the disaster--which would lead to the Cuban Missile Crisis--Kennedy admitted that Reston should probably have gone ahead and printed it anyhow.). Never mind, though. Consequences be damned.

Soleimani was a bad guy, yes, but we will pay for this. Count on it. Escalation is guaranteed. There will be a kind of backdoor attack that will be delightfully vengeful in Iran (Remember the shooting down of the Iranian jetliner during the Reagan years? That was apparently done by mistake. No matter: A jetliner was sabotaged over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing a comparable number of Westerners. Measure for measure.). In the meantime, at least emotionally, 45 has made our whole country hostage to his act.

Iran is also getting out of its nuclear deal. Once gone, a new discussion will be impossible, as opposed to what 45 said he wanted. I personally don't believe that and never did; he lied about that as well as he's lying about not wanting a war but stopping one. 45 wants war with Iran to make himself look fantastic. He has a desperate need to put himself in a place in history where no one forgets him. He'll certainly get that.

How could the Democrats remove him now, when he seems so irreplaceable to his faithful? That question will reverberate through 45's favored, filtered media. How could they even consider it?

More to the point: How could any Republican even think about doing anything but whisking the process through a divided Senate in a token, even half-hearted effort to satisfy those who cluck their tongues about due process?

Even more to the point: How will Pelosi manage to keep the country's attention on the process of impeachment proceedings with the ultimate deflection, a rising military commitment to the Middle East (again!), well underway?

Rationality has now been taken hostage, too. It will return if and only if we manage to get 45 out of the White House and reduce Mitch McConnell's power to that of Just Another Senator. Both are necessary. Neither can happen until November, unless John Bolton (a) is allowed to testify and (b) he says something so completely outrageous that at least Republican Senators have no choice but to convict to save the integrity of the chamber--though I can't imagine what that might be at this point to risk getting a primary election shoved in their faces back home.

The other hostage situation is the extent to which Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, an evangelical Christian, and 45 himself believe that God is working through them to expand the influence of Israel just before The Rapture. They are caught without rationality themselves. They will see a wider war as not only inevitable, but necessary. They will see casualties as collateral damage as long as they aren't part of them.

If all of this lures Iran to attack Israel, so much the better. Then the Ultimate Showdown will happen. It's why Pompeo, as opposed to the blustering, belching 45, never has to raise his voice. It's all happening according to The Plan. Watch him. He almost can't avoid grinning.

If you're wondering why 45 is so quickly running to shore up his evangelical base, it's to make the irrational seem rational. After all, not nearly as many of them live in large cities, where attacks are likely to take place (the exception being where the mega-churches stand). The longer all this continues, the closer we stand to such a possibility. They aren't in for a penny, as the British say: They're in for a pound, or in all the way. As actual war approaches, watch for the frenzy to peak. They're being held hostage, too--emotional hostage.

Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark