Please Help With Personal Finances!

Tweet from Kevin M. Kruse:

Please, can someone who's good at the economy help me figure this out? My family is starving.

Rent $2,000
Utilities $300
Internet $80
Cell phone $60
Groceries $600
Hair styling $70,000

Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" Was NOT Inspired by "People of Praise"

Trump's new nominee for the Supreme Court, Amy Comy Barrett, belongs to a weird Catholic sect known as "People of Praise." I myself believed for several weeks the story going around that "People of Praise" was the inspiration for Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel of female subjugation, "The Handmaid's Tale."

Turns out that's not the case. Rather, "The Handmaid's Tale" was inspired by a different weird Catholic sect known as "People of Hope."

The story is debunked in this article, by Constance Grady, of Vox:

On Saturday, President Donald Trump chose Notre Dame law professor and federal appellate judge Amy Coney Barrett as his nominee to take Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat on the Supreme Court. The news threatens to reignite a storm of controversy around Barrett’s religion that has been building since 2017.

Barrett is a devout Catholic. She has written before about her belief that Catholicism should affect a judge’s jurisprudence, and Democrats discussed her views widely when she was nominated to the federal bench in 2017. In a moment that has become infamous on the right, Sen. Dianne Feinstein declared that “the dogma lives loudly within you” during Barrett’s hearing, a phrase some conservatives took to be an attack on Barrett’s Catholicism.

Barrett is also part of a small Catholic group known as People of Praise, and that’s where her religious affiliations get especially touchy. Some liberals argue Barrett’s membership in this group, which teaches that husbands are the heads of families and have authority over their wives, signals that she will hand down religiously motivated conservative opinions if confirmed to the Supreme Court, particularly when it comes to women’s reproductive freedom and the rights of the queer community.

Meanwhile, conservatives reply that Barrett is a high-powered federal judge who is also married, so she can’t be all that oppressed by her husband, and that liberal critiques of the way Barrett’s religion affects her judicial obligations are nothing more than anti-Catholic prejudice at work.

One of the weirder ways this debate has played out since Barrett was first discussed as a potential Supreme Court nominee is the fight over whether or not People of Praise, the group she belongs to, is also one of the inspirations for The Handmaid’s Tale. In Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian novel (and its recent TV adaptation), fertile women are forced to live as childbearing slaves called handmaids. The group isn’t an established inspiration for the book — but the story has developed legs anyway.

The inaccurate link between the People of Praise and Atwood’s story, perpetuated by a series of confusing coincidences and uneven fact-checking, first emerged in a Newsweek article and was later picked up by Reuters. Both articles have since been corrected, but the right was furious at both. The Washington Examiner called it a “smear that just won’t die.” Fox News noted several other outlets have mentioned Barrett and The Handmaid’s Tale in the same story.

To be absolutely clear: People of Praise is not an inspiration for The Handmaid’s Tale, and the group does not practice sexual slavery or any of the other dystopian practices Atwood wrote about in her novel. But the argument over whether or not the two are connected reflects the deeply contentious atmosphere in which Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court occurs — and the immense symbolic weight The Handmaid’s Tale carries in American popular culture.

The Handmaid’s Tale is actually inspired by People of Hope. They’re different from People of Praise.

Two coincidences led to the idea of a People of Praise–Handmaid’s Tale connection. The first coincidence is that the People of Praise once had a religious rank called “handmaid.” As reported by the New York Times in 2017, People of Praise members are all accountable to a personal adviser. Those advisers offer guidance on major life decisions, including, per the Times, “whom to date or marry, where to live, whether to take a job or buy a home, and how to raise children.” And these advisers used to be called “heads” when they were men and “handmaids” when they were women. They have since been renamed “leaders.”

The second coincidence is that when Margaret Atwood explained her Handmaid’s Tale inspirations to the New York Times in 1987, she described one of them as “a Catholic charismatic spinoff sect, which calls the women handmaids.” Atwood did not at the time name the sect, so when her quote resurfaced in 2020, it was very easy for some readers to think, Well, People of Praise is a Catholic charismatic spinoff sect that calls the women handmaids, so there you go. Accordingly, on September 21, Newsweek reported that People of Praise was one of Atwood’s inspirations for The Handmaid’s Tale.

Asked about her inspiration for The Handmaid’s Tale by Politico as the controversy heated up, Atwood said she wasn’t sure which group she was talking about in 1987. Her archive of work and research is at the University of Toronto, where she can’t currently access it due to Covid-19 restrictions. But she’s on the record as going through her Handmaid’s Tale archives for journalists plenty of times in the past, and during those interviews, she’s always cited People of Hope, a different Catholic charismatic spinoff that calls women handmaids.

Specifically, People of Hope is a fundamentalist group in New Jersey that some former members have said behaves like a cult and which has allegedly arranged marriages between teenagers. The People of Hope call wives “handmaids,” and when Atwood saw that word in an Associated Press clipping about the group, she underlined it in pen. It’s rumored that it’s here that she developed the idea of using the name to begin with.

In a weird wrinkle, the timing of the lore here doesn’t quite work out. Reporting for the Star-Ledger in 2017, Tom Deignan found that the story didn’t hit the AP until after The Handmaid’s Tale came out in 1985, meaning that Atwood couldn’t have pulled the word “handmaid” from that mythical news article after all. But regardless, the AP clipping in Atwood’s archives, the one that she always shows reporters, is about People of Hope. And while it’s plenty plausible that Atwood has indulged in a little self-mythologizing about her creative process over the years, it’s not really that relevant to any questions about Amy Coney Barrett and her religious leanings today.

The outrage over the controversy speaks to the symbolic weight Handmaid’s Tale holds today in American pop culture

The slippage between People of Praise handmaids, People of Hope handmaids, and Margaret Atwood handmaids is where this whole misunderstanding originated. And it is, in its own way, telling about the world Atwood was writing about in 1984 when she built Gilead, her theocratic dystopia.

Atwood was drawing from the cultural norms of lots of different North American charismatic Christian groups at the time, including harmless ones. The reason there’s so much confusion about exactly where she took the word handmaid from is that handmaid is the kind of word a lot of North American charismatic Christian groups were into in 1984: suggestive of purity, duty, and feminine obedience to divine will.

Again, that does not mean these groups were practicing sexual slavery. It means they were working with a very specific vocabulary, and the way Atwood made her dystopia feel real was by skillfully mimicking them.

But that this slippage occurred in 2020 is also telling about how immensely fearful people are, on both the right and the left, about America’s future — and how powerful The Handmaid’s Tale is as a symbol of what that future might look like.

People on the left look at Amy Coney Barrett and see someone who has denounced both abortion and marriage equality in explicitly religious terms, someone who they fear will, if seated on the Supreme Court, turn back the clock on both those issues. They see a symbol of the same fear that drove protesters to don Handmaid robes at the Kavanaugh hearings in 2018: the fear that women are going to lose control of their bodies, and that when that day comes, we might just as well be in Gilead. So they have linked Barrett to The Handmaid’s Tale because The Handmaid’s Tale is now our culture’s most potent symbol for the idea of a world in which women’s bodies are not their own.

People on the religious right, meanwhile, see the left’s focus on Barrett’s Catholicism as confirmation that American Christianity is losing its cultural power, and that they may soon become a persecuted minority. Articles that mistakenly link Barrett’s People of Praise to The Handmaid’s Tale, seen through this lens, become examples of the left trying to make Barrett’s religion a disqualifying mark against her, and by extension to make all Christian faith disqualifying for higher office.

The result is a controversy about two political parties that increasingly see themselves as pushed to the breaking point — and who believe they have no space left to interact with the other side in good faith.

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Helpful, Positive Input From The Right (well, maybe not so much)

This is taken from Brian Stelter's "Reliable Sources," a collection of comments by our friends on the right last spring, when the CDC predicted there would be 200,000 American deaths from COVID-19. 

 

The United States hit a tragic milestone on Tuesday, surpassing 200,000 deaths from the coronavirus. It is difficult to process that vast loss of life. The figure represents mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, cousins and uncles, friends and coworkers.

 

It's a number no one ever wanted to hit. But it didn't blindside us. The early models did predict it. It's hard to forget the White House press conference back in March in which the task force told the public to brace for 100,000 to 240,000 deaths.

 

Most news organizations soberly reported the warning and took it seriously. But many top personalities in right-wing media did not. Instead, they attacked the models and suggested health experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci were alarmists. And when one model briefly lowered its projection to 60,000 deaths (with some caveats), these figures seized on the news, touting it as supposed proof of how great the White House's response had been and how unreliable the health experts had been.

So as the US crosses this terrible milepost of 200,000 dead, it's worth looking back at those who attacked the models, the health experts, and the media. Here are some comments made in April from top conservative commentators and personalities: 

>> Rush Limbaugh: "It's now down to 60,000. What happened to 240,000? What happened to 100,000 to 200,000? What happened to 240,000?" 

>> Brian Kilmeade: "The fact is, when someone says 200,000 people die, oops, I mean 60,000. And it's not going to be right away, it's going to be in August. That's how good we are doing and how off the models were..."

 >> Bill O'Reilly: “The [death toll] projections that you just mentioned are down to 60,000, I don’t think it will be that high..."

>> Candace Owens: "FACT: we went from 2.2 million, to 100,000, to 60,000 predictive #coronavirus deaths because the models were always bulls**t, the media was always lying, and the virus was never as fatal as the experts that are chronically wrong about everything, prophesized..." 

 >> Laura Ingraham: "They were off by a factor of 33 from 2.2 million projected COVID deaths at the top, which was terrifying to a little bit more than 60,000 deaths projected today..." 

 >> Mark Levin: "We've seen these numbers, these so-called models and the data over the last six to eight weeks. They have fluctuated wildly. Millions might die. Hundreds of thousands might die. Now, they're saying 60,000 give or take, maybe less than 60,000...." 

 >> Tucker Carlson: "Sixty thousand deaths -- that's a very big number. ... Yet, at the same time, it is far fewer than many expected. It is a much lower number...." 

 >> Martha MacCallum: "You cannot help but look at the numbers that caused it and the models which were incorrect that really were one of the biggest push points to shut down the United States economy. It is quite possible that you’re going to end up with numbers of fatalities in this Covid-19 tragedy of those that have been affected that will be south of the numbers in the 2018 flu season..." 

 >> Dinesh D'Souza: "Most people have no idea how way off the #Coronavirus models have been. A nutcase virus denier who predicted ZERO deaths would be closer to the mark (ie to the current 60,000 projection) than the best-case scenarios, taking into account social distancing, of 100-240,000 deaths..." 

>> Jim Hoft: "STUNNING! IHME Reduces Their Model Predictions AGAIN! — Now Say Peak Is ON EASTER and Only 60,000 Deaths …Like a Typical Flu!" 

 It's important to revisit these comments, given how many of these commentators are still misleading the public on the coronavirus and the administration's response today. Fox News, talk radio, and right-wing websites were brimming with commentary playing down the virus back in April — and, in many respects, they still are today, even with a staggering death toll of 200,000 deaths. The arguments have changed, but the dishonesty has not.

Corrections or apologies from these folks? Crickets . . .

 

RT (Russia Today) Deepfakes Trump

Trump video:

Democratic Domination Of The Popular Vote

Since 1992 (28 years ago), there have been 7 presidential elections. They were won by the following:

1992: Bill Clinton
1996: Bill Clinton
2000: George W. Bush
2004: George W. Bush
2008: Barack Obama
2012: Barack Obama
2016: Donald Trump

The Democratic candidate for president has won the popular vote in 6 of those 7 elections. 

In those 7 elections, Republicans received 374,290,307 votes; Democrats received 403,086,894 votes. Democrats received 28,796,587 more votes than Republicans, an average of 4,113,798 more votes per year.

In those 7 elections, Democrats have won 4 times (16 years); Republicans have won 3 times (12 years). The only time a Republican president won the popular vote was Bush over Kerry, 2004, by a margin of 3,000,176 votes.

 

Notorious RBG: The Umbrella

In 2013, in the case of Shelby County v. Holder, Chief Justice Roberts voted to eviscerate the Voting Rights Act (declaring the Day of Jubilee, as Charlie Pierce puts it). In a scathing dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote:

Congress approached the 2006 reauthorization of the VRA with great care and seriousness. The same cannot be said of the Court’s opinion today. The Court makes no genuine attempt to engage with the massive legislative record that Congress assembled. … One would expect more from an opinion striking at the heart of the Nation’s signal piece of civil-rights legislation...Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.

It's raining -- hard.

The "Lost Cause"

 Here's the Wikipedia entry for "The Lost Cause":

The Lost Cause of the Confederacy, or simply the Lost Cause, is an American pseudo-historical, negationist ideology which advocates the belief that the cause of the Confederate States during the American Civil War was a just and heroic one. This ideology furthered the idea that slavery was just and moral, under the ruse that it brought worthwhile economic prosperity. The ideology was used to perpetuate racism and racist power structures during the Jim Crow era in the American South.  It endorses the supposed virtues of the antebellum South and views the war as a struggle that was primarily waged in order to save the Southern way of life or to defend 'states' rights,' such as the right to secede from the Union, in the face of overwhelming 'Northern aggression.' At the same time, the Lost Cause minimizes or completely denies the central role of slavery and white supremacy in both the buildup to and outbreak of the war.

The southern states seceding from the Union in 1861, immediately prior to the Civil War, issued proclamations giving reasons for their course of action. Modern-day revisionists try to gloss over the issue of slavery, maintaining that the principal causes of secession were related to economics; the industrial north was determined to subjugate the agrarian south, treating it as a colony to be exploited.

If you read the declarations of secession, you will find that they are quite pointed: The rebellion was principally in opposition to the North forcing the abolition of slavery.

Here is the declaration of Mississippi (read it; it's short), adopted during a convention of State delegates from January 7-26, 1861:

A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union.

In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin. That we do not overstate the dangers to our institution, a reference to a few facts will sufficiently prove.

The hostility to this institution commenced before the adoption of the Constitution, and was manifested in the well-known Ordinance of 1787, in regard to the Northwestern Territory.

The feeling increased, until, in 1819-20, it deprived the South of more than half the vast territory acquired from France.

The same hostility dismembered Texas and seized upon all the territory acquired from Mexico.

It has grown until it denies the right of property in slaves, and refuses protection to that right on the high seas, in the Territories, and wherever the government of the United States had jurisdiction.

It refuses the admission of new slave States into the Union, and seeks to extinguish it by confining it within its present limits, denying the power of expansion.

It tramples the original equality of the South under foot.

It has nullified the Fugitive Slave Law in almost every free State in the Union, and has utterly broken the compact which our fathers pledged their faith to maintain.

It advocates negro equality, socially and politically, and promotes insurrection and incendiarism in our midst.

It has enlisted its press, its pulpit and its schools against us, until the whole popular mind of the North is excited and inflamed with prejudice.

It has made combinations and formed associations to carry out its schemes of emancipation in the States and wherever else slavery exists.

It seeks not to elevate or to support the slave, but to destroy his present condition without providing a better.

It has invaded a State, and invested with the honors of martyrdom the wretch whose purpose was to apply flames to our dwellings, and the weapons of destruction to our lives.

It has broken every compact into which it has entered for our security.

It has given indubitable evidence of its design to ruin our agriculture, to prostrate our industrial pursuits and to destroy our social system.

It knows no relenting or hesitation in its purposes; it stops not in its march of aggression, and leaves us no room to hope for cessation or for pause.

It has recently obtained control of the Government, by the prosecution of its unhallowed schemes, and destroyed the last expectation of living together in friendship and brotherhood.

Utter subjugation awaits us in the Union, if we should consent longer to remain in it. It is not a matter of choice, but of necessity. We must either submit to degradation, and to the loss of property worth four billions of money, or we must secede from the Union framed by our fathers, to secure this as well as every other species of property. For far less cause than this, our fathers separated from the Crown of England.

Our decision is made. We follow their footsteps. We embrace the alternative of separation; and for the reasons here stated, we resolve to maintain our rights with the full consciousness of the justice of our course, and the undoubting belief of our ability to maintain it.

You decide: was slavery a central reason for Mississippi's secession?

 

Funny Papers? Not So Much ...

 Click here for an article entitled "Totally Under Control": a comic strip presentation of how Trump and the U.S. on one side, and South Korea on the other, reacted to the COVID-19 virus.

Paul Krugman: Trump Does Not Deserve Credit For "Booming Economy"

 This is an article by Paul Krugman, published in The New York Times on August 25, 2020, entitled "Republicans, businesspeople, and other bad economists":

The U.S. economy just experienced the worst slump in its history. It has partially bounced back, but employment and output are still far lower than they were at the beginning of the year. Furthermore, early data suggest that the partial recovery has slowed if not stalled, and there will be widespread distress soon as expanded unemployment benefits run out.

Yet Donald Trump still, according to most surveys, has a net positive rating on the economy. How is that possible?

Before I get there, a few points on why giving Trump positive marks on the economy is absurd.

First, a picture. Here’s total employment since the end of the 2007-9 recession, which was brought on by the collapse of the Bush-era housing bubble and the financial disruption that followed. As you can see, there was steady growth under Barack Obama, but with the election of Trump … absolutely nothing happened. The trend continued as before, and nothing in the economic data would lead you to suspect that there had been any change in management.

In 2017, nothing happenedBureau of Labor Statistics

The only change came with the coronavirus, about that more in a minute.

Second, the key point about Trump’s economic policy was that mostly he didn’t have one. Oh, he got us into a trade war with China, which seems to have had some negative effect on manufacturing. And he passed a huge tax cut for corporations, which basically seems to have, well, cut corporate taxes; there was no sign of an acceleration in investment, productivity, or anything else.

Continue reading the main sto

Now, there was a huge policy response to the coronavirus: The CARES Act, which greatly cushioned the blow by expanding unemployment benefits. But that was basically a Democratic bill, designed by Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, that Republicans let by because they didn’t have any better ideas.

And when key provisions of the CARES Act expired at the end of last month, Trump responded with some executive orders that seem likely to do almost nothing to alleviate a sharp increase in hardship.

So what, exactly, are voters approving of?

Part of the answer is that the G.O.P. is still the party of big business and the wealthy, and the general public suffers from the persistent delusion that people who can run businesses and/or make a lot of money for themselves also know how to run an economy.

Continue reading the main st

The truth is that the knowledge and talents required for, say, being a successful CEO are very different from those required to make good economic policy. Corporations are command-and-control organizations in which executives can tell subordinates what to do; market economies aren’t. Corporations compete with each other, while countries mostly don’t, because they are their own main customers — my spending is your income, and your spending is my income. So the principles of good economic policy are nothing at all like the principles of good management, which is why even genuinely great businessmen like Herbert Hoover have made terrible economic leaders.

And don’t tell anyone, but Donald Trump is not, in fact, a great businessman.

I also suspect that there’s a form of media bias here that isn’t explicitly partisan but has the same practical effect. Where, after all, does economic policy get discussed most? In business publications, on TV shows catering to business audiences, and so on. And these venues naturally give more credence to politicians who praise business and promise to cut rich peoples’ taxes. So an innumerate Ayn Rand fanboy like Paul Ryan was long the darling of business media, while an infinitely more knowledgeable figure like Elizabeth Warren can barely get a word in edgewise.

So I’m disappointed but not surprised that Trump is still getting much better marks than he deserves on the economy. And I’ll be equally disappointed but not surprised if Joe Biden gets much less credit than he deserves if, as seems likely, he gets the chance to clean up Trump’s mess.

Senate Intelligence Committee: Russia Meddling In 2016 Election

The following is information concerning the release of a report by the Senate Intelligence Committee.  This committee is bipartisan, chaired by Republican Marco Rubio. In addition to Rubio and Vice Chairman Mark Warner (Democrat), there are 7 Republican and 6 Democratic members of the committee: Republicans Richard Burr, James Risch, Susan Collins, Roy Blunt, Tom Cotton, John Cornyn, and Ben Sasse; and Democrats Dianne Feinstein, Ron Wyden, Martin Heinrich, Angus King (Independent), Kamala Harris, and Michael Bennet, Colorado.

Here is the statement released on August 18, 2020:

Miami, FL — U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Acting Chairman Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Vice Chairman Mark Warner (D-VA) released the fifth and final volume of the Committee’s bipartisan Russia investigation titled, “Volume 5: Counterintelligence Threats and Vulnerabilities,” which examines Russia’s attempts to gain influence in the American political system during the 2016 elections.

Rubio released the following statement and a video message, which is available for download here:

“Over the last three years, the Senate Intelligence Committee conducted a bipartisan and thorough investigation into Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election and undermine our democracy. We interviewed over 200 witnesses and reviewed over one million pages of documents. No probe into this matter has been more exhaustive.

“We can say, without any hesitation, that the Committee found absolutely no evidence that then-candidate Donald Trump or his campaign colluded with the Russian government to meddle in the 2016 election.

“What the Committee did find however is very troubling. We found irrefutable evidence of Russian meddling. And we discovered deeply troubling actions taken by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, particularly their acceptance and willingness to rely on the ‘Steele Dossier’ without verifying its methodology or sourcing. 

“Now, as we head towards the 2020 elections, China and Iran have joined Russia in attempts to disrupt our democracy, exacerbate societal divisions, and sow doubts about the legitimacy and integrity of our institutions, our electoral process and our republic.

“We must do better in 2020. The Committee’s five reports detail the signs and symptoms of that interference and show us how to protect campaigns, state and local entities, our public discourse, and our democratic institutions. I join with Vice Chairman Warner in urging everyone — our colleagues, those in the Administration, state and local elections officials, the media, and the American public — to read them and take the recommendations seriously.”

You can read “Volume 5: Counterintelligence Threats and Vulnerabilities” here.

Key Findings:

• The Committee found that the Russian government engaged in an aggressive, multi-faceted effort to influence, or attempt to influence, the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.

• WikiLeaks actively sought, and played, a key role in the Russian influence campaign and very likely knew it was assisting a Russian intelligence influence effort.

• The FBI gave the Steele Dossier unjustified credence, based on an incomplete understanding of Steele’s past reporting record. The FBI used the dossier in a FISA application and renewals, and advocated for it to be included in the Intelligence Community Assessment before taking the necessary steps to validate assumptions about Steele’s credibility.  

• The FBI lacked a formal or considered process for escalating their warnings about the Democratic National Committee (DNC) hack within the organization of the DNC.

• The Committee assesses that at least two participants in a June 9, 2016, meeting with Trump Campaign officials, Natalia Veselnitskaya and Rinat Akhmetshin, have significant connections to the Russian government, including the Russian intelligence services.  The Committee, however, found no reliable evidence that information of benefit to the Campaign was transmitted at the meeting, or that then-candidate Trump had foreknowledge of the meeting.

• The Committee found no evidence that anyone associated with the Trump Campaign had any substantive private conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the April 27, 2016, Trump speech held at the Mayflower Hotel.

• Paul Manafort’s presence on the Trump Campaign and proximity to then-Candidate Trump created opportunities for Russian intelligence services to exert influence over, and acquire confidential information on, the Trump Campaign.

• George Papadopoulos was not a witting cooptee of the Russian intelligence services, but nonetheless presented a prime intelligence target and potential vector for malign Russian influence.

• Russia took advantage of members of the Transition Team’s relative inexperience in government, opposition to Obama Administration policies, and Trump’s desire to deepen ties with Russia to pursue unofficial channels through which Russia could conduct diplomacy.

Read the Senate Intelligence Committee’s previous reports:

• “Volume I: Russian Efforts Against Election Infrastructure”
• “Volume II: Russia’s Use of Social Media”
• “Volume III: U.S. Government Response to Russian Activities”
• “Volume IV: Review of the Intelligence Community Assessment”
• Additional declassifications of “Volume IV: Review of Intelligence Community Assessment”

GOP, Cult Of Personality

Well, the Republican National Committee has made it official: They're a cult of personality.

Every (normal) year, the two major parties get a committee together that hammers out a party platform: a formal set of principal goals which are supported by the party. This year, the Democratic party did so, as usual; Google "2020 Democratic Party Platform" if you want to look at the 92-page PDF. It's a useful process, since competing wings of the party have to come up with a compromise document that will satisfy the party generally. 

The Republicans, on the other hand, have taken a different approach this year. They can't possibly agree on any part of a platform -- health care, immigration, the economy, climate change, foreign policy, trade policy -- literally anything. Why not? Because they have no idea where Trump stands on any of these issues today -- and even if they knew, chances are excellent he'll take a different position tomorrow.

So instead of coming up with a platform, they have instead essentially thrown up their hands and said, "BE IT RESOLVED THAT: We pledge allegiance to our Glorious Leader, Trump the Magnificent, and will do whatever he wants. Oh, and if you want to bring up an amendment to this resolution, fuhgeddaboudit."

 Here's the text of the document:

WHEREAS, the media has outrageously misrepresented the implications of the RNC not adopting a new platform in 2020 and continues to engage in misleading advocacy for the failed policies of the Obama-Biden Administration, rather than providing the public with unbiased reporting of facts; and

WHEREAS, The RNC enthusiastically supports President Trump and continues to reject the policy positions of the Obama-Biden Administration, as well as those espoused by the Democratic National Committee today; therefore, be it

RESOLVED, That the Republican Party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the President's America-first agenda;

RESOVLVED, That the 2020 Republican National Convention will adjourn without adopting a new platform until the 2024 Republican National Convention;

RESOLVED, That the 2020 Republican National Convention calls on the media to engage in accurate and unbiased reporting, especially as it relates to the strong support of the RNC for President Trump and his Administration; and

RESOLVED, That any motion to amend the 2016 Platform or to adopt a new platform, including any motion to suspend the procedures that will allow doing so, will be ruled out of order.

They All Knew.

They all knew: 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1296881001168158720 

Q: How do you sleep at night? 

A: Booze and pills.

A Modern History of the NRA

New York Attorney General Letitia James has launched a lawsuit to disband the National Rifle Association (NRA). Here is a summary of how the NRA became what it is today, from Heather Cox Richardson's newsletter, "Letters from an American":

The NRA was chartered in New York in 1871, in part to improve the marksmanship of Americans who might be called on to fight another war, and in part to promote in America the British sport of elite shooting. By the 1920s, rifle shooting was a popular sport.

In the 1930s, amid fears of organized crime, 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 before delivery. NRA officers insisted on the right of citizens to own rifles and handguns, but worked hard to distinguish between, on the one hand, law-abiding citizens who should have access to guns for hunting and target shooting and protection, and on the other hand, criminals and mentally ill people, who should not. The NRA backed the 1934 National Firearms Act, and parts of the 1968 Gun Control Act, designed to stop what seemed to be America’s hurtle toward violence in that turbulent decade.

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 in 1975, and two years later elected a president who abandoned sporting culture and focused instead on “gun rights.”

The NRA had gone into politics. Its officials now opposed all limits on gun ownership, even though basic safety measures have always been popular, even within the NRA’s own membership. In 1980, the NRA endorsed a presidential candidate for the first time ever, standing behind Ronald Reagan. Now a player in national politics, the NRA was awash in money from gun and ammunition manufacturers. By 2000, the NRA was one of the three most powerful lobbies in Washington. It spent more than $40 million on the 2008 election.

In 2016, donations to the NRA jumped sharply. While in 2012, it spent $9 million, and in 2014 it spent $13 million, in 2016, it spent more than $50 million on Republican candidates, including more than $30 million on Trump’s effort to win the White House. This money was vital to Trump, since many other Republican super PACs refused to back him. The NRA spent more money on Trump than any other outside group, including the leading Trump super PAC, which spent $20.3 million.

In February 2018, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, Ron Wyden (D-OR), began an investigation of the NRA, its donors, and its role in the 2016 election.

On July 15, 2018, the federal government arrested Russian national Maria Butina and charged her with “conspiracy to act as an agent of the Russian Federation within the United States without prior registration.” Butina and Russian government official Alexander Torshin began coming to the U.S. for NRA events in 2014. Butina moved to the U.S. in 2016 on a student visa, intending to gain access to the American political system through the NRA and to push U.S. policy closer to Russian interests.

Butina became romantically involved with Republican political operative Paul Erickson, who had worked for Republican insurgent candidate Pat Buchanan in 1992, was friends with criminal lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and later represented John Wayne Bobbitt in media deals after Bobbitt’s wife Lorena cut off his penis with a kitchen knife. (Surgeons reattached it.)

Erickson promised to help Butina gain access to Republican lawmakers. When federal investigators began to monitor Butina, he came to their attention, and they discovered his businesses were designed to defraud investors. In November 2019, Erickson pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money laundering in an unrelated case. Last month, he was sentenced to seven years in federal prison.

But when their NRA scheme was still intact, Butina and Torshin attended NRA annual meetings and other NRA events at the invitation of its leaders, who invited the two to events like the National Prayer Breakfast, where they could meet Republican lawmakers. In turn, Butina and Torshin invited NRA leaders to Moscow, where they met with leaders who promised lucrative business opportunities with Russian oligarchs, including the opportunity to produce weapons for the Russian military. Some of the Russians they met were under sanctions from the U.S. government.

In April 2019, Butina pleaded guilty to working as a foreign agent without registering with the U.S. Department of Justice. She was sentenced to 18 months in prison, a sentence Russian President Vladimir Putin, who insisted she was being railroaded, called “arbitrary.” In September 2019, the Democrats on the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance outlined the work of Butina and Torshin in the U.S., and called the NRA “a foreign asset.”

Butina served 15 months in the Tallahassee Federal Correction Institution before being deported to Moscow. Reporters from RT, the state-sponsored Russian media outlet, traveled on the plane with her. Supporters greeted her at the Moscow airport with flowers and cheers, giving her a hero’s welcome. Once back in Moscow, she said she had been pressured to plead guilty to a crime, but all she was doing was “hosting friendship dinners.” Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for Russia's Foreign Ministry, told ABC News: “the only thing she was doing was supporting bilateral relationship and friendship between peoples. ... She did nothing wrong, absolutely nothing wrong.”

There is at least some reason to wonder if the sudden jump in NRA donations in 2016 had something to do with the Russian oligarchs who were talking with its leaders. When Senator Wyden requested information about their donors, NRA leaders stated categorically they did not accept money from “foreign persons or entities in connection with United States elections,” which is illegal. But then they said it had, in fact, accepted less than $1000 from Torshin, for a membership. And then they told Wyden that it had actually taken money from 25 Russian individuals for memberships or magazine subscriptions, totaling about $2512.85.

This last letter to the senator concluded, “We believe this and our previous letters have provided enough information to address any legitimate concerns about these issues. Therefore, given the extraordinarily time-consuming and burdensome nature of your requests, we must respectfully decline to engage in this beyond the clear answers we have already provided.” Wyden noted that “the notion that all of these important oligarchs who had involvement with the N.R.A. and were close to Putin were spending money on a few magazine subscriptions doesn’t strike me as very plausible.”

The lawsuit announced this morning concerned a different kind of NRA spending. For six and a half years, NRA leaders have misspent funds, lavishing the money of the nonprofit organization on their own lifestyles. In 2015, the NRA had a surplus of almost $28 million. By 2018, it was running a $36 million deficit. This spending came to light after Republican operative Oliver North, a key player in the Iran-Contra Scandal, became president of the organization in September 2018. In April 2019, North called for an investigation into the NRA’s finances and asked longtime chief executive of the organization Wayne LaPierre to resign. LaPierre responded that North was trying to get him out of the organization by threatening to release “damaging” information about him. North resigned.

Now New York Attorney General Letitia James has taken up the issue. She sued LaPierre. She also sued John Frazer, the organization’s general counsel; Josh Powell, a former top lieutenant of LaPierre; and Wilson Phillips, a former chief financial officer. Their trips to the Bahamas, Nieman Marcus clothing, and nights at the Four Season cost the organization $64 million over the past three years. James wants to bar all four men from running non-profits in New York in the future. “It’s clear that the NRA has been failing to carry out its stated mission for many, many years and instead has operated as a breeding ground for greed, abuse and brazen illegality,” James said. “Enough was enough. We needed to step in and dissolve this corporation.”

As James announced her lawsuit, the Washington D.C. Attorney General, Karl Racine, sued NRA Foundation, the organization’s charitable arm that teaches, for example, firearm safety, say it has been diverting funds to the NRA to pay for top official’s spending sprees.

The NRA immediately countersued, claiming James’s lawsuit was about politics, not the law, and that James is violating the First Amendment to the Constitution, which mandates that the government must not hamper free speech. Mr. LaPierre said: “This is an unconstitutional, premeditated attack aiming to dismantle and destroy the N.R.A. — the fiercest defender of America’s freedom at the ballot box for decades. We’re ready for the fight. Bring it on.”

Asked to comment, Trump said “That’s a very terrible thing that just happened. I think the NRA should move to Texas and lead a very good and beautiful life.”

Trump Apologizes!

A Trump Campaign Ad, Deconstructed

The days of manipulating images and lies by Brad Parscale, Trump's erstwhile campaign manager, have ended; the days of manipulating images and lies by Bill Stepien, Trump's new guy, have begun. The image above is a beautiful illustration of the toxic stew of lies we can expect between now and November 3. Click here for an article at The Bulwark by Jonathan V. Last entitled "Trump's New Ad Is Amazing."

The obvious implication of the scene on the right, of a police officer apparently being beaten by "evil hippie scum," is that this is the kind of violence taking place on the streets of American cities today, and what is to be expected under a Biden administration. Just one thing: it's not a photo of an American city today. It was taken on February 14, 2014.

In Ukraine.

And the crowd is not "evil hippie scum" beating a helpless representative of Truth, Justice, and The American Way: it's pro-democracy demonstrators beating "a member of the riot police who had been brought in to try to protect the authoritarian president, Viktor Yanukovych, who was attempting to turn Ukraine into a one-party state by extralegal means."

Interesting coincidence: One of the extralegal means Yanukovych employed was a specialized federal internal police force, the Berkut, which answered directly to him and was used to assault his political opponents and tamper with elections.

Eight days after this photo was taken, "an overwhelming majority of Ukraine’s parliament—328 of 447 members—voted to remove Yanukovych from office." And three days after that, having fled the country, Yanukovych -- who had been Putin's puppet in Ukraine -- was given asylum in Moscow.

After that, Yanukovych was charged in absentia with treason against the country he had led -- "Not in the Fox News sense. They didn’t go on TV and say “Oh yeah, that guy. He was the worst. Total traitor. Human scum.” No, this was an actual criminal charge that carried severe consequences should Yanukovych ever set foot in Ukraine again.

Interesting coincidence: In 2004, when Yanukovych was running for president so that he could sell out his country to the Russians, he hired a veteran political campaigner skilled in the art of dirty tricks, honed over a 35-year career in the murky depths of Republican politics -- Paul Manafort.

Wow! White Lady Speaks Out!

I just found this while blundering around on the Internet. It's a white lady speaking about the George Floyd incident in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020. It's really worth watching!

Paste this into the address bar in your browser.

https://www.facebook.com/ms.melissa.mccrery/videos/10222991210267770

The Iraq Debacle Revisited

Click here for an article at The New York Times by Robert Draper, entitled "Colin Powell Still Wants Answers."

It's a good telling of the story of how Powell came to give the speech he did at the United Nations making the case for war with Iraq.

Coronavirus, If States Were Countries

If states were countries, this graph from July 8, 2020, shows that of the 25 countries with the most confirmed new cases of Covid-19 over the last week, 15 would be states; 10 would be countries around the world. Arizona, Florida, and South Carolina would be 1-2-3, followed by Bahrain; then Louisiana, followed by Qatar and Oman. The next five would be Alabama, Nevada, Mississippi, Texas, and Georgia (the U.S. state, not the country).

Jordan Klepper v. Trump Supporters

Here's a collection of Jordan Klepper speaking to people at Trump rallies (12 minutes, 40 seconds):