Who in support of our Democracy can afford to be neutral about a President who appears to be operating on an authoritarian basis using rules of his own? It has been one thing to “let the horse run”, see how he works, and watch what he does. It’s another to turn our back on a hard-won — fought for, died for, paid for — nation devoted to fair play and integrity right beside the principles and spirit that produced our foundational documents.
Admiral McRaven knew his business and his country and what he represented every day as a four-star admiral. That’s not an Obama thing or, particularly a Democratic or Republican thing. It’s an American thing unless the Nation has forgotten why it exists as a unique and now long-lived democracy.
This President shrugs off resignations by the most competitive and experienced professionals in their fields: diplomats, investigators, intelligence executives, military executives, prosecutors. He believes everything we do happens by way of political chicanery and force — or “clevers” — and not much has to do with anything worth believing in, much less dying for.
These pieces by Harbough and McRaven tell of a different America, one more admirable, more noble, more deserving of extraordinary leadership and sacrifice.
Michael White didn’t deny killing Sean Schellenger. He admitted to police and at his trial that he plunged a knife several times into Schellenger’s back during a July 2018 scuffle in Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square. Numerous witnesses and a cellphone video confirmed what happened. Yet in October 2019 a jury acquitted Mr. White, a 22-year-old college student, of voluntary manslaughter. Many, including the victim’s family, blame Larry Krasner, Philadelphia’s soft-on-crime district attorney.
Jennifer Stefano is Vice President of the Commonwealth Foundation, a non-profit free-market think tank. Before joining the Commonwealth Foundation, Jennifer served in numerous leadership roles at Americans for Prosperity and Americans for Prosperity Foundation. The Emmy-nominated former TV reporter and anchor has spent the last decade advocating for public policies that maximize human flourishing and individual freedom.
In good Orwellian fashion, most of America’s WSJ op-ed readers may be expected to grouse through Jennifer Stefano’s truncated portrayal of Michael White’s actions in the death of Sean Schellinger, nod their heads with the template set in the background — young black man (from the ‘hood, right?) kills (hard working) white one (honorably selling real estate) — and move on steaming right along with the coffee on all that’s wrong with America.
Well, BackChannels, having encountered the op-ed via Facebook this morning, chose to have another look at the depiction of the case that Jennifer Stefano used to damn “social justice” (Left / Far Left!) prosecutor Larry Krasner.
Reportage
Authorities say White fatally stabbed 37-year-old Sean Schellenger after a brief but quickly escalating argument at the scene of a minor traffic dispute in Center City. The defense claimed and cell phone video seemed to support that Schellenger was first to attack the knife-wielding White.
Schellenger’s family accused the DA’s office of victim blaming, a complaint that resurfaced throughout the trial from prosecutors themselves. Assistant District Attorney Sherrell Dandy said White’s defense team emphasized the victim’s behavior more than his death. Schellenger’s cocaine use, heavy drinking and even past fights were introduced as evidence against the one person who could not defend himself in court, Dandy said during closing statements.
But White’s supporters argued that he feared for his life after Schellenger threatened to “beat the black off him.”
More than most cases, White’s trial seemed to touch on issues that have long affected the city, such as money, race, and opportunity.
White, a black man who had performed slam poetry and was working as a food courier on the night of the confrontation, testified that Schellenger — the white owner of a real estate company — said, “I’ll beat the black off you” before charging at him and trying to tackle him, causing him to fear for his safety.
After news of the Rittenhouse Square murder and White’s role in it broke, supporters of White took to social media to claim that he was acting in self-defense and to claim he is the “true victim.” White is an engineering student at Morgan University in Baltimore who grew up in Philadelphia and is interested in poetry, according to a Gofundme page he started to fundraise tuition money. He had no reported past arrests.
Schellenger has a criminal history including arrests in Chester County and Florida, including a 2008 arrest in Florida for disorderly conduct, battery and trespassing although charges were later dropped. He was found guilty of disorderly conduct in 2009 in Chester County, and previously charged in Chester County in August 2001 with burglary, resisting arrest, criminal trespassing, and theft, although the verdict in that case was unknown, the Inquirer reported.
The violation of journalism’s golden standard for reporting, “Clear, Accurate, Complete” produced the opportunity for this Bad Bloggie in the Windows. In her op-ed, Jennifer Stefano framed the case for a national audience by leaving out . . . the case. Again, Michael White was black and he done it, totally admitted it, and this soft Officer Krupke Lefty of a prosecutor Krasner made it easy for him to slip away with his crime.
For all anyone but WSJ might know, the Conservative Nodding Head Chorus may have bought it.
Next item, please, and another croissant.
Ah, but the American Press is free, vigorous, and decidedly not fake!
Gotcha!
Assailant gets out of his car. Black guy’s got a bicycle and a knife (c’mon, it’s Philly), and what he hears from the white guy about to charge him: “I’ll beat the black of you.”
After years of Iranian provocations directly and through proxies, America’s defense machinery returned fire in no uncertain terms. President Trump’s order was no subtle back alley “hit” involving a dimly lit peripheral figure among the state’s proxies or some obscure but critical figure engaged in rocketry and nuclear arms development. Qassim Soleimani was Tehran’s top general and (second) most vigorous master of the levers and tools of the state’s diplomacy and conflict-inducing and war-fighting capacity. His taunt as quoted by The New York Times, “We are near you, where you can’t even imagine. We are ready. We are the man of this arena” was his invitation to his kind of party.
Washington will wake up later this morning to . . . what? “Heightened tensions with Iran”?
Call it what the strike represented: war.
BackChannels, ever strident and stubbornly independent, suggests that Left / Far Left Democrats and Always Right / Far Right Republicans should both can their bitter and frequently counterproductive and surreal partisan sandbox fight and take a moment to consider together the many acts of terror sponsored by Tehran, including attacks on American forces, the harangues and threats against the Democratic Liberalism of the West — and nonstop threats promising the annihilation of Israel, the seizing over many years of British patrol and other sea craft, and most of all the barbarism — the inhumanity — meted to all within and beyond Iran who have been abused, murdered, and subjugated by the regime.
No civic-minded American, nor anyone else in the world, need miss this historic day’s process, so take here BackChannel’s relay with an appropriate tonic: high-speed Internet has made journalism’s “second-row seat to history” — what I once called news-watching at the desktop — a front-row sport.
“If a president undermining our national security and using the federal government for his own selfish personal gain is not impeachable conduct, then, Madam Speaker, I don’t know what is,” said Representative Jim McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts and chairman of the House Rules Committee.
Representative Jeff Flake jumped the gunwales of the Republican Ship as it swung toward the rocky coast of Trumpian Autocracy. For his conscience and his faith in the American and western liberal project, it must have looked better to swim off alone than stay aboard to go along and get along with the New Boss so apparently fond of unsavory associates. However, it appears that some left behind have been driven to mutiny outright — and God bless ’em!
“Patriotism and the survival of our nation in the face of the crimes, corruption and corrosive nature of Donald Trump are a higher calling than mere politics,” the founders of the Lincoln Project wrote in a New York Times opinion piece published Tuesday. “As Americans, we must stem the damage he and his followers are doing to the rule of law, the Constitution and the American character.”
BackChannels strongly suggests the Lincoln Project connect with Malcolm Nance ASAP to reestablish radically moderate Democratic and Republican positions in a way that both competes the Parties while assuring Americans of desired progress, prosperity, and security in either direction and in keeping with the bedrock of American ideals, freedoms, principles, privileges, and values.
The Bull has been gored and The Party is bellowing, which it does through denial, obfuscation, nitpicking, and ridicule — and for what it does to defend its Reality-Defying / Reality-Evading Highness — and does so badly and baldly — it has now made a habit of treating moderate, independently observant, and thinking Republican voters with contempt.
Fox 10 Phoenix, December 9, 2019.
BackChannels’ view: The IG report has been accepted on major observations while “irregularities” have been regarded by Trump’s opposition as minor “nits”. Nonetheless, the GOP’s bull has been gored, and The Party has been bellowing about what it may deny but cannot change.
I’ll go further here: The Republicans, who for fear of The Donald may well be referred to as “The Party (Sycophantic)” — they have earned that much — appear to have become the Party of Power (Now Matter What — and Absolute) while the Democrats have soldiered on to become the Party of the American People (Empathizing, Listening, Watching, Reasoning, Judging).
Notwithstanding the justified concern over aspects of the FBI’s use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to investigate onetime Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, make no mistake: The dual headlines of Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report are: 1) the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia was adequately “predicated,” i.e., had a lawful factual basis, and 2) no agent acted out of animus toward President Trump or his campaign.
Those two findings should put to rest persistent allegations from Trump and his champions that the bureau’s scrutiny of the contacts with Russia was illegal or, worse, a plot of the “deep state” to derail his candidacy. And whatever valid beefs Page may have with the investigation, they have nothing to do with Trump.
The grammar-school-civics-class version of our Revolution is that it was a rebellion against monarchical tyranny, and that in framing our Constitution, one of the preoccupations, the main preoccupation of the Founders, was to keep the executive weak,” Barr told the audience. “This is misguided.” Instead, Barr advocates for what is known as the “unitary executive theory,” which challenges the long-established doctrine that the president’s control over his branch of government is shared, to some degree, with Congress and the courts. “Whenever I see a court opinion that uses the word share,” Barr said, “I want to run in the other direction.” Critics say that in its maximalist form, the theory is a license for authoritarianism — a concern that Barr dismissed with ridicule.
If the observations were less than cogent, frank, honest, and prescient, I’d have to make them myself.
🙂
The Bull has been gored and The Party is bellowing, which it does through denial, obfuscation, nitpicking, and ridicule — and for what it does to defend its Reality-Defying / Reality-Evading Highness — and does so badly and baldly — it has now made a habit of treating moderate, independently observant, and thinking Republican voters with contempt.
” Trump’s ex-Russia advisor Fiona Hill blasts Ukraine election interference conspiracy theory”, Los Angeles Times, and posted to YouTube November 21, 2019.
As we know, the Grinch is a cartoon. So is the Trump administration’s view of life in America. In this cartoon version, everyone has access to well-paying full-time jobs that can support a family. Those jobs are plentiful even for those who lack education, transportation, and skills, or have criminal records. In this cartoon country, the only people who don’t take advantage of this prosperity are just too lazy and prefer to live as dependent on the largess of the federal government.
Fariborz Pakseresht, Oregon’s Department of Human Services director, said the rule change would make things worse “for those already facing difficult circumstances.”
“It also will result in an increased burden on food banks and other community resources to fill the void,” Pakseresht said.
As BackChannels — in fair blogger fashion — tries to knock out posts in hours as opposed to weeks, the quick look-see into themes produces impressions and summations but on the outside of the machinery.
Nonetheless — the tea leaves:
The Trump Administration’s stance with regard to the decay of the American street is that it would rather not see it, and it appears to believe that what is unseemly may be plainly hounded, starved, or threatened out of existence — or, eventually, thrown into Federal camps or prisons. Its actions, policies, and “vision” have each tended tend toward the promotion of greater desperation for America’s afflicted, marginalized, and struggling souls.
In addition, the Trump Administration’s War on the Poor this Christmas / Solstice Season hardly stops with the latest food stamp debacle. “Medicaid Work Requirements”, a draconian ploy certain to enserf the more miserable and altogether vulnerable of Americans, has been strongly contested by physicians and advocates for the poor. Other Dickensian steps take by the Administration have included deep cuts in Public Housing and Public Transportation budgets, both increasing the discomfort of America’s poorer citizens while threatening their independence as well (at least from the Federal standpoint — states have budgets too, and not all of the 50 are so dumb in relation to providing basic transportation services).
In California, the Trumpian State has been playing tug-of-war with the state’s ability to keep the most vulnerable of its citizens off the streets. Predictably, the President has withheld funding for housing vouchers that would reach some 50,000 souls, according to Governor Gavin Newsom.
One state noted — 49 to go — but here BackChannels may choose to listen to related complaints than dwell in the Patch of Social Issues with other than blog-like focus.
Cuts to Public Housing and Public Transportation Budgets
For HUD, the budget requests $44.1 billion in discretionary funding, a 16.4 percent decrease from 2019 funding levels. For DoT, the budget requests $21.4 billion in discretionary spending, a 22 percent decrease from 2019 funding levels.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) – In the latest skirmish over California’s homeless crisis, the state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, asked President Donald Trump on Thursday to stop withholding federal housing vouchers that could benefit 50,000 homeless people.
The adjectives come easily enough: autocratic, authoritarian, bombastic, bullying, capricious, dictatorial, disingenuous, imperious, etc. The same may be wrapped into one unifying wrapper: “malignantly narcissistic”.
The case fits the object that has become America’s most unrelieved subject of interest.
Posted to YouTube by Daroslaw Toorek, August 23, 2018.
There once was a day in which the power of the sovereign was precisely the power to destroy property or persons — or both — with impunity, and that same power would have been defended by barbaric, cruel, and ruthless machination and violence provided the sovereign could assemble the compacts and raise the army and security necessary to rule by force — or, as above, take care of business himself.
Ours is not that day — or at least not that day in the liberal and open democracies of the west — and very much not a day to be welcomed back.
In the parallel and surreal universe opposed to the west and marching forward into the past, however, the politically absolute may continue to deceive and gas light their hapless populations while making themselves — precisely: their “glory” (rather the effects) of their own brutality mistaken for virtue — of primary importance beneath the dispassionate gaze of God, nature, and the universe. From their most on-high positions, each will violate every last aspect of conscience by lying most freely, destroying most wantonly, thieving most brazenly, and, generally serving themselves most of all without restraint.
And why not if each malignantly narcissistic personality can seize the kind of self-glorifying power dreamed of for itself and achieve — true to form — “unlimited narcissistic supply”?
Posted by Bloomberg Politics to YouTube, November 21, 2019.
One might suggest that Putin, Assad, Khamenei, and, sigh, of late, Erdogan, and Orban, at least, have been living within or toward deeply retrograde dreams, but while empire, dictatorship, theocracy, and dynasty may prevail for Russians, Syrians, Iranians, Turks, and Hungarians, the same will not for Ukrainians — or Americans — for whom medieval power is no longer wanted, need be no longer tolerated, and will be resisted — and that, God willing, to the end of time.
Regarding President Trump
Count the now felonious associates (if you can); take in the bankruptcies and stiffed subcontractors; count the marriages (add in the lovers and spice with the “Grab ’em . . .” remark); consider the cruelty of the betrayals, including the firing of long-term alien labor right along with the tragic Michael Cohen’s sore abuse; think about the lies, especially having to do with his (denied) Russian relationships.
The BackChannels process has turned out one that might be distilled to “collect” (media), “select” (quotations, references, videos), and “opine” — i.e., stand on the virtual Hyde Park soap box and declaim. Be that as it may, here are a few of the more notable “moments” in text 🙂 provided by references noted.
“So often, the president would say, ‘Here’s what I want you to do, and here’s how I want you to do it,’ ” Tillerson said at a fundraiser for the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
“And I would have to say to him, ‘Mr. President, I understand what you want to do. But you can’t do it that way. It violates the law,’ ” he said.
Once Mr. Trump treated the military with a level of reverence that he extends to few other American institutions. Peppering his cabinet with retired senior officers enabled him to allay the concerns within the Republican Party about his own lack of experience and preparedness for the role of president. He has spoken admiringly of “my generals” and talked about those who looked the part.
“They were like from a movie,” he said on Wednesday, describing a recent Pentagon briefing. “Better looking than Tom Cruise, and stronger.”
. . . Mattis and Tillerson had together smothered some of Trump’s more extreme and imprudent ideas. But now Mattis was operating without cover. Trump was turning on him publicly; two months earlier, he had speculated that Mattis might be a Democrat and said, in reference to NATO, “I think I know more about it than he does.” (Mattis, as a Marine general, once served as the supreme allied commander in charge of NATO transformation.)
WASHINGTON — When President Trump’s top advisers on Ukraine gathered in the Oval Office in May, Trump gave them a simple, clear directive: “Talk to Rudy.”
Since then, a mountain of evidence has emerged to show just how deeply Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney with no official government role, penetrated American diplomacy toward Ukraine — and turned it toward pressing the country to announce an investigation of Democrat Joe Biden.
BackChannels 