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The world's largest food court ...
and the world in retrospect ...
We may be that age by the time we rebook our Paris flight. Our connecting carrier to Paris on Saturday rather rudely cancelled our flight, leaving us exiled. My daughter, who is many times more competent and patient than I, is attempting to rebook our flight home. (My patience expired at lunch, when the 20th eaterie on this trip in Germany informed us they didn't take credit cards.)
Without so much as a slide rule ...
Here's the Full Pope Monty (suspicious character in foreground). My daughter and I imagined that a fellow named Bob designed the building, about which the pope said, "Bob, we like it, we really like it, we really do. But Bob, do you think maybe you should have toned it down, just a little?"
Und meine schöne Tochter, natürlich.
I imagine he has much more hair, all over, reflecting his Neanderthalic roots, but this artist's book-cover representation of him seemed fair enough while shopping at a local bookstore.
The last German gentleman I spoke with told me that in Europe there has always been a vague fear of war, but with Trump that fear has transmuted into something frighteningly realistic. I told him that for months I had been thinking of moving to Deutschland. He responded that he and his wife are thinking about Iceland.
Sunday, in Munich ...
Today, in Cologne, of which we've yet to take photos. We had planned on staying in Stuttgart yesterday but decided to travel on, thus sparing us another room change before our return this weekend. So we're settled in for a few days, and that feels good.
The most mind-blowing political news I've read while here is that Italy's electoral system is far saner than the U.S.'s. The nation's president said, in effect, that democracy was not a suicide pact as it is in America, hence there was no way he was going to turn Italy over to the recent elections' victorious lunatics.
If our constitution allowed for such reasonableness, we wouldn't have you-know-who ...
About whom, I've yet to meet one European who thinks anything but ugly thoughts. My inquiries have been met by nothing but — What were you Americans thinking?
***
p.s.: Tuesday, 3:29 pm, Köln time … I took roughly 20 photos this morning, or rather, I thought I took roughly 20 photos this morning — until Ellie asked if I remembered to reinsert the camera's SD card. No further comment is necessary.
Photos coming, now that I'm locked and loaded.
Just had an American dessert (after explaining to the waitress how it is made) at a Köln restaurant playing Egyptian music while mixing a bit of French and English into the mostly German conversation.
I love European culture.
***
After a gentle rain, Köln's commercial district, with my daughter in search of a charm for her bracelet and small gifts for her friends ...
From the Rhein, which in places is strikingly vast in width.
The old and the new are a constant.
This may sound a trifle eccentric, but I've wanted to see Köln ever since my first year of German instruction, in which our textbook used the city as an inviting home base. I recall, for example,Wir gehen ins Kino ("We're going to the theatre") as one of the captions of a Köln photo. Tonight I took this shot, which "the textbook people" would have used for Wir gehen nach Hause ("We're going home").
***
The day's idiosyncratic highlight was a lunch waiter who refused to bring me the Coke I ordered, insisting that I drink ein Bier instead, which he did bring. We paid for my daughter's consumed beer and left, leaving an undrunk, unpaid-for beer on the table. (Disclosure: I once suffered an uncommonly vicious addiction to beer — only beer — which I would just as soon not resume, so I stick to wine or amaretto these days.) I have yet to fathom his serving strategy, but it was entertaining. I'll give him that much.
Pope Clement V may have known how to live by building this little pad in Avignon (now known as the Palais des Papes) in the early 1300s …
which, under the differing architectural tastes of several subsequent popes, became this sprawling, Frankensteinian monstrosity ...
but the peasants are now fitting in.
First, two shots of Marseille (I would have included one of the port, but something went haywire with the photos), followed by an ethical question surrounding the third.
Now for the controversial shot. I took this picture of a homeless gentleman (without his permission) on the streets of Marseille's immense wealth. He's in the lower left, between two dumpsters, sorting through the day's findings. My reasoning behind taking the photo is political and obvious; there is no need for elaboration. My daughter, Ellie, 19, was appalled at my action. She argued that I invaded the gentleman's privacy, that I treated him as one would an animal in a zoo. This we discussed at some length. I can certainly understand her ethical reasoning but feel that mine superseded hers, as a necessary political statement.
Which side would you argue?
Ma fille, Ellie, outside Le Café Victor Hugo ...
Moi, living well ...
My date tonight (she's a bit randy) ...
And the (yet) unidentified city.
And the winner (via email) is ...
Reader M.D., who, I believe, resides in France — a fortunate reader, I'd say.
Valence!
The city — most of it — is on the camera's side, but it is bifurcated by the Rhone, which runs on down to Tournon-sur-Rhone (about 10 minutes by train; France is a civilized nation, so it has trains — when they're not striking), where Ellie spent her senior year. Its cathedral is of course magnificent (construction completed circa 1100 A.D.) and its museum has two works by the impressionist artist Eugène Boudin, one of my favorites. (I have sold several Boudin reproductions; his paintings are quite striking. Look him up sometime if you're unfamiliar with his work. He's underrated for some unknown reason.)
Friday, Marseille.
Until some unspecified time, au revoir.
PM & Ellie
Tomorrow morning, my daughter Ellie and I will trek by train to Chicago, from where, after a brief hello to Detroit, we'll depart for Paris.
Just typing those last four words brightens this day for me. To Paris (also Lyon, Valence, Avignon and Marseilles) I have never been, and I was beginning to wonder if I ever would. That's because I lacked the determination of my daughter. Since she returned from her senior year in SE France, a year ago, she has wanted me to meet her host families there, to whom she developed quite close and lasting relationships. Months later, after Ellie repeatedly showed me irresistible airline deals, we're booked.
(Avignon at night)
We have her mother and my wife to thank. Before she departed this world, Penn left an account for travel. My late wife was just wild about seeing the world, and she wanted our daughter to do just that. Thus a travel fund, which also paid for Ellie's student exchange year in France. (I insert this bit of intel lest some readers think I'm squandering their contributions on a European journey. I am not. The travel fund has always been separate from my day-to-day, online operating expenses.)
I say "European journey" since we're also venturing to Munich, from where, by car, we'll snake our way through Stuttgart, Heidelberg and Cologne. At these locations I'll embarrass myself by speaking the world's rustiest German.
I'll try to post updates as we travel; I'm particularly interested in discovering just how deep runs European enmity toward Trump. I say I'll try, because Ellie doesn't want my nose stuck in a laptop throughout the trip. She wants me to take a real vacation from routine, which I haven't done in years. I'll try to do both — at least a bit of routine — but she's in charge of this trip. So we'll see.
At any rate I'll be back, online, June 4. And I promise I won't make you sit though a slide show.
Many times it has been said by many a thoughtful voice that the greatest threat to America's national security is — through his recklessness and ignorance and decidedly curious choice of foreign friends — the president of the United States. That sentiment has rested mostly in the field of opinion — until now.
Now there's demonstrable proof of the president's menacing posture. He and his henchmen are actively and publicly seeking the release of highly sensitive national-security information: the identity of an FBI source who was assigned the counterintelligence task of uncovering any Russian interference into the presidential election of 2016.
One would think Trump, his former campaign officials and the entire Republican noise machine would be delighted to learn that an American intelligence agency was on the job, vigilant as to foreign machinations. Again, the FBI informant's assignment was no criminal investigation; it was a counterintelligence operation designed to defend the U.S. from any malevolent interference into its democratic system.
That scrupulous undertaking is what Trump, in a tweet this week, called "a disgusting, illegal and unwarranted Witch Hunt." In a following tweet the president charged: "Reports are there was indeed at least one FBI representative implanted, for political purposes, into my campaign for president. It took place very early on, and long before the phony Russia Hoax became a 'hot' Fake News story. If true — all time biggest political scandal!"
Notes the Washington Post (which, by the way, is far more conscientious than the president; it "has confirmed the identity of the FBI source … but is not reporting his name following warnings from U.S. intelligence officials that exposing him could endanger him or his contacts"): "There is no evidence to suggest someone was planted with the campaign. The source in question engaged in a months-long pattern of seeking out and meeting three different Trump campaign officials." The three were campaign co-chairman Sam Clovis and, laughably, foreign-policy "experts" Carter Page and George Papadopoulos — Platonic Ideals of amateurish stumblebums.
In a column written for the Post by a real expert, Asha Rangappa, a Yale University national-security lecturer and former FBI agent, the weighty distinction between criminal investigations and counterintelligence operations is laid out. "Rather than trying to find evidence of a crime," observes Rangappa, "the FBI’s counterintelligence goal is to identify, monitor and neutralize foreign intelligence activity in the United States. In short, this entails identifying foreign intelligence officers and their network of agents; uncovering their motives and methods; and ultimately rendering their operations ineffective."
Would not any presidential candidate and then U.S. president be thankful for such inquiries?
Not Trump.
"Ironically," continues Rangappa, "the FBI’s apparent attempt to protect the campaign by investigating Russia’s efforts quietly is now being weaponized against it." Its protective attempt was nothing but a "witch hunt," bellows this monstrously cynical and sickeningly manipulative president. His hostile tactics also "display a shocking ignorance of the devastating consequences to our national security if the Justice Department hands over the information that [Trump's congressional hatchet man, Devin Nunes,] is demanding." Those consequences could be discerned by a middle schooler, hence I shan't repeat them here — but Trump appears astonishingly comfortable with letting the country know that he knows those consequences not.
The thing is, though, he does know them. He just doesn't care how devastatingly consequential releasing the information could be. Anything to protect him — that's what he cares about, that's all he cares about.
Even more astonishing is that he really doesn't care if his protestations of a "witch hunt" make him look guilty as hell, for only a guilty man would fight as hard as he's fighting to shut down an investigation.
"In the Republican Party, cranks and bigots are closer to legitimacy than at any time since William F. Buckley banished the John Birch Society. For some of us, this was a concern from the beginning of President Trump’s rise — not just the policies he would adopt but also the attitudes he would encourage and the passions he would provoke."
What about a congressman who blasted watermelons in his backyard. Or Jesse Helms — enough said. Or a party leader (later, House speaker) whose political action committee, Gopac, "offered a list of words to describe Democrats — like decay, traitors, radical, sick, destroy, pathetic, corrupt and shame." One could, as they say, go on, as to specific cranks and bigots.
More generally, what about a party whose nearly entire electoral strategy has, since the 1960s, rested on racism and white backlash. A party that's hunted "where the ducks are" — which meant pursuing white votes only — as Barry Goldwater, the reluctant founder of Republican bile, put it. Or the party of the Southern Strategy, which built on Goldwater's innovation. Or the party that has persisted in peddling vastly discredited economic theories, such as supply-side wackoism.
I know you mean well, Mr. Gerson. But your plenary enlightenment will come only when you accept that Trumpism had been coming for a long, long time. You came close today when you wrote, "Whatever else Trumpism may be, it is the systematic organization of resentment against outgroups" (mostly all people of color and the poor) — a rather nifty synopsis of late-20th- and early-21st-century Republicanism.
Expand your mind, Michael, and acknowledge your party's past, so that you can disown it.
I've had bad years, you've had bad years, everyone has had bad years. But none of us has had a year as bad as Paul Manafort's. The Wall Street Journal:
A former son-in-law of President Donald Trump’s ex-campaign chairman pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges in a sealed proceeding in California in January and is cooperating with federal
investigators, people familiar with the matter said.
Jeffrey Yohai, who until last year was married to one of Paul Manafort’s daughters, pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges in the Central District of California relating to real-estate loans on properties in New York and California.... Mr. Yohai invested with Mr. Manafort on real-estate deals in both states, public records show.
The one critical distinction between most folks' bad years and Manafort's worst year is that the former, in general, didn't deserve them. Manafort, though, is a living embodiment of karma.
At least he won't have to worry about his future real-estate holdings, which will be reduced to roughly 9 X 12 feet of federal property.
Whether Rudy Giuliani experienced yet another psychotic break in imagining that the special counsel's office is adverse to indicting Trump seems irrelevant. More pertinent is that Bob Mueller is a Dudley Do-Right rule-follower who, notwithstanding whatever Rudy has to say, will be immensely inclined to demur.
Most legal scholars interpret the special counsel's mandate, under 1999 rules, as one of excluding indictment of a sitting president. As noted, Mueller is no boat-rocker. Hence Trump's future will almost certainly be decided by the next Congress, which must rely on the special counsel's report. This, in turn, means the next Congress' future will largely be decided by how candidates play the impeachment card.
There's no doubt as to how Republican candidates will proceed. They'll misrepresent how Democrats intend to proceed. Because that's what Republicans do. Because they have nothing else to run on. Not many suspected that a party in total control of both congressional chambers and the White House would succeed in passing only one piece of major legislation — and even there, they've gone mum. It was that bad. So instead they'll imitate what the president has been up to.
Notes the NY Times: "Trump … has rallied his base by repeatedly denouncing the investigation, and strategists in his camp believe they can mobilize voters on the right by warning that a Democratic-controlled Congress would seek, in effect, to invalidate Mr. Trump’s election." The base's Trumpeteering dittoheads have already picked up on the strategy; one hears it in focus groups — those wicked Dems are out to overturn a legitimate presidential election.
Continues the Times, rather quizzically: "But that political strategy could prove difficult to sustain if Mr. Mueller furnishes extensive evidence of wrongdoing by Mr. Trump or his associates." Since when has "extensive evidence" of anything the base wishes not to believe proven effective in illuminating Trump's base? They'll simply parrot the administration's fallback strategy: that the investigation was corrupt to the core, thus its fruit is rotten.
As for the other side: "Already, several dozen Democrats voted earlier this year to advance an impeachment resolution against Mr. Trump, and public opinion polls show the idea of toppling the president is hugely popular with Democratic voters. Holding back an avalanche of impeachment calls could prove difficult for the party in the event of a damning report."
The timing of that "event" remains unknown. Still, the larger question looms, assuming the inevitable "damning report" isn't issued till post-election. If Democrats take control of the House, should they follow through with impeachment proceedings?
I can't imagine any more calamitous course. While it's true that nothing could be more pleasing than Trump's official condemnation, it's just as true that his impeachment would go nowhere in the Senate, whether or not Dems (barely) control it in 2019. So a Democratic impeachment victory would be a Pyrrhic one at best.
What's worse, it could boomerang in 2020. Trump & Associates would of course take Democrats' failure to convict as evidence of Democrats' malice — nothing more. And as easily bamboozled as so many voters are, a critical margin might well believe it. Poor Donald.
In short, impeachment's practical use would come only in the case of a Democratic supermajority in the Senate, which won't happen in 2018, but could in 2020. Even then, a few Republican votes to convict would be indispensable, just to ward off charges of a purely partisan hit job. That most wretched of downsides, however, would be that Trump would have to be reelected for a supermajority to take him out. And in that forbidding case, America's rot would probably be irreparable.
If we do not as Americans confront the crisis of ethics and integrity in our society and among our leaders in both the public and private sector … then American democracy as we know it is entering its twilight years.
— Rex Tillerson, former secretary of state, 16 May 2018
Confronting the American crisis of ethics and integrity is precisely what Tillerson would have done, if only he had not "veiled" his rebuke: "He did not," reports the Times, "mention Mr. Trump by name."
I have yet to read anyone disagree with the consensus — that, as Michelle Goldberg put it, "if from their privileged perches these people saw the president as a dangerous fool in need of babysitting, it’s now time for some of them to say so publicly" — and yet "these people" continue to evade responsibility by not naming the name. It would be better if they simply said nothing, since saying just a little something so close to the truth makes their ensuing reticence hurt all the worse.
One might think they'd be too embarrassed to admit yet another staff malfunction, but then one recalls that they're shameless.
The White House is discussing possible replacements for Department of Homeland Security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, because Donald Trump is unhappy with how she is running the
massive agency.
It seems that Trump is once again the victim of an incompetent cabinet official. But that's OK, because Trump can always convert her into a scapegoat, which appears to be, other than tweeting and watching Fox News, his favorite pastime.
Far-right pundits have been mocking the administration this week for failing to get [his "wall"] done, angering Trump…. Nielsen is being blamed in the White House.
This passage — my emphasis — is even more priceless.
Trump was also furious when he found out that the omnibus spending bill that funded the federal government this March barely contained any funding for the wall.
Donald, that's what before-the-fact briefings and briefing papers are for. Has no one explained this to you?