THE OWLS' NEST - Mostly U.S. Politics
Paste this into your address bar and play the video -- it's 1 minute, 4 seconds.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1608178388157566976
The Republicans hate Marc Elias not because he's done anything wrong, but because he's such an effective lawyer. It drives Bannon crazy (a short trip) that the GOP don't have anyone comparable on their side.
In reply to this mashup of Republican denunciations, Elias posts a quote from FDR: "I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made."
Click here for an article by Timothy Snyder, professor of history at Yale, entitled "January 6: The Facts." Laurence Tribe describes it as "a very concise summary of the Select Committee's Final Report."
Here is my very brief summary of the factual part of the report, in fifteen quick points. I am deliberately understating here; the evidence, in the Final Report itself, permits much broader conclusions:
1. Trump knew that he was likely to lose the 3 November 2020 election, and planned in advance to declare victory (to tell a Big Lie) if he lost.
2. On 3 November 2020, Trump knew that he was very unlikely to have won the election of that day, and declared victory anyway. In the days following, aware that he had lost, he continued to declare victory.
3. Over and over again in November, December, and January, Trump publicized specific claims of electoral fraud shortly after being informed that they were false.
4. Aware that his advisors, campaign officials, and cabinet knew his claims of fraud to be false, Trump promoted people, such as Rudolph Giuliani, who would lie for him in public.
5. In the full knowledge that he had lost the election and that his claims of fraud were false, Trump made several deliberate efforts to overturn the election results and thus American democracy.
6. In states he had lost, Trump personally pressured state officials to fraudulently and illegally alter the electoral outcome.
7. Informed that the Department of Justice had investigated and found no evidence of fraud, Trump nevertheless sought to use its powers, via Jeffrey Clark, to intimidate state officials to change electoral outcomes.
8. Knowing that he had lost the electoral college vote, Trump oversaw an effort to create fake slates of electors. These entirely bogus documents were then sent to the vice-president (who refused them).
9. Though aware that it was the vice-president's role only to count the electoral votes, Trump pressured the vice-president not to do so, on the theory that the vice-president could, in effect, choose the president.
10. Even the person who devised the plan regarding the vice-president, John Eastman, knew it to be illegal.
11. Knowing by January 6th that all that remained was the formality of certifying Biden's victory, Trump encouraged supporters he knew to be armed and angry to halt this procedure and violently overthrow our form of government.
12. Trump's call to violence was successful because enough of his supporters believed his lies and understood what he wanted them to do: prevent a peaceful transition of power.
13. At a time when the Capitol was under attack, the vice-president was in flight, and the members of the vice-president's security detail feared for their lives, Trump urged his supporters on to further violence.
14. After the failed coup attempt, a number of Republican legislators sought presidential pardons, thereby acknowledging their fears that they had acted illegally.
15. Even had Trump believed that he had won the 2020 election, which he did not, his coup attempt would remain a coup attempt, and his crimes would remain crimes.
Click here for a post by Keith "Retired lawyer & Army vet in The Villages of Florida. Lifelong: Republican (pre-Trump), Constitution buff, science nerd & dog lover," which details events culminating in the testimony we've all seen before the January 6 Committee.
"Trump world," as the people referred to themselves, put a lot of pressure on Hutchinson to lie to the Committee -- and she initially did. I read in another article quoting her as saying she needed to pass "the mirror test," and she went through a personal moral crisis before ditching her "Trump world" lawyer, who had been urging her to lie, promising her a great job if she came through, and telling the truth in her bombshell televised interview.
She testified with poise and dignity and was obviously telling the truth: I hope she comes out of this okay -- even though at one point she said to her mother, "I’m fucked . . . I am completely indebted to these people. And they will ruin my life, Mom, if I do anything that they don’t want me to do.”
Click here for Heather Cox Richardson's daily article, today describing the rebellion of the Santee Sioux native tribe, and the December 26, 1862, hanging of 38 Santee men in the largest mass execution in American history.
The struggle did not involve all of the Santees, but rather those driven to war in August 1862 after the U.S. government, financially strapped by the Civil War, did not appropriate the money necessary to pay for the food promised to the Santees by treaty. Nine years before, in 1851, settlers had poured into the territory demanding land to farm, and the government had forced the Santees onto a reservation too small to feed their people. The government promised the Santees provisions to make up for the loss of their economic base not as a one-time payment but as a fifty-year contract. Then, when Minnesota became a state in 1858, its leaders took even more Santee land.
But by summer 1862, the Civil War had drained the Treasury, and so-called Indian appropriations fell behind.
Starving and unable to provide for themselves on the small reservation onto which they had been corralled, some Santees demanded the provisions for which they had exchanged their lands. At least one of the agents who had contracted to provide that food had some on hand but refused to hand it over until he had been paid. Furious, young Santee men considered their agreement broken and attacked the settlers who had built homes on the land the Santees had ceded.
On August 17, four young Santee men killed five settlers, and violence escalated. By September, both Minnesota militia and U.S. Army regiments were battling the Santees, and the struggles would leave more than 600 settlers, at least 100 to 300 Santees, and more than a hundred soldiers dead before the last of the Santee warriors surrendered to the military at the end of the month. Another 300 Santees—at least—would die from conditions of their imprisonment after the war or from exposure as they fled the state.
HCR further explains:
Over the course of five weeks in the fall of 1862, a military commission tried 393 Santees for their part in the conflict. The prisoners did not have lawyers, and many of them did not speak English. Those who did understand the questions put to them did not understand the legal process that permitted them to avoid self-incrimination; they told the truth about their part in the fighting and thus cemented their convictions. Many of the trials took fewer than ten minutes before the judges reached a guilty verdict: in one two-day span, 82 men were tried.
In early November the commission convicted 303 Indians of murder or rape and sentenced them to death. Minnesota governor Alexander Ramsey wrote to President Abraham Lincoln, expressing his hope that “the execution of every Sioux Indian condemned by the military court will be at once ordered.” But by law, the president had to sign off on executions, and Lincoln refused.
Repelled by the idea of mass executions, Lincoln examined the facts and found that 265 of the Santee were behaving as soldiers in battle, and refused to sign their death warrants, effectively pardoning them. But 38 had apparently committed murder or rape against civilians, and those men were hanged on December 26, 1862, in Mankato, Minnesota.
In the aftermath of the hangings, the Lincoln administration continued to develop the concept of war crimes. On April 24, 1863, the administration issued what became known as the Lieber Code after its author, legal philosopher Francis Lieber. It tried to establish rules for wartime, prohibiting the execution of prisoners of war, for example, and outlawing rape and torture. The Lieber Code helped to make up the international Hague Conventions of the turn of the century, which set out to establish rules of war.
On December 28, HCR posted another diary entry concerning the slaughter of about 250 men, women, and children of the Lacota, or Teton Sioux, tribe on December 29, 1890, on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota -- another massacre airbrushed from American history. Click here.
Click here for an article in The American Prospect, by Hannah Story Brown and Glenna Lee, entitled "It's Past Time to Replace IRS Chief Charles Rettig.
Surprise, surprise. Hand-picked and appointed by Trump in 2018, Rettig is a walking conflict of interest. Like the "disastrous USPS Postmaster General Louis DeJoy," Rettig was retained by Joe Biden, who chose not to dump either of the two wildly inappropriate office-holders, apparently to avoid controversy and criticism from Republicans.
Rettig has been entangled in Trump’s affairs since well before he became IRS commissioner. During his confirmation process back in 2018, Rettig initially failed to disclose that he co-owned two Trump-branded rentals in Hawaii, from which he’d made as much as $1 million in income since his purchase in 2006. Trump likely made a profit from Rettig’s purchase. That’s not all: In 2016, over a year before Trump chose Rettig as commissioner, Rettig publicly defended Trump’s refusal to publicly disclose his taxes in a Forbes piece.
Before his IRS appointment, Rettig had worked for almost 40 years at "a Beverly Hills law firm specializing in tax avoidance." The article says, "The very nature of Rettig’s pre-government career is antagonistic to his responsibilities as commissioner."
Rettig has been entangled in Trump’s affairs since well before he became IRS commissioner. During his confirmation process back in 2018, Rettig initially failed to disclose that he co-owned two Trump-branded rentals in Hawaii, from which he’d made as much as $1 million in income since his purchase in 2006. Trump likely made a profit from Rettig’s purchase. That’s not all: In 2016, over a year before Trump chose Rettig as commissioner, Rettig publicly defended Trump’s refusal to publicly disclose his taxes in a Forbes piece.
Rettig's term ended on November 12, 2022, and he was replaced by Acting Commissioner Douglas O'Donnell; Biden has nominated Danny Werfel — a former budget official and private sector leader — to become the next IRS commissioner.
Wikipedia says that "Ruth Ben-Ghiat is an American historian and cultural critic. She is a scholar on fascism and authoritarian leaders. Ben-Ghiat is professor of history and Italian studies at New York University."
She has some excellent essays, particularly on Italian politics (she's an expert on fascism), but also on fascism and politics in the U.S. and worldwide (she's U.S.-born to an Israeli father).
Click here for an essay entitled "The GOP might have a new neo-fascist fave," subtitled "Italy is ending an era of male monopoly of authoritarian governance."
The "new neo-fascist fave" is Giorgia Meloni, recently elected prime minister of Italy.
Now Italy is the country to have the first female-led far-right government, ending an era of male monopoly of authoritarian governance. What can we expect from Meloni? For starters, Italy will become more enmeshed in far-right networks that stretch from Vladimir Putin's Russia to Viktor Orban's Hungary to Jair Bolsonaro's Brazil to Republican America.
The connection to the Republicans? Ben-Ghiat says:
If this sounds like Fox News's Tucker Carlson or other Republican figures, there's a reason. As Meloni told The Washington Post, her party feels a kinship with the GOP, and she is in frequent dialogue with Steve Bannon and Republican politicians. "We have networks connecting us, our think tanks work with the International Republican Institute, with the Heritage Foundation, we do cultural exchanges, and many of their fights are about things we have talked about."As a result of her fascism in Italy (the country where fascism was born):
That is a lesson Americans can pay attention to as Republicans bring their own extremists into government, supporting the campaigns of election deniers, Oath Keepers and participants in the Jan. 6 coup attempt. Republicans have continued to cultivate Orban as a mentor in all things autocratic. Meloni's fascist credentials will likely make her another GOP favorite as Republican America creates its own new political reality to support its dream of illiberal rule.
Sorry, I don't know how to embed a Facebook post. This is titled "Renoir's Women," a slideshow with accompanying music, posted by Barry Cyr.
https://www.facebook.com/ArtsEmotions/videos/691177489313129
Heather Cox Richardson hits it ot of the park again. Click here for her diary entry for December 14.
Senator Joe Manchin (Democrat, West Virginia) shot a hole in a climate bill in 2010 -- simultaneously proving his machismo, his hatred of environmental regulation, and his support for the Second Amendment, I guess -- but no Democrat has used a gun in an ad since then. In 2020, there were 100 Republican ads which featured a gun.
The national free-for-all in which we have 120 guns for every 100 people—the next closest country is Yemen, with about 52 per one hundred people—is deeply tied to the political ideology of today’s Republican Party. It comes from the rise of Movement Conservatism under Ronald Reagan.
Movement Conservatism was a political movement that rose to combat the business regulations and social welfare programs that both Democrats and Republicans embraced after World War II. Movement Conservatives embraced the myth of the American cowboy as a white man standing against the “socialism” of the federal government as it sought to level the social and economic playing field between Black Americans and their white neighbors.
Since its formation after the Civil War, the NRA had been a basically nonpolitical association, promoting marksmanship and gun safety. But that all changed in the mid-'70s -- and Ronald Reagan became the pro-gun candidate for president in 1980.
In the past, NRA officers insisted on the right of citizens to own rifles and handguns but worked hard to distinguish between law-abiding citizens who should have access to guns for hunting and target shooting and protection, and criminals and mentally ill people, who should not. Until the mid-1970s, the NRA backed federal legislation to limit concealed weapons; prevent possession by criminals, the mentally ill and children; to require all dealers to be licensed; and to require background checks.
But in the mid-1970s, a faction in the NRA forced the organization away from sports and toward opposing “gun control.” It formed a political action committee (PAC) in 1975, and two years later it elected an organization president who abandoned sporting culture and focused instead on “gun rights.”
Until 1959, every single legal article on the Second Amendment concluded that it was not intended to guarantee individuals the right to own a gun. But in the 1970s, legal scholars funded by the NRA began to argue that the Second Amendment did exactly that.
The PAC formed in 1975 became a financial and political powerhouse:
Now a player in national politics, the NRA PAC was awash in money from gun and ammunition manufacturers, 99% of it going to Republican candidates. By 2000 it was one of the three most powerful lobbies in Washington. It spent more than $40 million on the 2008 election, and in that year, the landmark Supreme Court decision of District of Columbia v. Heller struck down gun regulations and declared for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to keep and bear arms.
Ten years ago, 20 children aged six and seven and six adult staff members at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, were murdered by a deranged gunman. People thought the NRA would be chastened, but the opposite was true: They came out, guns blazing (forgive the metaphor), proclaiming their unwavering support for "the right to keep and bear arms." Even after that horrific massacre, a modest gun control bill proposed by Obama's Democratic House of Representatives was thwarted by a Republican filibuster in the Senate.
If the atrocity at Sandy Hook could not curb the NRA and Republican blood lust, what can? In 2021, Richardson says, there were 692 mass shootings in the U.S. (a mass shooting being defined as four people shot, not including the shooter).
Merry Christmas.
Click here for Heather Cox Richardson's diary entry for December 3, 2022.
Today, one of former president Trump’s messages on the struggling right-wing social media platform Truth Social went viral.
In the message, Trump again insisted that the 2020 presidential election had been characterized by “MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION,” and suggested the country should “throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or…have a NEW ELECTION.”
Then he added: “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”
In other words, Trump is calling for the overthrow of the Constitution that established this nation. He advocates the establishment of a dictator.
Today, both Trump’s White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, and deputy counsel, Patrick Philbin, testified before a federal grand jury for several hours. They had previously refused to testify, citing executive privilege, but another court struck that argument down, and they were forced to testify to what Trump had said to them.
Judge Aileen Cannon's appointment of a special master to review the documents seized from Trump's residence at Mar-A-Lago last August was struck down, so the DOJ now has the documents in their possession.
The Trump Organization's fraud trial is concluding -- and Trump lost yet another lawsuit and has finally been forced to turn over tax records to the Senate Finance Committee. What will the committee find in the documents Trump fought so hard for six years against turning over?
But Trump's demand to overturn the Constitution and establish him as president is the newsworthy event of the day:
White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates said in a statement: “The American Constitution is a sacrosanct document that for over 200 years has guaranteed that freedom and the rule of law prevail in our great country. The Constitution brings the American people together—regardless of party—and elected leaders swear to uphold it. It’s the ultimate monument to all of the Americans who have given their lives to defeat self-serving despots that abused their power and trampled on fundamental rights. Attacking the Constitution and all it stands for is anathema to the soul of our nation, and should be universally condemned. You cannot only love America when you win.”
But Republicans, so far, are silent on Trump’s profound attack on the Constitution, the basis of our democratic government.
That is the story, and it is earth shattering.
Click here for an article entitled "The one thing you need to know about the railroads," by Robert Reich.
Reich says that "legislation effectively prohibiting a strike would impose unfair working conditions on employees in one of the most profitable industries in America — further tilting the nation’s economic imbalance toward large corporations and Wall Street, and against working people."
An example of the railroads' profitability: "Union Pacific, the largest publicly traded US railroad, paid its investors more than $41 billion in dividends and share buybacks over five years through 2021. In the first six months of 2022, it heaped an additional $5 billion on them."
Reich asks: "Why is it that whenever lawmakers confront the social costs of corporate greed, they roll over? They allow the greed to prevail while penalizing workers and others who are most immediately harmed by it."
He ends the article as follows:
In the age-old battle between labor and capital, labor is taking it on the chin. In some respects, the US economy is back to where it was in the late nineteenth century.
After all, the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 began with a work stoppage by railroad employees in West Virginia protesting a reduction in their wages. Railroad workers in other states soon joined them. Commerce in the East and Midwest was seriously disrupted. The economy was threatened.
The strikes were ended within a few weeks, largely because the federal government sided with the railroads. President Rutherford B. Hayes called out federal troops to quell the strikes.
Honestly, how far have we come since then?
Dog having fun.. 😊 pic.twitter.com/Rdhi6JGlQh
— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) December 1, 2022
Click here for an NYT article by Alan Feuer and Zach Montague, entitled "Oath Keepers Leader Convicted of sedition in Landmark Jan. 6 Case." Read about how leader Stewart Rhodes, holder of a Yale law degree, "became increasingly panicked as the election moved toward its final certification at a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6."
"Mr. Rhodes and some of his followers were in thrall to outlandish fears that Chinese agents had infiltrated the United States government and that Mr. Biden — a “puppet” of the Chinese Communist Party — might cede control of the country to the United Nations.
"The messages also showed that Mr. Rhodes was obsessed with the leftist movement known as antifa, which he believed was in league with Mr. Biden’s incoming administration. At one point during the trial, Mr. Rhodes, who took the stand in his own defense, told the jury he was convinced that antifa activists would storm the White House, overpower the Secret Service and forcibly drag Mr. Trump from the building if he failed to admit his defeat to Mr. Biden."
Millions of people have been duped by the conman Donald Trump. Some of them have acted on their misguided beliefs.
Click here for Heather Cox Richardson's summary of the conviction and the circumstances leading to it:
Beginning in late December 2020, they planned to travel to Washington, D.C., on or around January 6, 2021, to stop Congress from certifying the electoral college vote that would officially elect Biden. They recruited others, organized combat training sessions, and smuggled paramilitary gear to the area around the Capitol. They planned to take control of the Capitol grounds and buildings on January 6.
According to the Department of Justice, on that day, “Meggs, Harrelson, and Watkins, along with other Oath Keepers and affiliates—many wearing paramilitary clothing and patches with the Oath Keepers name, logo, and insignia—marched in a ‘stack’ formation up the east steps of the Capitol, joined a mob, and made their way into the Capitol. Rhodes and Caldwell remained outside the Capitol, where they coordinated activities” and stayed in touch with quick reaction force teams outside the city, which were ready to bring in firearms to stop the transfer of power.
Kenneth Harrelson, Jessica Watkins, and Thomas Caldwell were also found guilty of lesser charges, not including the serious count of sedition.
There are two more seditious conspiracy trials scheduled for December. One is for five other Oath Keepers; the other is against the leaders of the far-right gang the Proud Boys, led by Henry ‘Enrique’ Tarrio.
Former federal prosecutor Randall D. Eliason, who teaches law at George Washington University, told reporters:
“Now the only remaining question is how much higher did those plans go, and who else might be held criminally responsible.” While federal prosecutors sought only to tie Rhodes to the other Oath Keepers, both sides agreed that Rhodes communicated with Trump allies Roger Stone, Ali Alexander, and Michael Flynn after the election.
Might we see Stone, Alexander (who has been collaborating with the feds quite a bit, I think), and Flynn in the defendants' box soon? Hope springs eternal!
full quote is "Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, vox populi, vox dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit.”
— shauna (@goldengateblond) November 20, 2022
it translates to:
"Do not listen to those who say the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the tumult of the crowd is always close to madness." pic.twitter.com/K77VU6eUrB
It turns out that's not really the "full quote"; it's somebody's commentary on "vox populi, vox dei." Nevertheless, "vp, vd" is a flawed concept. You can't always be governed by a majority belief. If something is the wrong thing to do, a poll to the contrary doesn't change that fact. For example, I believe that Ukraine deserves to be supported in its resistance to Russian aggression, and I believe that's an objective truth. If a poll runs 9 to 1 that the U.S. and the West should stop supporting Ukraine, all that means is that the poll is wrong. If a January 6, 2020 poll ran 9 to 1 that Mike Pence should be hanged, all that means is that the poll is wrong. You may not agree with policy decisions that Joe Biden has made, but he has most certainly not committed any "high crimes or misdemeanors," and if a poll runs 9 to 1 that he should be impeached -- yes, you guessed it: The poll is wrong.
An aside: How many of those votes were bots? And how easily could this poll be gamed?
The New York Post is a Rupert Murdoch paper. So is The Wall Street Journal, but that's in the conservative mainstream. The Post is on the other end of the spectrum, a right-wing muckraking tabloid. It's believed the Post has been Trump's favorite newspaper; if so -- not anymore!
The day after Trump's speech announcing his candidacy, the front page of the Post didn't cover it -- except for about a 1-inch banner at the very bottom of the page, saying "Florida Man Makes Announcement - page 26."
That's some pretty decent trolling. But if you turn to page 26, the complete article was less than a column, headed "Been there, Don that." The article, too, is brutal -- here it is in its entirety:
With just 720 days to go before the next election, a Florida retiree made the surprise announcement that he was running for president. In a move no political pundit saw coming, avid golfer Donald J. Trump kicked things off at Mar-a-Lago, his resort and classified-documents library. Trump, famous for gold-plated lobbies and for firing people on realtity television, will be 78 in 2024. If elected, Trump would tie Joe Biden as the oldest president to take office. His cholesterol levels are unknown, but his favorite food is a charred steak with ketchup. He has stated that his qualifications for office include being a “stable genius.” Trump also served as the 45th president.
Click here for a Heather Cox Richardson post for November 17 that gives a good summary of Nancy Pelosi's farewell speech as she steps down from her Democratic leadership position. I thought her octegenarian second-in-command, Steny Hoyer, would be a candidate for her position, but I guess he's stepping down; Pelosi's hand-picked successor is Hakeem Jeffries (who I think would be good).
1/ Don't worry, gentry conservatives. We get it.
— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) November 16, 2022
You're writing "No" now but soon enough you'll write "While we have deep reservations about Donald Trump, Joe Biden is a socialist Marxist antifa Soros dupe and while Trump's tweets are terrible, his polices...
Donald is “running for POTUS again.” Hilarious. Here are all the reasons he will never be President again no matter what he says or does:
— Andrew Wortman (@AmoneyResists) November 16, 2022
1.) He is under a dozen investigations for crimes ranging from espionage to seditious conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and is going to prison
Sometimes following right wing social media isn’t terrible. pic.twitter.com/IwVyBDa0Nv
— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) November 11, 2022
That’s just Los Angeles county. Lol. LA County pays more in federal income taxes than all those states combined. LA COUNTY! https://t.co/ux4MSOHUtd
— J-Nouri (@jnouri13) November 12, 2022
Another US election, another "Land doesn't vote, people do" style map showing the election results. pic.twitter.com/XmMTSUKJof
— Simon Kuestenmacher (@simongerman600) November 11, 2022
Click here for an article by my favorite columnist, Charlie Pierce at Esquire, entitled "No One Can Pretend that Wisconsin Is a Republic," subtitled, "Whatever it is, it's a far cry from a representative democracy."
Charlie says:
On Tuesday, the Democratic Party got 51 percent of the vote statewide. This got the Democrats…30 percent of the seats in the state legislature. Any reasonable definition of “a Republican Form of Government” cannot possibly include this kind of result. It is completely and utterly a product of grotesque partisan gerrymandering sanctioned by the Supreme Court in its disgraceful decision Rucho v. Common Cause three years ago.
The die was cast on this atrocity last April, when the state supreme court ruled that this year’s elections would be contested on the ludicrous maps produced by the state legislature, itself the product of past gerrymanders. The U.S. Supreme Court was a critical accessory after the fact.
And:
The roundness and completeness with which extreme conservatism has deformed the American republic is occasionally stunning.
Steph Curry is robot🌟
— Tansu YEĞEN (@TansuYegen) November 6, 2022
pic.twitter.com/f426Ia7Qld
Morning Yoga.. 🐶
— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) November 6, 2022
🎥 IG: my_aussie_gal pic.twitter.com/gxQlHqG11v
Since @Sen_JoeManchin decided to attack @POTUS Biden days before the mid-terms, I am re-posting one of the best videos we have ever made.#JoeManchinSenatorForSale = 4.7 MILLION VIEWSpic.twitter.com/vzRH137MOH
— Don Winslow (@donwinslow) November 6, 2022
Apparently Fred Astaire said this was the best on-screen dancing he'd ever seen (the Nicholas Brothers appear starting about 3:15):
I just found a cool mouse trick.
I wish there were more military videos like this one -- it's really easy to follow and understand (copy and paste it into your address bar):
https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1568299481648578561
Click here for a short article at Mother Jones by David Corn promoting his new book American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy. His thesis is that "since the 1950s, the Republican Party has brazenly encouraged and exploited right-wing extremism."
An illustrative paragraph: "It chronicles how the Republicans have fueled and fed on the worst elements of American public life since the McCarthy era. This includes Eisenhower surrendering to McCarthy in 1952; Goldwater’s alliance with the Birchers; Nixon’s racist Southern strategy; the rise of the New Right and the religious right (and their politics of hatred); Reagan’s partnership with the Moral Majority, whose leaders called for executing gay people, and his political ties to former Nazi collaborators (yes, really); the Limbaughization, Foxification, and Gingrichization of the GOP; the Bushes’ reliance on far-right and extreme (and bonkers) Christian right operatives; Palinism (as in Sarah); the Tea Party; and—ta dum!—Trump."
Click here for an article by Dana Milbank at The Washington Post entitled "The GOP is sick. It didn't start with Trump -- and won't end with him."
Click here an article by Jonathan Swan on Axios entitled "Inside Trump '25: A radical plan for Trump's second term."
Remember Sadaam's Ba'ath party in Iraq? Trump plans to replace thousands of career civil servants -- nonpolitical people whose job carries over from one president to the next, Democratic or Republican -- with loyal Trumpists who will do his bidding.
Liz Cheney: "He didn't talk to his attorney General. He didn't speak to the Department of Homeland Security. Trump did not give an order to deploy the National Guard on that day, and he didn't try to cooperate with the Department of Justice in coordination and deployment of law enforcement assets. Mike Pence did all of these things."
Click here for another great Heather Cox Richardson diary entry, this one outlining the plot behind the "spontaneous" attack on the Capitol and the rest of the complicated plot, involving a number of top-level Republican conspiracists, to overthrow Joe Biden's legitimately elected administration.
Click here for an article by Heather Cox Richardson on a courageous Republican from 70-odd years ago (yes, there were a few of them, unlike today -- hat tip, Liz Cheney: Best wishes in your Wyoming primary).
Spotted on a tweet:
Let's take a moment to honor the sacrifice of our brave school children who lay down their lives to protect our right to bear arms.
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I was aware around the time the census was being taken that there were Republican efforts to distort the outcome; click here for an article at msnbc.com, The ReidOut Blog, by Ja'han Jones, titled "The Jan. 6 insurrection failed. But this Trump plot to undermine democracy didn't."
The U.S. census is taken every 10 years. It's important that it be accurate, because it determines how representation in the House will be redistributed and how services will be provided for marginalized, vulnreable populations; click here for an article at Vox by Alvin Chang, titled "How Republicans are undermining the 2020 census, explained with a cartoon."
Those populations are routinely undercounted:
The undercount happens because those people are harder to find. They tend to be more transient, less trustful of government, and less tied to communities.
So the count is usually distorted to some degree despite best efforts; in 2020, the Trump administration and Republican states made a concerted effort to deliberately undercount these populations so they would not be allowed access to government funding.
The Trump administration also tried repeatedly, but failed, to have a new question added to the census: "Are you an American citizen?"
In field testing, this question was very effective in discouraging non-citizens from responding to the census for fear the government would use the document to find and deport them, which could lead to a massive undercounting of non-citizens and resulting in inadequate government funding for programs intended to help marginalized people.
From the articles I've been reading, it's looking more and more likely:
Click here for "Garland Says DOJ 'Not Avoiding Political Cases' as Many Demand Trump Probe"
Click here for "'Trump Will Be Charged,' Kirschner Concludes After AG Garland's Remarks," by Jason Lemon at Newsweek.
- By substituting green tea for my morning coffee, I was able to reduce by 88% what little enjoyment I had left in life.
-Looking back on my life, I don't know where my money went. Some of it I spent on wine, women, and song, but the rest I just squandered.
Click here for another excellent article from Heather Cox Richardson today, February 25, 2022.
Joe Biden nominated Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit as the next Supreme to replace the retiring Stephen Breyer (interesting coincidence: Jackson at one time clerked for Breyer).
The Republicans will attack her, of course, as they would any Democratic appointment. For instance,
Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), who sits on the Judiciary Committee, said it was “extremely inappropriate” for the president to nominate a Supreme Court justice just days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and she said that “Biden is putting the demands of the radical progressive left ahead of what is best for our nation.”
Blackburn is one of the worst Senators and regularly spouts inanities. The idea that Biden should put everything else aside while the U.S. deals with the Ukrainian situation is preposterous, of course. HCR says:
In contrast to Blackburn, one could see the act of nominating a justice in the midst of a crisis in the same way President Abraham Lincoln thought about holding the 1864 election in the midst of the Civil War. In November of that year, he told a group of visitors that no one had been sure that a democratic government could survive in times of emergency, but he believed that if an emergency could interrupt the normal process of democracy, “it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us.” Holding the election was itself a victory for the rule of law.
Jackson has expressed some opinions in the past that are right on point today:
Similarly, it seems to me a mistake to characterize Jackson as a part of a “radical progressive agenda” unless democracy itself has become such a thing. Jackson’s tightly reasoned briefs show a focus on democracy that is similar to that of her mentor, Breyer. She has become famous, for example, for a 2019 opinion rejecting the idea that a president’s advisors cannot be compelled to testify before Congress. “Presidents are not kings,” she wrote. “This means that they do not have subjects, bound by loyalty or blood, whose destiny they are entitled to control. Rather, in this land of liberty, it is indisputable that current and former employees of the White House work for the People of the United States, and that they take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Like Breyer, as well, Jackson has a “reputation for pragmatism and consensus building,” according to former president Barack Obama, who nominated her as a district judge.
Republicans will say she is too inexperienced (she's 51). Let's compare her experience with that of the last SCOTUS appointment, by Trump: Amy Coney Barrett:
Barrett is 50. She spent two years as a judicial law clerk, then worked in private practice for 3 years, from 1999 to 2002 (she joined Roberts and Kavanaugh as one of the future Supremes working on Bush v. Gore, overturning the people's popular choice for president.) She then was a law professor until 2017, when Trump nominated her to the Supreme Court -- without spending a day of her life as a judge.
Here's a brief rundown of Jackson's career:
She was a law clerk for two years, spent a year in private practice, then clerked for Breyer for two years before returning to private practice. She was vice chair of the U.S. Sentencing Comission for five years; then in 2013 she was confirmed (with unanimous Senate consent) as a judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. She's been a judge in one of the two most important Districts in the country, the other being the Southern District of New York (Wall Street), for 8.9 years.
HCR says:
Anticipating criticism suggesting that Jackson’s judicial experience has been brief, Vladeck also compiled a chart of the judicial experience of all Supreme Court justices since 1900. The information showed that Jackson’s 8.9 years of prior judicial experience is more than four of the justices currently on the court—Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice John Roberts, Elena Kagan, and Amy Coney Barrett—had combined. It's also more experience than 4 of the last 10 justices had at their confirmations, or 9 of the last 17, or 43 of the 58 appointed since 1900.
From there, HCR moved on to discuss Ukraine. It's only been a few days, but so far at least, things are not going entirely Putin's way: He is meeting stiff resistance both from the Ukraine military and from dissidents on the home front:
Putin needed a quick victory in Ukraine, and the heroic resistance of the Ukrainians has made that impossible, buying time for pressure against him to build. Last night, 1800 Russians were arrested for protesting the war at rallies around the country; prominent Russians, including the children of leading businessmen and lawmakers, are speaking up against the invasion.
When Facebook fact-checked Russian state media accounts and put warning labels on them, the Kremlin limited Russians’ access to the site, where they were sharing their anger at Putin’s war. Apparently, ill-trained Russian conscripts are shocked to be on the front lines in Ukraine—Russian law says only volunteer troops are supposed to be used there.
That's important: Ukrainian resistance has provided time for the pressure against Putin to build. On that subject, she says:
Putin is rapidly becoming isolated. Russia vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning the invasion and calling for an immediate end to hostilities and the withdrawal of Russia’s troops from Ukraine, but it was notable that China, India, and the United Arab Emirates abstained rather than vote. Also today, President Milos Zeman of Czechia and Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, both of whom have been supporters of Putin, came out strongly against the invasion. So did Romania and Bulgaria. Kazakhstan has refused to send troops to Russia.
Incredible! Her name is Nandi Bushell, and she was born in Durban, South Africa, April 28, 2010; as I'm writing this, she's 12 years old!
Yes, it's true. Click here for Heather Cox Richardson's diary entry for February 5, 2022.
CNN Business reports that since 1945, the Standard & Poor’s 500—a market index of 500 leading U.S. publicly traded companies—has averaged an annual gain of 11.2% during years when Democrats controlled the White House, and a 6.9% average gain under Republicans. In the same time period, gross domestic product grew by an average of 4.1% under Democrats, 2.5% under Republicans. Job growth, too, is significantly stronger under Democrats than Republicans.
“[T]here has been a stark pattern in the United States for nearly a century,” wrote David Leonhardt of the New York Times last year, “The economy has grown significantly faster under Democratic presidents than Republican ones.”
The persistence of the myth that Democrats are bad for the economy is an interesting example of the endurance of political rhetoric over reality.
There's much more. Click the link above to read it all.
Click here for an article in The Atlantic by The Irish Times' Fintan O'Toole, entitled "Beware Prophecies of Civil War, " subtitled "The idea that such a catastrophe is unavoidable in America is inflammatory and corrosive."
O'Toole grew up in the days when full-fledged civil war was a distinct possibly in Ireland.
