Femme fatale

From time to time, RtO has to state things itself, since nobody else is saying it first. This is one of those times.

What did Natalia Veselnitskaya want? All the reporting and commentary has focused on what Whiny Baby Donald's idiot son wanted -- dirt on Clinton. But why did Veselitskatya want to meet him? Not because of his pretty eyes.

And not because of adoptions. That is certain.

Around the world, the American middle-class hobby of scooping up poor infants is deplored, or worse. Bolivia forbids it. Russian patriots, who want to be regarded as equal to the biggest players, have no reason to like having to give up babies their country cannot manage to take care of. The idea, enunciated by Trump the Less, that some free-lance wanted to talk to him about renewing this humiliation is one reason we can confidently call him an idiot.

So, commenters leap to the conclusion that her purpose was to talk about removing the Magnitsky Act that sanctions some Russians bigwigs.  That makes no sense.

Putin had reason to believe that WBD would be amenable to removing Magnitsky if he could be elected. Possibly, he wanted Veselnitskaya to confirm that this would be a WBD priority.

But there was no need to contact the idiot son. Putin already had campaign manager Paul Manafort on speed dial. He could just have called him.

Even if, for some reason, an approach to Idiot Son was preferred, tempting him with dirt on Clinton and then being unable to deliver was a worse than clumsy way to go about it. WBD is notoriously touchy, and promising dirt and then not delivering would, most likely, be the item that remained in the front of his tiny mind, not Putin's anxieties about Magnitsky. (I saw a commenter refer to WBD's "goldfish-like attention span. That was funny.)

Veselnitskaya  and Putin must have had something else in mind.

My guess is that she came to remind (or perhaps reveal to) WBD that Putin has tapes of golden showers (or something similar) and that, if he should be elected, he had better follow the Kremlin line.

That's a message that would not have taken long to deliver, so Idiot Son may not be lying when he says it was over in 20 minutes.

Book Review 393: Siege: Malta 1940-1943

SIEGE: Malta 1940-1943, by Ernle Bradford. 304 pages, illustrated. Morrow, $19.95

A few years ago, I would have predicted that sieges were a thing of the past. Under 21st century conflict conditions, with  light-armed guerrillas usually having the upper hand, there seemed hardly any opportunity for an army to mount a siege.

That turned out to be incorrect. In Syria and Iraq, we have seen the unexpected sight of guerrillas mounting successful sieges, and, almost as surprising, armies besieging guerrillas.

There were two very long sieges during World War II. The siege of Leningrad has been widely covered; the siege of Malta much less so. Yet the (second) Siege of Malta presents some interesting phenomena, worth reviewing in the context of 2017.

Ernle Bradford’s history is short on statistics and details but usefully informed by a man who lived on Malta for 10 years, although after the war. Bradford, a sailor who wrote extensively about places in the Mediterranean, understands that Malta’s survival depended, in principal part, on its geography:

Two small islands (Malta is about four times the size of Manhattan and had a population of about 250,000 in 1940) made out of limestone. Easy to tunnel into, hard to disturb with high explosive. Hard to storm, with steep cliffs on the south and small beaches and wide creeks (what Americans would call inlets) on the north, fairly easy to defend, especially when indestructible forts had accumulated over 400 years.

As a result, and because of a vast overestimation of the capabilities of air power, Malta became the first place to be besieged almost entirely by air. (Submarines and light naval forces were used to cut off relief ships, but air attack was where the heavy fighting occurred.)

The Royal Navy, the Fleet Air Arm and the Royal Air Force took enormous casualties to keep supplies flowing to the island, and by the end of 1942 the island was on very short rations. (Nothing like as stringent as the besieged at Leningrad or Japanese bases in the Pacific faced.)

The story of the Pedestal convoy, and especially of the two civilian seamen who reboarded the abandoned tanker Ohio and fought off the Luftwaffe by themselves, would have dressed up “Malta” a great deal, but Bradford does not tell it. (Sam Moses does, in a 2007 book, "At All Costs.")

The inspiring story he does tell is the staunch stand of the Maltese, who had come to like their position as the home of the Mediterranean Fleet over generations. (This did not keep the from choosing independence after the war.)

Of interest in the light of the sieges of Aleppo or Mosul is the list of diseases that exploded in the undernourished population: vitamin-deficiency diseases like pellagra, ulcerative stomatitis, rickets and even — on an island that grew lemons — scurvy; trachoma and eye diseases (blamed on dust from explosions); tuberculosis, typhoid and dysentery.

Those were expected. Also expected were mental breakdowns, including what is now so popular, post-traumatic stress disorder.

That did not happen. Mental cases went down.

This despite absorbing the greatest weight of aerial bombs of any target during the war.

Inoperative statements

Younger readers may not know about it, but before rightwingers called their own lies alternative facts, they called them inoperative statements. That was back in Watergate days, and it resulted in the departure of a crooked, crazy president in disgrace.

A cautionary tale, one might think.

Anyhow, the press did not expose Watergate in a single story, decorated with attributed statements and buttressed with verifiable documents. That's not the way political corruption stories are exposed.

At the start, the malefactors scream and holler about journalistic propriety and holes in the story. It is a useful, if not ironclad guideline that the louder the screams and hollers, the dirtier the crooks.

This weekend, we came to the point where suspicions start to solidify into allegations. There's still time for Trump fans to abandon ship, but not much. Stick with Whiny Baby Donald and become one of his tools and fools. As my mother used to say, lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.

It is significant that Donald the Less the Elephant Slayer, Manafort and Kushner did not volunteer their conspiracy to gather dirt on Clinton but were forced into the guilty admissions by the steady pressure of partial revelations.

What did we know and when did we know it? We know the Trump campaign conspired to use Russian dirty tricks to influence the campaign's outcome -- that's what they have admitted -- and we have known it since July 8.

UPDATE July 10

Runnin' scared

MORE UPDATING

Ruth Marcus asks te right questions. Washington Post commenters add important points:

1.

OnlyTheTruth

The multiple choice options at the beginning should have included a 4th option: contact the FBI to report a contact from an agent of a foreign country that is hostile to the U.S. regarding unethical if not illegally obtained information concerning your father's political opponent as a candidate for the office of President of the United States.

2.
 

bobbiji

But aren't sanctions against Russia somehow connected to adoption?

3.
 

James Moylan

I am an Aussie lawyer who works as an academic and have spent quite a bit of time researching electoral laws across the western world.
I thought I might comment as many who are adding their voice to these threads don't seem to understand the significance of this story in legal terms.
In the statement released by Trump Jnr. he admits to an intention to meet with a person known to be a foreign national and who might have “information helpful to the campaign” - namely that "the woman stated that she had information that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Ms. Clinton".
The reason why Trump Jnr's press release is of significance is because it was so badly written that it actually forces those investigating these matters to investigate further. It is a very very odd document (in legal terms). Either no lawyer looked at the PR or those who did were utterly incompetent.
By making these statements Trump Jnr is forcing those who are investigating these matters to (at the very least) interview him to clarify the precise nature of the encounter and determine his intentions regarding the meeting.
This obligation is triggered simply because it is possible to construe the statements in the press release as being indicative that an offense may have been committed. The physical circumstance which is known to have occurred (a meeting with a foreign national) when coupled with a proscribed intent (a 'mens rea') can constitute a crime. However the press release was so badly worded and inappropriately focused (if it was intended to act as a legal justification) that it left the possibility that Trump Jnr may have been entertaining a proscribed intent at the time of the meeting open.
The Trumps' never cease to amaze.

No. 2 from bobbiji appears to be the most important point.

Fools rush in

Tricia and I like to watch a Youtube channel called "18th Century Cooking with Jas Townsend & Son." The host, Jon Townsend, (and occasionally his young daughter Ivy) have an infectious enthusiasm for 18th century foodways; and, somewhat unusually for the re-enactor community, he does solid research.

However, we missed the July 3 episode, from Mount Vernon, on a dessert called "Orange Fool." Unfortunately, a howling mob of ignorant rightwingers, drawn by some Reddit idiot (but I repeat myself), descended on the channel.

Townsend has eliminated their comments (presumably they reside somewhere on the Internet but I have not searched them out; I can imagine them easily enough). But from his subsequent anguished commentary, they exhibited the mix of venom, stupidity, ignorance and absence of humor that characterize the Trumpeters.

Sad.

Book Review 392: Lincoln at Gettysburg

LINCOLN AT GETTYSBURG: The Words that Remade America, by Garry Wills. 315 pages. Simon & Schuster, $23

As usual, when Garry Wills takes a closer look, American myths get debunked.

In “Lincolh at Gettysburg” we learn that our most eloquent president did not scratch out his Gettysburg address on an envelope on the train ride to the battlefield but (of course) labored over it for some time. That it was received well at the North and was not disparaged or belittled. That Edward Everett’s centerpiece address, though long, was not windy or tedious and was welcomed also as  summation of the conflict up to that time.

Those points, however, are not the thrust of Wills’s book, which was written in 1992 but has more punch now than it did 25 years ago, if only for this summation of Lincoln’s argument against Stephen Douglas in the quarrel about slavery:

“Government by the people cannot exist where those who believe in equality are asked to sacrifice that belief (and its expression) in the name of social concord.”

Still less, we might think, when the sacrifice is being demanded in the name of social discord, as today.

However, as trenchant as that page is, it is not the main thrust of Wills’s argument, which is that Lincoln, with a three-minute statement of aims and beliefs, “altered the document  (the Constitution) from within by appeal from its letter to the spirit, subtly changing the recalcitrant stuff of that legal compromise, bringing it to its own indictment.”

It was not easily done.

Today, liberals often criticize Trumpeters for waving the “treason flag.” This is entirely correct but it is not a claim that Lincoln was able to countenance. His goal, in war, was preservation of the Union, not abolition or any other good. Politically, he had a delicate task: to keep the four slave states that had not seceded from leaving the Union.

Therefore, Lincoln, formerly the lawyer for the nation’s biggest corporation (the Illinois Central Railroad (now owned by Canadians, how’s them apples?), argued that states had no legal capacity to secede. Therefore, the Confederate States of America had only a fictive existence, and, consequently, its adherents, even if in rebellion against the national government, had not given allegiance to another state and so could not be traitors.

This argument is bogus in every respect but, we may think, was an act of great political wisdom. Or, we may equally as well think, by allowing the white supremacists (who really were traitors in their own hearts) back into communion with the Union as equals, Lincoln’s policy, as expressed in the post-Reconstruction years, did end up sacrificing equality in the name of social concord — among whites. Blacks, browns and yellows did not experience much concord.

Wills writes, too optimistically:

“Lincoln does not argue law or history . . . He makes history. He does not come to present a theory, but to impose a symbol . . . No other words could have done it. . . . In his brief time before the crowd at Gettysburg he wove  a spell that has not, yet, been broken.”

Tillerson lies

To Congress. It's like it's part of the job description for Trumpeters.

Mr. Tillerson’s testimony notwithstanding, the programs explicitly promise that fellows will be able to join the Foreign Service if they successfully complete the fellowship. Zaid Zaid, a former Pickering fellow, said that Mr. Tillerson’s claim that no one had promised the fellows jobs in the Foreign Service was “patently false and ridiculous.”

Left behind

In the New Yorker, an illuminating interview with the only doctor in one of the poorest counties in Georgia.

Dr. Karen Kinsell sounds like a nominee for sainthood, although the interview is deficient in explaining exactly what the economic structure of her clinic is.

Nut grafs:

“Most people are so poor and kind of out of it that they don’t expect anything. They mostly just expect to not have insurance.

"This morning, we had a lady with post-menopausal bleeding, which could be cancer. The absolute best thing to do is have her checked out by a gynecologist, but we really don’t have a way to do that that she can afford. The health department has some programs, but they generally require a diagnosis of cancer before their programs can pick up. So that’s a problem.

"People constantly have a problem being able to afford their medicines. I use generics all the time. And prescription-assistance programs, which are a tremendous amount of paperwork, which people have trouble doing. We use samples from drug reps.

“There’s no mental-health care in the county, which is crazy. I just had an eighteen-year-old who needed some mental-health medications renewed, so I did that. There just isn’t what you’d expect to have in America down here."

It sounds a lot like Maui County, except we're rich. But we don't have any mental health care at the hospital, and not even any private mental health care for young people.

And it sounds even more like the rural parts of the state, like Kona.

It raises a question, whose answer is, to me, easy:  Do Americans in the hollowed-out parts of the country get any medical care?

RtO has pointed at this problem before; the review of "Wide Ruins," for example, referred to "wild rides." Those were to get sick people to the neares medical help, about 140 miles away over unpaved tracks.

It is out of the question to expect modern medical services nearby for people who live so far out in the sticks, but Clay County, Georgia, is not that remote. It even has a "chicken plant."

The New Yorker report does not explain it, but Georgia has small counties, a hangover from an old-time voting system called the county-unit, which gave rural voters excess voice in the Legislature, on the same principle that the U.S. Senate does to small states. The county-unit system is gone but Georgia  has never rationalized it tiny counties. It might, perhaps, be somewhat simpler to deliver medical care if Clay and nearby counties were combined into a larger county with greater total resources.

Anyway, Clay County seems to have benefited little from Obamacare, but the Republican approach  -- as exemplified by the idiotic Sen. Ron Johnson -- would just dump the rural poor into the hands of root-doctors.