2020's Top Ten

It's time to look back at the year that was. Here are the top 10 posts of the year, based on your pageviews. 

Coming in  at number ten? My recap of day four of the Republican National Convention. The Trumps and the RNC decided the best way to abuse us with pageantry and falderol was to hold the final day  at the White House, in violation of general principle and ethics rules. In addition to those violations, the speeches themselves violated my sensibility, but some of them sparked my sense of humor, for sure.  

For example, here's the current Senate Majority Leader and Chief Cunctationist, Kentucky's Mitch McConnell.

I’m immensely proud of the work the Republican Senate has done.  (We refused to allow witnesses in the impeachment and made sure the president stayed in office so we can sit around waiting for him to tell us what to do, or for more judges to die.)  Like President Trump, we won’t be bullied by a liberal media intent on destroying America’s institutions. (We will instead be bullied by the president, and ignore the wishes even of you Republicans out there, who elected nearly 200 members of our party to serve you in the House).We will stand our post on behalf of the millions of Americans whose stories aren’t told in today’s newspapers, whose struggles are just as real. (Well, really, we'll sit on your stories, and drag them out at times like this, when it suits us. Other than that, we're just an ineffective part of a co-equal branch of government. You know what? I think that makes us 'flyover country' too!) 

Number nine came from back in March, and I was Ranting and Raving about a column in the Washington Post that tried to convince readers that the impeachment hindered the president's response to the coronavirus pandemic. Here's a part of my response to the column, addressing the author's contention that Trump couldn't have done better early on, because 

...impeachment managers were regularly calling Trump a king or incipient dictator, a more forceful response against the virus in January or early February likely wouldn't have gone well.

That one made me laugh out loud. We're talking about Donald Trump, who blurts out whatever he feels like blurting, whether it's a policy change, a threat against a Republican who dares disagree with him, any number of insults at any number of Democrats or just random crap directed at random citizens. He doesn't shrink away from anything - he tells us that all the time. If you need an example, ask the McCain family.

A Trump in Transition post from May was the eighth most popular post. This one focused on a series of four tweets, sent within the same minute, the morning after the president was whisked to "tour" the White House Bunker. I included the tweets after my comments, which began thusly.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the president of the United States. 

Hear his voice as you read his tweets,

talking about 'frisky' protesters, 

vicious dogs, ominous weapons, and

changing front lines of young Secret Service agents

 ready to 'practice' on protesters outside America's house.

He is SO full of himself.

Himself is SO full of crap.

A Sunday School Extra Credit from June was number seven. It included comments from Washington Gov. Jay Inslee on how it would be helpful for some leadership out of Washington DC. In his conversation with John Dickerson on Face the Nation,he was not gentle when talking about president Trump or the veep.

On messaging: ...when I hear the vice president talk about how things are just hunky dory, it's just - it's just - it's just maddening. The situation is critical in many places...all the happy talk and wishful thinking in the world is not going to wash that away. 

On mask requirements: ...we put an order in effect, including businesses' obligation in this regard. And we sure could use some leadership from the president. It is so difficult. From day one, he has downplayed and distorted and disabled our ability to fight this war... So right now, we are in an urgent national mission - or should be - to mask up... Donald Trump is for masking up like George Wallace was for integration.

The sixth most popular was a Sunday School post from mid-April.  This is a post I went back to frequently, when talking about the vice president and his particular skill at not answering questions. He does it by saying a whole lotta words - hundreds, even, when he could literally answer that question in one note.  

In the interview, how long were Pence's generally non-specific and nonresponsive answers?  321, 219, 279, and 282 words. You'll understand why I'm not including excerpts, right? I encourage you to read them, though - they're pretty interesting.

Coming in at number five was another Trump in Transition post, from May. Whenever Trump talks about the pandemic, you can be sure he's going to follow Pence's lead and not answer the question. And while David Muir really tried to pin Trump down, he wasn't successful. 

For example, Muir asked (I'm paraphrasing here) if workers going back to their offices could get testing if the wanted it, or if they'd just have to trust their employer that everything's safe. Here's one take of Trump trying to answer.

Muir tried to get an answer to whether people going back to work should have access to testing or "do they have to go back to work, having faith in their leaders and you, Mr. president, that the workplace will be safe?" Trump talked about some new data on testing, noting among other things that "it's also, very importantly,  we have the best testing. We have the best testing."  Which wasn't an answer, so Muir tried again. Workers "should have no problem" getting tested, Trump said, adding,

 And as good as this is, we're even getting better. We came up - don't forget, the cupboard was bare. The other administration - the last administration left us nothing. We didn't have ventilators, we didn't have medical equipment, we didn't have testing. The tests were broken. You saw that. We had broken tests. They left us nothing. And we've taken it and we have built an incredible stockpile - a stockpile like we've never had before.

So, are people safe going back to work? Who knows, even now, several months later. The president surely didn't tell us then, and can't tell us now.

Number four on the list?  Me, sharing My Middle-aged White Lady Perspective, in response to a widely shared "You see Trump as x, I see Trump as y' letter to the editor. The author tried really hard to depict the president as a patriotic leader and not a politician, as pro-LGBTQ, as not being anti-immigration  "because he married an immigrant." Honestly, there wasn't much I of the column I found credible - especially the non-politician part.

You see Trump as an unpolished politician; I see Trump as a breath of fresh air. Donald Trump pretends to be unpolished, and not a politician. He is not a breath of fresh air, he and his lies and his bullying and his threatening comprise a toxic cloud that hangs over our country, and over our allies. And he is a classic, arm-twisting strongman pol, who threatens members of his own party who might disagree with him. Don't go along with me? No endorsement. A barrage of negative tweets. Attacks against you in your district. Support for your opponent. And you think he's not a politician? That's laughable.

Your number three was a Middle-aged White Lady Perspective post, about speech and law enforcement and Black Lives Matter and about outrage. It's a twisting tale of a rookie police officer gunned down in the line of duty, and people getting 'triggered' by things they see, hear or read, and how colleges handle speech. And the outrage part? 

I honestly share the outrage, expressed by my friend, a policeman's mom, over Corona's senseless death, and of the deaths of all the other officers killed in the line of duty. I hope that her son stays safe, on duty and off, and that other police officers do as well.

I honestly share the outrage, expressed by my friends - people of color and otherwise - over the senseless deaths of those who have been killed by police officers. I hope my friends' children, family members, and friends stay safe, and aren't caught up in what we know happens to people of color, particularly black men, in our country.

I just as honestly wish it was socially acceptable to be equally outraged by both circumstances - because honestly, I often feel like it's not.

And, I guess not surprisingly, we've got another Trump in Transition post filling the number two spot on our list. This series seemed to strike a chord, or a nerve, depending on which side of the Trump you were on. This one was me, channeling Trump after the upside-down Bible appearance during the protests this past summer, and saying what he wished he could get away with. Here's how it started.

Look at me! 

LOOK AT ME!

Did you see me on the news? Even the fake news, MSDNC and the rest of them, they had my picture, did you see it? 

I was holding a Bible!!

Someone asked if it was my Bible. Nah, it's 'a' Bible, not 'my' Bible - heck, I don't even know where they found it, probably in the nightstand in one of the rooms in my hotel or something, I don't know. It's a good book, they tell me. Very good, good words. Good words. I don't have time to read it, but I hear it's very good. I'll ask Mike. Is Mike here? Where's Mike?

Sadly, I bet he could have gotten away with saying what I said. His actions that day embodied everything I don't like about him. And that surely came out in the post. 

Those same feelings came out in the top post of the year, one of the top posts of all time on the blog. It was an Irony Board post, about Rev. Franklin Graham and his comments on the Democratic National Convention, including that God was missing from that event.

Graham also reminded us all of the Ten Commandments, as if Dems and leaning Dems and former Dems like me, heathens all, I guess, needed the reminder. I took offense to that.

• He places himself above all, before all, and bows before no one. He worships mere mention of his name, the almighty dollar, the almighty ratings, as if those three things are the measure of a man. Those things? They are the measure only of a megalomaniac. They are out of place in the heart, mind, and words of a person of faith.

• He  is the graven image upon which his eyes rest most comfortably: his name on a clothing label; on the side of a building, writ in gold; carved in stone on an embassy wall; emblazoned in countless gaudy hotels, his golden club, his golf carts, and more; his giant signature, held up to the cameras for all to see, to bow to, to venerate, no matter how nonreligious, how faithless, how merciless are the words above it.

To Rev. Graham, I had one question: Tell me again, where is God missing?

There you have it -- the top ten most viewed posts of 2020. I hope you stick around for next year!

Could Alexa Even Handle the Decorations?

Folks who know me well know I sometimes question the value of all our modern technology. For example, here's an old post where I designed my own robot, one that would actually do meaningful and helpful things, rather than stuff like turning on the oven I'm standing in front of... I remember my now sister-in-law once said that I was like the Unabomber. 

She meant it in the nicest possible way, of course, but I'm still not so much a joiner in some of the tech stuff.  I'm known for chuckling at the ridiculous 'smart' things and the ads trying to convince me I can't live without these devices. This is my current favorite. Not for nothing, but unless there's a robot coming out of the woodwork to get the bowl out of the sink and onto the floor, well... As all pet owners know, the only thing worse than an empty dish is a full one your pet can't reach.

Another sis-in-law, who shares similar feelings about commercials (don't get us started on the perfume ones!), tagged me in a Facebook post (that's it to the right), and while we both laughed, I started thinking about what that would look like at our house - or anyone's house, for that matter. 

I can't imagine just telling her to "take down the Christmas decorations" without any additional instructions. I mean, how would she possibly know what's involved?

Would she know that the cute little boxes stacked so festively on the front stairs are nesting boxes? Would she know she has to take the lids off all of them except the smallest box, then put the smallest one inside the next smallest one, and then put that lid on, and put those two boxes inside the next biggest one, and then put that lid on, and then put those three boxes inside the last box, the biggest one, and put that lid on? And then put the box of boxes into the tote labelled Boxes and Pictures, which is downstairs in the Christmas room? 

Would she know to get to the Christmas room by going from the foyer to the dining room to the kitchen to the back door (not to be confused with the back porch door), and down the stairs, then cross the basement heading towards the front of the house, and if she runs into the bikes hanging on the rack, she's gone just a step or two too far? 

And that before she puts anything in the Christmas room, she's going to have to take out a bunch of trees and decorations that we didn't put up this COVID Christmas?

Would she know the framed pieces of some of our favorite wrapping paper hanging on the wall need to come down? And that they, too, go in the Boxes and Pictures tote in the Christmas room?  And that there's a difference between a framed piece of wrapping paper and the picture of me and My Sweet Baboo?

And the Santas? OMG, my Santas! 

Does she know the difference between cast iron, glass, ceramic, resin, metal, wood, and felt? Which need to be on the bottom of the tote, and which on top? Would she know that the tall skinny wooden Santas need to have rubber bands put on them, before being wrapped in bubble wrap and tied with ribbon, so their arms don't flail about and possibly break off? Does she know those don't go in a tote, but instead are placed gently on a shelf? That all of the motion-Santa bases get wrapped together, to make it easier for me to find them next year?

The cast iron ones? They get wrapped in newspaper and put in a tote, sure - but would she know that it doesn't go in the Christmas room, it goes in the closet under the stairs? 

Or that the smallest of the Santas, and the flattest of them, get wrapped (unless they don't need to be) and they go in a separate box that goes inside one of the Santa totes? 

And if you put the Santa's away 'wrong' you could end up with way too much space, or not enough, in the totes? And if it's too much space, would she try to fill it with other decorations, co-mingling them with the Santas and messing up the system? I did that (once) - is she smart enough not to?

Would she be even remotely curious about the newspapers everything gets wrapped in, some of which are more than a decade old? Would she even look at the articles, or no? And will she know whether to replace the least viable newspapers, or if they'll make it one more Christmas before being recycled? 

And what about the memories? 

Will she smile at each Santa as she gently puts them to bed until next year, remembering which came from where, or who, and why? 

Will she know which of the cast iron ones I got years ago in one of the first booths we visited at a massive antique show, and carried in a knapsack for hours as we wandered around a field of 1,000 dealers? Will she hear My Sweet Baboo cursing my foolishness that day?  

How could she possibly know which was the very first one he gave me, or the most recent? Whether it was from our first Christmas, or our second? The tenth? Twelfth? Does she even know this is our 18th Christmas this year? Could she actually put the decorations away without knowing our history, our Christmas history?

And, will she do this? Is she able to do this, the real work of De-Christmasing? 

As I put things away, I find myself pulling out the decorations that never left the tubs, the ones that didn't make the cut. Could I have put this ornament on the tree? Could I have put this stocking somewhere? Could the candy cane candles have gone on the sideboard? I spend almost as much time thinking about the ones that didn't get used, and how I had used them last, as I do remembering how much we enjoyed the ones that did.

Thanks, Alexa, but I think I'll take them down myself. Although, if you want, you can take care of the lights...

Sunday School 12/27/20: Extra Credit

In yesterday's Sunday School, we heard from three members of the House -- one Republican and two progressive Dems. 

For your Extra Credit today, we've got That Guy from Vermont and three prominent governors. 

TGFV (Sen. Bernie Sanders), talked with Jon Karl on This Week with(out) George. Here are the highlights.

On Trump's messing around with the COVID stimulus bill (he did finally sign it last night), he said "what the president is doing right now is unbelievably cruel," pointing to folks who are losing extended unemployment benefits and who might be evicted if Trump vetoes the bill.  

My view is that given the terrible economic crisis facing this country, yes, we do need to get $2,000 out to every working-class individual in this country, 500 bucks for their kids. But you can't diddle around with the bill. Sign the bill, Mr. President, and then immediately, Monday, Tuesday, we can pass a $2,000 direct payment to the working families of this country.

He also said that, during the entire time he was lobbying for $2000, with only one Republican joining him, TGFV never heard from Trump or anyone else on the higher payment, including Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.  He also referred to Trump as "an extraordinary narcissist, pathologically narcissistic."

He pretty much dodged the question on whether it was a mistake for the Dems to refuse the pre-election $1.8T relief bill, saying "at this moment, working families are suffering more economic desperation than any time since the Great Depression. We should be responding to that need" with no mention of Pelosi's decision.

And, finally, on whether the Biden cabinet is progressive enough, his answer is no.

Well, what I have said many, many times is the progressive movement itself probably is 35 or 40 percent of the Democratic coalition. And I believe that the progressive movement deserves seats in the cabinet. That has not yet happened.

He's like to see "strong progressives in the administration"  

who believe that healthcare is a human right, who believe we’ve got to make sure that public colleges and universities are tuition free and that we have to be aggressive on issues like climate change, racial justice, immigration reform.

Next, Karl talked with My Favorite Republican (MFR), Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan. 

On whether President-elect Biden is keeping his promise to reach out to Republicans, MFR says so far, so good. The two have already talked, and he's reached out to govs on both sides of the aisle - and not only is he reaching out, he "seems to be listening" to them and their concerns. 

I know your previous guest probably would like him to move more -- more to the left, but I've been pushing to try to keep him, you know, in a more moderate place where he's willing to reach across the aisle and work together with Republicans.

On what kinds of "damage" president Trump can do in the next three weeks or so (Karl mentioned the ridiculous pardons as one example), MFR says he "gave up guessing what he might do next." The veto of the NDAA has been troubling, he said, but the fooling around on the stimulus bill "really bothers" him.

... you know, both parties were so far apart in the House and the Senate, the Problem Solvers Caucus, some really bipartisan folks on both sides of the aisle, brought everybody to the table. They reached an agreement. Secretary Mnuchin worked together with them and made commitments on behalf of the administration. And then not eight months before or even eight days before, but after it was passed, then the president raises these objections... 

On Rs standing up to Trump, he says more of them are, and more of them will. He also said that while Trump will still have a voice in the party, it's going to be different after the inauguration, when he won't have as much influence. Perhaps worse, in my opinion, is the uphill battle he faces on a larger scale.

There's an awful lot of people that want to be the next Donald Trump. But I'm going to be fighting to try to return our party to its roots, and to become a bigger tent party to reach out, a more Reaganesque party, more positive, hopeful vision for the future.

 Now, since we've had an Independent, and a Republican, let's hear from a Dem - Michigan's Gov. Gretchen Whitmer who visited the Face the Nation classroom to talk with Margaret Brennan.

On whether people have learned the value of their local governments this year, Whitmer said she hopes so, adding that no governor wanted to be in the situations they're in, but "it was incumbent on us to rise to the occasion" given the lack of a broader national strategy.  She also said the governors who acted regionally, learning from and sharing information with each other, benefited everyone because each state's experts were collecting different information that could be helpful to their cross-state line counterparts.

I should note that Ohio's Republican Gov. Mike DeWine was also on in the same segment as Whitmer, and he was generally in agreement with Whitmer on most of the questions, but he did point out one area where they might have differences of opinion: who gets the vaccine. 

I think there's been a real consensus among what we call A1 group, which is the-- the first responders, our medical people, our EMS, people who are risking their lives every-- every single day, as well as where we've taken the most losses, and that is in our nursing homes. I think there's probably going to be more lack of consensus among people in general when you get beyond that first group.

That segued into the question of how 'essential workers' are being defined, as Brennan mentioned reading that Colorado may be putting ski resort employees on their list. Whitmer said it could vary widely from state to state, and that varying will probably speed up as the vaccines get out there. And, she said, they've going to be "doing the hard work" of identifying who is-- has the most exposure, who is out there in jobs that are, you know, come into contact with the public at greater numbers." 

Brennan also asked how Whitmer makes sense of the experience of the threats against her (I think the question included both the ones where her life was threatened but also the day-to-day stuff that they're all hearing). She said every governor is getting backlash of some sort, some because of the steps they are taking to keep people safe and safe lives (she's in that bucket), but she also noted that's not the case for everyone.

Other governors are getting a backlash because they haven't done enough and people have been dying on their watch. There are no easy solutions here, no clearly obvious solutions here. Yet, I believe that the right thing to do is to follow the science and to put people's lives first because we can and we will recover from the economic blowback, from COVID-19 that has run amok in our country. What we can't do is, you know, bring someone back to life.

The bipartisan collaboration between the governors generally, which MFR has often mentioned in interviews, as well as the regional collaboration such as the kind we've seen here in New York with neighboring states, is something I hope US Senators and Congressmembers learn from, and take with them to Washington when the new legislative session kicks off next month.  

I mean, there's no time like the present, right?

See you around campus.  

Sunday School 12/27/20

Let's dive in to your Sunday School with interviews Dana Bash had on CNN's State of the Union with Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger (IL) and Democrats Rep. Jamaal Bowman (NY) and Rep. Cori Bush (MO). The Dems were both newly elected in November. 

Kinzinger was asked if there are enough R votes in the House to override the president's veto of the National Defense Authorization Act. Kinzinger hopes so, noting that the veto was "for nonsensical reasons" including Trump's requirement that the bill eliminate the Section 230 protections for Twitter and Facebook.  

...we had way more than two-thirds votes to pass this. I don't understand. I could not justify if I voted for this bill and then voted to sustain the president's veto, instead of override it. I do not know how you justify that, besides saying, I'm just going to do what the president wants. This is a great bill. This goes after China, Russia. It does a lot to shore up our cyber-defenses, which, as we have seen, are extremely vulnerable. To sustain the president's veto, after you voted for this bill, I just don't understand.

He couldn't say he was confident they'd be able to override the veto, saying "...we're in such a time that I just have no idea right now." They could afford to lose some of the original 'yes' votes and still override the veto, but he doesn't know how anyone could explain that.

Bash asked what he thought was next for the stimulus bill. Kinzinger said "this just shows the chaos of the whole thing," noting that Steve Mnuchin negotiated it, "presumably, on behalf of the president." And if the president wants $2000 checks, he should have negotiated that all along, and he can negotiate that after the agreed-upon bill is signed.

I don't understand what's being done, why, unless it's just to create chaos and show power and be upset because you lost the election. Otherwise, I don't understand it, because this just has to get done. Too many people are relying on this. We have worked hard. We should have had this done a lot earlier...

He said when he talks to his constituents, he tells them the same thing he told her: they did the negotiating, it wasn't pretty, but an agreement was reached, and that while it's easy to point fingers at Congress, they're not the bad guys now. 

Kinzinger also laments the president purposefully conflating the COVID bill and the omnibus spending bill, which is money that would have been spent "whether we had COVID or not."

But to then say that we're giving money to other countries in the COVID bill is disingenuous. And it totally conflates two different issues. But -- and it doesn't do a service to the American people to explain what's going on and how these things are different.

When it comes time to officially accept the Electoral College results, he expects "there will be a little chaos," and said "This is a scam, though." The election can't be overthrown, isn't going to be overthrown,

...And so all that's being done is, certain members of Congress, the president, et cetera, and like -- quote, unquote -- "thought leaders" on Twitter are getting retweets, they're getting followers, they're raising money on this scam. It is a scam.

Disappointing to people who think the election was stolen? Yes, but the disappointment's misplaced. 

...instead of being disappointed in the people that led them on this grifting scam, they're going to somehow try to convince these people that it was, I don't know, what's the new word, the RINOs in Congress or something like that, and not the Constitution that prevents this from happening in the first place...

Finally, he's not worried so much, but

...if you convince people that Congress can change a legitimate election, and everything was stolen, and there's a deep state-slash-QAnon theory driving this, which is that it's Satanist pedophiles that run the government, you could see people being driven to violence. So, I'm concerned about that.

He's also worried about the future of the Republican party, "that's being destroyed by conspiracies right now and anger."

We need more Kinzingers, don't you think? We need people are willing to speak out, who seek and understand reality, even if it's not to their liking.

Next, Bash talked with Reps-to-be Bush and Bowman about the state of things for them, as progressives in the House where the Dems hold only a slight majority. She asked Bush if she felt "confident and comfortable" with compromising. Bush said her first priority is to bring St. Louis to the table, as a "politivist" which she describes as an activist and a politician.

So, I'm using what I learned on the streets of Ferguson and every other -- every other protest, every other movement I have been a part of, that moxie, that desire to apply pressure, that -- being bold and fierce, bringing that to Congress, making sure that our -- the voices of regular people, and bringing grassroots organizers, bringing the people that are actually on the ground doing the work, bringing that to Congress, and making sure that that voice is heard. I feel like that is something that is -- that we're not seeing enough of. So, that's what I think that has to happen.

And, she said, you can't compromise "if you don't -- if you're not one of the people that know exactly what's happening on the ground in our communities?" She knows, she's been there, she said, and "that is what I bring, my lived experience."

Turning to Bowman, Bash wondered how he'll work to act on his ideals, including his support for defunding the police. He echoed what Bush said, that "our job is to meet the needs of our constituents, period, point blank." He talked about his district and said 

I have had two police-involved shootings in my district over the last year. So, as we talk about defunding the police, we're talking about reimagining public safety, reimagining public health, taking a holistic approach to legislating to truly meet the needs of the constituents in my district. That is the bottom line.

And, as far as compromising? Yeah, you can't do that "when it comes to, what are the needs of the people in my district." 

People are hungry. People are homeless. People are jobless. Poverty rates are way too high. And my fight in Congress is going to be with the people of our district to make sure we deal with those issues explicitly and directly, without compromise. 

Bash asked about the stimulus bill. Bush said that $2000 is not enough.

And so when we talk about giving somebody $600, that's a slap in the face to people who are suffering. And let me tell you, when you're hungry, you're hungry all day. That's an every moment, every hour feeling. And it does something to you.

And whether Trump's right to not sign the bill? He needs to get "his Republican buddies" to up the amount, to give people the money, and worry less about "getting his friends out of prison."

Bowman said we need monthly $2000 checks, and continue the $600 unemployment bonus and that Trump 

recently suffered a malignant narcissist's harm by losing the election. He continues to go to court to try to overturn the results. He continues to lose. And now he's posturing to make himself -- to bring himself back as the hero of the American people, asking for $2,000. 

He didn't agree that Speaker Pelosi erred by agreeing to the bill, but said they need to get back and do more.  And, in addition to prioritizing winning the two Georgia runoffs, he had more harsh words for Trump.

The president is the embodiment of everything that's wrong with this country. He's a privileged person who rose to power as a reality TV star. And now he's trying to drive this country into chaos. I can't wait for him to be out of office. 

Finally, she asked them both if they would support Pelosi for another term as Speaker. The non-answers were consistent, I'll give them that. Bush said she was "working within her community" while Bowman said he was "organizing within our community"  - and each said we'd find out when they voted.

When Bash asked what that meant, and after each trying to let the other go first, here's what Bowman got in before they ran out of time. 

We got to bring HR-40 to the floor for a vote. We need reparations for the African-American community. We need a federal jobs guarantee. We need Medicare for all. 

Is Pelosi's career as Speaker in trouble? Maybe; we'll have to see. But it sounds like she might have her hands full with Bush and Bowman, two new aggressive progressives. 

See you around campus. Wear your mask, or I'll kick you out of class. 

In Case You Missed It (v66)

Got your cuppa? Here's your recap of last week's posts.

I devoted my Sunday School classroom time to folks who have been tapped to serve in the incoming administration, including Jen Psaki, who'll be the new White House press secretary. She talked with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday about a number of things, including the day's hot topic. Take a look.

And, finally, the Hunter Biden questions: does Biden promise to let US attorney David Weiss (he's currently conducting the investigation) finish the job?  And second, what does Biden think about a special counsel possibly being appointed to investigate his son?

 Well, let me be crystal clear, Chris, and I appreciate you asking this question. He will not be discussing an investigation of his son with any attorney general candidates. He will not be discussing it with anyone he is considering for the role, and he will not be discussing it with the future attorney general. It will be up to the purview of a future attorney general and his administration to determine how to handle any investigation.

That's pretty clear, and boy, I  hope she's not kidding. 

A lot of classroom time was spent talking about the likely-committed-by-the-Russians computer breach, although some of the people interviewed pointed out that we do need to make sure we do the hard work on attribution before we go off all halfcocked and hog wild down the retribution path. I included those interviews in your Extra Credit. 

One of the folks making the rounds was Kevin Mandia, CEO of FireEye, the cyber security company that initially discovered the breach. He talked with Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation. Here's part of their discussion on how we keep this kind of thing from happening again.

He said we need to "have doctrine," like we do for the use of chemical weapons, so people know the rules of the game, and if we don't, he thinks it will just get worse.

We're going to see the borders continue to be pushed outward in cyber attacks-- to the point where, when do we finally do the work--when it's already intolerable, when it already got so bad that we have no choice but to respond. But like you said, it starts with doctrine. With doctrine, you have to get attribution right. And with attribution, then you have to do a proportional response to whoever the actors were. 

I dropped a Trump in Transition post, the 48th in that series, on Tuesday. There'll be one on January 20th, I think. We'll see if he earns one before then. Here's a bit of that brain dump.

The millions who showed our displeasure, our distaste, our dislike, he cannot or will not comprehend. Our exhaustion, he cannot comprehend. How annoyed we are, how sick we are of his constant self-promoting, the embarrassing tweets, the grifting, the cast of characters by whom he is surrounded, that he foists upon us, that he honors and celebrates, he cannot comprehend.

Equally incomprehensible is that, as he pretends all of this isn't happening, didn't happen, isn't true, he continues to roil the waters in which his devout supporters swim, working them into a frenzy of martial-law supporting, havoc-wreaking, our-country-has-been-stolen fanatics. They are insisting he will be president, he will have his second-term inauguration come January 20th, and they don't care what it takes to make that happen.

Sometimes, trying to get my arms around this stuff between him and his followers, I beg for the chance to have my own 'Bobby Ewing in the shower' moment, I really do. 

Disgraced former Buffalo-area Congressman Chris Collins was in the news again; he was the subject of a note from The Update Desk.

Tonight, the impeached, lame duck president issued 20 pardons and commutations, with Collins being among the lucky. 

That the former congressman was the first one to support the president probably was very meaningful to Trump - and I can only imagine that, had he still been in office, Collins would have happily added his name to the list of 126 House Republicans supporting the 'Texas+' lawsuit (sorry, tired of listing the other states that joined that ridiculous case). 

My Wondering on Wednesday included a bunch of random questions (including a couple related to Christmas) - and the ones below.

Why is the United States considering offering immunity to Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi royal who's such a good What's App friend of Jared Kushner, for his role in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi?

Who will be the next target that the president will attack, now that he's gone after the #2 Republican in the Senate? Any guesses?

Why are people all of the sudden worried about foreign policy? Why haven't they been complaining all along? And why are reporters and politicians lying about it?

I took the rest of last week off, for a little holiday R&R, but we're back at it. See you later for Sunday School.

Wondering on Wednesday 12/23/20

Ready... Set... Wonder!

There's so much wondering in my head today. For example:

Who will be in the next round of pardons, clemencies and commutations? 

Why is the United States considering offering immunity to Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi royal who's such a good What's App friend of Jared Kushner, for his role in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi?

Who will be the next target that the president will attack, now that he's gone after the #2 Republican in the Senate? Any guesses?

Why are people all of the sudden worried about foreign policy? Why haven't they been complaining all along? And why are reporters and politicians lying about it?

Why did the president decide, suddenly, to be interested in the pandemic spending bill once it had been approved, after not paying attention - for months?

If you don't put out cookies for Santa Claus, does he get free returns on your stuff? And does he keep all those receipts? 

How many Bed, Bath and Beyond coupons do you think they get at the North Pole, anyway? And, of course, while I'm typing this, a BB&B coupon landed in my inbox... 

We've been listening to our collection of Christmas CDs (we're old - we don't stream) and my husband said that the "Mayhem Steamroller" tunes would be coming up soon... and can't you just picture THAT Allstate commercial? 

How do we get out of the mess, all of this stuff I posted yesterday?

Why are people STILL so concerned about the House Speaker's ice cream habit? And why do people think that she could fund the stimulus with it? And am I a bad person for buying craft ice cream myself?

How many people will follow the applicable COVID restrictions where they live? How many of the three million+ people who've moved through TSA airport screening checkpoints around the country are going to quarantine when they get off the plane? 

How much does Dr. Deborah Birx regret travelling with multiple generations of her family?

News is breaking that the president has vetoed the National Defense Authorization Act, the $740B military spending plan, mostly (he's said in the past) because it allows for renaming military bases, and because it doesn't remove protections for Twitter and Facebook, which have aggressively labelled his posts as fake news - and, really on both, what do they have to do with the military? 

How long will it take for his veto to be over-ridden? Probably not long.  And does Trump know he's the first to not sign the bill in nearly sixty years? And does he consider being the first another notch in his #winning  hair spray bottle? 

Should pandemic-denying Republican members of the House and Senate be getting the vaccine ahead of front line health care providers, the elderly, essential workers, and folks of all ages with pre-existing conditions? Are they really that much more valuable or that much more worthy of the protections than, say, my 90-year-old-with-a-heart-condition Mom?

What are you wondering about?

The Update Desk: Chris Collins, Again, Darn It

I was sure, the last time I wrote about convicted securities fraud conspirer Chris Collins, the former Congressman from Western New York, that I was writing about him for the last time.  I really should have known better.  You can read his sad story here, in my last update. 

I had been ignoring the delays in getting his just over two-year prison term started - concerns about the coronavirus and all - and I even ignored it when he finally did report for duty at the Pensacola Federal Prison Camp back in October. 

Tonight, the impeached, lame duck president issued 20 pardons and commutations, with Collins being among the lucky. 

That the former congressman was the first one to support the president probably was very meaningful to Trump - and I can only imagine that, had he still been in office, Collins would have happily added his name to the list of 126 House Republicans supporting the 'Texas+' lawsuit (sorry, tired of listing the other states that joined that ridiculous case). 

He probably would have been appearing at rallies for the president, or maybe trying to overturn New York's election or something equally silly. At least we didn't have to see that, with him in prison down in Florida. 

I'll leave you with a comment from Geoffrey Berman, the prosecuting US Attorney in the Collins case. (You may remember that Berman was fired by Trump after some questionable personnel decisions by AG Snitty Snitty Bill Barr backfired.)

Anyway, here's what Berman said.

Lawmakers bear the profound privilege and responsibility of writing and passing laws, but equally as important the absolute obligation of following them. Collins' hubris is a stark reminder that the people of New York can and should demand more from their elected officials, and that no matter how powerful, no lawmaker is above the law.

Yes, they do. And no, they aren't. No matter what the pardon memo says - or doesn't.

Trump in Transition (v48)

Watching people argue on Twitter about which presidential candidate won more counties - not more votes, more counties - is both comical and disheartening.

The self-proclaimed "proud supporters of the Constitution" seem to believe that counties vote...? And, without irony, they also believe that counties - particularly counties in red states - cheat, make up ballots, and round up dead people to vote against Trump.

The same people believe that wearing a Black Lives Matter t-shirt when observing ballot-counting is both a crime against humanity and indicative of cheating, while wearing a MAGA hat is indicative of patriotism and truthfulness, which is itself untruthful, if the judges who've reviewed the 'evidence' from said 'red heads' are correct.

And, it would seem, many of them apparently think that a mythological Scandinavian sea monster is going to save the Trump presidency. That would appear to be a completely un-American approach, don't you think? An illegal immigrant from a country governed by a monarch swimming in to save the American republic? Stop it.

Donald Trump feeds off the people who idolize him and can't imagine that someone wouldn't; it's impossible for him to believe he is unlikeable. Even in the face of evidence that people dislike him, he denies the possibility.

To sit where he sits - he acts like he's in a booth in the back in the corner in the dark, except he's in the White House, and we can see him - and repeatedly tell us and the world that he won, that he got more votes than Obama!! and more votes than any sitting president ever!!!, and that there's no way anyone could have gotten more votes than him since he got more than anyone before him!!!!! is insane. It's delusional. It's narcissistic.

And, sadly, it's completely consistent with what we have been forced to put up with throughout his presidency. He has not transitioned an inch, not even a hair. He is now who he was then, who he has been and will be forever, except that he was elected president. Once.

He denies my existence, and the existence of millions of people like me, over 81 million of us, who did not vote for him. He denies the existence of people who had the audacity to like someone better, or to dislike his opponent less than they dislike him.

The millions who showed our displeasure, our distaste, our dislike, he cannot or will not comprehend. Our exhaustion, he cannot comprehend. How annoyed we are, how sick we are of his constant self-promoting, the embarrassing tweets, the grifting, the cast of characters by whom he is surrounded, that he foists upon us, that he honors and celebrates, he cannot comprehend.

Equally incomprehensible is that, as he pretends all of this isn't happening, didn't happen, isn't true, he continues to roil the waters in which his devout supporters swim, working them into a frenzy of martial-law supporting, havoc-wreaking, our-country-has-been-stolen fanatics. They are insisting he will be president, he will have his second-term inauguration come January 20th, and they don't care what it takes to make that happen.

• Let's send separate slates of Trump electors. Let's have a nationwide recount - in the states he lost this time that he won last time, because that is the nation, that handful of states. That is the height of the resistance against him, and against which devout rage must be directed.

• Let's have a separate inauguration for him, at noon on January 20, 2021, an online inauguration. It'll be the biggest crowd for any online inauguration in history, it surely will - the zoomiest Zoom call EVER! We'll bring Sean Spicer back, grab him from the studios of Newsmax and have him count all the little faces on the screens to validate the count! Obama never had a zoom inauguration this big - we'll show him, that Muslim race-baiting worst president ever- we'll SHOW HIM!

• Let's fight the acceptance of the Electoral College vote! Let's dispute it on the floor during the Joint Session, and make the Vice President deal with that! (Insert Howard Dean scream here.)

And Trump sits in our house, huddling with the China-loving fraudster Steve Bannon; with the indescribable Sidney Powell, the lawyer who's not his lawyer, but who spends an awful lot of time at the White House lately; with Rudy Giuliani, the lawyer who IS his lawyer but who spends a lot of time telling people that Sidney Powell is nuts; with twice-confessed lying pardoned disgraced General Michael Flynn, and his other usual suspects - RINOS one and all - because these folks are not representative of the majority of Republicans. They cannot be.

Trump and his followers would have you believe that Republicans in charge of elections in red states are RINOS for not declaring him the winner, but they are actually Republicans, sharing their disappointment at the outcome of the election (however misplaced that disappointment is, in my opinion) and at the same time supporting the rule of law and the processes that are in place.

They are being turned on (no, not like that), the Republicans are, by the man they chose, the one they said was a lunatic, unstable, a racist, not like them, not good for the country, a con man, and more. He is turning on them, not just privately, but pitting one against the other, pitting the many against the one, whoever the one is that is drawing Trump's ire at any particular moment.

The majority of Republicans don't have the cojones to put themselves in the Stevie-Rudy-Sidney-Mikey crowd, right? They prefer to cower in the face of these folks. Complicitly, most of them silently, but still cowering, instead of using their precious microphone and camera time talking about what their constituents need, regardless of what Trump wants, or heaven forbid, talking about what the country needs.

And they surely don't have the cojones to stand up to Trump, unless it's on their way out of office. That seems to be the time when courage, and cojones, are found aplenty. (Well, a couple, maybe; not really aplenty. I mean, they're not hanging like ornaments on a tree or anything.)

All of this - the ignorance, the insistence, the convincing, the convicted, the complicit, the true believers, the treasonous - all of this creates a giant, flaming bullseye showing us exactly where we are, and how far we need to go.

We don't need a cult leader, raking in money hand over fist from the faithful. We don't need a grifter, enriching his businesses and his family off the taxpayers. We don't need a liar, a tweeter, a shouter, a screamer, a cranky two-year-old having a temper tantrum.

We surely don't need more people coming to the White House wearing their criminal convictions on their sleeves; we need people who have the courage of their convictions, their principles, their ethics, their love of country.

We don't need a person, we need a plan, for the entire country.

The 'real' transition cannot happen soon enough.

Sunday School 12/20/20: Extra Credit

Yesterday's Sunday School focused on the Biden folks who were out and about. For your Extra Credit today, we're going to focus on the massive hack which apparently kicked off months ago, and was only more recently discovered - or, at least, more recently disclosed. 

Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) was in the classroom with George Stephanopoulos on This Week. Warner agreed with many others that "all indications point to Russia" as being the culprit in the hack, even though the president said it might be China. Warner also said "thank goodness" FireEye came forward, otherwise we might not have discovered the attack. (We'll hear from FireEye later in the post). And, Warner said, 

... I think this raises a whole host of questions of how did they get in, stay so long, how do we make sure our government agency, for example, CISA, that's supposed to oversee cybersecurity, there's not even a requirement that private companies or for that matter, even public agencies, have to affirmatively report that kind of attack or intrusion to CISA. We’re going to need to look at a whole new set of rules...

The attack may be ongoing, he's not sure - but "they got in and were in for a long time." Warner talked about being able to get into a "supply chain" and then move from one company to another and "ultimately get down to some of our most important innovation tools being discovered by our adversaries." And he said when the president tries to deflect or is not willing to call out our adversary, he is not making our country safer.

Warner said it appears that only non-classified networks were breached, and that we've got a lot of work to do - "literally weeks" to find out how extensive the attack was, and "potentially months" to remediate the damage. He also said we need better funding and better rules for this kind of thing.

I sometimes think we disproportionately spend on tanks, ships and guns when we should be better protecting on cyber. And I think not only America but, frankly, our FireEye partners, NATO, others, because there are international implications of this attack as well. 

We had the benefit of our 'mutually assured destruction' from the nuclear perspective, he said, but we don't have similar thinking around cyber. What happened falls somewhere between espionage and an attack, 

And I think the only way we're going to be able to counter it is not only better cyber hygiene, better protocols on how information must be shared if you are attacked, and then making very clear to our adversaries that if you take this kind of action, we and others will strike back.

Finally, George asked about our own hacking, our own espionage, but Warner answered a different, unasked, question. 

The level of indiscriminate attack launch, as Secretary of State Pompeo said, by potentially a Russian spy agency, this is as broad and as deep as anything we've ever seen. And the idea that that should go unanswered would be very bad American policy and, frankly, simply invite Russians or others to continue these kind of malicious activities.

Over in the State of the Union classroom, Jake Tapper's guest was Christopher Krebs, who led the US Cybersecurity Agency during the time of the hack. Tapper cited Trump's comments I linked above, and Krebs discounted the president's view.

Everything I have heard... it's Russia. I mean, they are - they're exceptionally good at this, particularly the foreign intelligence service, the SVR. They're good. They're quiet. They're deliberate. They're patient and they're careful.

Krebs said we're "just getting our arms around" the scope, and while there's been a lot of talk about SolarWinds, an IT company that provides software services to many companies that were hacked, he thinks it's probably bigger than just them. He suspects there are more companies compromised, and

in fact, my old agency issued a report to that effect just the other day, that we are looking for other ones. And supply chain compromises are particularly hard to defend against.

Tapper asked why didn't anyone catch the hack sooner. Krebs said first, the Russians are very talented; second, a supply chain attack is very hard to defend against; and third, we've got "a lot of old antiquated, legacy IT systems that are hard to defend" in our 101 federal civilian agencies.  But there's more. The National Defense Authorization Act (which the president has threatened to veto)

... would give CISA, my old agency, the authorities to go out and really aggressively hunt and look for these adversaries. And that's what we're going to have to do to get certainty and to the other side of this, is really deep-diving into these agencies' systems, looking for the Russians, and going hand to hand combat almost with them and get them out of those systems.

He agreed that "yes, it happened on my watch at CISA. And we missed it." The key now is doing the work to make sure we get them out of our networks, and "that it never happens again." That's going to take Congressional support, resources, and the authority to do what we need to do. 

Krebs says the Russians are more interested in intelligence, in policy stuff, diplomatic stuff, negotiations and so on, rather than in "destructive types of attacks." That said, we need to be "very careful with escalating this," in making any kind of retaliatory attack of our own. We need to talk with "like-minded countries" about what's an acceptable response. 

Final question? What does he think about Trump meeting with Rudy Giuliani, Michael Flynn,  Sidney Powell "talking about martial law to overturn the election, making Sidney Powell a special counsel, et cetera?"

I think I have said it a couple times this week in a Senate hearing on Wednesday, but this is not the America that I recognize. And this is just beyond the pale.

And, from the Face the Nation classroom, we've got Margaret Brennan's discussion with Kevin Mandia, the CEO of FireEye, "a cybersecurity company that protects clients against malicious software and investigates hacks."  That's the company Sen. Warner mentioned in his comments, which discovered the breach.

Mandia said this was different from the over a thousand breeches his company responds to a year. He described it vividly, saying

This was not a drive-by shooting on the information highway. This was a sniper round from somebody a mile away from your house. This was special operations. And it was going to take special operations to detect this breach. 

He also said he thinks these are the same folks who were messing around in the 90s and early 2000s, not a "one and done" threat, and said that it's a "continuing game in cyberspace." As to when it began, suggesting it was

In October of 2019 when code was changed in the SolarWinds Orion platform, but it was innocuous code. It was not a backdoor. Then sometime in March, the operators behind this attack did put malicious code into the supply chain, injected it in there- and that is the- the backdoor that impacted everybody.

He also said that it's true "over 300,000 companies use SolarWinds," but around 18,000 companies actually had the malicious code in their networks, and then only around 50 were "genuinely impacted." 

When asked about attribution for the attack, and whether he agrees with others that it was Russia, Mandia said it was "definitely a nation behind this." And after some more very vivid descriptions, going even beyond his earlier drive-by analogy, Brennan pressed him on the Russia question, saying

But you know better than anyone that there are only a very few number of nation states capable of what you are describing in terms of skill. Russian intelligence, specifically the SVR, has been repeatedly pointed to by officials. Is that who you believe did this?

He thinks "this is an attack very consistent with that," and that we're going to get the attribution right. We can either "speculate it or we can do some more work" to nail it down, to "put a neon sign on the building of the folks that did this."

And I'm very confident as we continue the investigation, as it gets broader, as more people learn the tools, tactics and procedures of this attack, we're going to bring it back and we're going to get attribution. Not ninety-two percent right, not 'consistent with,' but a hundred percent. Let's just get it right so that we can proportionately respond, period.

Brennan explained her push on attribution, suggesting that to prevent this kind of attack from happening again, we have to know who did it. She, too, mentioned the president's muddying of the waters by disagreeing with his own cabinet, and asked Mandia how we keep something like this from happening again.

He said we need to "have doctrine," like we do for the use of chemical weapons, so people know the rules of the game, and if we don't, he thinks it will just get worse.

We're going to see the borders continue to be pushed outward in cyber attacks-- to the point where, when do we finally do the work--when it's already intolerable, when it already got so bad that we have no choice but to respond. But like you said, it starts with doctrine. With doctrine, you have to get attribution right. And with attribution, then you have to do a proportional response to whoever the actors were. 

So, feeling better, or not so much?  I can't decide.

See you around campus, after the holiday.  I'll be looking for your masked family celebration posts on social media - don't let me down!