Just Guitar

My Old School, a Steely Dan song from their second album, Countdown To Ecstasy, but with just Skunk Baxter's guitar parts.  The whole thing is great, but goes absolutely insane with the closing solo starting at 2:31.  There is nothing predictable about that solo and it's also very humorous.  The guy covering this is quite good.

I Take It Back

On February 11, THC gave a favorable review to Monsieur Spade after viewing four of the six episodes.  We just watched the final episode tonight and what a miserable way to end the series after a such a strong start.  There were a couple of plot points early in the episode which seemed very manipulative and out of character with what we'd seen previously, but it was the last big scene which was an absolute disaster, introducing a completely new character into a Hercules Poirot setting, full of exposition with poorly written dialogue, and making little sense.  It was as though the screenwriters got tired and rather than work their way through to some resolution they just decided to give up and phone it in.  I've rarely watched anything with such a drastic fall off in quality at the end, and Ms THC concurs with this verdict.

Shady Grove

You can find several version of Doc Watson performing this traditional folk song on YouTube but I like this best, because you can hear Doc's wonderful speaking voice and telling the story of how he met his wife RosaLee.  RosaLee and Doc were married for 65 years, with RosaLee passing six months after Doc in 2012.  Ms THC and I saw Doc perform in 1978.  An appropriate song for Valentine's Day.

Great Moments In History

Going through my old books I came across Great Moments in History by Samuel Nisenson and Alfred Parker.  Published in 1932, Great Moments had been my mother's book (her maiden name is inscribed) and I remember reading, and loving, it as a child of 9 or 10.  It consists of 150 "Moments" described in one page, illustrated, and vividly written vignettes, beginning with The Exodus from Egypt (1285-1250 BC) and The First Olympic Games (776 BC) and concluding with Lindbergh's Transatlantic Flight (1927).  It is heavily weighted towards American history.

Samuel Nisenson wrote a series of similar books, primarily in the 1930s but continuing into the 1950s with titles like Minute Biographies, Minute Sketches of Great Composers, Great Moments in Catholic History, Great Moments in Baseball, History's 100 Greatest Events, and a 1934 biography of Franklin Roosevelt.

Written for general audiences and published by Grosset & Dunlap, one of the big publishing houses of the day, the books provide an insight into the America of that era.  I thought it would be interesting to see how and whether events related to race in America are portrayed almost a century ago.

One of the "Great Moments" is "The Introduction of Slavery in America: The Beginning of the Powerful Institution that was Nearly to Disrupt America" (August 1619), pictured below.  The narrative provides a pretty good summary of the origin and growth of slavery in the Western Hemisphere and concludes:

The spread of the institution of slavery had far-reaching and disastrous effects on the social history of the United States.  It created a sharp line of division between the northern manufacturers who did not need slaves and the southern planters who depended on them, a division that ultimately precipitated the American War Between the States in 1860.

Doesn't appear the authors had any doubts about the cause of the Civil War.

The next relevant Moment is in 1793, "The Invention of the Cotton Gin: The Remarkable Machine that Changed the History of America", pictured below.  We are given an account of the invention by Eli Whitney along with its impact on the economics of cotton.  This page concludes:

Between 1791 and 1801, the exports of cotton, now a cheap commodity, instead of a luxury, increased 100-fold, and slavery became an important industrial factor in the Southern states.  The South was soon a country of vast cotton plantations, while the slave system grew into a powerful institution that threatened to disrupt the Union and ultimately brought on the Civil War.

 The Capture of John Brown: The End of the Raid that Startled the Country! (Oct 18, 1859) is next up.

With the coming of the Civil War the next entry on the subject is"The Freeing of the Slaves: The Proclamation that made All Men Free and Equal in America!" (January 1, 1863), pictured below.

Unlike the prior entries, this narrative has serious flaws.  It states that Lincoln "freed all the slaves by his Emancipation Proclamation".  The effect of the Proclamation was much more limited, being restricted to slaves still held in areas controlled by the Confederacy on that date.  Non secessionist slave states, and slave holding areas already occupied by Union troop were not included.

The narrative concludes:

"Although the liberation of the Negroes at first threw the South into chaos, the gradual readjustment, after the war, placed the Negro on an equal footing with the White man and fulfilled the words of the Declaration of Independence that 'All Men are Created Equal'"

That is not what happened and, in the former slave states, the "readjustment" took the form of Jim Crow laws which began to be adopted in the final two decades of the 19th century.

The final Moment dealing with race in America is "The Reconstruction of the South" (1867-1876) and it goes badly awry.  We read of Northern "carpetbaggers", the Southern white "scalawags" who joined in their corrupt schemes, and government "completely into the hands of the Negroes".  It only ends when "the people finally rose and drove them out".  Once the states were readmitted "the Union was once more intact and a new industrial South replaced the broad plantation with its black slaves."

We find no mention of the Black Codes, instituted by southern states in 1865-66, or of the spree of violence by Whites against newly freed Blacks, actions which triggered the 1867 Reconstruction Act.

Great Moments in History was published in 1932 at the height of the influence of the Dunning School interpretation of the Civil War and Reconstruction.  William Dunning was a professor of history and political philosophy at Columbia University.  Extremely influential, Dunning taught and wrote that Reconstruction was a disaster, that freedmen were incapable of self-government, Blacks should not be allowed to vote or hold office, and segregation necessary; the military occupation of the South had been a mistake; and that the Reconstruction state governments had been corrupt and incompetent, a gross mischaracterization, particularly given the armed resistance they faced from recalcitrant Whites.  This caricature of reconstruction governments was prevalent for decades - I remember references to this in my middle school history book in the early 1960s, though by high school I think it was gone.

It is interesting that the greatest diversion between the text and the real history is in its most recent entry, illustrating the failure of post-Civil War America to find a way to assimilate Blacks at the same time it was successfully assimilating millions of immigrants.

This book was written during a period that some historians consider the nadir of the post-Civil War experience for Black Americans, the era between the World Wars (see Strange Fruit for more details), and it is a reflection of its times.

Monsieur Spade

 We were not aware of this series until a couple of days before its premiere.  Decided to watch after the first couple of episodes had been broadcast and have now viewed 4 of the six in the series.  It's very good - not Breaking Bad/Justified top notch, but very good, even though I had my doubts at the start.

The Maltese Falcon, which introduced Sam Spade to movie audiences, takes place in 1941 and it ends with Spade (Humphrey Bogart) turning the duplicitous and lovely Brigid O'Shaughnessey (Mary Astor) with whom he'd had a dalliance, over to the San Francisco police.

It's now 1955 and we find ourselves in rural France, where Spade has come to deliver O'Shaughnessey's daughter to the family of her father.  Flash ahead to 1963, and we find Spade has remained in France and is now caught in a web of death and intrigue stretching back to World War Two and the recently ended Algerian War.

The series is slow-burning with a complex plot.  There are several very appealing aspects.

Clive Owen as Sam Spade.  He's the right age and physically right for the role, bringing a sense of Bogart's cynicism tinged with flickers of romanticism and a sense of honor.  Though he does not sound like Bogart, the cadence of his speech is identical and you can imagine Bogie speaking the dialogue.

The supporting cast is excellent.  From Chiara Mastroianni (daugher of Marcelo M and Catherine Deneueve) as Spade's now deceased wife, Cara Bossom as the now 15-year old daughter of O'Shaughnessey who reveals character traits much like her mother, to Denis Menochet as the local police chief.

The setting.  Most summaries of the series mention it is set in the South of France, so I assumed it meant the overused Provence.  But it is not.  The town of Bozouls is in the southern part of the Auvergne, a very rural and isolated (particularly in the time setting of Spade) rural area of small towns and farms in a rugged landscape.  Ms THC and I drove very close to Bozouls in 2015 while going from Millau to Dordogne.  Lovely country, but definitely nothing like Provence.

The Frenchness.  The people are not warm and cuddly.  They are very, very French and a very real portrayal of French attitudes and behaviors decades ago.  In that regard, Spade's housekeeper, whose name I cannot find, is perfect.

The Durham Report: Part 3 - A Conspiracy So Immense

For Part 1 (The Kremlin Connections Of The Clinton Campaign)

For Part 2 (Mueller's Obstruction of Justice)

The Russia collusion story was a turning point for this country.  When Trump was elected in 2016, I had many concerns, one of which is that, over the years, he had been on every side of every issue (except trade).  For instance, he'd criticized Justice Scalia for his position on affirmative action and Mitt Romney in 2012 for being too tough on illegal immigration.  I had no idea what he would actually do in office but suspected he could be easily manipulated by the Democrats he'd spent so much time with for decades in New York.  Go look at the 1996 Democratic Platform and, with the exception of trade, it reads like Trump's positions in 2016.

That's also apparently what was on mind of New York Senator Chuck Schumer, who knew Trump well, in the immediate aftermath of the election.  Schumer knew that with the right combination of flattery and friendliness Trump would move in his direction and, for those first couple of days, the senator spoke of Trump as someone he could work with.

Then came an abrupt change in direction and Schumer changed his tune.  It was a combination of factors.  Hillary Clinton decided to make alleged collusion of Trump with the Russians a permanent issue and a couple of her key staffers were able to raise millions of dollars to set up a permanent organization to undermine Trump's presidency.  It helped that the Clinton campaign and its media accomplices managed to create an atmosphere of hysteria and panic about the incoming president among the most committed Democrats.  I read and heard about the brownshirt marches and imminent fascist measures that were going to be implemented.  And the intelligence community, now panicked that its efforts to defeat Trump would be uncovered in the wake of his unexpected victory, found a common interest with Democrats in destroying his presidency.

Instead of trying to manipulate Trump it was to be total war against him.  It wasn't limited to the Russia collusion story; for the first time in American history the opposition party in the Senate obstructed and held up the confirmation of even routine, otherwise non-controversial political appointments, in order to hamper the new administration.  But the collusion story was the beating heart of the opposition up until the release of the Mueller Report and Mueller's Congressional testimony in the summer of 2019.  And it would have continued for even longer if William Barr had not become Attorney General and finally called a halt to the nonsense.  The collusion investigation tied up Administration resources and understandably became a preoccupation of Trump, all the while generating a steady stream of what proved to be bogus stories to be reported by an all too willing media.

As a result, several things happened, none of them good for America.

First, we never got to see the alternative scenario where Schumer & Co schmoozed Trump, though we had one brief glimpse when Schumer and Pelosi charmed and flattered him into temporarily agreeing to an amnesty deal for 1.8 million illegals.  Schumer understood the truth about Trump.  He doesn't do policy, he does impulses.  He also does deals, but doesn't care that much about the substance of the deals.  His brand is as a great deal maker and what he most wanted to tell people when he was in business and when President, is that he got a great deal.  The deal itself is the victory, Trump's personal trophy.  What would that presidency have looked like?  Instead, a gullible and conspiratorial minded guy had a real conspiracy created against him.

Second, in their monomaniacal pursuit of Trump, the Democrats, the media, and many of our other institutions ended up degrading and discrediting themselves.  They disregarded the truth, exaggerated, and spread as much misinformation as Trump.  They proved themselves no better than their opponent. Every poll shows the credibility of every major American institution has declined since 2016.

Third, Trump's opponents helped Putin accomplish his goals of weakening the United States.  Hillary Clinton, the Intelligence Community, Adam Schiff, and the New York Times could not have helped Russia more if they'd been paid agents of the Kremlin.

Fourth, they empowered conspiracy theorists on the left and right.  I'm allergic to conspiracy theories.  If you had told me in 2016 or early 2017 the truth about what was actually going on with the Russia collusion story I would not have believed you.  That a conspiracy so immense could really exist was not credible to me back then.  But it happened.  It was real and proved much worse than I thought even after my first few months of digging into the source documents.

I've also dug into the Stop the Steal accusations.  They are nonsense, but I have a lot harder time persuading believers because they can point to the Russia collusion story and other excesses since 2016 and simply say, "these things DO happen".  Let's face it, if you really believe Trump is another Hitler, wouldn't you be justified in doing anything you could to prevent his reelection, including rigging the vote? Wouldn't it be immoral not to? And that there has still be no institutional or personal responsibility and accountability for the Russia collusion conspiracy only reinforces the beliefs of the conspiracy minded.(1)

It's why I've spent so much time on this since 2017.  We cannot come out of the dismal spiral the country is in until there is accountability for what happened, beginning with the Clinton campaign in 2016.

The Starting Point: HillaryLand

It all started with Hillary Clinton's private email server on which she conducted government business in violation of legal requirements.  That server, set up upon her becoming Secretary of State in early 2009, evaded government requirements in order to make it more difficult for anyone in the American public to obtain her communications under the Freedom of Information Act.  The downside was it increased the chances that outside parties, such as Russia or China, could access her communications.  Clinton apparently felt her desire for privacy from her fellow Americans was worth the risk of America's enemies accessing her emails.  Or perhaps, in determining priorities, she was confusing her fellow citizen with her enemies.  We need to start here because it was all the trouble the emails were causing Clinton in 2016 (along with the leak of internal Democratic Party emails) that led to her campaign deciding to construct a Russia collusion story around Donald Trump in order to distract the public from Hillary's problems.

One of Clinton's priorities on joining the Obama administration was to, in her words, "reset" the relationship with Russia.  During the campaign and after, Obama and Clinton blamed the deterioration on U.S.-Russia relations (in 2008, Russia invaded U.S. ally Georgia) solely on George W Bush.  For this reason, along with his hatred of John McCain, Putin openly backed Obama in the 2008 election.

Announced with great fanfare, the reset was designed to open a new and cooperative era between America and the Kremlin.   Below, we see Clinton giving a "reset" button to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on March 5, 2009.  Lavrov is still Foreign Minister and a vocal supporter of Russia's invasion of the Ukraine.  The first act in the reset was NATO's restoration of relations with Russia, after they were suspended in the wake of the Georgia invasion the year before.

Meanwhile, during her time as Secretary of State, the Clinton Foundation received millions of dollars of contributions from Kremlin-connected oligarchs, and Bill Clinton was paid $500,000 for a speech in Moscow.  It was also during Obama's first administration that efforts to negotiate a nuclear compact with Iran began, and a improved relationship with Russia was seen as essential in accomplishing that role because of the Kremlin's good relations with the Mullahs.

As a result, the Kremlin, even more openly than in 2008, supported Obama in the 2012 election.  Putin must have enjoyed Obama's mocking of Mitt Romney's claim that Russia was our #1 enemy, and then the President was caught on an open mic with Soviet President Medvedev, asking him to "tell Vladimir" he'd "have more flexibility after the election".  This was a reference to the portion of the missile defense interceptor system to be based in Eastern Europe, a program announced by the Obama Administration in 2009.  However, in 2013 after Obama's re-election, the administration announced it was cancelling the SM-3 Block IIB program, to the dismay of Poland and Romania where it was to be installed, and to the joy of the Russians as it was the part of the interceptor program most vociferously objected to by the Kremlin.

In early 2013, Clinton left the Obama administration to prepare for her 2016 presidential run.  Once outside the administration, she displayed hostility to the Russian regime and Putin.  Meanwhile, in pursuit of the Iran deal, the Obama administration acquiesced in the Russian intervention in Syria and settled for a perfunctory protest, and weak sanctions, in the wake of Putin's 2014 takeover of the Crimea.

Awareness of the irregularities in Clinton's handling of the emails was an offshot of the Congressional Benghazi investigation and by early 2015, the Clinton email server began to make news, with CNN reporting in March that she wasn't publicly registered as the owner of the domain and server used to operate her personal email, making it difficult to trace the account back to her.  Accounts were registered in her aides' names, and she used a proxy company to shield her involvement.

A DOJ investigation began, along with others.  On January 4, 2016,  in a letter to congressional intelligence committees, Intelligence Community Inspector General I. Charles McCullough III wrote that emails on Clinton’s private server had been flagged for classified information, some of which was considered the highest “top secret” level of classification.

Meanwhile, in late 2014, the FBI learned from a "well-placed CHS [Confidential Human Source]" that a foreign government was planning to send a individual to contribute to Clinton campaign "as way to gain influence with Clinton".  Application for a FISA warrant "lingered" because, according to agent, "everyone was super more careful" "scared with the big name" and "pretty tippy-toeing around HRC because there was a chance she would be the next President" (Durham Report, p.69)(2).  The FISA was eventually approved, but on condition Clinton campaign get a defensive briefing.  Later, a similar incident from another country was discovered (p.74), and most startingly of all, the CHS made illegal contributions to the Clinton campaign that were not documented by FBI handlers. (p.76).

The Durham Report drew a number of contrasts between how the FBI handled these situations versus its approach in 2016 towards Trump.  Hillary's campaign was afforded a defensive briefing, in which it was made aware of the potential illegal contributions from a foreign government so it could be on the alert, while Trump's campaign was not given a defensive briefing.  Further:

"The FBI's and the Department's measured approach to these foreign influence allegations involving Clinton also stands in stark contrast to the speed with which the FBI undertook to include the Steele Report allegations in the FISA request . . . targeting [Carter] Page". (p.73)

"Contrasted with the FBI's rapid opening of CH [Crossfire Hurricane, the Trump investigation], the FBI appears to have made no effort to investigate the possible illegal campaign contribution (which allegedly was a precursor to the contribution of a significant sum of money) . . . on behalf of Foreign Government-30, or the Clinton campaign's purported acceptance of a campaign contribution that was made by the FBI's own long-term CHS on behalf of . . . ultimately, Foreign Government-3" (p.77)

In January 2016, three different FBI field offices opened investigations into "possible criminal activity involving the Clinton Foundation". (p.78)

"The reporting, which in itself is not proof of wrongdoing, was a narrative describing multiple funds transfers, some of which involved international bank accounts that were suspected of possibly facilitating bribery or gratuity violations.  The transactions involved occurred between 2012 and 2014, and totaled hundreds of thousands of dollars." (p.79)

On Feb 22, 2016 a meeting was chaired by Assistant Director McCabe to hear from field offices.  "McCabe initially direct field offices to close their cases, but following objections, agreed to reconsider the final disposition of the cases".  McCabe's approval would be needed before any further investigative steps taken and it was not granted. (p.79)

The FBI was beginning preparations to interview Hillary Clinton regarding the emails, prompting an email from FBI lawyer to Peter Strzok, Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI's Counterintelligence Division, who was leading the investigation into Clinton's emails, and later led the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.  Page and Strzok were having an affair, and she reminded him:

"One more thing: [Clinton] may be our next president. The last thing you need [is] going in there loaded for bear.  You think she's going to remember or care that it was more doj than fbi?"

Meanwhile, on March 2, Bryan Pagliano, the former Clinton staffer who helped set up her private email server, agreed to provide an interview with investigators and accepted an offer of immunity from the FBI and Justice Department, a highly irregular procedure since he had made no proffer of what we would testify to.

It is at this point that Trump emerged as the front runner for the GOP nomination, his campaign took steps to set up a foreign policy advisory board, and the timeline of relevant events in both campaigns begin to merge which will be covered in the next installment in this series. 

--------------------------------------------------------------

(1)  One of the few examples of "accountability" only reinforced the conspiratorial minded.  DOJ Inspector General reported that a junior DOJ lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, deliberately altered a communication from the CIA to the FBI, regarding whether Carter Page had been a voluntary informant for the CIA regarding Russia.  The CIA notified Clinesmith that Carter Page had been approved by the CIA as an operational contact, but Clinesmith informed those putting together the FISA application on Page that the CIA said Page "was never a source".  As a result, the FISA application omitted material information that may have impacted whether the warrant was approved. (p.185).  Durham reports that a few days after the 2016 election, Clinesmith sent a email to a colleague proclaiming, "vive la Resistance".  Despite the lawyer deliberately lying in a matter that resulted in the issuance of a surveillance warrant for those close to the newly elected President, Clinesmith was only sentenced to 12 months probation.  The normal practice for the DC Bar Association is to automatically suspend convicted members.  However, in this instance, the DC Bar only did so after a reporter asked questions of it a couple of months after the conviction.  The DC Bar also requires those suspended to reapply for admission before they are reinstated.  However, in the case of Clinesmith it did so automatically without asking him to reapply.

(2)  In 2006 or 2007 I was in a meeting with the corporate communications team of the company I worked for.  The team told us that the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) had requested our CEO appear at one of its events.  We were informed that our CEO did not want to attend, but we needed to provide someone senior for the event because "you know, she might be president some day".  The Clinton Foundation and CGI were always a "pay to play" scheme, with their viability to attract donor funds resting on Hillary's potential political future.  Do you think companies were paying Hillary $250,000 per speech because of her brilliant insights?

Now And Then

The last song from The Beatles, released late last year.  Simple and elegiac, based on a Lennon demo from the late 1970s, transformed into a tribute by Paul and Ringo to their missing mates.  Tonight's the 60th anniversary of the band's US performance debut on The Ed Sullivan Show, watched by 73 million Americans, including almost 13 year old me.  At the time, the outbreak of World War One seemed unfathomably distant to me, but it was much closer in time than today is to that night sixty years ago.

The Boy Is Back In Town

After an absence of over a thousand years, the colossal (42.6 feet high) statue of the Emperor Constantine, is complete and back in Rome, having just been unveiled in the garden of the Capitoline Museum, overlooking the Roman Forum.

Constantine, born around 280, spent from 306 to 312 maneuvering to seize control of the western portion of the Roman empire.  In 312 he defeated the Emperor Maxentius at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge outside of Rome, and sometime in the next few years the statue was completed and placed in the Basilica of Maxentius, located between the Forum and the Colosseum.  According to Wikipedia:

The great head, arms and legs of the Colossus were carved from white marble, while the rest of the body consisted of a brick core and wooden framework, possibly covered with gilded bronze.

The statue was pillaged during the early Middle Ages although various portions of the statue have been preserved and ended up in different Italian museums.  I'd seen the head and other fragments during my visit to the Capitoline in 2006.

(Statue fragments)

The unveiled statue is a recreation that, according to this AP article:

 . . . was imagined using 3D modelling technology from scans of the nine giant original marble body parts that remain.

Constantine went on to defeat Licinius, his rival in the East, in 324, reuniting the empire under one ruler.  Before his death he began the construction of a new capitol, modestly called Constantinople, and accepted baptism as a Christian on his deathbed.

The Defects Inherent In Its Own Merits

A constitutional government will always be a weak government when compared to an arbitrary one. There will be many desirable things, as well as undesirable, which are easy for a despotism but impossible elsewhere. Constitutionalism suffers from the defects inherent in its own merits. Because it cannot do some evil, it is precluded from doing some good. Shall we, then, forgo the good to prevent the evil, or shall we submit to the evil to secure the good? This is the fundamental practical question of all constitutionalism.

- Charles Howard McIllwain, Constitutionalism Ancient and Modern (1940)

Written more than eight decades ago, accurately reflecting the choices made at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and the same question that confronts us today. 

Charles McIllwain (1871-1968) was professor of history and government at Harvard from 1911 to 1946.

Elihu Root considered the same question in his lectures at Princeton in 1913; see Elihu Root and 21st Century America.

The issues may change over time but the question remains unchanged.

No, No, No

. . . on the proposed foreign aid/immigration bill (which now seems dead).  Before getting to why, let's take a minute to set the context.

The current border chaos is a result of the Biden's administration deliberate choices on enforcement and funding, made at the beginning of the president's term.  He has the authority to reduce the chaos, and has chosen not to do so.  The degree of chaos and inability of the United States to control its own borders is evident if you follow those correspondents who spend time on the border or if you live in a border state, as I do, and see it yourself. 

The reason the administration has gone from three years of insisting the border is under control to admitting there is a problem is because of Ron DeSantis.  It was DeSantis who started it all with the brilliant move of sending illegal migrants to Martha's Vineyard, a tactic then adopted by other like Governor Abbott in Texas.  Now that all those Democratic governed sanctuary jurisdictions are being flooded with illegals, it has become a crisis!  It's also heightened the profile of the entire problem in an election year, not a good look for the Democrats.

From the Democrats perspective the issue became how to appear to be doing something meaningful, while not really impacting the general trajectory of encouraging illegals.  Or, if they fail, how to blame Republicans.  The answer; lure into negotiations some GOP senators who really, really want aid to go to Ukraine and Israel, while the Chamber of Commerce wing of the GOP can support them in making minimal cosmetic changes.

I'm in favor of additional aid to Ukraine and Israel, but I think it fair for American citizens to ask, "why should we care more about the borders of foreign countries than we do about our own?".

One of the Democratic negotiators of the bill, Senator Chris Murphy, the callow youth whose only life experience is working on campaigns or running for office, has been tweeting and going on news shows emphasizing to his progressive supporters that the only thing this bill really does is smooth out the flow of illegals into the U.S., making the process more manageable over the long term.  His version of "reducing chaos" is to allow the same numbers in but just over a bit long period.  He's also emphasizing that this is just a three-year deal and that Biden can always declare a national emergency and get around the bill's provisions.  Some excerpts from Murphy's tweets:

"A requirement the President to funnel asylum claims to the land ports of entry when more than 5,000 people cross in a day.  The border never closes [emphasis added by THC], but claims must be processed at the ports.  This allows for a more a more orderly, humane asylum processing system."

"But . . . important checks on that power.  It can only be used for a limited number of days per year.  It sunsets in 3 years..  Emergency cases that show up in between the ports still need to be accepted.  The ports must process a minimum of 1400 claims a day."

"You can't reduce arrivals at the border without allowing for more legal immigration.  So, more visas! [Exclamation point by Murphy, not THC]. 50,000 extra employment and family reunification visas each year for the next 5 years.  And a brand new visa category to allow non-citizens to visit family in the U.S."

"A brand new right to legal representation for all immigrants. . .  And . . . the first ever government paid-for lawyers to young unaccompanied minors."

"A quicker, fairer asylum process.  No more 10 yr wait.  Claims processed in a non-detained [emphasis added by THC], non-adversarial way in 6 months.  Also, no more waiting for work permits.  Most asylum seekers can work immediately."

Yeah, that's the ticket!

There was a lot more wrong with the proposal, but fundamentally, while the border was not controlled under Trump, it was better controlled, so the simplest thing for Biden to do would be to undo all his measures reversing Trump's policy, which he could do without legislation.(1)

The bigger problem:

The GOP does not know how to negotiate.  The Democrats, and many in the GOP, wanted to authorize additional aid for Ukraine and Israel.  The GOP wanted to regain control of our borders and, at least for purposes of the 2024 campaign, the Biden administration wanted to be seen as doing something.

The problem is that the GOP negotiators seem to have started from the position of what is the minimum we can do to satisfy our supporters that will also allow us to get the aid to Ukraine and Israel.  The result is they were negotiating within the context of immigration policy and law.  What they needed to start from was "you" (Democrats) want aid, "we" (GOP) want border security, and here is what you need to give us on the border in order for us to support the aid.  Such a strategy would set up an initially stronger bargaining position, and force Democrats to reveal their preferences and priorities.  Instead the GOP started negotiations on their back feet.

A secondary problem is the lack of expertise and skill in the substance of the legislative language and the interplay of the various provisions in the bill.  GOP staffers are simply not as good as Democrat staffers when it comes to the details, and it is details that count in drafting legislation.  You can have all the nice concepts you want but one innocent sounding clause in the bill can undercut any concept.  This is a long-standing problem but has gotten worse in recent years as so many GOP lawmakers and their staff seem more interested in performance art on Twitter and elsewhere to please their base.

Incoherent GOP strategy.  What the House GOP should have done is bring up the Senate bill, or its version of the bill, proposed extensive amendments to strengthen it, and force the Democrats to vote on each amendment.  It would be easy enough to expose the game being played by the Democrats, but that's not going to happen.

The biggest problem:

The death of compromise.  I don't know if there is a way, regardless of legislative language, to fix this.  The Senate proposal would have allowed Biden to declare a national emergency and override its provisions.  Given this administration's disregard of the law - see the rent moratorium and student loans for example - it is likely that if Biden were to win reelection, he'd simply declare the law inoperative.  Even if he didn't he still controls the administrative bureaucracy, a bureaucracy ruled by Democrats, and could easily undermine the provisions he doesn't like.

I pointed out, in posts in 2014 and 2016 (read the last part of this post), how President Obama's arbitrary and lawless modifications to the Affordable Care Act and immigration law with DACA, undercut the ability of the political parties to reach legislative compromise.  Compromise means each side gets some things it wants in exchange for giving up some other things.  But the Democratic approach to executive power, which has accelerated under Biden, means that even if codified in legislative language, the GOP is likely not to get all the things it thought it got in any bill.  The situation is so dire, if I were in Congress I don't know if I would support any bill, regardless of the language, if we had to rely on a Democratic administration and bureaucracy to implement it.  To do otherwise would make me, as I wrote in the 2016 post linked above, a chump from Palookaville.

--------------------------------------

(1) I have not read the full text of the bill, nor, I suspect, have most of the Senators doing the negotiating.  This leaves me relying on the analysis of the few sources I have come to trust over the past few years.  None of these are newpapers, TV, cable, or websites.  It's a difficult situation if you don't have the time to read original documents yourself.  When you do, the details often reveal a very different picture than what is portrayed in the media across the political spectrum.  For instance, in 2015 I read the full text of the Iran Deal to discover the gap between how the media and White House described a key element of the deal and how this would work out in the real world when you read the specific language (see The Iran Deal: It Was Never About Nuclear Weapons).

Fast Car

I very much liked Tracy Chapman's Fast Car when first released, but it quickly became overplayed and started turning it off whenever it came on my radio while commuting.  Hadn't listened to it in years.  Heard there was a popular cover recently that was the subject of yet another manufactured controversy.  

Tracy and the cover artist, Luke Combs, performed at last night's Grammy Awards and it reminded me of the beauty and pathos of the song.  I gather Chapman has rarely performed in recent years but she was in great form and the duet worked so well.  Until I saw his name, I didn't realize Combs had done the cover - I first heard him in a duet with Bill Strings (on guitar and harmonies) on a song called The Great Divide which is now on my playlist.

Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs - Fast Car#GRAMMYs pic.twitter.com/WWztcov2tJ

— Craig R. Brittain (@RealBrittain) February 5, 2024

UPDATE: Sadly the Chapman/Combs duet has been taken down.  Here is Tracy Chapman's original. 

FURTHER UPDATE:  The Grammys have posted the duet.