Blame It On Gingrich

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."

Frightening Plan For A Trump Second Term

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.

Pence In Charge

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."

January 6 Plot

 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.

Margarate Chase Smith: Courageous Republican In The Joe McCarthy Era

 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).

Memorial Day: Honor Our Brave School Children

 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.

Tom Cruise's Greatest Stunts -- So Far! (2022)

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Trump's Deliberate Distortion of the 2020 Census

 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.

U.S. vs. Trump?

 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.

On Life

 - 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.

HCR - New Supreme, Ukraine

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Little Drummer Girl

 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!

 

Surprise: Democrats Manage The Economy Better Than Republicans!

 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.

Fintan O'Toole (The Irish Times) On The Possibility Of Civil War In America

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.

 

 

https://twitter.com/IAmPoliticsGirl/status/1464745657617420292

McDonald's USA v. McDonald's Denmark

 McDonald’s USA — Employee: $9.00/hr, no benefits — Big Mac: $5.65 

 McDonald’s Denmark — Employee: $22/hr, 6 weeks vacation, 1 year paid maternity leave, life insurance, pension — Big Mac: $4.74

(tweet from Andrea Junker, @Strandjunker)

There are some good replies to Andrea's tweet:

starting wage in Canada at McDonald's is $13.50/hr

In Canada, the average McDonald's wage is $14.62 and the cost of a Big Mac is $5.69 

Bear in mind that those figures are Canadian dollars -- so the wages are not quite as high, and the Big Mac is a bit cheaper, than Americans might think.

 

Some HIghlights From HCR, November 22

 That's historian Heather Cox Richardson. A couple of notes from her post:

Today, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, based in Stockholm, Sweden, released its 2021 report on “The Global State of Democracy.”

“Democracy is at risk,” the report’s introduction begins. “Its survival is endangered by a perfect storm of threats, both from within and from a rising tide of authoritarianism.” “The world is becoming more authoritarian as nondemocratic regimes become even more brazen in their repression and many democratic governments suffer from backsliding by adopting their tactics of restricting free speech and weakening the rule of law.”

The report identifies the United States as one of the democracies that is “backsliding,” meaning that it has “experienced gradual but significant weakening of Checks on Government and Civil Liberties, such as Freedom of Expression and Freedom of Association and Assembly, over time.”​​

“The United States, the bastion of global democracy, fell victim to authoritarian tendencies itself, and was knocked down a significant number of steps on the democratic scale,” the report says.

Surprise, surprise. The U.S., which has always been a global leader in the advocacy of democracy and human rights, completely withdrew from that role for the four years of the Trump administration. He attacked fellow democracies while cozying up to dictators and autocrats all around the planet. 

I was pleased to see provocateurs Roger Stone and Alex Jones have been subpoenaed by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol. Now if they can be forced to show up . . .

She says "conservative columnist Max Boot called out Republican lawmakers for “fomenting violent extremism” and noted that “they have also become hostage to the extremists in their ranks” because they fear for their safety should they stand up to the Trump loyalists. Right-wing extremists have threatened the lives of the 13 Republicans who voted for the bipartisan infrastructure bill."

It's kind of sad when elected representatives receive death threats for doing their job, and are cowed into going along for fear of violence to themselves or their families.  

Two long-standing Fox News Channel contributors, Steve Hayes and Jonah Goldberg, quit the enterprise today over Tucker Carlson’s three-part series Patriot Purge. That series, they wrote, “is presented in the style of an exposé, a hard-hitting piece of investigative journalism. In reality, it is a collection of incoherent conspiracy-mongering, riddled with factual inaccuracies, half-truths, deceptive imagery, and damning omissions.”

They say they could no longer work at the Fox News Channel because “we sincerely believe that all people of good will and good judgment—regardless of their ideological or partisan commitments—can agree that a cavalier and even contemptuous attitude toward facts, truth-seeking, and truth-telling, lies at the heart of so much that plagues our country.”

Well, I can't stand either Goldberg or Hayes, but it's a good thing that Fox News is too much for even them, and I'm glad they have called Tucker Carlson's "Patriot Purge" the hot mess that it is.

 

Audio Book L'Étranger, Albert Camus

Amazon says: 

The classic literary masterpiece The Stranger (Vintage International) is a story about an Algerian, Meursault, the titular character who commits a murder after attending his mother’s funeral. His understanding of the world, his emotional spectrum, and the general absurdities of the time all combine to form a compelling read. 

The story is aptly divided into two riveting sections, both told from the perspective of Meursault, who gives us his views before the murder in the first section and later walks us through his state of mind after the murder in the second section. The two parts in this thrilling novel encompass the protagonist’s mindset through the ordeal of grieving for his mother’s death while also coming face to face with his own moral compass for committing a murder. 

 The Stranger (Vintage International) is often cited as one of the finest examples of the philosophy of the absurd. The sense of culture and various human values interwoven during the turbulent pre-modern era is also best captured in the contents of this novel. 

L'Étranger, by Albert Camus, audio:

Here's the "dueling banjos" scene from Deliverance.

 The "banjo boy" was a young actor named Billy Redden -- but he's not playing the banjo; that's done by Ronnie Cox, the actor who's playing the guitar. Redden was neither autistic nor slow-witted. He was paid $500 for his appearance in Deliverance, and he's recently been working in a WalMart in Georgia.

 

Tax The Rich!

A tweet from Andrea Junker:

Wealth of Elon Musk

    2011: $2,000,000,000

    2021: $271,500,000,000

Wealth of Mark Zuckerberg

               2011: $17,500,000,000 

                2021: $121,900,000,000 

Wealth of Jeff Bezos 

                2011: $18,100,000,000 

                2021: $203,100,000,000 

U.S. Minimum Wage 

                2011: $7.25 

                2021: $7.25 

Three words: tax the rich.

Click here for the entry on Twitter; it's worth reading comments. There are pros and cons.