8/12/23

Saturday, August 12, 2023

In bed at 8:40, awake and up at 4:45 with back pain and a bad dream, law firm, no time tickets, not prepared for an upcoming trial, guilty, bad fit.  Mostly sunny day ahead but bad start,  64℉, high of 83℉, AQI=40, wind W at 10 mph, 4-11/22.  .2" of rain in the last 24 hours, heavy rain is expected on Monday.  Sunrise at 5:53, sunset at 7:59,  14+5.

 LTMW at a group of grackles glomming onto the bird feeders.  They are too big to fit comfortably on any of the feeders.   They remind me of big teenagers throwing on some chintzy 'costume' and showing up at my door trick or treating, competing with the little kids. . . .  By 10 a.m., I am wondering why I haven't seen any young mother or father pushing a baby buggy or stroller, or accompanying a youngster on a trike or bike or scooter.  Nor a walker or jogger or cyclist.  Unusual.  If this happened with the birds, I'd be thinking about a predator in the neighborhood.

Don't underestimate Joe's ability to fuck things up.  Words attributed, perhaps accurately, perhaps not, to Barack Obama while discussing Joe Biden's bid for the presidency in 2015 or 2016.  I think of those apocryphal words as I hear and read about the appointment of a special counsel to prosecute Hunter Biden.  For both Hunter B. legally and Joe B. politically, this has been a shitshow from the beginning, ab initio as judges are wont to write.  Hunter B.'s behavior in life has been mighty unadmirable.  There is not much about it to admire, except for his too-much-maligned paintings which I think are pretty good.   He reminds me of another president's son who managed some major fuck-ups in his life and took to painting late in life.  But I have a small soft spot in my heart for Hunter and always wonder how much his father contributed to the son's troubles.  I know it's presumptuous of me but I've long wondered about Joe's decision to go to the Senate after Beau's (age 3) and Hunter's (age 2) mother and sister were killed in a car-truck crash in December 1972.  Hunter had a fractured skull and other head injuries; Beau had leg and other injuries.  I wonder about the decision because the characteristic that has marked Joe's entire adult life is overweening political ambition.  It took him to the Senate at age 30 and led him to run for president in 1988 at age 46, a campaign that ended in scandals.   He considered running again in subsequent elections and did run in 2008 when he was beaten by Barack Obama.  Despite his 'aw, shucks', call me Joe, regular guy image, he has been at least as intensely driven to pursue power and prestige in Washington as any other politico and I am persuaded that it was that driving ambition that led him to the Senate rather than staying close to home with his motherless children.  Did it make a difference in Hunter's life?  Who knows, but one wonders.  Additionally, I wonder about Joe's fawning adulation of big brother Beau and what effect that may have had on Hunter.  Was Hunter always competing with Beau for his father's affection, admiration, and love, or engaging in substance abuse to numb himself to his second-class position in the family?  No need to belabor that point, but again one wonders.  In any event, Beau grew up to be the superhero in his father's eyes and Hunter became the train wreck.  How much did Joe contribute to both?  One can only wonder. 

In any event, Joe now is standing by his son and that may be commendable.  But was it so commendable to publicly write off Hunter's daughter, Joe's granddaughter, to deny that she even was his granddaughter until after Hunter and the girl's mother had worked out their child support settlement, including that provision that the girl's name would not be 'Biden'?  Was that provision designed to ensure that she could not use the Biden name to seek fame and fortune the way her father did?  And what is the point of Joe's public protestations of Hunter's innocence of the charges being pursued against him, including the tax and gun charges which he was willing to admit as part of his plea deal with the U.S. attorney (and now Special Counsel)?  "First of all, my son has done nothing wrong.  I trust him and I'm proud of him."  Nothing wrong???  Joe has long had a big problem with truth-telling, about his academic record, his visits as VP to Afghanistan, and lots of things.  But to say of train-wreck Hunter that he "has done nothing wrong" is stupid, not particularly helpful to Hunter, and politically damaging to Joe. 

If only he would drop out of the presidential race and give another younger and more appealing Democrat a chance, but that is wishful thinking.  He has wanted to live in the White House most of his adult life and nothing is going to deter him from trying to hold on to it until he is 86 years old, not even the prospect of Donald Trump regaining it with all that that portends.

Mike Drew has died at age 90.  He was the TV critic, notably the local TV critic for the Milwaukee Journal.  He started with the Journal in 1961 and wrote columns for 43 years.  He stayed on writing his columns in 1995 when the Journal and its local competitor, The Milwaukee Sentinel, merged into the Journal-Sentinel.  The news story about his death reminded me of the tremendous changes that have occurred in local journalism, both broadcast and print, since I came to Milwaukee in 1959.  I wasn't aware of it then, but the Sentinel employed two courthouse reporters, one for the state courts and one for the federal courts.  Today, there is probably one Journal-Sentinal reporter whose beat includes local courts, but not exclusively.  He or she may also cover city or county governments.  The difference shows up in the reporting or rather the lack of reporting.    Reporters rely on "sources" and establishing source-relationships requires contact, frequent contact.  For courthouse reporting that may or may not include schmoozing with the judges, but also includes schmoozing with clerks, bailiffs, attorneys, sheriffs and police officers, and anyone with a sense of what is happening where and with whom or is about to happen.  The wider the reporter's beat, the fewer are the opportunities to develop source-relationships.  Newsrooms have been decimated since the arrival of the internet and 24-hour cable news.  It shows in the lack of local reporting.  Dana Milbank's column in yesterday's WaPo was about the local newspaper in Rappahannock County, Virginia, where he now lives.  It is thriving with a lot of very granular and personal local reporting but does so with the financial support of a couple of non-profit helpers.  It's a tough world out there for local news and Mike Drew's death reminds me of that.

Hallucinating Ugly Trump Thoughts.  The judge in Trump's January 6th case, Tanya Chutkan, is just as savvy and judicious as the judge in the Mar-a-Lago case, Aileen Cannon, is the opposite.  She has made it clear that there will be punitive consequences if Trump engages in conduct that threatens or intimidates witnesses or jurors.  It is virtually impossible to imagine that Trump will desist from his normal name-calling and threatening bombast because of the judge's warnings.  It seems probable that the judge will be tempered in her imposition of sanctions on Trump, which is to say it is highly unlikely that she will find him in contempt and have him incarcerated on his first or perhaps second violation of her orders or of the conditions of his release from custody pending trial.  She will probably order him into court and admonish him to cease & desist, etc., and perhaps impose substantial fines for each of his acts deemed violative of her orders and/or conditions of release, but it's unlikely she will put him behind bars except as a last resort.  What I am wondering is whether Trump wants to push her to revoke his release, whether he is willing to spend some time behind bars to trigger the political and social upheaval that his incarceration would provoke and perhaps to provoke a  conflict between the court and the Secret Service over the conditions of his incarceration.  AND provide an occasion for getting to the D.C. Court of Appeals and ultimately to the Supreme Court via an interlocutory habeas corpus proceeding, keeping in mind that there are few interlocutory appeals permitted in federal criminal cases.  I can't imagine all the possibilities that might eventuate but, from Trump's point of view, anything that would come out of the Roberts/Trump court would likely be more favorable to Trump than would be the case with Judge Chutkan unimpeded by corrupt, politically-motivated superiors.  If Trump were to be found in contempt and jailed, with the whole world watching, he could count on being handled with kid gloves by his guards (including Secret Service agents).  Would there be riots in the streets, violent gatherings akin to January 6th?  I think there would be, not at the Capitol but at federal courthouses and other facilities around the country.  Would we see something akin to the Oklahoma City bombing of the federal courthouse there?  or some less lethal and destructive attack on federal facilities?  I think we could count on it.  How would the federal government respond?  How would Joe Biden respond?  How would the American people respond?  Biden as the nation's chief magistrate, law enforcer, and commander-in-chief of the armed forces would have to get involved personally.  He wouldn't be able to take the 'hands off' attitude he has taken with respect to the Special Counsel investigations and prosecutions and with the DOJ's dealings with Hunter Biden.    Perhaps Biden would emerge from the awful disruptions looking magisterial and Churchillian, but I rather doubt it.  I suspect that one way or another his already low approval ratings would dip even further and that he would be held responsible for the nation's chaotic condition and deepening polarization.  Trump and his people were not able to bring the government down on 1/6/21 but they might bring Biden's government down simply by getting himself thrown in jail by Judge Chutkan.  But of course I'm just hallucinating all this, amn't I?