The Gathering Storm (Sally Forth)

#PutiTrump | #WhatTheyVotedFor

Via Associated Press:

Former acting attorney general Sally Yates is expected to testify to Congress next week that she expressed alarm to the White House about President Donald Trump’s national security adviser’s contacts with the Russian ambassador, which could contradict how the administration has characterized her counsel.

Yates is expected to recount in detail her Jan. 26 conversation about Michael Flynn and that she saw discrepancies between the administration’s public statements on his contacts with ambassador Sergey Kislyak and what really transpired, according to a person familiar with that discussion and knowledgeable about Yates’s plans for her testimony. The person spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to pre-empt the testimony.

As a general rule, it seems wise to suggest we cannot really know what to expect, except, of course, the general outline of history, that Yates warned the Trump administration about Michael Flynn, and all the President’s men and women seem to have ignored her. And, you know, maybe that explains she was fired, though upsetting the president by refusing to enforce his unvetted executive order might do it, regardlesss of being yet another improper reason to dismiss a Justice Department attorney.

And, true, it is not necessarily helpful to wonder if this will be what blows proverbial lids into orbit or smithereens or whatever happens to them when they come off highly-pressurized metaphors. Still, though, as societal institutions struggle to catch up on the avalanche backlog of dubious and dangerous implications about Team Trump’s behavior, complacency can have many meanings. There is comfort in the notion that the processes continue despite Congressional Republicans, but it is also easy to get lost in some abstract faith that this all adds up to something. Their guilt does not preclude process, and that, apparently, requires some degree of extraordinary vigilance, as the Congressional majority really does not seem particularly interested in doing their job. All told, though, this should be something of a spectacle. You know, in that boring way that Congressional hearings are, followed by breathless analysis verging on panic because we … must … know … this … now! … even if it’s just some pundit saying we don’t know anything yet.

You know: Breaking: Pundit — “Too soon to know what to think.”

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Image note: Top — #PutiTrump: Protest image of Vladimir Putin, artist unknown. Donald Trump in detail of photo by Mark Peterson/Redux for msnbc, 2016. Left — Sally Q. Yates (Credit: J. David Ake/AP Photo).

Tucker, Eric. “AP source: Yates to testify on warning White House on Flynn”. Associated Press.

My Own Incoherent Distress

“That’s a burden that President Obama and I proudly carry every single day in the White House, because we know that everything we do and say can either confirm the myths about folks like us―or it can change those myths.”

―Michelle Obama

This is not, technically speaking, fair.

Then again, such is life. Michelle Obama stood before the graduating class of King College Prep High school in Chicago, yesterday, and delivered remarks that some have taken as a suggestion that the First Lady has officially entered the fight:

At a time of roiling debate over the issues of race and opportunity, punctuated by the events of Ferguson, Mo.; Staten Island; and Baltimore, the nation’s first African-American first lady has added her voice. It is not a new message for her, but one that has taken on special resonance and one delivered with bracing candor in recent speeches. Along the way, Mrs. Obama has opened a window into her own life, not just in Chicago but also in the White House.

By her telling, even living at the world’s most prominent address has not erased the sting of racial misunderstanding. In recent weeks, Mrs. Obama has talked of “insults and slights” directed at her husband and caricatures that have pained her. It all “used to really get to me,” she said, adding that she “had a lot of sleepless nights” until learning to ignore it. But she said she realized that she and her husband had a responsibility to rewrite the narrative for African-Americans.

“That’s a burden that President Obama and I proudly carry every single day in the White House,” she told the graduating seniors of King College Prep High School on Tuesday, “because we know that everything we do and say can either confirm the myths about folks like us―or it can change those myths.”

(Baker)

Some of us might be pessimistic. After all, what signs have we that President Obama and the First Lady have changed any perceptions about dark skin? Indeed, if we measure by the headlines, we might suggest they have somehow managed to exacerbate race relations.

Then again, that would be a misperception, and this is the important part.