James Comey and the Time-Space Continuum

            Last Thursday James Comey testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee. That happened, and we can all agree it happened. I wrote about it as it was happening and then I reflected on it.

            I found few took the same line as me in analyzing the behavior of Mr. Comey. I have to say my analysis fits comfortably in to the narrative that the “Evil MSM” is pushing: Comey said no one big bombshell but affirmed lots of negative reporting about Trump and laid out a handful of other breadcrumbs of things to come. While not mind blowing, the gathering storm from those clouds is becoming obvious.

            For this story I thought it might be good to venture outside my ideological neighborhood and see what everyone else might say. It was served to me before I even had the chance, though. First WaPo did a Chyron analysis which was fascinating. Second, several of my conservative friends on Facebook and Twitter jumped to the party line. Some were even people who had appeared to be taking a break from politics were stepping up to note the lack of a direct order language, and to profess they had just tasted a “nothing burger.”

            Rather than suggest they go look up the definition of obstruction of justice I kept my (electronic) mouth shut. I smugly thought they would soon come around, I was wrong. As they fought in the feeds below their comments, my smugness lost its edge. I could accuse them of lawyering up with the rest of the administration, or I could explain what I perceived as the long game Comey was playing. But it didn’t seem like it would matter.

            What I am seeing is that everyone is being totally earnest. All of my liberal friends see obstruction. All of my conservative friends see a disgruntled employee who has a history of going it alone and wanting to be at the center of things. Back on the left, Mr. Comey is portrayed as a tone deaf, Boy Scout, one that says “lordy” instead of “shit.”

            We all watched the same hearing. We all are living in the same universe, I presume. Are we alternating sticking our heads in the ground? Is this some sort of political Rorschach test?

            This is the real thing about gas lighting, there is no way to prove it has been happening or that it was done, barring an admission from the culprits. I have my beliefs, and I have my education, and I know what I saw. Problem is, so does the other half of the population.

            There has been plenty said about objective reality and political tribalism and information siloes. But this is a genuine test, we all saw him say he felt a pattern emerging where the president tried to leverage him to stop an investigation. That, if all true, would be obstruction of justice. Is there daylight? Absolutely. We still need to 1) determine the veracity of his words, and 2) parse the meaning of the word “hope.” If we want a particular result there is still plenty of room for optimism, either way. And for you to believe that is still rational. But to say your side has won is not rational at all.

            For the good of the republic, and frankly my mental state, as I have had to question the objective reality around me, seen with my own eyes, let’s try to call this one as it is, not as we see it.

----

As a complete afterthought, and in fairness, what Loretta Lynch did to synchronize between Department of Justice and Clinton Campaign language is sketchy, perhaps even worthy of further inquiries. But it changes nothing in regards to other misdeeds. Nor, was it the biggest story. Same goes for Mr. Comey being the source of the memos to the New York Times, if you couldn’t work out that there were 4 people in the room during the loyalty pledge, and it wasn’t President Trump, it was not the two Navy Stewards, so it had to be James Comey, then you are not great at reading between the lines and should refer to my piece on Comey’s behavior. 

A Unified theory on the "strange" behavior of James Comey

James Comey has submitted written testimony and answered about 2 1/2 hours of public questions from senators in the intelligence committee hearing. Democrats hunted for the silver bullet that will make all of their dreams of impeaching President Trump come true. Republicans tried to trip up James Comey as best they could, through it all he presented a calm and rational case, though. The one that he wanted to present. He was not swayed to jump to conclusions or step outside of his comfort zone. He was a rock, the committee were crashing waves.

The thing that should strike you is that James Comey has made record of each and every solo interaction with President Trump. It has been lost on almost no one so far. But an honest answer has not been offered as to why. The Republicans would like the answer to be because James Comey has some reason to dislike Donald Trump and is in some way deranged and untrustworthy. The Democrats would like the answer to be that he has "the goods" and is out to show it off. Neither are the truth.

To understand Mr. Comey's behavior, you should understand his work experience and who he is. He is a career prosecutor, former Deputy Attorney General, and former FBI director. His instinct is to build cases over long periods of time protect the integrity of witnesses and then present the strongest case possible. That is how he has been trained and that is his primary setting. Until he realizes his role is different in that process.

Take a piece of his written testimony, excerpted for clarity and retrieved here:

I first met then President-Elect Trump on Friday, January 6 in a conference room at Trump Tower in New York. I was there with other Intelligence Community (IC) leaders to brief him and his new national security team on the findings of an IC assessment concerning Russian efforts to interfere in the election. At the conclusion of that briefing, I remained alone with the President-Elect to brief him on some personally sensitive aspects of the information assembled during the assessment. 

The IC leadership thought it important, for a variety of reasons, to alert the incoming President to the existence of this material, even though it was salacious and unverified. Among those reasons were: (1) we knew the media was about to publicly report the material and we believed the IC should not keep knowledge of the material and its imminent release from the President-Elect; and (2) to the extent there was some effort to compromise an incoming President, we could blunt any such effort with a defensive briefing.
... 

When the FBI develops reason to believe an American has been targeted for recruitment by a foreign power or is covertly acting as an agent of the foreign power, the FBI will “open an investigation” on that American and use legal authorities to try to learn more about the nature of any relationship with the foreign power so it can be disrupted. In that context, prior to the January 6 meeting, I discussed with the FBI’s leadership team whether I should be prepared to assure President-Elect Trump that we were not investigating him personally. That was true; we did not have an open counterintelligence case on him. We agreed I should do so if circumstances warranted. During our one-on-one meeting at Trump Tower, based on President-Elect Trump’s reaction to the briefing and without him directly asking the question, I offered that assurance.

So it is at this meeting when he is briefing the president on the dossier with the pee tape that Comey decides to offer an, otherwise unprompted, assurance that Mr. Trump is not under investigation. There is clearly a level of intuition here that causes Mr. Comey to do that. His behavior since, recording all interactions in the form of unclassified memos, making those memos available to the public and prosecutors, and preserving his integrity as a witness, all shows that he knew he would one day be called to testify regarding these interactions. He begins to act as a witness while he is still at his job as FBI Director, even at the expense of some of his duties. He intended for all of the memos to be unclassified but he typed the first one out on a classified machine, why? Because he knew he had to record the January 6th meeting immediately to keep it "present sense." He was simply preparing a witness rather than trying to stop any misdeeds.

Many of the Senators were interested, some even mezmorized, by Mr. Comey's inability to call out the President, his boss and the most powerful man in the world, for these inappropriate behaviors. While it would be both difficult because of the disorienting nature of Mr. Trump, and take the courage of standing up to your new boss, it just as easily could have been a third reason, its hard to remain a credible witness if you had begun to take part in, or shape, the inappropriate behavior rather than just witness it. Mr. Comey risked losing his credibility and integrity on the witness stand. He was out to better prepare himself than that. 

I don't believe that today's testimony was even the one he was preparing himself for. He leaked the unclassified memos for the express purpose of triggering a special prosecutor. There may be more said behind closed doors today, but a few things are clear. Mr. Comey intended to be a witness, he had a long term plan to see a case built over time, and he believes that only a special prosecutor can properly execute it. 

What is not clear is what Mr. Comey believes will come of his testimony, how much more interesting stuff he still has to say, if anything at all, or if the special prosecutor will actually turn up anything actionable against anybody. 

Some Live Impressions of the Comey Hearing

Some notes of what I am thinking about as I watch James Comey testify before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence

10:40 - I am noticing that between previous hearings, Yesterday's hearing with DNI Dan Coates, and NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers, and today with James Comey, Intelligence Community members are choosing to look suspicious not answering questions with regard to specific questions. Whether they were about influence over the Russia investigation, or if they were about the Steele Dossier. There is a larger play by the intelligence community. They are building a case and they know they will spook it or confuse it if they are too forthcoming.

Comey is a prosecutor and I am sure that he is thinking of himself as a witness, which is why he preserved the memos. He wanted present sense impression, and present memory refreshed.

10:48 - Senator Risch, points out how good the written testimony is, prepared as good as it gets from legal writing class.

10:54 - We are beginning to drill down to one of the fulcrums of the problem here. President Trump was not under investigation, but the Russian interference was. Why would this create pressure on the President were it not for some sort of complicity or collusion? If he were truly uninvolved why not turn out your pockets and instruct your councilors to do the same? That has always been the dubious problem that makes everyone act Benghazi level nuts.

10:57 - Senator Feinstein also puts before Comey the obviousness of the power of the oval office. A lot of this wouldn't fly in direct, in a court room. But still a public record.

11:03 - Comey has a couple of times mentioned that he did not have the presence of mind to admonish the president for acting strangely, or inappropriately. I think it belies the destabilizing nature of Donald Trump. He does not act like the normal politician or public servant. It is hard to predict if your whole life has been reporting to service minded people. It won't get said explicitly but I think so much of the uneasiness that Comey has had stemmed from this unpredictability.

11:14 - Under questioning from Wyden, we just got one of the biggest pieces of the obstruction puzzle. He said if the president got what he wanted, the Russia investigation would have been ended. Senator Wyden connected the dots, if you had acceded to the president's request the American people would not have gotten the truth. I know people will deny that this is the key, but really that is what those obstruction calls are about. Stay calm, its still going to feel like forever.

11:23 - Comey has been good about creating a theme of trying to protect the organization, which is a far better reason to create the memos and do all of the things he has done. He certainly doesn't look like a guy with an ax to grind.

And while I was typing, he just admitted to being the source of the leaks. Laundered the memos through a professor at Columbia Law. So pretty much everything we have read in the paper about Comey and Trump is from Comey leaking. Again, he has built his case perfectly and is just connecting the dots today.

11:36 - Senator Blut appears to be trying to bury some of this testimony as strange behavior by Comey. I think he's getting shown up, Comey seems to be able to explain over the incredulity of the Senator. And he managed to run himself out of time trying to tease out this strain of thought. Comey shows no interest in answering an unasked question. I keep saying it but that comes with practice, he had to have trained witnesses to not answer unasked questions. I hope this is shown in law schools for years.

11:45 - Closest Comey has come to discussing the actual investigations. The Russia inquiry and the Flynn investigation were "separate but touching" seemed genuinely unsure if he would have been able to let the Russia investigation go unobstructed if Flynn had been stopped. Comey noted that he might want to pressure Flynn to "flip" him. Now the question is who would he flip him to testify against?

11:57 - Great refutation of Trump's claim that Comey had better hope there are no tapes of the conversation. Comey says release them all, almost seems like he would be relieved if they were there to corroborate the memos. He seems like he is enjoying this questioning from Senator Manchin, which should not speak to effort he is putting in.

12:08 - Seeing on Twitter that Judicial Watch is putting out there that Comey leaking information to reporters through third party was betraying his oath. For a supposedly legal organization they don't seem to be able to understand the difference between classified information and unclassified information, or personal recollection recorded. Something that might be worth looking in to would be the giving of Israeli intelegence to the Russians. Or perhaps the deaths of 18 CIA Sources in China just a couple of weeks after the Presidents of China and the US met.

As far as the hearing, Senator Kamala Harris managed to get an impressive string of "unable to answer in open session" answers. And it is beginning to appear that most of the red meat has been consumed by the senior members of the committee so the junior members are going a bit far afield here.

12:19 - Senator Cornyn asks to go back to the Clinton matter with Loretta Lynch. I have not mentioned his other answers in this area because I found them lacking probative value, and minor news. It could have been extrapolated from other information already provided. Biggest piece of news was the direct request on verbiage matching the campaign line. Comey did note no news article matched the language he used. He said "matter" everyone said "investigation," this is more likely the nothing burger the GOP keeps talking about, it certainly couldn't be the other things discussed. Not seeing the Senator getting far with this.

12:29 - Comey just reminded the room what is at stake, if the Russians were meddling in our election that is a big deal. If any American helped that is an even bigger deal. This makes it plain that we need to dig for facts, non-partisan, non-biased facts. I hope all of congress just got that message, as well as Robert Mueller III, which everyone says he already knows that.

Now Senator John McCain can show if he is for America or if he will fall back on the need to protect the President.

12:36 - John McCain is blowing my mind. He goes on a long questioning about the Clinton Email scandal, but can't seem to put a cogent question together. He concludes that there appears to be a double standard. He might be the only one who can track exactly what he means. These are very separate matters, and one seemed finished. If you tracked it let me know.

12:38 - McCain gets gaveled out of a rather tortured speaking time.

12:47 - We are gaveled out of the hearing and the talking heads are flapping. I'll collect myself in a bit for a recap.

With Obama Care, we were never angry at the right people

            There have been years of bellyaching in regards to the passage of the Affordable Healthcare Act. Most of it has come from Republicans decrying the temerity to mandate the purchase of something which is considered essential by most developed countries. Some came from earners in the subsidy gap left by the structure of the bill. As time went on, more voices joined the chorus to note the rise in premiums that were inevitable, and then egregious, to give everyone with preexisting conditions coverage.

            The anger flowed freely and ran hot against President Obama and the Democrats that voted for it. A sharp irony now that 23-24 million stand to lose insurance who clearly were the beneficiaries of that law. It was so bad and worth complaining about for seven years but the prospect of it going away and millions of our fellow Americans losing their coverage appears to be untenable. This uproar should indicate that the ACA was not all bad. And the things that weren’t bad maybe, definitely, are worth saving. Like the subsidies that allowed more than 20 million people to sign up for insurance in the first place. Or the requirement that insurance companies cover preexisting conditions and what people are paying for will actually cover the illnesses they could get.

            Our problem is that we were never angry at the right people. People raged against the president but never questioned why insurance companies were pulling out of marketplaces other than the reasons on the company press release. Instead of believing that they couldn’t make any money in the insurance marketplace, we should have questioned why they could not make money while insurance rates were doubling or tripling, and a record number of insurance customers were paying along with the federal government. Not to mention, company profits never took a sustained hit. Yes there were some growing pains but by 2016 there were profits for all who had stuck it out. If a company cannot make money in this environment it appears to be more a result of incompetence rather than the failure of legislation.

            One of the most important customers that the insurance marketplaces managed to get in this process was the federal government. If these companies really cared about the health of their customers, they, with their enormous lobbyist arms, could have reached out to congress to help prod for more subsidies. On passage even Democrats admitted the bill was not perfect, the companies could have taken the lead in how to reform the markplaces payment structure. Instead they just kept raising prices and they did so because of a clear assurance from an important interest group of the insurance companies. The Republican Party, led by their congressional delegation gave the companies political cover to continue to raise the rates. They complained loudly and often about the bill. So much so that the insurance industry saw that they would not get those subsidies quickly and the path of least resistance would be to play in to the hell-scape that Paul Ryan was promising.

            The other major group that one could credit with not getting enough flack is those  people who were complaining about the individual mandate and the media that enabled them. People who refused to buy insurance were depicted as patriotic cowboys fighting for their right to die of whichever disease they so choose. They were allowed their indignation without the serious check that they did not understand how the purchase of insurance might benefit society at large, or them in the long run, as preventative care is far cheaper than trying to pay for some unforeseen illness. The media allowed them to not have to deal with the fact that their principled stand against Obama Care should have been conflated with a desire to see their neighbors die of cancer.

            The Democrats were not totally blameless, though they were not criticized enough for the right things. They should have been dragged in to the streets for not creating a public option, or the ability to buy in to medicare for all. They were likely lobbied hard; any sign of public insurance will lead to the end of private health insurance in the ten years that follow it. That’s hard to end an industry. Democrats chose not to end dying of preventable disease in their own country instead. They do deserve praise for one thing, though. The bill was never designed to go on forever, and it may fail, but it will do so in a way that proves that people prefer to have healthcare rather than not. And that may mean that Obama Care hastened the coming of the public option, and for that we should thank those who crafted this whole mess. 

Take a breath

The pace of the Trump administration is dizzying. It is always finding a way to do something outrageous while preparing to pivot to the next piece of madness. The Atlantic pointed this out recently when they wrote about four stories that broke in a single day. Prior to this I have wanted to publish several articles on the Trump administration; none have made it through the editing process before losing not only their timeliness but almost their coherence, as the world around us seemed to change.

            I have wanted to write about how Donald Trump is getting co-opted by those around him, and how his alt-right followers should be furious. There were too many examples to keep going, the article never seemed up to date enough. Sure he didn’t reinforce Article 5 but he did just quietly allow in a bunch of refugees.

            I started doing research on health care, tax policy, and infrastructure. None seemed important enough to pull together 500 words on while the Russia story burned brightly. There is so much that could be said on them but each feels as if it will have its moment. The Russian moment is now, and like a glitter bomb it is on everything.

            I wanted to write several wide ranging analyses of the Russia revelations but that might be the least solid ground in politics right now. I scroll through my Facebook feed to see the “promoted” stories are a part of the scandal that I have almost forgotten. Reading back through stories the news site algorithms suggest stories that seem like ancient history. In fact reading news from April, right now being the end of May, feels like simpler time. The most recent breaking news has been about the Transition, a time which even allowed non-political news to enter the public consciousness.

            It has been said many times before but it is worth repeating, Donald Trump is good at disruption, it is how he likes to run his businesses and it is how we are being governed. He wants to keep people off balance, he wants us to be stuck five outrages ago while he is off signing executive orders or golfing. This allows him space to operate, but also gives him plenty of coverage on the news. The NPR politics podcast pointed out last week that he will say whatever he wants to get to the next 10 minutes, but once under oath he is evasive and disciplined.

            So it is time to take a breath away from Russia, the investigations will continue at pace. The world is a place full of problems and provocations, so for the next two weeks those will take center stage for The Polaris Revolution.

Why should they get the court too?

Yesterday Neil M. Gorsuch was sworn in to the Supreme Court of the United States. He will serve a lifetime appointment from now until most likely at least 2048, the year he turns 80, very possibly beyond. There are two current members of the court who are older than that.

Today more than most I feel it is important to ask, why should they get the court too?

The Republicans have the House of Representatives. A prize won through the collection of state legislators to properly sequester or dilute Democratic votes in as many states as possible during redistricting. Allowing them to hold a strong and defensible majority, if not one that is entirely impenetrable to ideological disagreements, within the lower house.

Add to that the simple fact that Democratic states are more populous, while Republican states are more numerous. This means that on average, more states will send Republican Senators to Congress as their allocation is a constant two per state no matter how sparse.

This advantage in number of states has played out at the presidential level as well. Democrats have won 6 of the last 7 popular votes for president (‘92, ’96, ’00, ’08, ’12, ’16). However they have only won 4 of the last 7 Electoral College votes. To be clear, those have produced legitimate presidents as those are our rules. They could not be considered truly democratically elected though.

The Democrats are not particularly good at actually winning elections. 2016 should have been a clear indication of that. Even while indicators were pointing to a large Democratic victory, the party failed to deliver. That is made even worse by the notion that democratic ideas and policies often poll much higher than Republican ones. They are just not sold as well when the time comes. Gay Marriage, the Public Option, Marijuana legalization, supporting education, climate change, all public polls show the country siding with the Democratic platform, yet we have a Republican House, Republican Senate, Republican President.

So why should they get the court too?

Shouldn’t one branch of government actually reflect the people? Shouldn’t the minority be protected? Or majority represented? It doesn’t follow that this country should be governed by regressives trying to hold the country back from the direction which it is naturally heading.

Judge Gorsuch is not the coming of the apocalypse, he is a conservative, and some might say that it is a “conservative seat” which he sits on. That logic should not follow, just because the predecessor was a conservative, or an originalist, does not mean that the successor needs to be. If you’d like to find out if the gender of the judges should remain the same, I believe Ruth Bader Ginsburg enjoys answering that question.  The court must be allowed to evolve. It should reflect the practice of law for its own time, but it should also reflect the country for which it is interpreting those laws.

Just because Justice Scalia may have liked the person who replaced him, does not mean that we owe it to him to have Judge Gorsuch on the court. The country deserves to have a Justice that will dispense justice in a way that it recognizes.

The Atlantic reminds us all to rise above controversy

            Ian Bogost writes in The Atlantic that “Pepsi’s New Ad is a Complete Success.” By all conventional standards he would be wrong. The ad was likely not cheap to produce and could only be aired for all of a day before getting attacked so thoroughly that they could not get value out of it before getting pulled. He is also more right than anyone else who has weighed in on this controversy.

            Pepsi has created something not meant to actually be an advertisement but a stunt. Bogost does an excellent job of breaking down how this is more an act of capitalism than politics. How we are treated by corporations reveals their ideological bent, consumerism first everything else second.

            The article politely brings you the realization that whether outraged or not, you are playing in to the trap that Pepsi has set for you. It does not lay out the trope of not thinking of a purple elephant, though it could easily be excused if it did. Bogost even calls himself out for being part of the machine that has eaten the controversy and allowed it to live out its lifecycle.

            Universalized, the message is much more profound. We live in a time of great outrage. There are things happening within our political and social spheres that are worthy of outrage. We are inundated by all sorts of things that could make us angry. Everyone knows that the superlative emotions get the clicks. Which is why no one does anything that you will think is generally kind of neat, they do things that will totally blow you away. We live with our whole lives on max outrage. Which is why we can be at full breath screaming that the president of Syria is gassing his own citizens, but what wins the news cycle is a cola ad. Why? Well Middle East politics are a tricky mine field of terrible choices and less than ideal allies. Going full blast at a cola company is something we can change today. (Also, land mines are still totally a thing, which we might be rid of by 2025 but I wouldn’t count on it.)

            The lesson here though is we need to focus on the decisions and the policy behind things. Pepsi wanted you to be mad, or to be mad at the people who were mad, so we would all be talking about them. Did it work? Sure. Did we spend our time well? Depends how you define it. Yes we managed to take down a tone deaf ad. But we still didn’t fix the issues that the protests the ad was parodying were about to begin with. So in a week when we should have been teaching ourselves about infrastructure, and whether or not it’s racist (hint: kinda), we something something omg Kendall Jenner.

            So please stop being outraged, calm down enough to decide what matters, and choose to care about it. And even if you do get taken in by something from the outrage machine, at least be honest with yourself that you are being frivolous. If we admit it, then later we can go back to what really matters.