Tag Lisa Mascaro

How a bad thing can lead to your being grateful

Pat Ryan 1 Comment

Over the past month there have been enough examples of my state’s leaders behaving disgracefully to make me think I could write a nice satire about how I am thankful we have leaders who are willing to protect us from things we didn’t know we needed protection from.  You know, things like, Muslims in America exercising their First Amendment rights to the freedom of religion, or Texas state employees using personal social media accounts to promote a non-MAGA political rally, or university professors who are serious about exposing students to ideas their parents may not agree with, or actually anything done by anyone intent on telling truths that don’t align with the preferences of how those in power prefer their “truths” nowadays.  But before I could get there I found something that I really am grateful for: the first serious signs of a potential loosening of TFG’s grip on the Republican Party.

During the 2016 primary campaigns there were plenty of Republicans willing to be quoted disagreeing with the outrageous things Donald Trump had to say, right up until he won the nomination.  After that, as is usual, members of the party supported the party’s candidate.  But as time went on we saw an eerie, almost mystical transformation that left virtually every Republican unable to speak any criticism at all: they learned that (1) Trump was so thin-skinned that he could stand no disagreement of any kind at all on any issue, no matter how petty, (2) he had demonstrated how he would gleefully make good on his threat to support a challenger to any critic when he or she ran for re-election, and (3) MAGA nation was eager to do whatever TFG asked.  Republican senators and members of Congress – never shy and retiring types, always eager to defend their institutional prerogatives as well as their high and mighty personages – forgot how to disagree, however politely, with the Chief Executive.  They might as well have stopped meeting at all.  For a period recently, they pretty much did stop meeting.

When the president began issuing executive orders to take actions that have always been the right and/or responsibility of Congress, the Republicans who control both the House and Senate never raised a public peep about it.  When his administration took it upon itself to begin unprovoked attacks on private boats in international waters – destroying the ships and killing the crewmembers – while claiming the boats and their crews were hauling illegal drugs and therefore constituted an attack on the safety of the United States but never sharing with the world any evidence to prove the claim, there was one constant in the response from GOP members: the sound of crickets.  Until this weekend.

Last Friday the Washington Post reported (free link) on the questionable orders that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave to the Navy SEALs executing the first of these attacks.

The longer the U.S. surveillance aircraft followed the boat, the more confident intelligence analysts watching from command centers became that the 11 people on board were ferrying drugs.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. “The order was to kill everybody,” one of them said.

A missile screamed off the Trinidad coast, striking the vessel and igniting a blaze from bow to stern. For minutes, commanders watched the boat burning on a live drone feed. As the smoke cleared, they got a jolt: Two survivors were clinging to the smoldering wreck.

The Special Operations commander overseeing the Sept. 2 attack — the opening salvo in the Trump administration’s war on suspected drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere — ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions, two people familiar with the matter said. The two men were blown apart in the water.

Hegseth’s order, which has not been previously reported, adds another dimension to the campaign against suspected drug traffickers. Some current and former U.S. officials and law-of-war experts have said that the Pentagon’s lethal campaign — which has killed more than 80 people to date — is unlawful and may expose those most directly involved to future prosecution.

The important thing to be emphasized here, beyond the claim that Whiskey Pete ordered the killing of “combatants” who might have been considered “non-combatants” after their boat was blown out from under them and were clinging to wreckage to keep from drowning, is that the talk of investigating potential “war crimes” is coming from Democrats AND Republicans!

The lawmakers said they did not know whether last week’s Washington Post report was true, and some Republicans were skeptical, but they said attacking survivors of an initial missile strike poses serious legal concerns.

“This rises to the level of a war crime if it’s true,” said Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va.

Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, when asked about a follow-up strike aimed at people no longer able to fight, said Congress does not have information that happened. He noted that leaders of the Armed Services Committee in both the House and Senate have opened investigations.

“Obviously, if that occurred, that would be very serious and I agree that that would be an illegal act,” Turner said.

(snip)

Republican Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and its top Democrat, Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, said in a joint statement late Friday that the committee “will be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances.”

That was followed Saturday with the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Republican Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama, and the ranking Democratic member, Washington Rep. Adam Smith, issuing a joint statement saying the panel was committed to “providing rigorous oversight of the Department of Defense’s military operations in the Caribbean.”

“We take seriously the reports of follow-on strikes on boats alleged to be ferrying narcotics in the SOUTHCOM region and are taking bipartisan action to gather a full accounting of the operation in question,” Rogers and Smith said, referring to U.S. Southern Command.

This does not mean that ALL Republicans are challenging the White House, but today some of them are willing to say the quiet part out loud: that lawmakers have the responsibility to check this out for themselves…it might be that the president’s puppet, the demonstrably unsuitable nominee to lead the nation’s military that the Senate obediently approved even if holding their collective noses, might have given orders that violate the Geneva Convention.  And, they are saying, we won’t ignore this.

For that, I am grateful.

1+1=2, water is wet, and default is bad

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Some good news for those in the reality-based community following the debt ceiling discussions in Washington: House Republican leaders are getting their head-in-the-sand brethren prepared to do the responsible thing and vote for a debt ceiling increase.  Amid reports of continuing private negotiating sessions—which, frankly, is how the negotiating should be done—Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan explained to the Republican conference the realities of what would happen if the U.S. government were to default on its loan payments, and it appears to have worked with some of them:

“He said if we pass Aug. 2, it would be like ‘Star Wars,'” said Rep. Scott DesJarlais, a freshman from Tennessee. “I don’t think the people who are railing against raising the debt ceiling fully understand that.”

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with not wanting to raise the debt ceiling, with wishing it weren’t necessary; but there’s everything wrong with refusing to do it, with denying the overwhelming evidence that it will lead to serious economic problems for most of the country, because you’re trying to prove the validity of a discredited economic theory.  Extremists have co-opted the once-proud name of “Republican Party” to pursue their radical ends with some cover of respectability, and every one of us who didn’t do enough to shine the light of reason on their goals and tactics must take part of the blame for their current power.

Paul Krugman put some perspective on this in a column this week:

A number of commentators seem shocked at how unreasonable Republicans are being. “Has the G.O.P. gone insane?” they ask.

Why, yes, it has. But this isn’t something that just happened, it’s the culmination of a process that has been going on for decades.

(snip)

As The Times’s Nate Silver points out, the president has offered deals that are far to the right of what the average American voter prefers — in fact, if anything, they’re a bit to the right of what the average Republican voter prefers!

Yet Republicans are saying no. Indeed, they’re threatening to force a U.S. default, and create an economic crisis, unless they get a completely one-sided deal. And this was entirely predictable.

(snip)

Supply-side voodoo — which claims that tax cuts pay for themselves and/or that any rise in taxes would lead to economic collapse — has been a powerful force within the G.O.P. ever since Ronald Reagan embraced the concept of the Laffer curve. But the voodoo used to be contained. Reagan himself enacted significant tax increases, offsetting to a considerable extent his initial cuts.

(snip)

Recently, however, all restraint has vanished — indeed, it has been driven out of the party. Last year Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, asserted that the Bush tax cuts actually increased revenue — a claim completely at odds with the evidence — and also declared that this was “the view of virtually every Republican on that subject.”

(snip)

…those within the G.O.P. who had misgivings about the embrace of tax-cut fanaticism might have made a stronger stand if there had been any indication that such fanaticism came with a price, if outsiders had been willing to condemn those who took irresponsible positions.

(snip)

…there has been no pressure on the G.O.P. to show any kind of responsibility, or even rationality — and sure enough, it has gone off the deep end. If you’re surprised, that means that you were part of the problem.

I hope the report of House leadership having a “come to Jesus” meeting with the GOP conference is a sign that there is still some responsibility and rationality there that can be accessed to do what’s right for everyone.