Monday Reads: Once again, I manage to avoid the Stupor Bowl

Posted: February 14, 2022 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , | 29 Comments

The Kingfisher, Vincent van Gogh. 1886

Good Day Sky Dancers!

We’re beginning to see signs of spring around here so that’s a good thing!! There are patches of green grass and bird arrivals.  I also like spring so we get beyond the national Panem et circenses frenzy. It drags on longer than National Crass Consumerism Season.  We’re deep into Carnival here and the parades are back on the streets of New Orleans. I always wonder why the greedy and rich always co-opt perfectly wonderful festivals celebrating the passage of the season and turn them into ordeals requiring mass credit card spending, ads, and tourists.

However, I did miss this sight which reminds me of me when I had to go to football games with my father and occasionally my mother.  I loved the time with my Dad but it took me about two seconds to drag a book out to read through the rest of the game.  The best part was the Cheese Frenchie, Onion Rings, and chocolate malted at King’s in downtown Lincoln prior to the the parking spot at the stadium and mass crowd chaos.

The only other thing I used to do at the University of Nebraska games was to stand up and cheer when the opposing team scored. We sat on the fifty-yard line in the 20th row right behind the marching band and close enough to throw stuff at the cheerleaders.  I never indulged in any of that but I especially enjoyed singing Boomer Sooner. I knew all the words because that’s where I was born and my Dad went to Law School there. It was enough to irritate people but back then you just got dirty looks.  Nebraska ruled college football at the time and their rival was always Oklahoma.

I also had the pleasure of reading through a Stupor Bowl in LA back in the day although my dad was a Ford Dealer and not part of the NFL players like Andrew Whitworth. Good for whoever Whitworth is because he’s got himself a nerdy, book-reading daughter!

Little Owl – Albrecht Dürer (1506)

The other parts of the Stupor Bowl–and I name this for the fans and not for the poor players who wind up severely brain damaged with CTE–are the ads, the halftime, and the Puppy Bowl. So, let’s just say that paying all that money to hype a product seems crazy but it must work. Hence, the costs of living in an oligopolistic monopoly-based failed market. The Puppy Bowl is damned cute.  I missed it since I worked through the entire shindig but the country’s First Puppy stole that show! The best thing about this huge ad campaign was the game was dedicated to animal rights activist Betty White. Team Fluff won the game!  (via Daily Beast)

In what may prove to be the most important sports-related story this Sunday, Team Fluff snatched victory out of the tiny jaws of defeat in Puppy Bowl XVIII. Following a fur-ocious three-hour battle, Fluff edged out Team Ruff with a final score of 73-69. The eighteenth iteration of the Puppy Bowl saw 118 adoptable puppies competing for the “Lombarky” Trophy by dragging chew toys around the miniature field. Representing more than 60 shelters and rescues in 33 states, this year’s lineup also featured a record number of puppies with special needs, including Benny, a goldendoodle with partial paralysis who used a set of rear support wheels to race around the field. Benny was also crowned the 2022 Puppy Bowl’s “Most Pupular” player. And, most importantly, “every Puppy Bowl ends with every single dog being adopted,” longtime referee Dan Schachner told the New York Post.

The Threatened Swan – Jan Asselijn (1650)

So, there are a few noteworthy things about the half-time show.  And no, it’s not Snoop Dog’s toke prior to his appearance. That’s par for the course and perfectly legal in California.

Eminem–bless his bad 49-year-old ass–took the knee to remind everyone that black lives matter.

My youngest daughter–then a middle schooler–came with me to spend the holidays in NYC. The first thing she wanted to do was go see 8 Mile and so I splurged for the tremendously expensive tix and we headed to the movie theatre in the East Village.  She had been playing the heck out of the CD on my laptop and was indulged by my then-boyfriend when we spent time with him in Harlem. He had very large speakers.  This was 2002 so back in the good old days. I am familiar with him and rap in general. I was substitute teaching in a music class and let the kids play vinyl back in 1979.  I got my first introduction to rap at Omaha Tech High School!

Well, good for Eminem!  He may be middle aged, white, and rich but at least he still knows where he came from. Dr Dre set the whole thing up and was Eminem’s mentor.  The genre has grown a lot since then.

On Sunday, Eminem knelt and held his head in his hand after performing “Lose Yourself,” his anthem about self-determination from the movie “8 Mile.”

Air – Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1566)

I haven’t seen it but I plan to because the royalty of early 21st-century rap performed and some bonus artists showed up.  Plus, Mary Ann Blige …

 Blige, whose 14th studio LP, “Good Morning Gorgeous,” arrived on Friday, sang two of her most beloved older anthems, “Family Affair” and “No More Drama,” reaching deep for some powerful high notes and ending the set flat on her back.

However, I agree with this headline in MSNBC: “NFL Super Bowl halftime show was a master class in gaslighting. The Dr. Dre-led performance was awesome — but it played into the NFL’s plan to distract from the league’s race and gender issues.” It’s written by Ja’han Jones.  It seemed like awfully convenient timing to present black artists. There were also some “gender issues” present in the performances.

The mini-concert was an undeniable smash hit, featuring Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg performing their classics together, 50 Cent rapping upside-down like it was 2003, along with Mary J. Blige, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar and even Anderson .Paak on the drums.

Theirs was one in a number of acts that constituted what was arguably the Blackest night in NFL history, withgospel duo Mary Mary, country music star Mickey Guyton and R&B singer Jhené Aiko performing ahead of the kickoff.

And, most importantly to the NFL, there were virtually no references to the league’s sordid racial politics, exposed in recent years by its treatment of former San Francisco49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick and allegations of systemic racism from former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores. (The league denies such allegations.)

The only thing even approaching a critique was Eminem taking a knee in a purported act of solidarity with racial justice activists.

Watching it in real time, I wasn’t sure whether that was a form of protest or a performance miscue, and if you have to question whether a protest is a protest … it probably isn’t.

The league did seem to convey its racial ideology in another way some may not have realized, though. During Lamar’s performance of the protest song “Alright,” a lyric was conspicuously censored to remove a line critical of police who kill.

The line — “and we hate po-po, when they kill us dead in the street, fo’ sho’” — was scrubbed of any reference to the police at all.It seems the NFL won’t even tolerate criticism of police in an imagined-yet-realistic scenario of anti-Black violence.

So, about those gender issues which were mostly hidden by a stupid tweet by some right-wing troll, I had never heard about.  Well, he’s all over Twitter so he got his share of 3 minutes of fame. So wtf is Sexual Anarchy?  It sounds like a 70s metal band name.  I’ve got dibs on it for my next band’s name!!!

This is from the Salon link above and written by JON SKOLNIK. Too bad Kirk wasn’t around for the Janet Jackson breast shot.

Kirk’s tweet, which he did not care to explain any further, drew all kinds of responses from critics on the left, many of whom derided Kirk over his prudish tendencies.

“I’ve been trying to figure out what Charlie Kirk means by ‘sexual anarchy,'” tweeted attorney Ron Filipkowski. “I’m not exactly sure, but I think it’s probably better than whatever the opposite is.”

Peacock and Peacock Butterfly – Archibald Thorburn (1917)

Still, there was a lot of that Rapper vibe in the show which means a lot of women dancing provocatively with scant clothing. Dance has mostly always been that way but anyway, I’m not a dance critic but I do have issues with hyper-sexualizing black women for the pleasure of men. Historically, that never ends well.

So, I have to make a disclosure here.  I worked the Gentilly Stage for Jazz Fest for many years as part of the front-of-the-house sound team.  I have seen a lot of performers in my day on that stage and set up their kits, microphones, and instruments.  My thrill was to mic Etta James. That’s closely followed by setting up the piano mics for Randy Newman then watching over his two small children side stage.  I don’t want to turn this into a name game but let’s say I’ve happily helped a lot of talent of all flavors. The guy I really didn’t like was Elvis Costello but, oh well. However, I boycotted and refused to deal with 50 Cent and I was not the only one back in the day. I did not make a scene but I clearly let it be known I thought his treatment of women was appalling and I would not enable it. He showed up in “Da Club” last night with that same schtick. 

After Snoop and Dre combined for “The Next Episode” and “California Love” to kick off the halftime show, the camera panned down to 50, upside down and flexing, just as he did to kick off the “In Da Club” music video 19 years ago. 50 Cent was soon joined by a slew of dancers to bounce to the rap classic, and he then threw the performance to Mary J. Blige, who sank into “Family Affair.”

Maybe, that’s where the sexual anarchy term came from, I don’t know.  Like I said, I was working and not watching.  I think displays of sexuality are fine.  I’m cool with exuberant dancing.  New Orleans represents all of that and more! All people are sexual beings. But,I still object to the objectification of women for the benefit of men. So, if I missed the cues on this I’ll go look but I’m not sure. I’m open to input.

So, of all the people to do a Super Bowl wrap-up, it shouldn’t be me but there it is.  BTW, who won the game?

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Lazy Caturday Reads

Posted: February 12, 2022 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads | Tags: , , , , , , , | 20 Comments

Good Morning!!

Black cat sleeping by Harry Boardman

Black cat sleeping by Harry Boardman

The news today is mostly focused on the situation in Ukraine. Here are the latest developments:

The Washington Post: U.S. orders most embassy staffers in Kyiv to leave Ukraine amid fears Russia will invade soon.

KYIV, Ukraine —The U.S. State Department began evacuating staffers from the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv Saturday, amid mounting warnings that Moscow could imminently launch an invasion of Ukraine, according to a security update emailed to U.S. citizens in the country.

“U. S. citizens should not travel to Ukraine, and those in Ukraine should depart immediately using commercial or other privately available transportation options,” the advisory said.

Russia has pushed back fiercely against the stark warnings by the Biden administration that Moscow is on the verge of attack, accusing the West of hysteria and spreading disinformation even as Russian forces continue to hold major exercises near Kyiv’s borders.

However,Russia confirmed media reports Saturday that it was pulling its own diplomatic staff from Ukraine, citing “possible provocations by the Kyiv regime and third countries.” Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Vladimirovna Zakharova said the move was in response to the growing list of other governments deciding to draw down their diplomatic corps and urging their citizens to leave.

“We conclude that our American and British colleagues apparently know about some military actions being prepared in Ukraine,” she said, according to a statement by the ministry.

Russia is apparently trying to put the blame on the U.S. for any escalation of the situation.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan cautioned Friday that there is a “very distinct possibility” that Russia will invade Ukraine in a “reasonably swift time frame” and urged all U.S. citizens there to leave immediately. Sullivan could not confirm that Russian President Vladimir Putin had made a final decision to attack, but he said that military action could begin “any day.”

Diplomats raced to steer the situation back from the brink Saturday, but with little sign of progress. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in a call with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, warned Russia that invading Ukraine “would result in a resolute, massive, and united Transatlantic response,” according to the State Department.

Lavrov, for his part, accused Washington of engaging in a propaganda campaign against Russia, pursuing “provocative goals” and pushing its allies in Kyiv to resolve its crisis in the contested Donbass territory with force, according to Russia’s foreign ministry.

Norbertine Bressslern-Rother, Two Cats, linocut print, 1920s

Norbertine Bressslern-Rother, Two Cats, linocut print, 1920s

President Biden will speak with Vladimir Putin today. AP: Putin, Biden plan high-stakes phone call in Ukraine crisis.

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Joe Biden are to hold a high-stakes telephone call on Saturday as tensions over a possibly imminent invasion of Ukraine escalated sharply and the U.S. announced plans to evacuate its embassy in the Ukrainian capital.

Before talking to Biden, Putin is to have a call with French President Emmanuel Macron, who met with him in Moscow earlier in the week to try to resolve the crisis.

Russia has massed well over 100,000 troops near the Ukraine border and has sent troops to exercises in neighboring Belarus, but insistently denies that it intends to launch an offensive against Ukraine….

Biden has said the U.S. military will not enter a war in Ukraine, but he has promised severe economic sanctions against Moscow, in concert with international allies.

The timing of any possible Russian military action remains a key question.

The U.S. picked up intelligence that Russia is looking at Wednesday as a target date, according to a U.S. official familiar with the findings. The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly and did so only on condition of anonymity, would not say how definitive the intelligence was. The White House publicly underscored that the U.S. does not know with certainty whether Putin is committed to invasion.

However, U.S. officials said anew that Russia’s buildup of offensive air, land and sea firepower near Ukraine has reached the point where it could invade on short notice.

More from The Washington Post on Russian plans to blame Ukraine and U.S. if Putin decides to send in troops: New intelligence suggests Russia plans a ‘false flag’ operation to trigger an invasion of Ukraine.

The United States has obtained new intelligence that suggests Russia is planning to stage an attack that it would falsely blame on Ukraine to justify invading the country, possibly as early as next week, according to multiple U.S. and European officials who have reviewed the intelligence or been briefed on it.

Cat with butterfly, woodcut by Joyce Gibson

Cat with butterfly, woodcut by Joyce Gibson

The intelligence about a “false flag” operation was discussed in a quickly convened meeting in the White House Situation Room on Thursday evening and helped prompt renewed calls from the Biden administration for all Americans to leave Ukraine immediately, according to officials familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence.

The precise timing and nature of the Russian operation was unclear. The United States had already accused Russia of planning to film a fake attack against Russian territory or Russian-speaking people in eastern Ukraine. The new intelligence is distinct from that alleged operation, the officials said.

Officials in multiple capitals concurred that the intelligence appeared to show that Russia is in the final stages of preparing to mount an invasion, which analysts have said could leave up to 50,000 civilians dead or wounded and lead to the fall of the government in Kyiv within a few days.

“Moscow is actively trying to create a casus belli,” or a justification for war, a Western official said.

A couple more interesting Ukraine links to check out:

The Washington Post: The TikTok buildup: Videos reveal Russian forces closing in on Ukraine.

Former Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul at Foreign Affairs: How to Make a Deal With Putin. Only a Comprehensive Pact Can Avoid War.

Another big story in the news is the Truck convoy in Ottowa. The New York Times is posting live updates on the story. Here’s the latest: Police confront protesters, and some begin to leave Ontario bridge.

Canadian police moved in Saturday morning to clear protesters at a vital bridge in Windsor, Ontario, connecting Canada and the United States.

The Windsor Police wrote on Twitter Saturday morning that “The Windsor Police & its policing partners have commenced enforcement at and near the Ambassador Bridge.” It added: “We urge all demonstrators to act lawfully & peacefully.”

Police officers wearing heavy jackets but not wielding shields or other riot gear, were standing in a line on Saturday morning, and were cautiously and progressively edging closer to the protesters. Vehicles began to leave the site just before 10 a.m., their horns blaring as they departed.

Natalia Leonova - Breakfast in Bed. 2017. Pastel on paper

Natalia Leonova – Breakfast in Bed. 2017. Pastel on paper

At the intersection closest to the bridge, some protesters remained in the street, facing off with police officers.

Some of the protesters were yelling at police, while others chanted “freedom, freedom!” and sang “O Canada,” the national anthem. A group of protesters dismantled a tent where they had kept food and supplies, then swept the area around it.

Automakers have been particularly affected by the partial shutdown of the Ambassador Bridge, which normally carries $300 million worth of goods a day, about a third of which are related to the auto industry. The blockades have left carmakers short of crucial parts, forcing companies to shut down some plants from Ontario to Alabama on Friday.

A court order calling for protesters to disband or face stiff fines or prison went into effect on Friday at 7 p.m., and the numbers of protesters has since thinned. But on Saturday morning, dozens of protesters, some dressed in fluorescent construction garb, had still refused to leave, and were milling around at an intersection before the bridge, drinking coffee and holding up Canadian flags. Other protesters remained in their pickup trucks, their engines idling, to stay warm.

Read more and check for future updates at the link.

Ben Collins, who covers right wing extremism at NBC News has a piece on the trucker protests: As U.S. ‘trucker convoy’ picks up momentum, foreign meddling adds to fray.

There is growing momentum in the U.S. anti-vaccination community to conduct rallies similar to Canada’s “Freedom Convoy” that has paralyzed Ottawa, Ontario, and the effort is receiving a boost from a familiar source: overseas content mills.

Some Facebook groups that have promoted American “trucker convoys” similar to demonstrations that have clogged roads in Ottawa are being run by fake accounts tied to content mills in Vietnam, Bangladesh, Romania and several other countries, Facebook officials told NBC News on Friday.

The groups have popped up as extremism researchers have begun to warn that many anti-vaccine and conspiracy-driven communities in the U.S. are quickly pivoting to embrace and promote the idea of disruptive convoys.

Researchers at Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy first noted that large pro-Trump groups had been changing their names to go with convoy-related themes earlier this week. Grid News reported on Friday that one major trucker convoy Facebook group was being run by a Bangladesh content farm.

Tomoo Inagaki, Chatting Cats

Tomoo Inagaki, Chatting Cats

Many of the groups have changed names multiple times, going from those that tap hot-button political issues such as support for former President Donald Trump or opposition to vaccine mandates, to names with keywords like “trucker,” “freedom” and “convoy.”  Facebook allows groups on its platforms to change names but tracks the changes in each page’s “about” section.

The motivations of the people behind the content mills are not clear, but Joan Donovan, director of the Shorenstein Center, said the pattern fits existing efforts to make money off U.S. political divisions.

“In some ways, it’s normal political activity,” Donovan said. “In other ways, we have to look at how some of the engagement online is fake but can be a way to mobilize more people.”

“When we see really effective disinformation campaigns, it’s when the financial and political motives align,” she added.

Of course Fox News is cheering for the “protesters” causing chaos up north. Matthew Gertz at Media Matters: Fox News goes all-in promoting anti-vaccine-mandate Canadian truckers.

Fox News’ effort to discourage its viewers from vaccinating themselves against COVID-19 has gone international. The network’s stars have in recent weeks fixated on our neighbor to the north, regaling their audiences with fawning coverage of Canadian truckers protesting their country’s COVID-19 vaccine requirements – and encouraging the development of similar activism in the U.S.

Since January 29, a group of truckers and their allies has effectively crippled downtown Ottawa by using vehicles to block traffic, leading the city’s mayor to declare a state of emergency. Similar protests have occurred in cities across the country, and on Monday truckers blocked a major international crossing. This so-called “Freedom Convoy” originally assembled to oppose a newly implemented rule requiring them to either be vaccinated or quarantine after returning from trips across the U.S. border, but organizers now say they will continue their demonstrations until the national and provincial governments “end all mandates.”

The demonstrators are not representative of Canadian truckers or the populace at large. The Canadian Trucking Alliance, which represents the industry, has disavowed them, arguing that “a great number of these protestors have no connection to the trucking industry” and pointing out that nearly 90% of the nation’s truckers are vaccinated. Their actions are also unpopular with their fellow Canadians – a recent poll found nearly two-thirds of respondents there oppose the Ottawa protest.

But on the other side of the border, Fox hosts are extremely excited about the protests, even as they quietly labor under the network’s own stringent vaccine requirements. The network devoted 10 hours and 8 minutes to the story from the first mention of the convoy we found on January 18 through February 10. Prime-time stars Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity are among the convoy’s biggest fans at the network, giving it 1 hour and 13 minutes and 1 hour and 5 minutes, respectively.

I’ll end with this story at CNN that provides details on the ongoing efforts of the National Archives to retrieve government documents that Trump took with him when he left the White House:  Archives threatened to go to Congress and Justice Department to get Trump to turn over records.

Worried that a trove of White House records that had been brought to Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate contained classified material, a top official in the former President’s orbit warned his aides last fall: Do not touch those boxes.

Spotted Cat, woodcut by Seiho Takeuchi

Spotted Cat, woodcut by Seiho Takeuchi

The senior official in Trump’s inner circle did not want to risk exposing sensitive materials to aides who may have lacked the appropriate security clearances, according to a person familiar with the matter. The boxes, which were being stored at the time in Trump’s personal suite at his Florida club, had landed on the National Archives and Records Administration’s radar after officials there noticed that several items were missing from their catalog of Trump White House records.

In May 2021, the realization that important items from Trump’s time in office — including some of his correspondence with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un and infamous Sharpie-altered map of Hurricane Dorian — were not transferred to the Archives at the end of his presidency prompted NARA officials to contact Trump’s team.

Longtime Archives lawyer Gary Stern first reached out to a person from the White House counsel’s office who had been designated as the President Records Act point of contact about the record-keeping issue, hoping to locate the missing items and initiate their swift transfer back to NARA, said multiple sources familiar with the matter. The person had served as one of Trump’s impeachment defense attorneys months earlier and, as deputy counsel, was among the White House officials typically involved in ensuring records were properly preserved during the transfer of power and Trump’s departure from office.

Trump claimed that he returned the materials “easily and without conflict and on a very friendly basis,” but of course that was a lie. The Archives have been battling with Trump over the documents since last spring and he likely still has more materials that he hasn’t turned over.

One source familiar with the situation says the document turnover has “not been fully resolved” and says Trump is still in possession of documents the Archives wants. The Archives hinted at this in a statement earlier this week.

“Former President Trump’s representatives have informed NARA that they are continuing to search for additional Presidential records that belong to the National Archives,” the Archives said in a statement.

Mother cat wiht her two kittens,, Lucy Dawson print, 1946

Mother cat sleeping with her two kittens, Lucy Dawson drawing, 1946

In a series of interviews with CNN, a half-dozen people familiar with the matter described a tense situation that took nearly eight months to resolve — beginning with NARA’s outreach in May and ending with its retrieval of the boxes from Mar-a-Lago last month.

In the end, it may have been a threat that ended the impasse. At one point, the Archives notified a member of Trump’s team that it planned to alert Congress and the Department of Justice of the matter if it wasn’t quickly resolved, according to a person familiar with the warning. According to a person familiar with the matter, the Archives have since asked the Justice Department to investigate. It is unclear whether the Justice Department has started an investigation.

The House Oversight Committee chairwoman, Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney of New York, has also vowed to initiate a probe of the records’ removal from Trump’s Palm Beach resort, which she called “deeply troubling” in a statement on Monday.

What are your thoughts on all this? What other stories are you following?

Friday Reads: Depths of Depravity

Posted: February 11, 2022 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: | 13 Comments

Otto Dix, The Seven Deadly Sins, 1933

Good Day Sky Dancers!

I can only wonder what the January 6 Committee is unearthing. Today, I saw this in The New Republic.  Just when I think I can’t learn anything more appalling about the Trump Family Crime Syndicate and its enablers something else unearthly floats to the top of the golden septic tank.  This is a follow-up to BB’s excellent post yesterday.  “January 6 Committee Recap: Concerns About Trump’s Records Can’t Be Flushed Away. Trump could be in legal trouble for potentially violating federal laws related to the handling of government records.” This analysis is written by Grace Segers and Daniel Strauss.

It was another big week in developments related to the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Rudy Giuliani, former President Donald Trump’s lawyer and a frequent main character of these updates, reportedly asked a Republican prosecutor in northern Michigan to turn over his county’s voting machines to the Trump team. According to The Washington Post, Giuliani and other members of Trump’s legal team asked Antrim County prosecutor James Rossiter for the machines after the county initially misreported its election results in favor of Joe Biden. Rossiter told Giuliani that voting machines could not simply be seized and delivered without probable cause, a term that Giuliani, himself a former prosecutor, should have been familiar with. (Giuliani failed to appear before the House select committee on January 6 in a required deposition this week.)

Meanwhile, the National Archives asked the Justice Department to investigate Trump’s handling of presidential records, the Post reported, amid revelations that some records had to be recovered from the former president’s residence in Mar-a-Lago and that Trump had torn up other records. Adding to the pile-on of news related to the former president’s records, The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman reported in her upcoming book that White House residence staff occasionally found toilets clogged with wads of paper—and that they believed Trump had flushed pieces of paper. (This may add some context to Trump’s claims during campaign rallies that toilets were no longer working properly.) These reports raise questions about whether Trump violated federal laws dictating how government records should be handled.

As to the substance of the records: CNN reported on Monday that records obtained by the select committee provide new details about a call between Trump and Representative Jim Jordan on the morning of the attack. The Times also reported on Thursday that the committee had discovered gaps in the official White House telephone logs from January 6 during the critical hours when Trump was making calls.

The committee on Wednesday subpoenaed yet another person in Trump’s orbit, former White House official Peter Navarro. In his memoir, Navarro claimed to have concocted a plan with former Trump adviser Steve Bannon to delay certification of the Electoral College results.

Wave (1916)
Maurice Denis

You may continue reading at the link.  This is not the end of the piece even though I shared a lot with you.  If you want proof that records were altered and destroyed look no further than this CNN headline: “White House records obtained so far by January 6 committee show no record of calls to and from Trump during riot.”  And CNN please, it was a violent insurrection.  It was not just a riot damn it!

The records the House select committee has obtained do not contain entries of phone calls between the President and lawmakers that have been widely reported in the press. Trump was known to make calls using personal cell phones, which could account for those.

Two of the sources, who have also reviewed the presidential diary from that day, say it contains scant information and no record of phone calls for several hours after Trump returned to the Oval Office after giving a speech to his supporters at the Ellipse until he emerged to address the nation in a video from the Rose Garden

The House select committee has received hundreds of White House records since Trump lost a legal fight at the Supreme Court to keep them secret. The committee had asked the National Archives for all call logs and telephone records for Trump and top aides as well as daily presidential diaries.

Empty Wheel reminds us that altering and deleting documents was par for the course in Trump’s White House and Justice Department.

And, Eric Boehler reminds us:

 

The media continue to normalize his criminality, in this case absconding from the White House with classified documents as he readies another presidential run. (And shredding other docs.) It’s the same D.C. press corps that crucified Hillary Clinton for years simply because journalists thought her email story might have a hint of criminality to it. It never did.

What Trump has done since he first arrived in Washington, D.C., in January 2017 was shred longstanding Beltway protocols; traditions that for decades and sometimes centuries were based on a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ on the proper way to behave and the ethical course that should be followed while running the government. The consummate bully and liar, Trump didn’t care about any of those rules and began obliterating them immediately. He flooded the zone with crass, outlandish and destructive behavior, which the press tried to keep pace with at first. Shattering Beltway protocols used to carry a penalty, which was handed out by the press.

Eventually, as the years passed, news outlets mostly gave up, especially with the day-to-day transgressions, adopting a Trump-being-Trump view of his chronic rule breaking. Beltway institutions, particularly within the federal government, embraced the same mealy-mouthed approach, which gave Trump the okay to trample norms. “He didn’t think the rules applied to him,” a former White House aide told CNN this week. And he was right.

Mikhail Vrubel, Flying Demon, 1899

He and his followers are the consummate bullies.  Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney continues to refuse to be bullied. She wrote an OpEd in the notoriously right-wing WSJ Opinion section today.

Republicans used to advocate fidelity to the rule of law and the plain text of the Constitution. In 2020, Mr. Trump convinced many to abandon those principles. He falsely claimed that the election was stolen from him because of widespread fraud. While some degree of fraud occurs in every election, there was no evidence of fraud on a scale that could have changed this one. As the Select Committee will demonstrate in hearings later this year, no foreign power corrupted America’s voting machines, and no massive secret fraud changed the election outcome.

Almost all members of Congress know this—although many lack the courage to say it out loud. Mr. Trump knew it too, from his own campaign officials, from his own appointees at the Justice Department, and from the dozens of lawsuits he lost. Yet, Mr. Trump ignored the rulings of the courts and launched a massive campaign to mislead the public. Our hearings will show that these falsehoods provoked the violence on Jan. 6. Mr. Trump’s lawyers have begun to pay the price for spreading these lies. For example, Rudy Giuliani’s license to practice law has been suspended because he “communicated demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers and the public at large in his capacity as lawyer for former President Donald J. Trump, ” in the words of a New York appellate court.

The Jan. 6 investigation isn’t only about the inexcusable violence of that day: It is also about fidelity to the Constitution and the rule of law, and whether elected representatives believe in those things or not. One member of the House Freedom Caucus warned the White House in the days before Jan. 6 that the president’s plans would drive “a stake in the heart of the federal republic.” That was exactly right.

Those who do not wish the truth of Jan. 6 to come out have predictably resorted to attacking the process—claiming it is tainted and political. Our hearings will show this charge to be wrong. We are focused on facts, not rhetoric, and we will present those facts without exaggeration, no matter what criticism we face

There are so many things out there to arrest Trump for that it is amazing to me we see little movement towards the target by the DOJ. Every one is still turning their lonely eyes to Merrick Garland.   Surely the request from the National Archives must be answered timely!

Normal public servants get sent to jail for this!  Watch Glenn Kirschner’s #Justice Matters for more coverage including what he said on Joy Reid’s show last night.

I’ve just about had it with this!  Now we have a group of right-wing truckers funded by the usual tea party billionaires out to wreck our recovering economy!   This is not a form of public discourse!  It’s insurrection and domestic terrorism. The DOJ/FBI needs to get more aggressive with these nutters too. I feel like we’re in some kind of Cold Civil War and not many of us are paying attention.

 

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

 

Insane Thursday Reads, with Bunnies

Posted: February 10, 2022 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 22 Comments
Painting by Janie Olsen

Painting by Janie Olsen

Good Morning!!

Well, now we know why Trump was obsessed with low water toilets. It turns out he was trying to flush torn up documents in the White House bathrooms.

Axios: Haberman book: Flushed papers found clogging Trump WH toilet.

While President Trump was in office, staff in the White House residence periodically discovered wads of printed paper clogging a toilet — and believed the president had flushed pieces of paper, Maggie Haberman scoops in her forthcoming book, “Confidence Man.”

Why it matters: The revelation by Haberman, whose coverage as a New York Times White House correspondent was followed obsessively by Trump, adds a vivid new dimension to his lapses in preserving government documents. Axios was provided an exclusive first look at some of her reporting.

Haberman also revealed to Axios that Trump claims to be keeping in touch with one of his favorite dictators, Kim Jong Un. 

Haberman reports Trump has told people that since leaving office, he has remained in contact with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un — whose “love letters,” as Trump once called them, were among documents the National Archives retrieved from Mar-a-Lago.

The book will be published in October. Read more about it at Axios.

More on Trump’s destruction of documents:

The Washington Post: National Archives asks Justice Dept. to investigate Trump’s handling of White House records.

The National Archives and Records Administration has asked the Justice Department to examine Donald Trump’s handling of White House records, sparking discussions among federal law enforcement officials about whether they should investigate the former president for a possible crime, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Full Moon Hare, by Andrew Bailey

Full Moon Hare, by Andrew Bailey

The referral from the National Archives came amid recent revelations that officials recovered 15 boxes of materials from the former president’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida that were not handed back in to the government as they should have been, and that Trump had turned over other White House records that had been torn up. Archives officials suspected Trump had possibly violated laws concerning the handling of government documents — including those that might be considered classified — and reached out to the Justice Department, the people familiar with the matter said.

The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a politically sensitive request. The two people said the discussions about the matter remained preliminary, and it was not yet clear whether the Justice Department would investigate. The department also might be interested in merely reclaiming classified materials. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.

The New York Times: Archives Found Possible Classified Material in Boxes Returned by Trump.

The National Archives and Records Administration discovered what it believed was classified information in documents Donald J. Trump had taken with him from the White House as he left office, according to a person briefed on the matter.

The discovery, which occurred after Mr. Trump returned 15 boxes of documents to the government last month, prompted the National Archives to reach out to the Justice Department for guidance, the person said. The department told the National Archives to have its inspector general examine the matter, the person said.

It is unclear what the inspector general has done since then, in particular, whether the inspector general has referred the matter to the Justice Department.

An inspector general is required to alert the Justice Department to the discovery of any classified materials that were found outside authorized government channels.

The Washington Post Editorial Board: Opinion: Documents weren’t the only things Trump tore up while in office.

Former president Donald Trump liked the feel of tearing things up — figuratively, as he did with laws and norms of public service; but also literally, as he did with documents that he was required to preserve under the Presidential Records Act. Having refused to give his elected successor a smooth and orderly transition, Mr. Trump then skulked away to Mar-a-Lago in Florida with 15 boxes of official documents and mementos that should have gone to the National Archives.

The Post reported this past weekend that Mr. Trump routinely destroyed briefing papers, schedules, articles, letters and memos, ripping them into quarters or smaller pieces, leaving the detritus on his desk in the Oval Office, in the trash can of his private West Wing study or on the floor of Air Force One. Mr. Trump’s aides were left to retrieve the pieces and piece them back together, sometimes hunting through special “burn bags” intended for classified material to find torn documents that needed to be reassembled and preserved. Recently, the committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection received documents from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) that appeared to have been torn apart and taped back together.

Mr. Trump broke the law. After President Richard M. Nixon’s resignation, Congress passed a number of laws intended to preserve the integrity of documents and other materials from Nixon’s presidency, and made the laws applicable to all future presidents. The Presidential Records Act of 1978 ended the practice of records belonging to former presidents and declared that the United States shall “reserve and retain complete ownership, possession, and control of presidential records.” The law requires a president to “take all such steps as may be necessary” to make sure the records are preserved — an important pillar of accountability in a democracy and also essential for historical understanding of the presidency….

Mr. Trump, who mercilessly attacked Hillary Clinton for using a private email server, turned out to be a slovenly steward of the people’s property. He regarded himself as above the law, but he was not. What’s left of the jigsawed and taped-up pages might not provide the thoroughgoing record of his presidency that the law demands, but they are a wrenching testament to his penchant for wanton destruction.

Wild Rabbit, photo by Julian Rad

Wild Rabbit, by wildlife photographer Julian Rad

Here’s another bonkers story that The Washington Post broke yesterday: Giuliani asked Michigan prosecutor to give voting machines to Trump team.

In the weeks after the 2020 election, Rudolph W. Giuliani and other legal advisers to President Donald Trump asked a Republican prosecutor in northern Michigan to get his county’s voting machines and pass them to Trump’s team, the prosecutor told The Washington Post.

Antrim County prosecutor James Rossiter said in an interview that Giuliani and several colleagues made the request during a telephone call after the county initially misreported its election results. The inaccurate tallies meant that Joe Biden appeared to have beaten Trump by 3,000 votes in a Republican stronghold, an error that soon placed Antrim at the center of false claims by Trump that the election had been stolen.

Rossiter said he declined. “I said, ‘I can’t just say: give them here.’ We don’t have that magical power to just demand things as prosecutors. You need probable cause.” Even if he had had sufficient grounds to take the machines as evidence, Rossiter said, he could not have released them to outsiders or a party with an interest in the matter.

Legal scholars said it was unusual and inappropriate for a president’s representatives to make such a request of a local prosecutor. “I never expected in my life I’d get a call like this,” Rossiter said….

Giuliani’s team called Rossiter around Nov. 20, 2020, Rossiter said, as it worked to overturn Trump’s defeat to Biden. The direct appeal to a local law enforcement official was part of a broader effort by Trump’s allies to access voting machines in an attempt to prove that the election had been stolen. That effort extended to a recently disclosed draft executive order for Trump’s signature to have National Guard troops seize machines across the nation.

Jacqueline Alemeny, one of the reporters on the WaPo story, appeared on MSNBC yesterday.

Raw Story: ‘This story is fairly shocking’: WaPo reporter breaks down latest ‘bonkers’ reports on Trump’s final days as president.

Antrim County prosecutor James Rossiter told the newspaper that Giuliani and others called him around Nov. 20, 2020, and pressed him to hand over the voting machines so they could be examined for fraud, as part of an ongoing scheme to undo Trump’s loss in Michigan, and journalist Jackie Alemany explained the significance of her colleagues’ findings to MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

Painting by Scott Gustafson

Painting by Scott Gustafson

“Well, it’s amazing, first of all, we are continuing to find so much new information that has yet to be uncovered, which is exactly what the Jan. 6 committee is doing,” Alemany said. “But this story especially is just fairly shocking because it shows them actually trying to implement some of their plans that we’ve seen sketched out in executive orders to seize voting machines. Here is a situation where they dialed in on a specific county and found a reason to do so despite it being obviously quite unconstitutional.”

“Even in the conversations I’ve had just in the past few months there are still a lot of people involved with this effort who believed that these voting machines needed to be seized to be protected so they could prove fraud,” she added. “These people are true believers.””That’s why those clips that were just played are so important for everyone to remember, especially when this investigation might potentially lead to whether or not this was negligence or actually intentional behavior,” Alemany said. “But it is clear that the former president knew exactly what was wrong with doing these things. He called up Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton on ripping up documents, taking classified information, accepting gifts, mischaracterizations because he knew it was politically damaging and gave the appearance of being corrupt. That’s what I think ultimately the DOJ is going to have to do if they decide ultimately to investigate the 15 boxes taken from Mar-A-Lago, which is what the archives has asked them to do according to our reporting yesterday.”

More on the Trumpist efforts to seize voting machines from Betsey Woodruff at Politico: Read the emails showing Trump allies’ connections to voting machine seizure push.

Leaked emails obtained by POLITICO reveal the connection of two outside Trump allies — Washington lawyer Katherine Friess and Texas entrepreneur Russell Ramsland — to the failed push to seize voting machines as part of a desperate bid to overturn the 2020 election.

The emails show then-President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, and another former military officer workshopping the draft of a Trump executive order to seize voting machines. The emails between Flynn, retired Army Col. Phil Waldron and others provide new details about the events that preceded the assault on the Capitol last Jan. 6.

It is unclear if the Capitol riot select committee has obtained the emails. POLITICO is publishing them here, solely redacting the senders’ and recipients’ email addresses. We are also publishing two draft versions of the executive order that would have directed authorities to seize voting equipment. CBS News previously reported on the contents of the emails and published one of the drafts.

All three emails were sent to multiple people, including Friess, who appears to have lobbied for a variety of clients, including groups linked to Puerto Rico and the telecommunications industry. Friess’ visibility into the efforts to overturn the election results on Trump’s behalf has drawn comparatively little scrutiny. She did not respond to requests for comment. Ramsland, Waldron, Flynn and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani — also a central player in the election subversion effort — also did not respond to requests for comment.

Head over to Politico to read the emails.

Bunny Graces, by Belinda Cooper

Bunny Graces, by Belinda Cooper

At The Religion News Service, a report on how right win Christians and the January 6 insurrection: New report details the influence of Christian nationalism on the insurrection.

A team of scholars, faith leaders and advocates unveiled an exhaustive new report Wednesday (Feb. 9) that documents in painstaking detail the role Christian nationalism played in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and calling it an unsettling preview of things to come.

Christian nationalism was used to “bolster, justify and intensify the January 6 attack on the Capitol,” said Amanda Tyler, head of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, which sponsored the report along with the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Tyler’s group is behind an initiative called Christians Against Christian Nationalism.

The organizations touted the report as “the most comprehensive account to date of Christian nationalism and its role in the January 6 insurrection,” compiled using “videos, statements, and images from the attack and its precursor events.”

The report, written chiefly by Andrew L. Seidel, an author and director of strategic response at the Freedom From Religion Foundation, details Christian nationalist rhetoric and symbols that cropped up at events that preceded the insurrection, such as the Million MAGA March and Jericho Marches that took place in Washington in Dec. 2020 and Jan. 2021.

Christian nationalist symbols and references, Seidel writes, were ubiquitous at those gatherings, as well as the insurrection itself: flags with superimposed American flags over Christian symbols; “An Appeal to Heaven” banners; prayers recited by members of the extremist group Proud Boys shortly before the attack or by others as they stormed the Capitol.

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Seidel highlighted what he called the preponderance of “openly militant” rhetoric that conflated religion and violence. He pointed to William McCall Calhoun Jr., a Georgia lawyer who reportedly claimed on social media that he was among those who “kicked in Nancy Pelosi’s office door” on Jan. 6. (Calhoun later claimed in an interview with the Atlanta Journal Constitution that he did not personally enter any office.)

What are your thoughts on all this insanity? What other stories are you following today?

Tuesday Reads: Odds and Ends

Posted: February 8, 2022 | Author: | Filed under: just because | 18 Comments

Laurette with a cop of coffee, Henri Matisse

Laurette With a Cup of Coffee, Henri Matisse

Good Morning!!

Over the weekend, Todd Gitlin, one of the most well-known leaders of the 1960s New Left died, possibly from Covid-19. The Washington Post: Todd Gitlin, activist and scholar who shaped and chronicled the New Left, dies at 79.

Todd Gitlin, who organized rallies against South African apartheid, racial segregation and the Vietnam War before turning to writing as a vehicle for social change, emerging as an incisive media scholar, sociologist and sometime critic of his colleagues on the left, died Feb. 5 at a hospital in Pittsfield, Mass. He was 79.

His stepdaughter, Shoshana Haulley, confirmed his death but did not know the cause. She said he had suffered cardiac arrest on New Year’s Eve and was diagnosed with covid-19 after being hospitalized near his home in Hillsdale, N.Y. Dr. Gitlin also had an apartment in Manhattan, where he taught at Columbia University.

Drawing on his immersion in the tumultuous student protest movement of the 1960s, Dr. Gitlin was a voice of the American left for more than half a century, writing cultural and political commentary, appearing as a talking head in documentaries and championing pro-democracy and antiwar causes at picket lines and teach-ins.

Todd_Gitlin_by_David_Shankbone_crop

Todd Gitlin by David Shankbone

“He didn’t just watch from the sidelines,” said his friend Peter Dreier, a professor of politics and urban and environmental policy at Occidental College in Los Angeles. “From his college days onward, he was deeply involved in the major movements of his time,” including an effort to organize working-class Whites in Chicago, which he chronicled in his first book, “Uptown” (1970), and the Occupy Wall Street movement, which he examined in “Occupy Nation” (2012).

A self-described “not very private intellectual,” Dr. Gitlin wrote nearly 20 books and contributed to publications including The Washington Post, the New York Times, the San Francisco Examiner, USA Today and the Jewish online magazine Tablet. Philadelphia Inquirer journalist Carlin Romano once described him as “one of our shrewdest culture critics, a bracing mix of jazzy, colloquial rhythms and internally-footnoted academic erudition.”

As a scholar, Dr. Gitlin investigated the inner workings of the television industry and examined the role that journalism plays in shaping social movements — an issue he had firsthand experience with as a leader of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), which extolled “participatory democracy” and came to define the New Left before disintegrating into factionalism at the end of the 1960s.

At The New York Times, Michelle Goldberg has an excellent piece about Gitlin’s evolution from student radical dismissing the old guard leftists to a member of the old guard himself: Requiem for a Liberal Giant.

There’s an indelible scene in Todd Gitlin’s 1987 book “The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage,” in which he and other leaders of Students for a Democratic Society — the leading organization of what was called the New Left — meet with old guard democratic socialists from the journal Dissent. The encounter is worthy of a play; it’s pregnant with both unfulfilled longing for connection and exasperated contempt. “We were scarred, they untouched,” wrote Dissent’s founding editor, Irving Howe. “We bore marks of ‘corrosion and distrust,’ they looked forward to clusterings of fraternity.”

Todd Gitlin, fifth from right in sports jacket, with members of Students for a Democratic Society in 1963.Credit...C. Clark Kissinger

Todd Gitlin, fifth from right in sports jacket, with members of Students for a Democratic Society in 1963.Credit…C. Clark Kissinger

It was the early 1960s (1963, according to Gitlin, 1962, according to Howe). The young activists, with their romantic enthusiasm for revolutions in the developing world, strike the older socialists as feckless and naïve. The socialists seem, to young men who feel themselves on the brink of a radical breakthrough, resigned to their own irrelevance. Gitlin and his comrades even feel a slight disdain for Joseph Buttinger, a Dissent patron and editor who had been a leader of the Austrian Socialist Party and part of the underground anti-Nazi resistance. Through “no fault of his own, history had condemned him to be a loser,” wrote Gitlin. “Not for us elegies to the twilight; for us the celebration of sunrises!”

But there would be no revolution in the U.S., unless you count the right-wing one that would sweep much of the New Deal away. By the end of the 1960s S.D.S. would implode; the giddily nihilistic Weathermen spun off and became terrorists, albeit mostly ineffectual ones. As a 42-year-old — the same age Howe was in 1963 — Gitlin wrote, “I know what it is like, now, to be attacked from my left — how galling when the attacker is 20 years younger, how hard to forge the link between innocence and experience.”

A remarkable thing about Gitlin, who died this weekend at 79, was that he never stopped trying to forge that link. The president of S.D.S. in 1963 and 1964, Gitlin eventually became a renowned professor of sociology. He was also a critic, a novelist and a poet — and, to the end, an activist.

Read the rest at the NYT.

I’m sure you’ve all seen the latest Trump documents outrage, but I’m still amazed by what this horrible man has gotten away with after the way Hillary Clinton was treated for using a private email server as Secretary of State. The Washington Post: National Archives had to retrieve Trump White House records from Mar-a-Lago.

The National Archives and Records Administration last month retrieved 15 boxes of documents and other items from former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence because the material should have been turned over to the agency when he left the White House, Archives officials said Monday.

The recovery of the boxes from Trump’s Florida resort raises new concerns about his adherence to the Presidential Records Act, which requires the preservation of memos, letters, notes, emails, faxes and other written communications related to a president’s official duties.

Trump advisers deny any nefarious intent and said the boxes contained mementos, gifts, letters from world leaders and other correspondence. The items included correspondence with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, which Trump once described as “love letters,” as well as a letter left for Trump by President Barack Obama, according to two people familiar with the contents.

Two former advisers described a frenzied packing process in the final days of the administration because Trump did not want to pack or accept defeat for much of the transition.

Archives officials confirmed the transfer, which occurred in mid-January, following publication of a version of this story by The Washington Post earlier Monday. 

From The Boston Globe, Canadian and U.S. anti-vax truck drivers have taken over the city of Ottowa and created a nightmare for residents and law enforcement: Ottawa declares emergency after protests spin ‘out of control.’

Canada’s capital city declared a state of emergency Sunday as police struggled to rein in protests against vaccine mandates and COVID-19 restrictions.

Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson, who declared the emergency, said that increasingly rowdy demonstrations posed a “serious danger and threat to the safety and security of residents.” Hundreds of trucks continue to occupy the downtown area near Canada’s parliament with no sign that the protesters plan to leave.

Truckers and their supporters have been stockpiling jerry cans of diesel and other necessities. They built a wood shed as a kitchen and set up logistics centers in a downtown park and the parking lot of a baseball stadium.

But on Sunday, police fenced off the park and showed up at the stadium location to seize fuel cans, propane cannisters and vehicles. A total of seven people were arrested as part of investigations related to the protests, according to a statement from the Ottawa Police Service. It said there are more the 60 active criminal investigations, primarily for mischief, thefts, hate crimes and property damage.

Protesters gathered near Parliament Hill during the Freedom Convoy demonstration in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, on Saturday, Feb. 5, 2022. David Kawai, Bloomberg

Protesters gathered near Parliament Hill during the Freedom Convoy demonstration in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, on Saturday, Feb. 5, 2022. David Kawai, Bloomberg

The protests started in reaction to Canadian and Us laws that went into effect in January, requiring truckers crossing the border to be fully vaccinated. They’ve since morphed into a rally against COVID restrictions more broadly. Demonstrators have been camped out in the capital since Jan. 28.

The Canadian protest, which expanded to cities across the country this weekend, was championed by the likes of Fox News and by podcaster Joe Rogan, Tesla billionaire Elon Musk and former US President Donald Trump.

In Ottawa, the truckers’ blockade of streets and use of air horns for days — sometimes deep into the night — has angered residents. The city’s police force warned people that they could be arrested for bringing “material supports,” including fuel, to the protest zone.

So far, the Canadian federal government has refused to get involved. I think they may have to do that. This story is behind a paywall, but I’ve given you the gist.

Will Saletan has moved from Slate Magazine to The Bulwark, and yesterday he published an outstanding article on Trump’s anti-democracy movment: Lies Are the Building Blocks of Trumpian Authoritarianism.

Americans like to think our country is immune to authoritarianism. We have a culture of freedom, a tradition of elected government, and a Bill of Rights. We’re not like those European countries that fell into fascism. We’d never willingly abandon democracy, liberty, or the rule of law.

But that’s not how authoritarianism would come to America. In fact, it’s not how authoritarianism has come to America. The movement to dismantle our democracy is thriving and growing, even after the failure of the Jan. 6th coup attempt, because it isn’t spreading through overt rejection of our system of government. It’s spreading through lies.

It turns out that you don’t have to renounce any of our nation’s founding principles to betray them. All you have to do is believe lies: that real ballots are fake, that prosecutors are criminals, and that insurrectionists are political prisoners. Once you believe these things, you’re ready to disenfranchise your fellow citizens in the name of democracy. You’re ready to cover up crimes in the name of fighting corruption. You’re ready to liberate coup plotters in the name of justice.

And that’s where we are. Donald Trump and his party have sold these lies to more than 100 million Americans. He has built an army of authoritarian followers who think they’re saving the republic….

At a rally in Arizona this past Jan. 15, Trump repeated his standard lie that “the real insurrection took place on Election Day,” through voter fraud. From that standpoint, he noted, the Jan. 6th uprising was an attempt to restore democracy, and the people arrested in the uprising were “political prisoners.” The House Jan. 6th Committee is, in Trump’s words, a partisan cabal that trampled innocent people “like this is . . . a communist country.” So are the federal and state prosecutors looking into Trump’s possible financial and political crimes. In the name of law and order, he urged his supporters to rise up against these agents of the state: “We must protect our nation from these monsters that are using law enforcement for political retribution.”

d658cc96dbf2185587450bc59e04195832dc151cdd91c94a1e1664fd1b567302_1Trump continued his Orwellian themes at a Jan. 29 rally in Texas. He argued that President Joe Biden had been installed by fake ballots, not real voters, and that legislation to make voting easier would just lead to more fake ballots. Democrats “don’t have a voting rights bill,” Trump scoffed. “They have a voting fraud bill.”

This strategy—inserting lies into conventional moral appeals, so that his listeners think they’re doing the right thing when they’re actually doing the opposite—is central to Trump’s propaganda. Without the lies, the evil would That’s what happened a week ago, when Trump forgot to lie. In a statement, he complained that when Congress counted electoral votes on Jan. 6th, Vice President Mike Pence could have, and should have, “change[d] the results” and “overturned the Election.” The words “change” and “overturn” revealed Trump’s despotic intent. So, in a follow-up statement two days later, he replaced them. His true purpose, he insisted, was to “ensure the true outcome” and “ensure the honest results.”

I hope you can find the time to read the whole thing.

More stories to check out today

Politico: Senate GOP backlash smacks RNC after Cheney-Kinzinger censure.

CNN: Republicans are frustrated by RNC move reopening party’s January 6 divide ahead of midterms.

The Daily Beast: ‘Stop the Steal’ Organizer Scored Big Payout at Curious Time. Ali Alexander received a major payout to his old consulting firm right when he was subpoenaed.

The New York Times: Supreme Court Restores Alabama Voting Map That a Court Said Hurt Black Voters.

Gawker: We Have Kyrsten Sinema’s Social Security Number.

Politico: Biden’s top science adviser, Eric Lander, resigns amid reports of bullying.

The New York Times: Putin Warns the West and Ukraine, but Keeps His Intentions a Mystery.

Financial Times: France says Vladimir Putin is moving towards de-escalating Ukraine crisis.

The Washington Post: Documents reveal U.S. military’s frustration with White House, diplomats over Afghanistan evacuation.

Have a nice Tuesday, Sky Dancers!!

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →