For the Record: Miller Bringing Back the "China Virus"

 

Trump sold foreign policy to the PRC for less than $20K. https://t.co/hBnMdg0KZR pic.twitter.com/jtvEr4MclF

— Yas We Can (@Yastreblyansky) November 15, 2022

Because he didn't think it was going to be that serious, except sometimes. pic.twitter.com/d4DLPsc0qX

— Yas We Can (@Yastreblyansky) November 15, 2022

Green Lanternism

 

I've never been an aficionado of the Green Lantern, and one of the things I didn't know about him, or them, since there is apparently a whole Green Lantern lineage, sometimes coexisting in an intergalactic Green Lantern Corps managed by the Guardians of the Universe, was this thing in the earlier phases of development in which his magic power ring didn't protect him from attacks with wood, or vegetable matter in general. This is blamed on the very first Green Lantern, or first one on Earth at any rate, in ancient China, one Yalan Gur. Wikipedia explains,

Power ultimately corrupted this early Green Lantern, as he attempted to rule over mankind, which forced the Guardians to cause his ring to manifest a weakness to wood, the material from which most Earth weapons of the time were fashioned. This allowed the Chinese peasants to ultimately defeat their corrupted "champion". His ring and lantern were burned and it was during this process that the "intelligence" inhabiting the ring and the lantern and linking them to the Guardians was damaged.

And the ring and lantern retained this wood vulnerability when they were picked up by the original American Green Lantern, Alan Scott, but it didn't transfer to his successors, beginning in 1959 (Hal Jordan's lantern was vulnerable to the color yellow instead, and the entire topos of Kryptonite knockoffs eventually disappeared from the series).

This story sheds a whole new light on the Green Lantern Theory of the Presidency, a popular myth discovered by Dartmouth professor Brendan Nyhan, as Ezra Klein reported it in Vox in 2014:

For the Record: Weak

Little Marco. Photo by Greg Nash/Getty via David Frum's impeachment piece from Wednesday in The Atlantic.

One of the things really striking me in the course of the impeachment proceedings was the appalling personal weakness of those tough-guy pro-Liberty Republican senators, which we often don't see because they have so much ability—I won't call it "power"—to make everything worse. It may sound like a paradox, but it's an ability born of failure, and impotence, and inability to rise to an occasion, and it got me ranting:  

Then what the fuck is it good for. Congress should be the branch that guarantees democracy. I don't want soft legislators like you getting pushed around by loony dictators because oh the Constitution didn't give me explicit permission. Jesus Christ you're pathetic.

— Chase Me Ladies I'm on the Calvary (@Yastreblyansky) February 14, 2021

"I'd love to do something about the psychopath who drove a murderous mob to trash my building and kill people who work here but oh my stars I'm not sure if the Constitution wants me to so I'd better play with my fucking phone instead."

How can you be so little and not ashamed?

— Chase Me Ladies I'm on the Calvary (@Yastreblyansky) February 14, 2021

And then there was Mitch McConnell, explaining how he knows Trump is guilty but doesn't think it's proper for him to do anything about it. Of course we know (I think Steve was the first to clarify this for me) what he really means, which is that his political position requires him to say both that Trump is guilty (for the suburbans) and that he's not guilty (for the rustics) and so by God he'll say both regardless of the contradiction, but the logic he used in his remarks showed what a loser he really is, and got me going:

The End is Nearer

.

I'm in the odd position of being happy to say Jonah Goldberg is right: the reason DHS goons were sent to Portland in their camos and unmarked vehicles wasn't to protect federal property, as the administration claimed, or to rehearse a fascist takeover of the country after he loses the election, as some have said on the left, but just an effort to get some good video of Trump taking care of some "chaos in the streets" for use in campaign ads and the Republican convention.

That's demonstrated by the ease with which they've slipped away:

For days, as fireworks and tear gas erupted in the streets of Portland, Ore., during the deployment of federal tactical teams cracking down on raucous demonstrations, President Trump campaigned against protesters he described as “sick and deranged anarchists & agitators” who he said had threatened to leave Portland “burned and beaten to the ground.”

But even as the president was doubling down, Vice President Mike Pence and other senior administration officials were negotiating an agreement with Oregon’s governor, Kate Brown, to begin withdrawing the federal tactical teams from Portland.

On Wednesday, Ms. Brown announced that the federal law enforcement agents guarding the federal courthouse in downtown Portland would begin withdrawing as early as Thursday. “We know where we are headed,” she said. “Complete withdrawal of federal troops from the city and the state.”

Federal officials confirmed an agreement but hedged on the timing, cautioning that a departure would depend on the success of the state’s promise to secure the area.

That last looks like a wary nod to the one unhappy camper, President Trump, who doesn't like people suggesting that he's ever quit anything—

.@FoxNews reported incorrectly what the Federal Government is doing with respect to Portland. We are demanding that the Governor & Mayor do their job or we will do it for them. To complicated to discuss in a Tweet, but bad reporting by Fox (possibly on purpose!). @DHSgov

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 29, 2020

—but it's pretty clear he did, or the courtiers did it for him, after realizing that Trump's mercenary force mowing down the Wall of Moms or the Wall of Vets was not going to be a good look.

There also seems to be some alteration in  the planned withdrawal of 12,000 US troops, about a third of the force, from Germany that Trump ordered in June without telling the Germans about it, because he hates Chancellor Merkel, or because he persists in believing Germany doesn't pay its "fees", as if NATO were a golf club membership

"Germany's delinquent. They haven't paid their fees, they haven't paid their NATO fees," Trump told Wednesday reporters outside the White House, even though no such "fees" exist for members of NATO. "Germany owes billions and billions of dollars to NATO. And why would we keep all of those troops there?"

forcing Defense Secretary Mike Esper to invent a different reason

The Pentagon chief cast the decision to cut U.S. forces in Germany as the result of a months-long review of American deployments in Europe aimed at bolstering defense [Sure, Jan].

"These changes will achieve the core principles of enhancing U.S. and NATO deterrence of Russia, strengthening NATO, reassuring allies and improving U.S. strategic flexibility," Esper said, even as he made clear that the repositioning of U.S. forces remains tentative. "I want to note that this plan is subject to and likely will change to some degree as it evolves over time."

Not so fast; literally, according to this morning's Security Brief from Foreign Policy, from my email:

While the Pentagon has rushed to begin plans to draw down troops from Germany at the president’s request, some U.S. service members stationed there are being told that these moves will take years to carry out, according to documents obtained by 

Some units that are moving back to the United States, including the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, based in Vilseck, Germany, have been told that the move will “likely take months to plan and years to execute.”

It's clear, in fact, that they're walking it, very, very, very slowly, back.

Now he's saying in a pinned tweet that he'd like to delay the election

With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 30, 2020

but without saying how he plans to take over functions that have been entirely outside the control of the executive branch for 233 years. This is because, as usual, he really has no idea how these things are arranged or who takes care of them. (At top is the video documentation by Access Hollywood of what seems to have been Trump's first attempt, at the age of 58, to vote, shepherded by Mr. Billy Bush, in the 2004 election—he plainly didn't know that you are supposed to register first.) 

How exactly does he go about delaying elections? By issuing tweets announcing that elections have been postponed? By convincing Barr and the OLC to put together a case for postponing elections and try to convince Congress to implement it? I suppose so, but the chances that Congress would comply are nil. 

Steve asks,

And are we sure the Republicans won't just violate the law with impunity?

And Mike Pompeo, that grinning grease-faced fool, suggests that they will, but mainly reveals he hasn't read the Constitution in a long long time: 

Secretary of State Pompeo this morning, in response to Senator Tim Kaine, on whether a President can delay a Presidential election:
"In the end, the Department of Justice and others will make that legal determination."

— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) July 30, 2020

Because where's the mechanism with which they'll do it?

We are not moving the date of the election. The resistance to this idea among Republicans is overwhelming. We must take all necessary steps to prevent election fraud - including stopping Democrat ballot harvesting - but we will not be delaying the election.

— Liz Cheney (@Liz_Cheney) July 30, 2020

And a founder of The Federalist Society, Trump voter and impeachment opponent, Steven Calabresi, has turned up calling the idea "fascistic"—

“Until recently, I had taken as political hyperbole the Democrats’ assertion that President Trump is a fascist,” he said. “But this latest tweet is fascistic and is itself grounds for the president’s immediate impeachment again by the House of Representatives and his removal from office by the Senate.”

But the main thing for me is, who does it? Barr writes a letter to 50 state secretaries of state and orders them to put the election on hold? Rapid Deployment Teams from DHS fan out to 3000-plus counties to bar the doors of the precincts?

One thing that seems certain to me: he really doesn't have the troops. He doesn't have the troops to do anything more than a demonstration of their impotence like Portland. He has the DHS's Protecting American Communities Task Force (PACT) created by Acting Secretary Chad Wolf on 1 July (with no advice in the official statement as to who's in it to safeguard "our nation’s historic monuments, memorials, statues, and federal facilities" and which can deploy Rapid Deployment Teams (RDT), with no advice to signal who's in them either, but apparently "made up of personnel from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Transportation Security Administration, the Coast Guard, and Customs and Border Protection", and maybe the US Marshals Service. My guess is that it doesn't really exist. Wolf and his trusty SOPDDSHS Cuccinelli may be able to requisition a few dozen guys to occupy a couple of blocks in Portland to rescue the federal courthouse from being "burned and beaten to the ground", but they can't put the nation under martial law. That thing is just a complete fraud (nasty as it may have been for the victims in Portland itself).

More generally, it seems to me that the real ongoing story is the dwindling of Trump's power as everybody inside and outside the administration loses belief in it, hidden, particularly hidden from him, by all these projects, from the Space Force (an inexpensive reshuffling of ongoing projects to make it look like a real thing) to the Durham investigation of the origins of the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane, last in a series of desperate attempts in the inspectorate and DOJ and Senate committees to make it look as if McCabe and Mr. Mueller did something cripplingly wrong in investigating the Trump campaign's Russia connections, while Trump sits in his bed praising pizzeria owners for saying nice things about him.

150,000 dead from a pandemic, GDP down 9.5% for the quarter, millions out of work, no Senate rescue package in sight, and the president is promoting a pizza restaurant because its owner is praising him on TV.

Left, Fox Business' Varney & Co., 10:21 a.m.
Right, Trump, 10:26 a.m. pic.twitter.com/iNdjwNi0YU

— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) July 30, 2020

The end—I realize I've said this before, but not that long ago—is near.

The Pretzel of Power

Image via Rudi's Organic Bakery.

Congress now has 6 months to legalize DACA (something the Obama Administration was unable to do). If they can't, I will revisit this issue!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 6, 2017

Longer Donald J. Trump:

Those Dreamers—young people brought to America before they were six so that they've never known any other country, with stainless records of crime-free goodness, enterprise, and service, but without green cards—are the best thing ever, and nobody loves them more than I do, but unfortunately they are innocent collateral damage in a terrible attack on the Constitution by merciless ex-dictator Barack Obama.

At least that's what I learn from Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, Stephen Bannon, and other tyranny experts in or formerly in my administration. In working out this system allowing Dreamers to stay here longer than criminal aliens and other non-Dreaming types, instead of waiting for Congress to stop refusing to do it, has Violated the Separation of Powers, and this tyranny cannot stand!

Therefore I'm personally annihilating it and ordering Congress to recreate the situation I just destroyed immediately and if they don't I'm going to do it myself just like Obama did, maybe.

Because my respect for the Separation of Powers is so immense.