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crime and punishment national politics & policies

Frisky Friends

“WOW, BLOOMBERG IS A TOTAL RACIST!” tweeted President Donald J. Trump.

He was reacting to a recording, recently unearthed, of Democratic presidential aspirant Michael Bloomberg speaking to the Aspen Institute in 2015 about his controversial “stop-​and-​frisk” police policy while mayor of New York City.

“Ninety-​five percent of your murders, murderers and murder victims fit one M.O.,” Bloomberg told his audience. “You can just take the description, Xerox it and pass it out to all the cops. They are male, minorities, 16 to 25.… that’s where the real crime is.”

“And the way you get the guns out of the kids’ hands,” explained Mayor Mike, “is to throw them up against the wall and frisk them.”

Bloomberg has since apologized for targeting young male minorities to be regularly detained, searched, harassed and thrown into walls by police on the basis of nothing more than being young male minorities. Ultimately, a federal court struck down Bloomberg’s program as an unconstitutional mass violation of Fourth Amendment rights. 

“We did it in New York, it worked incredibly well and you have to be proactive and, you know, you really help people sort of change their mind automatically,” Trump argued in 2016, floating a national roll-​out and defending Bloomberg as “a very good mayor.” 

Back in 2009, Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Trump were together on something else: Bloomberg disregarding a campaign promise and defying two clear citywide referendums to run for a third mayor term.

“Well, I’m not a believer in term limits,” Trump said then, adding, “Michael is a friend of mine.”

Funny, asked about then-​Sen. Hillary Clinton, Trump offered, “I think she’s a wonderful women,” but “she’s a little bit misunderstood.”

Not long after posting the racist-​baiting tweet noted above, the president deleted it.

We understand.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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national politics & policies

Much Ado in D.C.

The impeachment trial of President Donald J. Trump began yesterday, after much stalling by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who had postponed sending the House impeachment documents to the Senate after the finalization of the impeachment vote a month ago. Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts swore in the assembled senators — 99 of 100 signed their oaths — and a schedule was announced.

The question of new documents and testimony remains a bit up in the air. “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says a federal watchdog’s report on President Donald Trump’s freeze of aid to Ukraine makes it more important for Congress to get new testimony and documents,” according to the Associated Press. Seems odd that a trial would require more information than was present in the original indictment, er, impeachment, but I’m no scholar of the legality of this issue.

I do remember the last presidential impeachment.

And it was a real partisan — indeed, all-​around — let-​down. 

Interestingly, that trial was held around the time Bill Clinton was to give 1999’s State of the Union address. And he gave it, indeed, in the midst of the whole brouhaha. 

Defiantly.

What will President Trump do? What should he do?

I don’t know. But I know what would be fun: deliver it via Twitter.

The Constitution, as I’ve noted before, does not specify a format of the annual presentation before Congress. Thomas Jefferson wrote it out and had it delivered. No speech at all.

But the idea of the Twitterer-​in-​Chief tweeting it and even not correcting the spelling errors? Priceless.

He could end with “Covfefe.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Impeachment Day, 2020

“The difference between this and parody?” asked Loserthink author Scott Adams, referring to Adam Schiff’s latest rationale for impeaching the president. His answer: no difference

“It’s completely merged.”

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D‑Cal.), repeating a theme he had been pushing all week on talk shows, had tweeted to explain why the Democrats “had to move forward with articles of impeachment:

The threat persists. 

The plot goes on.

And Trump’s efforts to cheat in the next election will never stop.

The President — and his lawyer — continue to make the case for his own removal.

Scott Adams found it impossible not to see this as an appeal to ‘pre-​crime’ to distract us from the paucity of evidence the two impeachment committees had collated. 

After yesterday’s deed had been done, Schiff castigated Republicans for failing to vote for the “historic” impeachment. “They have made their choice and I believe they will rue the day that they did.” 

Adams thinks it will be Schiff to rue Impeachment Day, 2020. By genius or luck, President Trump has egged Democrats to do the one thing that will help him most: play Bad Boy and survive impeachment, making Democrats look ridiculous in the process.

He knows it: “It doesn’t really feel like we’re being impeached,” Mr. Trump said as the impeachment votes were tallied in the House, using the Majestic Plural. 

Only if the Senate convicts Trump will this scenario not help the president. 

“We” for Trump refers (obviously) to himself and the people … who voted for him.

But he had made a more telling remark earlier: “I’m the only politician in history that have [sic] kept more promises than I made.” 

Impossible? Sure. 

But funny.

The president’s Yogi Berra-​ism was deliberately hyperbolic.

The Democrats’ form of comedy seems . . . less advertent.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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national politics & policies partisanship Popular

Between the Devil and the Deep State, See?

“If it turns out that impeachment has no sting, has no bite,” exasperated Princeton University professor Eddie Glaude, Jr., speculated on Meet the Press, “and we are in the aftermath, what it will mean is that there will be an unlimited, an imperial, executive branch that can do whatever it wants to do.”*

Per the “imperial presidency, actually, that ship sailed a while ago,” the American Enterprise Institute’s Danielle Pletka quickly responded. 

“I mean, it was a problem under George W. Bush. It was a growing problem under Obama. And it has come to its apotheosis under Donald Trump.”

There appears a left-​right consensus among TV chatterers that, a Constitution of enumerated federal powers notwithstanding, the president can “do whatever [he] wants to do.” 

But considering what we are learning about “the interagency” machinations to take down the current imperator, the imperial guard may be as big a problem. 

Last week, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz released his report on the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign, code-​named “Crossfire Hurricane.” Though the IG did not find conclusive evidence that political bias inspired the launch of the investigation, he did detail “many basic and fundamental errors” that “raised significant questions” … adding portentously, “we also did not receive satisfactory explanations for the errors or problems we identified.”

“[A]s as the probe went on,” reported The Washington Post, “FBI officials repeatedly decided to emphasize damaging information they heard about Trump associates, and play down exculpatory evidence they found.”

The evidence piles up: Washington is dangerously out of control, and our career-​politician Congress can only muster to provide a constitutional check on the flimsiest grounds and partisan manner.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


* Somehow Professor Glaude seems to have forgotten President Bill Clinton, who reached his highest ever public approval rating — 73 percent — in the aftermath of his 1998 impeachment by the then-​Republican-​controlled House. Been there, done that.

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insider corruption

Another Impeachable Offense?

“Do me a favor: start buying agriculture.” 

That’s what President Donald J. Trump says he said to the Chinese in agreeing to Phase One of a U.S.-China trade deal.

Now, if China starts buying more American agricultural products, Trump might be aided in defeating his Democratic opponents next November.

“The biggest winners in the China trade deal announced Friday appear to be a key part of President Trump’s voter base: U.S. farmers,” Jon Healey wrote in the Los Angeles Times. “There’s nothing wrong with that, because Trump’s political interests coincide with U.S. national interests.”

But when President Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for a favor, back during the now-​infamous July phone call, a whole lot of people concluded that Trump’s desire to “get to the bottom” of the Bidens’ pungent possible corruption in Ukraine was not a harmony of interests between Trump and Americans.

Last week, his biggest critics on the House Judiciary Committee passed two articles of impeachment against him, alleging (1) that he abused his power in delaying the aid Congress had appropriated for Ukraine in order to push the Ukrainians to open up an investigation of Hunter Biden and Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company that hired him, and (2) obstruction of Congress, for refusing to adequately respond to congressional subpoenas.

An investigation launched by Ukraine into former Vice-​President Joe Biden’s son would certainly be news — bad for Biden, currently the leading Democratic rival to the president; good for Trump.

But is such an investigation warranted

Surely Americans who voted for Trump to “drain the Swamp” would think corruption is always worth investigating. 

The Swamp — along with many good Americans — disagrees.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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media and media people

Zucker’s Scold

It was in bad taste.

The “meme” — an altered video — depicted extreme, murderous violence. But it was not “weaponized” as  incitement to real violence; it was, instead, “memeticized” contempt against the meme’s “victims,” the full panoply of media outlets along with a few iconic politicians.

The video was very popular over the weekend on social media. It took the church massacre scene from the first Kingsman movie, but with President Trump’s head placed over Colin Firth’s visage, crudely in “meme” fashion, and a few other heads put over other actors’, and the logos of major news outlets superimposed over most of the movie’s victims’ heads.

Cartoonish, yes, but done with élan.

Brooke Baldwin, however, is a paid agent of billionaire president of CNN, Jeff Zucker, and she has her marching orders, as revealed this week by a Project Veritas scoop. So she lit into the president in high moral dudgeon: “Mr. President, why is it taking you so long to condemn this video? You tweet all the time. I don’t want to hear from your press secretary … who says you strongly condemn the video … I want to hear from YOU.”

What Ms. Baldwin and her boss don’t get is that a growing swath of the American populace does not want to hear from a news reporter scolding demands that the president “condemn” things he had nothing to do with.

Trump didn’t make the meme, after all, nor had it made for him. 

Brooke Baldwin’s effrontery shows why someone might make a meme like the one in question. 

Not because you deserve to be killed, Ms. Baldwin, but because you deserve derision.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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