Lazy Caturday Reads
Posted: January 29, 2022 Filed under: just because 17 Comments
Good Morning!!
The big nor’easter moving up the East Coast appears to be behaving as predicted. We are still under a blizzard warning and the snow is coming down steadily outside my windows. In fact, I can’t see much but white out there. The Boston Globe: Blizzard warning in effect for much of Eastern Mass., all of R.I., with predicted totals of up to two feet.
A snowstorm that could bring up to two feet to some Eastern Massachusetts communities is barreling down on Southern New England, with blizzard conditions expected in the eastern third of the state and all of Rhode Island, the National Weather Service said.
The “significant winter storm” arrived after midnight and is expected to stick around through Saturday night. It will bring heavy snowfall, near hurricane-force wind gusts, and power outages, according to the weather service. The greatest snowfall amounts are expected across Eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
The weather service expanded its blizzard warning Friday to include not just coastal areas but much of Eastern Massachusetts and all of Rhode Island. The warning is in effect from midnight Friday through early Sunday morning. A winter storm warning was also issued for much of Central Massachusetts.
Eastern portions of the state are expected to be hit the hardest. In Boston, Plymouth, and parts of Cape Cod at least 18 to 24 inches of snow is likely, forecasters said. Depending on the location of isolated snow bands, some areas could see up to 30 inches, with forecasters predicting that snow totals in certain spots will break records or come close.
From 7 p.m. on Friday through 7 a.m. on Sunday, forecasters anticipate 24.7 inches in Boston, while South Shore communities could see higher amounts of 26 inches or more. like Plymouth are expected to see the highest amounts, with 26.8 inches.
As long as the power doesn’t go out, I’m just going to be cozy and warm in my apartment, sipping tea and reading a good book.
Republicans and right wing media are attacking President Biden’s commitment to appointing the first Black woman to the Supreme Court. From Media Matters: Biden pledged to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court. Right-wing media are rushing to dismiss the idea.
Following the news that Justice Stephen Breyer is retiring from the Supreme Court, right-wing media began launching racist attacks at the yet-unnamed nominee who would replace him based solely on President Joe Biden’s campaign pledge that he would nominate a Black woman.
Biden is not the first president who committed to diversity in his judicial selection. Ronald Reagan also made a similar pledge during his presidential campaign in 1980, saying he would nominate a woman to “one of the first Supreme Court vacancies in my administration.” Biden himself has already diversified appellate courts, nominating eight Black women so far to serve in the nation’s second highest courts.
However, once the news of Breyer’s retirement broke, right-wing media were quick to attack Biden’s promise. Through outright racist language, tangential broadsides at Vice President Kamala Harris, and far-fetched comparisons between Biden’s pledge and affirmative action, right-wing figures have been dismissing the future nominee.
Examples:
— The Cato Institute’s Ilya Shapiro, in a set of since-deleted tweets, claimed that Biden’s selection process would result in him selecting a “lesser black woman” even though there are more deserving candidates. Shapiro also claimed that because of Biden’s pledge, his nominee “will always have an asterisk attached.”
— On Fox’s Outnumbered, guest and conservative radio host Leo Terrell claimed the “racial component” of the nomination process would mean “the race card is going to be played if you vote against this particular nominee.”
— Tom Elliot, the founder of right-wing news aggregation website Grabien, tweeted, “If only Biden could perform a vivisection, assembling a SCOTUS nominee” from Rep Maxine Waters’ (D-CA) “black skin,” Sen. Mitt Romney’s (R-UT) “Boy Scout background,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-NY) “insane politics,” Vice President Kamala Harris’ “vagina,” comedian Benny Drama’s “ambiguous sexuality,” and Justice Stephen Breyer’s “disdain for the Constitution.”
— Fox host Dan Bongino asserted on his radio show that nominating a Black woman meant she “could come out and say anything she wants — anything you say against it, you will automatically be deemed a racist.”
— Infowars’ Owen Shroyer, in discussing Biden’s pledge, said Democrats were “destroy[ing] everything with their commitment to diversity” and that Biden’s pledge to nominate a Black woman is “illegal and racist.”
This is hilarious from Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker. Ashton Pittman at the Mississippi Free Press: Wicker: Black Woman Supreme Court Pick An Affirmative Action ‘Beneficiary’
The first Black woman to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court in history will be a “beneficiary” of affirmative action, U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker told a radio show this afternoon. The senior Republican senator from Mississippi made clear that he has no plans to vote for Biden’s yet-to-be-announced pick.
Biden has vowed to select a Black woman to replace outgoing Justice Stephen Breyer, who announced his retirement yesterday.
“The irony is that the Supreme Court is at the very time hearing cases about this sort of affirmative racial discrimination while adding someone who is the beneficiary of this sort of quota,” Wicker told host Paul Gallo on SuperTalk Mississippi Radio today, referring to a pending U.S. Supreme Court case challenging affirmative action in college admissions.
“The majority of the court may be saying writ large that it’s unconstitutional. We’ll see how that irony works out.”
Wicker notably did not raise an objection when former President Donald Trump vowed to appoint a woman to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg when she died weeks before the 2020 election. Instead, the GOP senator enthusiastically supported Trump’s choice, Amy Coney Barrett, despite having stated in 2016 that then-President Barack Obama should not be allowed to appoint a U.S. Supreme Court justice in an election year
Despite not knowing who Biden will nominate, Mississippi’s senior senator predicted that Biden’s pick will be less palatable to Republicans like himself than the white, male justice who currently holds the seat. He compared the unannounced nominee to Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who became the high court’s first Latina justice when former President Barack Obama appointed her in 2009.
“We’re going to go from a nice, stately liberal to someone who’s probably more in the style of Sonia Sotomayor,” Wicker said. “… I hope it’s at least someone who will at least not misrepresent the facts. I think they will misinterpret the law.”
Then, he lamented that more Republicans did not turn out to help re-elect former President Donald Trump in 2020.
The Washington Post on one potential SCOTUS nominee: White House confirms South Carolina judge is under consideration for Supreme Court.
The 44-year-old leader faulted the West for waiting to impose more damaging sanctions on Moscow
Lost in translation:Thursday Reads: Bomb Cyclone, Bunnies, and a Bit of Breaking News
Posted: January 27, 2022 Filed under: just because 25 Comments
Lord Bunnikins, Louise Brown
Good Morning!!
It looks like we finally might get a big winter storm here in New England. This one is supposed to have a bomb cyclone, a lot of snow, and possible blizzard force winds. Now that I live in a warm apartment and don’t have to go out and shovel, I’m kind of looking forward to it. I have a grocery delivery coming this afternoon, so I should be all set.
Weather.com: Nor’easter to Hit Parts of East Coast With Snow, High Winds and Coastal Flooding.
A powerful nor’easter will develop in the western Atlantic beginning late Friday, bringing heavy snow, strong winds and coastal flooding to parts of the East Coast, but there remains a larger than usual amount of uncertainty in the forecast for this storm.
Winter storm watches have been issued by the National Weather Service for Friday night and Saturday from parts of southern New England southward through the coastal mid-Atlantic as far south as eastern North Carolina. This includes Boston, Providence, New York City, Philadelphia and Norfolk.
The winter storm watches outline the areas where there is the possibility of significant snowfall and strong winds from this storm. It does not mean all of those locations will see moderate to heavy snowfall, but rather the potential is there.
The setup begins Friday with a cold front moving across the Northeast that will haul in a fresh blast of chilly air prior to this storm’s potential impact. Then, low pressure will strengthen as it tracks off the East Coast late Friday through Saturday in response to an upper-level disturbance tracking through the central and eastern United States.
It’s likely this storm will become a “bomb cyclone” – a term meteorologists use for a low-pressure system associated with fronts with a central pressure that plunges at least 24 millibars in 24 hours or less. A storm with a lower pressure is stronger.
But what’s still in doubt is the exact track of this bomb cyclone in relation to the East Coast. That future track will have a domino effect for what areas will see the most significant snowfall, high winds and/or coastal flooding.
Portions of southern and eastern New England continue to have the highest probability of seeing heavy snow and strong winds. Areas farther south from around the New York tri-state area to the coastal mid-Atlantic could also see significant snow and gusty winds, but the confidence in the forecast for those areas is lower.
Maggie Vandewalle
It’s difficult to understand why President Biden’s poll numbers are so low. Check this out:
AP News: US economy grew 5.7% in 2021 in rebound from 2020 recession.
The U.S. economy grew last year at the fastest pace since Ronald Reagan’s presidency, bouncing back with resilience from 2020′s brief but devastating coronavirus recession.
The nation’s gross domestic product — its total output of goods and services — expanded 5.7% in 2021. It was the strongest calendar-year growth since a 7.2% surge in 1984 after a previous recession. The economy ended the year by growing at an unexpectedly brisk 6.9% annual pace from October through December as businesses replenished their inventories, the Commerce Department reported Thursday.
“It just goes to show that the U.S. economy has learned to adapt to the new variants and continues to produce,″ said Beth Ann Bovino, chief economist at Standard & Poor’s Global Ratings.
Squeezed by inflation and still gripped by COVID-19 caseloads, the economy is expected to slow this year. Many economists have been downgrading their forecasts for the current January-March quarter, reflecting the impact of the omicron variant. And for all of 2022, the International Monetary Fund has forecast that the the nation’s GDP growth will slow to 4%….
Many U.S. businesses, especially restaurants, bars, hotels and entertainment venues, remain under pressure from the omicron variant, which has kept millions of people hunkered down at home to avoid crowds. Consumer spending, the primary driver of the economy, may be further held back this year by the loss of government aid to households, which nurtured activity in 2020 and 2021 but has mainly expired.
What’s more, the Federal Reserve made clear Wednesday that it plans to raise interest rates multiple times this year to battle the hottest inflation in nearly four decades. Those rate increases will make borrowing more expensive and perhaps slow the economy this year.
Growth last year was driven up by a 7.9% surge in consumer spending and a 9.5% increase in private investment. For the final three months of 2021, consumer spending rose at a more muted 3.3% annual pace. But private investment rocketed 32% higher, boosted by a surge in business inventories as companies stocked up to meet higher customer demand. Rising inventories, in fact, accounted for 71% of the fourth-quarter growth.
Slowing to 4 percent growth doesn’t sound that bad. I’ll have to see what Dakinikat thinks. More from The Washington Post: U.S. economy grew 5.7 percent in 2021, fastest full-year clip since 1984, despite ongoing pandemic.
The U.S. economy grew by 5.7 percent in 2021, the fastest full-year clip since 1984, roaring back in the pandemic’s second year despite two new virus variants that rocked the country.
The growth was uneven, with a burst of government spending helping propel a fast start, even as a surge in new cases and deaths in the second half of the year created new pressures. The economy grew by 6.9 percent from October to December, the Bureau of Economic Analysis said Thursday, a sharp acceleration from 2.3 percent in the previous quarter.
In a powerful rebound from 2020, when the economy contracted by 3.4 percent — its worst result since 1946 — 2021′s strong growth created a record 6.4 million jobs. But it also brought a host of complications, helping fuel the highest inflation in 40 years and creating supply chain snarls as consumers hungry for products overwhelmed the global delivery system. To beat back rising prices, the Federal Reserve is now shifting its strategy and preparing for interest rate hikes this year, convinced it has given enough support to help the labor market and now must keep the economy from overheating even further.
While the omicron variant had begun its vicious surge by the end of 2021, economists didn’t expect to see any fallout in Thursday’s data. Rather, forecasters anticipated that the GDP report would represent a year of blockbuster growth despite the unpredictability of the pandemic economy, from labor shortages to supply chain backlogs to inflation.
Earlier in the year, economists worried that global supply chain problems would keep businesses from being able to fully stock shelves. But a rush by companies in the final months of 2021 to bolster their inventories ultimately drove GDP much higher, as companies started to refill empty storerooms.
It’s actually kind of complicated, so if you want more, head over to the WaPo.
Yesterday’s big news was the upcoming retirement of Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.
Moira Donigan at The Guardian: Liberals across America are sighing with relief about Justice Breyer’s retirement.
That sound you hear is Democrats in Washington and across the country letting out a sigh of profound relief: Associate Justice Stephen Breyer is retiring in June, at the end of the US supreme court’s current term. News of the 83-year-old’s choice to step down broke on Wednesday – evidently a little earlier than the man himself would have liked – giving President Biden his first opportunity to fill a vacancy on the nation’s highest court.
Rabbits, by Francois Desportes
The decision from Breyer ends months of speculation and a determined pressure campaign to convince the ageing liberal justice to retire while Democrats still held both the White House and the Senate, that rare and precarious circumstance that is now required for any Democratic president to see his federal court nominees confirmed. Breyer’s decision to step down this summer gives the Democrats a narrow window to appoint his replacement before they are expected to lose control of the Senate in the November midterms.
Breyer’s retirement, after nearly 30 years as a justice, will not change the balance of power on the supreme court, which has heaved dramatically rightward since Justice Anthony Kennedy chose to retire under Donald Trump in 2018. Nor will his exit mitigate what are likely to be ruinous outcomes in this term’s major rulings, which include the hateful Dobbs v Jackson, the case that is almost certain to overturn Roe v Wade. The benefits of his timely exit aren’t so much ameliorative as preventive: because he has retired under a Democratic trifecta, he has ensured that the supreme court’s conservative 6-3 supermajority will at least stay 6-3, and not become and insurmountable 7-2. But the extremist makeup of an increasingly maximalist rightwing court will continue.
Read about Breyer’s record on the Court at The Guardian link.
CNN: Inside Biden’s calculated silence on Breyer’s retirement.
President Joe Biden received a much-needed political opening on Wednesday. But neither he, nor anyone close to him, appeared ready to celebrate it.
Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer’s retirement plans were publicly revealed before the White House or the justice himself was expecting it, leading to a muted response from Biden and his aides. The White House — which had learned of Breyer’s plans last week, though the justice did not inform the President directly — had been preparing for the moment for more than a year. But a subdued reaction from Biden was indicative of something he has made clear for months: He won’t abide any pressure from his team, however subtle, on Breyer to step down.
“Let him make whatever statement he’s going to make,” the President said in the State Dining Room as a group of chief executives looked on. “And I’ll be happy to talk about it later.”\The awkward moment — with Biden remaining mum even as many Democrats were celebrating news that could provide him a badly needed political boost — reflected an announcement that had not come as many had planned, least of all the President.
Biden’s calculated silence over the past months has not stopped the process of selecting Breyer’s successor from quietly taking shape. Groundwork has been carefully laid for a process that will unfold over the coming weeks, which the President hopes will lead to a confirmed justice by spring.
Biden’s White House has created a judicial nomination machine during the President’s first year in office, vetting and selecting a raft of diverse candidates to fill open spots on the federal bench at a pace that outstrips most of Biden’s most recent predecessors. The President also has a deeply experienced player in a key role for the coming high-stakes process — his top adviser, chief of staff Ron Klain, has played a major part in nine different Supreme Court nominations over the last several decades.
Read the rest at CNN. Breyer will join Biden at the White House today for the official announcement. Biden is still committed to appointing a Black woman to replace Breyer.
Two more articles to check out:
SV Date at HuffPost: The 59 Republicans Who Joined Electoral Voter Fraud Scheme For Trump Could Face Prison.
Dozens of local and state Republican leaders who showed their loyalty to Donald Trump by casting fake electoral votes for him a year ago may now face prison time in return for that devotion.
Because as the House select committee investigating the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, starts to look into the origins of the scheme to send “alternate” ballots to Congress from states narrowly won by Joe Biden, the 59 ersatz Trump electors who claimed to be “duly elected and qualified” could face federal charges ranging from election fraud to mail fraud, in addition to a range of state-level charges.
And in two of the states, the Democratic attorneys general are openly calling on the Department of Justice to act.
“I believe it’s critical that the federal government fully investigates and prosecutes any unlawful actions in furtherance of any seditious conspiracy,” said Josh Kaul, attorney general of Wisconsin, where 10 Republicans filed papers claiming to be the state’s electors even though Biden narrowly won there.
“This is a crime,” Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel told reporters earlier this month, adding that calling the elector slate “alternate” did a disservice and that it should be called a “false, counterfeit, fake slate of electors.”
In her state, 16 Republican office holders and party officials filed paperwork claiming then-President Trump had won the state even though he had lost it by 154,000 votes. “This is election fraud, and it’s many other crimes as well, both, I believe, at the state and the federal level.”
Deputy U.S. Attorney General Lisa Monaco on Tuesday confirmed to CNN that Justice Department prosecutors “are looking at those” but would not comment further.
Arizona, where 11 Republicans filed papers falsely claiming to be the state’s electors; Georgia, which had 16; and Nevada, which had six, account for the rest of the 59.
Greg Sargent at The Washington Post: Opinion: What would a 2024 Trump coup look like? A new paper offers a worrying answer.
Thursday Open Thread
Posted: January 20, 2022 Filed under: just because 17 CommentsGood Morning!!
This will be another brief post, because I’m still really struggling with sciatic nerve pain. Here are the stories I’ve been looking at this morning.
After last night’s vote in the Senate ended voting rights legislation for now. Louisiana’s Foghorn Leghorn was thrilled.
Ari Berman at Mother Jones: GOP States Are Shredding Voting Rights and Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema Are Now Complicit.
For the fifth time during the last year, Senate Republicans blocked Democrats on Wednesday from passing sweeping legislation that would roll back GOP efforts to make it harder to vote.
Their justification: there is no GOP effort to make it harder to vote.
“The big lie on the other side is that state legislatures controlled by Republicans are busily at work trying to make it difficult for people to vote,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said this week.
That, of course, is exactly what Republicans have been doing.
Nineteen states passed 34 new laws in 2021 reducing voting access, according to the Brennan Center, which catalogued at least 16 different ways Republicans have sought to restrict voting rights, including making it more difficult to vote by mail and easier to remove voters from the rolls, cutting the number of early voting days, erecting new barriers to voter registration, and reducing the number of polling places.
Of course, it’s in McConnell’s interest to deny this. More surprising was how Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who co-wrote the Freedom to Vote Act precisely to counter these GOP voter suppression bills, claimed that no voters would be disenfranchised after he and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) announced they would side with Republicans to block a change to the Senate rules that would have allowed his bill to pass.
Hugo Lowell at The Guardian:
The former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham told the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack that Donald Trump hosted secret meetings in the White House residence in days before 6 January, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
The former senior Trump aide also told House investigators that the details of whether Trump actually intended to march to the Capitol after his speech at the Ellipse rally would be memorialized in documents provided to the US Secret Service, the sources said.
The select committee’s interview with Grisham, who was Melania Trump’s chief of staff when she resigned on 6 January, was more significant than expected, the sources said, giving the panel new details about the Trump White House and what the former US president was doing before the Capitol attack….
The secret meetings were apparently known by only a small number of aides, the sources said. Grisham recounted that they were mostly scheduled by Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and that the former chief usher, Timothy Harleth, would wave participants upstairs, the sources said.
Harleth, the former director of rooms at the Trump International Hotel before moving with the Trumps to the White House in 2017, was once one of the former first family’s most trusted employees, according to a top former White House aide to Melania Trump.
But after Harleth sought to ingratiate himself with the Biden transition team after Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election in order to keep his White House role, Trump and Meadows moved to fire him before Melania Trump stepped in to keep him until Biden’s inauguration.
Grisham told the select committee she was not sure who exactly Trump met with in the White House residence, but provided Harleth’s name and the identities of other Trump aides in the usher’s office who might know of the meetings, the sources said.
NPR: Experts see ‘red flags’ at nonprofit raising big money for Capitol riot defendants
Josephine Harvey at HuffPost: Eric Trump Pleaded The Fifth More Than 500 Times In Deposition, Court Filing Says.
Eric Trump and Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg invoked their Fifth Amendment rights more than 500 times when questioned by the New York attorney general’s office for its investigation into the company’s finances, according to a Tuesday court filing.
“Eric Trump then invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in response to more than 500 questions over six hours,” the filing says of an Oct. 5, 2020, interview with former President Donald Trump’s son.
Weisselberg reportedly did so during an interview on Sept. 24, 2020: “After answering a number of preliminary questions, Allen Weisselberg invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination to more than 500 questions over five-and-a-half hours.”
New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office argues that these instances demonstrate that the men were aware of potential criminal liability in the case….In her motion to compel Tuesday, James argued that Donald Trump and two of his children, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump, should be forced to testify under oath as part of her office’s ongoing civil investigation into the Trump Organization’s business dealings.
James’ motion seeks a court order enforcing testimonial subpoenas issued to the three Trumps, as well as the production of documents that have been withheld since they were subpoenaed in 2019.
NPR: Experts see ‘red flags’ at nonprofit raising big money for Capitol riot defendants.
In right-wing media, Cynthia Hughes has become one of the most prominent public faces representing families of the people held in jail, awaiting trial for allegedly attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“Cynthia, you’re a true patriot,” former Trump adviser Steve Bannon told Hughes on his “War Room” podcast, where he included her in a roundup of “People of the Year.”
Hughes, who lives in New Jersey, has become a regular on Bannon’s show, where she and Bannon describe the 1/6 defendants as “political prisoners.” On New Year’s Eve, Bannon even pledged to send Hughes 1,000 coins from his new cryptocurrency venture, the “Let’s Go Brandon” or FJB coin.
Bannon’s promised crypto contribution added to the considerable pool of donations amassed by Hughes’ group, the Patriot Freedom Fund – close to $900,000 as of early December, the group claimed. There are many online fundraisers for Capitol riot defendants, which have collectively raised millions from the small, but notable minority of Americans sympathetic to the Capitol riot defendants. Most fundraisers go directly to individual defendants.
Patriot Freedom Fund, by contrast, is incorporated as a nonprofit corporation, and describes itself as a kind of central hub – soliciting donations from the public to then provide services to families, including cash grants, gifts, and legal aid. And they have asked for big donations. “We need somebody to drop us $500,000 today – today, Steve – because we need to have our own attorneys on these cases,” Hughes said on Bannon’s show in November 2021.
The group’s pitch has attracted prominent supporters on the right, including Republican U.S. Senate candidate and “Hillbilly Elegy” author J.D. Vance, as well as the conservative filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza, who announced a $100,000 donation last year. Bannon has also promised that a portion of “transaction fees” from the “Let’s Go Brandon” coin will go to the Patriot Freedom Project. And a former Trump administration official, Rachel Semmel, who previously worked in the White House Office of Management and Budget, is also volunteering with the group.
Jennifer Rubin at The Washington Post: The media wants to paint Joe Biden as a failure. He won’t let that happen.
Tuesday Reads
Posted: January 18, 2022 Filed under: just because 25 Comments
Rain, by Edvard Munch, 1902
Good Morning!!
Good morning Sky Dancers! I’m sorry to report that I’m having another pain flare-up and so this post will be brief. I think I’m doing better with breathing and relaxing, and that does help the pain somewhat. I’m just hoping this won’t last too long. In the meantime, here’s what I’m seeing in the news today.
This is trending on Twitter, but I haven’t seen any reporting in the mainstream media yet.
https://twitter.com/petestrzok/status/1483429547295092736?s=20
Read the letter dated December 15, 2021 at the Conservative Action Project. The letter is addressed to Republican House leader Kevin McCarthy and requests that Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger be removed from the GOP caucus and attacks the January 6 committee and claims that those involved with the January 6 insurrection “have done nothing wrong.”
As you are aware, this committee has no formal representation from Republicans. Both Reps. Cheney and Kinzinger serve at the request of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). As part of Pelosi’s team, Reps. Cheney and Kinzinger have deliberately sought to undermine the privacy and due process of their fellow Republicans, and those of private citizens, with improperly issued subpoenas and other investigatory tactics designed not to pursue any valid legislative end, but merely to exploit for the sake of political harassment and demagoguery.
The actions of Reps. Cheney and Kinzinger on behalf of House Democrats have given supposedly bipartisan justification to an overtly partisan political persecution that brings disrespect to our country’s rule of law, legal harassment to private citizens who have done nothing wrong, and which demeans the standing of the House….
We ask that the GOP conference meet immediately to vote on stripping Reps. Cheney and Kinzinger from their membership in the GOP conference. We further inform you that conservative leaders are launching a nationwide movement to add citizens’ voices to this effort.
That’s the gist of it. Here’s the full list of signers.
CNN has the photos from the disaster in Tonga: First images of Tonga volcano damage show entire communities covered in thick ash.
A thick layer of ash covering entire island communities can be seen in the first images of disaster-hit Tonga to emerge following what experts believe to be the world’s biggest volcanic eruption in more than 30 years.
Aerial photos released by the New Zealand Defense Force from Tonga’s central Ha’apai islands show trees, homes and fields coated in gray ash — spewed out by the Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha’apai undersea volcano as it erupted on Saturday, sending tsunami waves crashing across the Pacific.
Satellite images show a similar scene in the capital’s Kolofo’ou district, on Tonga’s main island, with trees and homes completely blanketed by volcanic debris. Some buildings appear to have collapsed and aid workers are now concerned about water contamination and food security in the district.
An Aerial view from a P-3K2 Orion serveillance flight shows heavy ask fall in Nomuka, Tonga,on Jan. 17, 2022
See more photos at CNN.
This is from Jake Tapper at CNN: Former Trump administration officials hold call to strategize against former boss’ efforts in 2022 and 2024.
Around three dozen former Trump administration officials, disillusioned with their former boss and concerned about his impact on the GOP and the nation, held a conference call last Monday to discuss efforts to fend off his efforts to, in their view, erode the democratic process, several participants told CNN.
The only items the group seemed to agree upon in its first meeting, however, were that they’re not sure what their way forward should be, and that they are way behind the efforts of former President Donald Trump and his allies to set the stage for 2022, 2024, and beyond.
The highest-ranking participant was former White House chief of staff and retired Marine Gen. John Kelly, who told CNN that because of a prior commitment he was only able to “monitor” about 10 minutes of the call, which lasted about an hour.
Other participants included former Trump White House communications directors Alyssa Farah Griffin (now a CNN political commentator) and Anthony Scaramucci, former Homeland Security and counterterrorism adviser to Vice President Pence Olivia Troye, former Department of Homeland Security official Elizabeth Neumann, and former Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Chris Krebs, among others. Stephanie Grisham, who first publicly discussed this group a couple of weeks ago on CNN’s “New Day,” was not on the call because she was sick with Covid-19, though she told CNN she is engaged with the group….
Miles Taylor, the former DHS chief of staff who became a leading anti-Trump voice after writing an op-ed and book as “Anonymous,” helped lead the call and described participants as “overflowing with ideas” on how to be most effective. They ranged from “shining a light” on Trump’s corporate contributors to targeting for defeat in the primary or general election each individual Trump has endorsed for state and local races, although Kelly is reluctant to do anything that involves specifically endorsing any candidate.
“We’re still trying to figure out what it is” that we want to do, one participant told CNN. “Outcomes are key.” This individual said there was unanimity on the call, from those who spoke, that “this cannot just be a professional trolling operation, putting out ads like the Lincoln group.” The Lincoln Project was a group of so-called never-Trump GOP consultants who banded together to oppose the 45th President’s reelection, often running ads in the Washington, DC, area targeted to Trump.
From the CBS article:
Prosecutors granted immunity to an ex-girlfriend of Representative Matt Gaetz before she testified last week in front of a federal grand jury hearing evidence in the investigation of the congressman, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Gaetz has been under investigation to determine if he violated sex trafficking laws and obstructed justice in that probe. Gaetz has previously denied all wrongdoing, and has said he has never paid for sex nor had sex with an underage girl.
The woman, who CBS News is not naming to protect her privacy, testified in front of a federal grand jury in Orlando last Wednesday. She is viewed as a potential key witness, according to two sources familiar with the investigation. One of the sources said she has information related to the investigation of both the sex trafficking and obstruction allegations.
“This may be a willing participant who has a smart lawyer who sought an immunity deal from the government,” said former prosecutor and CBS News legal analyst Rikki Kleiman. “The government does not give immunity blindly, they know what they’re getting in exchange.” [….]
A source told CBS News last week that as a part of an obstruction probe, investigators are looking into whether Gaetz had a phone call with the ex-girlfriend, and another woman, who was already a witness in the federal investigation.
Multiple sources told CBS News that the ex-girlfriend and the other woman traveled to the Bahamas with Gaetz in 2018, along with a third woman with whom Gaetz was in a sexual relationship. That third woman was 18 at the time of the Bahamas trip, but investigators are also looking into whether she was 17 when the sexual relationship began.
https://twitter.com/sherrisjoy/status/1483474593444769800?s=20
The Washington Post: Florida governor proposes special police agency to monitor elections.
https://twitter.com/benjaminblouin/status/1483472324825341953?s=20
That’s all the news I have for you today–another insane news day with the ongoing pandemic and GOP coup in the background. What stories are you following?
Lazy Caturday Reads
Posted: January 15, 2022 Filed under: Afternoon Reads | Tags: Donald Trump, fascism, FBI, January 6, Merrick Garland, snowstorm, Tonga, tsunami, volcano eruption, winter weather 17 Comments
By German cartoonist Rudi Herzlmeier
Good Afternoon!!
The temperature here in the Boston area was 1 degree this morning. We had wind chill temperatures around -20 overnight and today will see -11 wind chills. Winter weather this year has been weird everywhere. For the past couple of weeks here, we have been alternating between freezing cold and unseasonably warm days.
Today a massive winter storm is moving from the upper Midwest into the South. Eventually the storm will move up the coast and into New England as a “southeaster.” So far it looks like my area will miss the heavy snow. I hope that prediction holds! I feel for those of you who live down south.
CNN: Where to expect snow in the days ahead as a massive storm system moves south.
A massive storm system that’s dumping several inches of snow on the central US is expected to move toward the southeast Saturday, prompting the governors of Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia to declare states of emergency ahead of a crippling ice and snow event.
More than 65 million people in the affected areas are under winter weather alerts, the National Weather Service said.
“A strong developing storm over the Lower Mississippi Valley will move eastward to the Southeast by Sunday morning, then head northeastward to the northern mid-Atlantic by Monday,” the National Weather Service Prediction Center said early Saturday.
Rain, snow, sleet, and freezing rain — or a combination of all of those — will make travel difficult over the three-day holiday weekend across the Eastern US.
A swath of 8 to 12 inches of snow was recorded across portions of North Dakota on Friday.
From there, the system dove deeper south, heading into Missouri, Arkansas and Kansas where it delivered rain and snowfall.
“How fast surface temperatures fall below freezing, and therefore, how fast rain changes to snow will play a big role in determining just how much snow accumulates,” said the NWS office in Topeka, Kansas.
Throughout Saturday the storm system will bring heavy bands of snowfall to the Mid-South and Tennessee Valley.
Localized areas of Tennessee could see snow totals exceeding 6 inches as the storm continues its eastward track toward the Southern Appalachians.
There’s lots more winter weather news to read at that CNN link.
By Rudi Herzlmeier
Out on the West Coast, there’s another type of natural disaster warning. The New York Times: Tsunami Reported in Tonga After an Underwater Volcano Eruption.
A four-foot tsunami wave was reported to have hit Tonga’s capital, Nuku’alofa, on Saturday, sending people rushing to higher ground. Witnesses said ash had fallen from the sky, after an underwater volcano erupted earlier near the remote Pacific nation.
The volcano, Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai, is about 40 miles north of the Pacific archipelago’s main island, Tongatapu.
The Bureau of Meteorology in Australia reported the tsunami on Twitter. But communication with Tonga was disrupted, according to The Associated Press, so there were no immediate official reports of injuries or the extent of the damage.
The Tonga Meteorological Service issued a tsunami warning for the archipelago on Saturday evening. On their Facebook pages, the meteorological services for nearby Fiji and Samoa also issued alerts, advising people to stay away from low-lying coastal areas.
The National Tsunami WarninI g Center in the United States issued a tsunami advisory for the West Coast on Saturday morning Pacific time, including the Washington and Oregon coast, with the National Weather Service in Portland reporting possible one- to three-foot waves in Newport, Ore., Long Beach, Wash., and Seaside, Ore. “First wave may not be the highest,” and later waves may “be larger,” the tweet said.
I think I’d rather have a snowstorm.
Unfortunately, I guess I’ll have to get to the politics news now. I want to recommend three long reads and then I’ll list some links to other interesting stories.
First a piece by Yale philosophy professor and fascism expert Jason Stanley at The Guardian, published last month: America is now in fascism’s legal phase.
Let us be reminded that before there is a final solution, there must be a first solution, a second one, even a third. The move toward a final solution is not a jump. It takes one step, then another, then another.”
So began Toni Morrison’s 1995 address to Howard University, entitled Racism and Fascism, which delineated 10 step-by-step procedures to carry a society from first to last.
Morrison saw, in the history of US racism, fascist practices – ones that could enable a fascist social and political movement in the United States.
Cats out for a walk, Rudi Hurzlmeier
Writing in the era of the “super-predator” myth (a Newsweek headline the next year read, “Superpredators: Should we cage the new breed of vicious kids?”), Morrison unflinchingly read fascism into the practices of US racism. Twenty-five years later, those “forces interested in fascist solutions to national problems” are closer than ever to winning a multi-decade national fight.
The contemporary American fascist movement is led by oligarchical interests for whom the public good is an impediment, such as those in the hydrocarbon business, as well as a social, political, and religious movement with roots in the Confederacy. As in all fascist movements, these forces have found a popular leader unconstrained by the rules of democracy, this time in the figure of Donald Trump.
Morrison’s interest was not in fascist demagogues or fascist regimes. It was rather in “forces interested in fascist solutions to national problems”. The procedures she described were methods to normalize such solutions, to “construct an internal enemy”, isolate, demonize and criminalize it and sympathizers to its ideology and their allies, and, using the media, provide the illusion of power and influence to one’s supporters.
Philosophers have always been at the forefront in the analysis of fascist ideology and movements. In keeping with a tradition that includes the philosophers Hannah Arendt and Theodor Adorno, I have been writing for a decade on the way politicians and movement leaders employ propaganda, centrally including fascist propaganda, to win elections and gain power.
Often, those who employ fascist tactics do so cynically – they do not really believe the enemies they target are so malign, or so powerful, as their rhetoric suggests. Nevertheless, there comes a tipping point, where rhetoric becomes policy. Donald Trump and the party that is now in thrall to him have long been exploiting fascist propaganda. They are now inscribing it into fascist policy.
The article is very long, but well worth reading. Remember, Hitler got many of his ideas from the Jim Crow South.
In the lead-up to the Capitol siege, the FBI received at least a dozen warnings about the possibility of violence that day (see timeline below.) When the day came and the Capitol barricades fell, it became evident the FBI largely ignored them all.
The warnings came from all sides: regional law enforcement, social media platforms, Congress (specifically the House and Senate intelligence committees), a top defense official, extremist watchdogs, right-wing experts, journalists and even three different components within the FBI itself.
By Rudi Herzlmeier
Grid reviewed every public statement FBI officials made about the bureau’s intelligence leading up to the siege to understand how the FBI explained its posture on Jan. 6. We read hundreds of pages of FBI briefings and press statements, FBI officials’ testimony before Congress and public comments in news reports.
We found that the FBI has given at least five different explanations for why it failed to heed these warnings and take steps to foil the Capitol attack or help other agencies prepare a sufficient response. Some of them support arguments the FBI should get more money and legal authorities. But given what we now know, none of them holds up.
“They’re following the same blueprint as 9/11,” said Mike German, a former undercover FBI agent and author of “Disrupt, Discredit and Divide: How the New FBI Damages Democracy.” He is a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice. “First they say, ‘We had no intelligence,’ then say, ‘Our authorities prevented us from getting the intelligence,’ which is not true.”
The institutional lack of introspection, while unsurprising, is deeply worrisome, German and others agree. The threat of political violence — particularly from the right, and targeting democratic institutions and political leaders — is higher than at any point in modern history. Many key indicators point in one direction: Extremist violence is reportedly surging, and threats against election officials and members of Congress are increasing. The threat of lethality from domestic violent extremist groups “is higher than it ever was,” Attorney General Merrick Garland told Congress last May.
If the FBI remains blinkered to the most serious and likely threats, Jan. 6 might not be its last major failure. American democracy has largely survived the violence of Jan. 6, and the Department of Justice has undertaken a historic effort to investigate, indict and prosecute hundreds of participants — who might never have stormed the Capitol in the first place if the FBI had heeded clear warnings and taken proper steps to prevent the attack.
Palidino goes on to refute the five main excuses the FBI has given for it’s failure to respond to the many warnings they received before January 6. It appears that the bureau is still focusing more on left wing protestors than on right wing violence, despite the public claims of director Chris Wray.
The final long read is by Jennifer Taub at The Washington Monthly: Merrick Garland’s Trump Problem—and Ours.
Timing is everything. When it comes to free and fair elections and ensuring that Donald Trump and fellow authoritarians do not pull off a successful coup, we are nearly out of time. At least 19 states have added laws that make it more difficult to vote, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, and 49 state legislatures are considering voting restrictions, including, most ominously, measures that would take election management out of the hands of secretaries of state and hand it over to GOP-controlled legislatures. We have until November 8to fix this.
Espresso by rudi Hurzlmeier
The prosecution of the former president is on a slower timeline. This includes not only the criminal investigations being pursued in Georgia by the Fulton County district attorney, and in New York by the state attorney general and the Manhattan district attorney, but also any investigations emanating from the U.S. Department of Justice. But that’s okay; Merrick Garland is no longer the problem or the solution.
I came to this conclusion after Attorney General Garland delivered a much-hyped speech commemorating the anniversary of the January 6 attack on the Capitol. After considering his words, I opened a calendar and did the math. We’ll get to that math in a moment. But first, let’s be clear about what Garland did and didn’t promise.
After watching his talk and then reading the prepared remarks published on the DOJ website, I have this take: I fully trust Garland to prosecute Trump in connection with the events directly leading up to and surrounding the certification of the electoral vote on January 6. But I’m less sure how much Trump mischief that will include.
Why do I believe DOJ is currently investigating the former president? Some doubt it. There have been no leaks to the press. By comparison, the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol has been less circumspect. Committee members, including Republican Representative Liz Cheney, have made it clear that they are examining Trump’s legal culpability on a number of grounds. Garland will have access to whatever the committee uncovers, including the report they plan to issue as early as this summer. And if the panel, chaired by Representative Bennie Thompson, makes criminal referrals to DOJ, committee staff will turn over the evidence they have gathered.
In such a referral, the committee might reference several statutes that DOJ can use to prosecute the former president and others, including obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy, and seditious conspiracy. They might also use the wire fraud statute to charge those who raised funds off the Big Lie.
Read the rest at The Washington Monthly link.
More stories to check out:
Yahoo News: Fake electoral documents under new scrutiny as Trump prepares for Arizona visit.
Emptywheel: The Structure of the January 6 Assault: “I Will Settle With Seeing [Normies] Smash Some Pigs To Dust.
Greg Sargent at The Washington Post: Kevin McCarthy’s coverup for Trump may be hiding knowledge of possible crimes.
Aaron Blake at The Washington Post: The conservative knives come out for Brett Kavanaugh.
The New York Times: Census Memo Cites ‘Unprecedented’ Meddling by Trump Administration.
What’s on your mind today? What stories are you following?
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