Wednesday, June 26, 2019

Next: Mr.. Mueller Goes To Congress

It's time to Break It Down!

Democrats will introduce the first two of their winnowing debates tonight and tomorrow night, conservative media are savaging the contenders in advance of the onset of formalities, a GOP Congressman, Duncan Hunter, CA, is alleged to have used campaign funds to pay for extramarital affairs with lobbyists and staff, while another woman has accused Donald Trump of sexual assault. Most any day of most any week, any one of those stories could vie for news of the day status. But not today. 

In last night’s breaking news, word emerged that Robert Mueller, by virtue of a subpoena, has reached terms to testify before two House Congressional Committees on July 17th. By my reckoning, that is today’s top story.

It’s true it’s unlikely to go over well at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC. And over in the Senate Chamber where Mitch McConnell has, on behalf of his GOP Majority, already dismissed any interest whatsoever in talking to Mueller, the action will likely be met by a shrug and a yawn. 

Last night, the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees released an announcement that the special counsel will appear and answer questions in public for the first time since initiating the 22-month investigation that culminated in the Mueller Report. The vast majority of Americans have not read the 448-page report, even in the redacted format. Now it appears we will get to hear Mueller himself answer questions about the probe. In a joint statement issued by House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, the two said:

"Americans have demanded to hear directly from the Special Counsel so they can understand what he and his team examined, uncovered, and determined about Russia's attack on our democracy, the Trump campaign's acceptance and use of that help, and President Trump and his associates' obstruction of the investigation into that attack."

Congressman Schiff said the two committees will question Mueller separately, and that the Intelligence Committee will question Mueller’s staff in closed session afterward. It is fair to say Mueller’s testimony is highly anticipated. While the staff will testify in closed session, it is equally assured that a read out of their testimony is also feedback millions of Americans are looking forward to hearing.

Democrats, the Justice Department, and Mueller’s team spent weeks negotiating before resorting to issuing the subpoenas. They attempted to persuade him to testify voluntarily. When those efforts failed, they played the subpoena card.

I’ve long held the position that Trump is ours (the American people’s) until he’d not, as in until he is unelected, or until he has served two terms, whichever comes first. I simply do not view impeachment (Senate conviction) as the means by which Trump will exit office. Who knows? I’ve been wrong before. MeanwhileNext: Mr. Mueller Goes To Congress!”

I’m done; holla back!

Read my blog anytime by clicking the linkhttp://thesphinxofcharlotte.comFind a new post each Wednesday.

To subscribeclick on Follow in the bottom right hand corner of my Home Page at http://thesphinxofcharlotte.com; enter your e-mail address in the designated space, and click on “Sign me up.” Subsequent editions of “Break It Down” will be mailed to your in-box.

Consult the links below for more detailed information on a variety of aspects relating to this post:

https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/25/politics/robert-mueller-will-testify/index.html

https://thesphinxofcharlotte.blogspot.com/2019/06/next-mr-mueller-goes-to-congress.html



Wednesday, June 19, 2019

Oh Canada: Raptors Win NBA Title

It's time to Break It Down!

In what would have seemed an improbable turn of events at the start of the NBA Season last October, the Toronto Raptors were the last team standing a week ago Monday night. The Canadian based franchise became the first team outside the United States to win an NBA Title. In another first, the Raptors also became the first team to win three road games on the way to the Title.

Last Summer Kawhi Leonard, a former NBA Finals MVP ditched the San Antonio Spurs for the Raptors. Leonard played only 9 games last season. He spent, for all practical purposes, the entire season out due to injury. He and the Spurs’ management and medical staff were at odds all year. His reputation took a major hit…with teammates, Spurs management, fans, and undoubtedly, a number of other NBA teams.

At the end of a contentious year, Leonard forced a trade, which ended up packaging he and Danny Green to the Raptors for DeMar DeRozan, Jakob Poeltl, and a protected 2019 first-round pick. At that point there was a fair amount of speculation that Kawhi was at least a borderline malcontent who simply no longer wanted to play in San Antonio, and who may just be biding time in Toronto until an opportunity for him to sign a max contract with another team presented itself. While it's still uncertain whether Leonard will return to Toronto next year, the malcontent issue appears to have been debunked.

Another year, another Title, and another Finals MVP. A lot has changed. Lest there have been any doubt, Kawhi established again, that he is one of the best among the League’s elite players. Detractors will note that the Raptors bested a depleted Warriors squad, one that saw Kevin Durant make only a token appearance, that saw Klay Thompson falter and go down in the deciding game, that included Andre Iguodala missing time due to injury, and with DeMarcus Cousins playing as a shell of his former self. All that is true, but shed no tears for the 2019 Warriors. A number of teams thought to be destined for NBA Titles have been undone by the fate of the injury gods, including Pistons, Lakers, Cavaliers, and even the Warriors. The season is long and injuries happen. The Warriors stocked their roster with a collection of the best players money could buy. When at full capacity, they could start Cousins, Green, Thompson, Durant, and Curry, or 5 All-Stars. That’s happened on 5 times before this season. That it didn’t work out in the end is surely not the Raptor fault. Neither is it their concern.

In the end, the best team won. Not the best collection of players, or the best team, if everyone had been available, but the best team over the 6-game duration of the 2019 NBA Finals. Conventional wisdom holds that the Western Conference is tougher than the Eastern Conference. Perhaps that’s true. But the Raptors not only swept the Warriors during the Regular Season, they finished with a better record, second only to the Milwaukee Bucks, whom they bested in the Eastern Conference Finals, winning 4 straight games after falling into an 0-2 deficit.

Having a better record than the Warriors meant the Raptors had the home court advantage in the Finals. After splitting games in Toronto to open the series, the Raptors won all 3 games at Oracle Arena (losing one more at home), not just ending the home team’s bid for a Three-peat, but closing Oracle for good with one final loss. The Warriors open a new state-of-the-art facility, the $1.4 billion Chase Center across the bay on (the Mission Bay area of) the San Francisco Waterfront.

Congratulations to the 2019 NBA Champs…”Oh Canada: Raptors Win NBA Title!”

I’m done; holla back!

Read my blog anytime by clicking the linkhttp://thesphinxofcharlotte.comFind a new post each Wednesday.

To subscribeclick on Follow in the bottom right hand corner of my Home Page at http://thesphinxofcharlotte.com; enter your e-mail address in the designated space, and click on “Sign me up.” Subsequent editions of “Break It Down” will be mailed to your in-box.

Consult the links below for more detailed information on a variety of aspects relating to this post:




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chase_Center

https://thesphinxofcharlotte.blogspot.com/2019/06/oh-canada-raptors-win-nba-title.html
https://thesphinxofcharlotte.blogspot.com/2019/06/oh-canada-raptors-win-nba-title.html

Wednesday, June 12, 2019

It Has Taken Far Too Long: Alas, The Media Is Coming Around

It's time to Break It Down!

It has been 873 days since Donald Trump assumed office. While conventional wisdom often suggests that time flies, for me at least, this factoid is impenetrably etched in another arc of the time and space continuum. It seems like it has been much longer. But that’s really beside the point. Please excuse my digression.

In the ensuing 125 weeks and five days, I have published 125 blog posts. Of those posts, in 10 of them, I have delved pointedly into the frequency, which third party evaluators have deemed Donald Trump to have uttered or written misleading, false, or downright patent untruths. Fact checkers at PolitiFact, the New York Times, and the Washington Post have recently indicated that Mr. Trump is closing in on 11,000 false or misleading statements, pegging the number at north of 10,800, and counting.

I have on a number of occasions pointed out in wonderment that the Fourth Estate has appeared to be reluctant to directly refer to these departures from truth as lies. I understand, somewhat, the deference, which at least in part accrues to the Office, not the man. Still it seems to me, there must be a point of no return, a breaking point, a point at which the masses and the media must simply face the absolute undeniable fact that, frequently, Trump makes statements that are not only not made jokingly, they are not alternative, nor any other kind of facts. They are, for lack of a more polite term, lies.

A week ago, a Paul Farhi article entitled, "Lies: The News Media is Starting to Describe Trump's Falsehoods That Way," appeared in the Washington Post. In the disquisition Farhi opined that it is all but official. The president of the United States, AKA Donald J. Trump, is a liar. For anyone who chafed at the erstwhile inexplicable reluctance, the Office notwithstanding, of media types to characterize the repeated, frequent, and by all discernible accounts, intentional statement and/or writing of the provably untrue as, well, lies, this has be akin to the point at which one stops "waiting" to exhale. 

To underscore his point, Mr. Farhi provided several recent examples of various media entities finding their (for too long silent) voice:

–CNN: “The Mueller report: A catalog of 77 Trump team lies and falsehoods.”
–Minneapolis Star Tribune: “President Trump lies to troops about pay raise.”
–Financial Times: “The real reason Donald Trump lies.”
–Los Angeles Times: “Mueller report exposes all the president’s liars.”
–Chicago Tribune: “Why are Trump’s lies not ruinous to him? Because truth can be in the eye of the beholder.”
–The New Yorker: “It’s True: Trump Is Lying More, and He’s Doing It on Purpose.”
–Foreign Policy: “Does It Matter That Trump Is a Liar?”

It hasn’t been that long since questions about Trump’s assertions were tested in a realm where he was routinely given the benefit of the doubt. The prevailing logic went something like this: “Could a Presidential statement, no matter how blatantly false, be deemed a lie, since by definition, the word implies awareness of falsity and intent to deceive?” To wit, how can journalists know what’s in Trump’s mind, even when he repeatedly says transparently untrue things, such as, “the wall is under construction right now,” on the Southern Border with Mexico, or that the United States pays “a disproportionate share” of the cost of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)?
  
The dictionary definition of lie still renders some media organizations unwilling to apply it to Donald Trump. FactCheck.org hasn’t used the term in 10 years, according to its Director, Eugene Kiely. The Washington Post’s Fact Checker column, despite having documented more than 10K false or misleading claims, has used the term just one time.

Glenn Kessler, the Post’s Fact Checker editor and chief writer notes that it’s impossible to get in Trump’s head, and the situational nature of his statement may mean he actually believes what he’s saying. That said, he concedes the sheer volume of Trump’s false and misleading statements may have caused some journalists to cease and desist with the benefit of the doubt trope.

For his part, Kessler used the apparently powerful three letter word last year to describe Trump’s denials about paying hush money to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election, given that an audio recording and other evidence clearly showed Trump spoke falsely.

The Post published the story under the headline, “Not just misleading. Not merely false. A lie.” The story appeared on Page 1 of the paper.

Last year, propelled by what may be considered Trump’s insouciant disregard for truth-telling, the Fact Checker created the Bottomless Pinocchio, a new category of falsehoods that have been repeated so often, “that there can be no question the politician is aware his or her facts are wrong.”

Among the first and most prominent entities to adopt the use of the L-word were the New York Times (NYT) and the Associated Press (AP). Both festooned Trump’s Birtherism claims with a Scarlett L. After his inauguration, the NYT also stamped Trump’s claim, that he would have won the popular vote had it not been for voter fraud, with an L. The headline: Trump Won’t Back Down from His Voting Fraud Lie. Here Are the Facts.”

Daniel Dale, who joined CNN last week on the fact checker beat, former Washington bureau chief, was one of the first mainstream journalists to systematically brand Trump’s comments as lies. He began compiling a database in 2015 and started counting the false statements the following year.

He deploys the word “lie” often and unabashedly refers to Trump as a “serial liar.” Speaking on the subject, Dale said:

“I think both are objectively true. It isn’t a departure from objective journalism to use these words. Why should objective journalism mean we have to dance around the obvious, objective truth? If we’re going to get readers to trust us, we have to be straight with them.”

Dale notes that he uses the term lie more frequently when Trump repeats a false claim multiple times. He elaborated:

“Perhaps the first couple [of instances] were confusion. But after dozens, and sometimes hundreds of instances, I think the active disregard for accuracy is sufficient grounds for calling the statement a lie.”

At the end of the day, Dale believes the terminology is less important than calling out the statements as wrong and inaccurate. "To not do so means news stories and segments are being completed without the public being informed the president made 10 or 15 or 35 false statements in one covered speech."

Angie Drobnic Holan, the editor of PolitiFact, the Pulitzer Prize winning fact-checking organization, agrees. She added:

“It’s much more important to point out why Trump is wrong, and show the evidence.”

PolitiFact doesn’t use the word lie explicitly. However, its most extreme rating – “Pants on Fire” – certainly implies it. It also awards a “Lie of the Year Award. Not coincidentally, it has given the award to Trump three times in the past four years.

Holan and Dale view the issue differently. Holan is concerned that the public is being pummeled with headlines that suggest they are being lied to, which may breed cynicism. Dale counters her concern with the observation that “if someone committed 100 felonies, we don’t report that he committed 2 felonies and 98 nonlegal activities. We just say it was 100 felonies. Trump lies all the time. If we’re only going to point out some of them, he wins with the other ones.”

On balance, though I think Ms. Holan means well, I fully and resolutely believe Mr. Dale is absolutely correct, both in his actions, and in his underlying reasoning. It Has Taken Far Too Long: Alas, The Media Is Coming Around!”

I‘m done; holla back!

Read my blog anytime by clicking the linkhttp://thesphinxofcharlotte.comFind a new post each Wednesday.

To subscribeclick on Follow in the bottom right hand corner of my Home Page at http://thesphinxofcharlotte.com; enter your e-mail address in the designated space, and click on “Sign me up.” Subsequent editions of “Break It Down” will be mailed to your in-box.

Consult the links below for more detailed information on a variety of aspects relating to this post:











https://www.timetemperature.com/date-tools/days-between-two-dates.php?timestamp=75423600&sd=20&sm=01&sy=2017&ed=12&em=06&ey=2019

https://thesphinxofcharlotte.blogspot.com/2019/06/it-has-taken-far-too-long-alas-media-is.html

Wednesday, June 5, 2019

And Another One: White House Orders Former Staffers Not To Cooperate With Congress

It's time to Break It Down!

Yesterday, the White House again directed former employees to ignore Congressional subpoenas and not provide documents to the House Judiciary Committee. In this latest of instances, it instructed Hope Hicks and Annie Donaldson to refuse to comply by not providing information the Committee had requested.

Donald Trump has pledged to contest, defy, and or fight any efforts by the Democratically controlled House to get information from individuals who currently serve the White House, or who formerly worked for him. He has issued a blanket assessment that such subpoenas amount to what he deems presidential harassment.

His supporters continue to argue he has a point, and, of course, they accept his reasoning. Democrats have launched a variety of probes, including into his taxes, his finances, and into his administration.

This post could take up numerous pages, and address various individuals who’ve already been precluded from openly sharing with a duly elected co-equal branch of government, information that it has every right to collect. It could. But it won’t. In fact, I will close with the most basic of questions. 

If, as Trump suggests, and as his backers concur, there is no there, there, what does Donald Trump have to hide?

As the talk radio phrase goes, I’ll hang up and listen! “And Another One: White House Orders Former Staffers Not To Cooperate With Congress!”

I’m done; holla back!

Read my blog anytime by clicking the linkhttp://thesphinxofcharlotte.comFind a new post each Wednesday.

To subscribeclick on Follow in the bottom right hand corner of my Home Page at http://thesphinxofcharlotte.com; enter your e-mail address in the designated space, and click on “Sign me up.” Subsequent editions of “Break It Down” will be mailed to your in-box.

Consult the links below for more detailed information on a variety of aspects relating to this post:



https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/white-house-directs-hope-hicks-annie-donaldson-withhold-documents-house-n1013666

https://thesphinxofcharlotte.blogspot.com/2019/06/and-another-one-white-house-orders.html