#^d 2019-03-02 #^h Weekend Roundup
Three fairly major stories dominated the news this past week: Trump walking away from his summit with North Korea's Kim Jong Un without even making a serious proposal or showing any interest in long-range peace; Michael Cohen's congressional testimony, where he made a case that his own crimes were directed by Trump; and Trump's "free-form" speech at CPAC's annual convention. We'll take these in order, then conclude with the leftovers, including some stories that are actually bigger and more ominous than the headline grabbers: a dangerous border skirmish between nuclear powers India and Pakistan, US escalation against Venezuela, the impending indictment of Israeli PM Netanyahu, the usual gamut of Washington scandals, and some hopeful legislation that Democrats are introducing (and campaigning on).
Some links on Korea and the summit failure:
Jason Ditz:
Fred Kaplan: Love can't buy a nuclear deal: "Trump and Kim failed to reach a breakthrough in Hanoi. For now, that may be for the best." It bothers me a lot when otherwise astute observers say things like this. War is so horrific no one should ever argue that walking back from the peace table is a good thing. What this really shows is that Kaplan, like so many American "experts," doesn't see costs and risks to perpetuating the status quo, especially the cruel sanctions regime. In the lead up to the summit, I didn't bother citing the many pessimistic forecasts, like Kaplan's own Trump's bargaining position with Kim Jong-un is unbelievably weak. Kaplan is half right about that, in that there is virtually nothing the US can do to force North Korea to capitulate. On the other hand, the US has one great asymmetric advantage, in that we know that Kim's "nuclear threat" is mere bluff, while US sanctions cause real pain with little or no cost or risk. I could expand on this much more, but right now don't have the time or stomach. But I will leave you with two points: one is that Trump is exceptionally capable of negotiating a realistic deal with Kim because he identifies with strong dictators and has no inclination to judge them morally (also because he doesn't have any compelling graft not to deal, as he has with Iran, Yemen, and Venezuela); the other is that this summit demonstrates a common thread in Trump's foreign policy, which is his utter contempt and callousness in all his dealings with the world.
Jen Kirby: North Korea contradicts Trump on the reason a summit deal fell through.
Jeffrey Lewis:
Anyone could have seen Trump's failure in Hanoi coming. Except Trump.
When President Richard M. Nixon opened relations with China, he did not demand that Mao Zedong abandon the bomb. Mao would simply have refused, and the historic moment would have been lost. Trump faces the same fundamental choice. If he does not accept the reality that we now live with a nuclear-armed North Korea, then we are doomed to the collapse of negotiations, and perhaps even a return to the terror of 2017, punctuated with Trump's taunts of "Rocket Man" and boasts about whose button is bigger.
The real North Korea summit is inside the Trump Administration.
Jon Schwarz: Breakdown in Hanoi Summit shows the real danger on the Korean Peninsula: Donald Trump's America.
Alex Ward: Trump is missing his opportunity to press Kim Jong Un on human rights: On the other hand, Kim missed the opportunity to press Trump on same.
Robin Wright: After all the swagger, Trump's talks with North Korea collapse.
Some links on Cohen and this week in the "witchhunt":
Natasha Bertrand: Michael Cohen's road map for Democrats.
Isaac Chotiner: A legal editor on what we learned from Michael Cohen's Congressional testimony: Interview with Quinta Jurecic, managing editor of Lawfare.
Maureen Dowd: The sycophant and the sociopath.
David Frum: Uncontradicted: "Republicans on the House Oversight Committee impugned the integrity of Trump's former lawyer -- but failed to defend the president from his key charges."
Jen Kirby: Michael Cohen: I probably threatened people for Trump hundreds of times.
Andrew Prokop: What Michael Cohen's testimony means for the Russia investigation.
Emily Stewart:
Why the answers Michael Cohen gave to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's questions mattered: "AOC got Cohen to name names -- and help build a case for getting Trump's tax returns."
And some links on Trump and this year's CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) orgy:
Aida Chávez: At Conservative conference, speakers were obsessed with the Socialist bogeyman.
Jane Coaston: CPAC 2019 reveals a base in thrall to Trump.
Andrew Kragie: The 7 most bewildering moments from Trump's CPAC speech.
Olivia Nuzzi: Self-care is a self-celebration for Trump at CPAC.
Aaron Rupar: CPAC speakers keep saying Democrats want to ban cows and legalize infanticide. They don't.
Amanda Sakuma: The 7 most bizarre moments from Trump's long-winded CPAC rant.
Still more scattered links this week:
Matthew Yglesias: Bernie Sanders is poised to open up a painful intraparty debate about Israel.
Michael A Cohen: Mitch McConnell, Republican nihilist. Wish I could also share Fintan O'Toole: The King and I, a review of Chris Christie's Let Me Finish and Cliff Sims' Team of Vipers (locked behind paywall).
Rachel M Cohen: Labor unions are skeptical of the Green New Deal, and they want activists to hear them out.
David Dayen: It might be time for a "War Dogs" sequel: Report on a Defense contractor TransDigm Group, which a recent report revealed "'earned excess profit' on nearly every parts contract it made with the Defense Department."
David A Graham: Trump aides keep writing memos to protect themselves: "Their urge to document the president's requests and interactions is justified by his behavior."
Greg Grandin: How the Right is using Venezuela to reorder politics: "The social-democratic wing of the Democratic Party must find a way to put forth a compelling counter-vision."
Maggie Haberman: et al.: Trump ordered officials to give Jared Kushner a security clearance: Not much of a story, but much cited this week. Kushner eventually got his clearance, and nobody seems to know exactly why it took so long -- in his position, it should have been automatic (not that he ever should have gotten the job). So the interest now seems to be catching Trump in another bald-faced lie (video link included).
Murtaza Hussain: Trump and Brexit proved this book prophetic -- what calamity will befall us next?: Interview with Martin Gurri, author of The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium (2014). For a flavor, here are the pull quotes:
"The year 2011 proved to be the moment of phase change, when digital anger passed over into political action."
"Elites currently seem to be more concerned with re-establishing their distance from the public than with reforming the system or restoring their own authority. They equate legitimacy with clinging to the top of the pyramid."
"When you abolish history, you lose your memory and it's like you've had a stroke. That condition can lead you to do crazy things."
"If we select the elites, we can un-select them. When it comes to politics, we can support politicians who fit into the digital age and are willing to compress the pyramid and dwell closer to the public."
Jen Kirby: Trump delays more tariffs on China in hopes of a trade deal breakthrough.
Sarah Kliff: Medicare-for-all: Rep. Pramila Jayapal's new bill, explained. Related: Ryan Grim:: The special interests behind Rep. Pramila Jayapal's Medicare for All bill are not the usual suspects.
Paul Krugman: Socialism and the self-made woman: "What Ivanka Trump doesn't know about social mobility."
O.K., this was world-class lack of self-awareness: It doesn't get much better than being lectured on self-reliance by an heiress whose business strategy involves trading on her father's name. But let's go beyond the personal here. We know a lot about upward mobility in different countries, and the facts are not what Republicans want to hear. . . .
Look, Ms. Trump is surely right in asserting that most of us want a country in which there is the potential for upward mobility. But the things we need to do to ensure that we are that kind of country -- the policies that are associated with high levels of upward mobility around the world -- are exactly the things Republicans denounce as socialism.
Elie Mystal: Running the Democratic primary through 'Trump Country' is the road to defeat: "Yes, we're looking at you, Bernie Sanders." Basically says don't waste your breath on the deplorables, or anyone else who lives in parts where they're statistically significant -- in effect, arguing that demography is destiny, and going even further than Clinton in admitting that Democrats have nothing to offer people who aren't part of their focus groups. Dismisses Sanders as "just the most prominent white man in the race right now." Adds that: "Both Trump and Sanders campaigns could be read as promising to put a white man 'back on top,' where he always thinks he belongs." As if any differences between the two pale in comparison to checking a couple of boxes on census forms.
Nomi Prins: Survival of the richest: "All are equal, except those who aren't."
Corey Robin: Why has it taken us so long to see Trump's weakness? Robin blames the "Historovox" (a word I hope never to hear of again):
Perhaps the answer lies in a new genre of journalism that forgoes the pedestrian task of reporting the news in favor of explaining it through the lens of academic research. Ensconced at Vox, FiveThirtyEight, dedicated pages of the Washington Post and the New York Times, and across Twitter, the explainers place great stock in the authority of scholarship -- and in journalists who know how to wield the authority of scholars. This genre first arose under the roseate glow of Obama, reflecting the White House's warm embrace of science and smarts. Now, in the age of Trump, it's less a happy affirmation of wonks and geeks than an anxious cry of the Resistance. Being smart, honoring research, favoring truth: These are the emblems of the world Trump wants to destroy and that the explainers wish to preserve. . . .
Short-term interests and partisan concerns still drive reporting and commentary. But where the day's news once would have been narrated as a series of events, the Historovox brings together those events in a pseudo-academic frame that treats them as symptoms of deeper patterns and long-term developments. Unconstrained by the protocols of academe or journalism, but drawing on the authority of the first for the sake of the second, the Historovox skims histories of the New Deal or rifles through abstracts of meta-analysis found in JSTOR to push whatever the latest line happens to be.
It's not hard to think of suspect examples -- indeed, most of the efforts to sketch Trump into the long histories of fascism or populism miss more than they discover, much like the efforts to psychoanalyze Trump as a sociopath -- but everyone brings some framework to their observations, and it's usually better to have one that's tested and coherent, rather than just falling for whatever PR slant most tickles your fancy. I, for one, have found Vox exceptionally useful since Trump became president. They do a relatively good job of summarizing news and putting it into a context that is historical and scientific, and their political slant isn't unpalatable (not that I don't find bones to pick). On the other hand, I've found The Nation (which should be closer to my politics) to be nearly useless (except for Tom Engelhardt's remarkable TomDispatch, and whatever Mike Konczal contributes).
Jon Schwarz: CNN hires Trump official who used same anti-press rhetoric as man who sent bombs to CNN.
Richard Silverstein: Both of these articles were occasioned by Netanyahu's decision to bring the ultra-right Kahanist political movement into his governing coalition:
American Jewry must break with Judeo-Nazism:
American Jewish groups have rightly condemned the new merger. But almost all have refused to name or condemn the author of this atrocity, Netanyahu. . . . In case anyone needs any further proof of Netanyahu's fascist proclivities, look no further than Europe, where he's cultivated not just the worst of the far-right parties, but outright anti-Semites like Hungary's Viktor Orban and Poland's Law and Justice Party. These are parties which unabashedly worship a national past in which fascism and Jew-hating were rampant. Even worse, the modern successors have developed a bad case of historical amnesia about these proclivities.
John Sipher: Putin's one weapon: The 'intelligence state': "Russia's leader has restored the role its intelligence agencies had in the Soviet era -- keep citizens in check and destabilize foreign adversaries." As noted, the role of the secret police dates back to the Tsars. It's always been justified by the presumed weakness of the nation and state, something it tends to perpetuate.
Emily Stewart: Sen. Brian Schatz will introduce a new bill to tax stock trades and curb high-frequency trading.
Matt Taibbi: This battle of billionaires was inevitable: "A surprise decision over a Pentagon contract seems like the latest volley in a war between President Trump and Jeff Bezos." Billionaires will always be jealous of one another, but the main interest here is an open-ended contract to turn management of the DOD's cloud computing over to a private contractor, under rules that curiously exclude all competitors other than Amazon.
Alexia Underwood:
The recent spike in tensions between India and Pakistan, explained. Related: Rafia Zakaria: War-weary Pakistan is ready for peace: "As peace rallies were being held in Pakistan, much of the media in India were pushing for war." Also: Pankaj Mishra: India and Pakistan are already at war on truth; and Robert Fisk: Israel is playing a big role in India's escalating conflict with Pakistan.
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu to be indicted on bribery charges pending hearing. More: What Netanyahu's indictment means politically.
Peter Wade: Police who shot Stephon Clark will not be charged, District Attorney announces.
Mark Weisbrot: Trump's other 'national emergency': Sanctions that kill Venezuelans: "The humanitarian crisis will get rapidly worse if the most recent sanctions continue."
Li Zhou: The Senate just confirmed a former coal lobbyist to lead the EPA: "Three things to know about Andrew Wheeler."