Wednesday: Covid Open Thread

Posted: November 15, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: just because | 8 Comments

Bruno Liljefors, Common Swifts

Bruno Liljefors, Common Swifts

Good Morning!!

After years of avoiding Covid, I finally came down with it. I have no idea how I caught it, because I stayed in my apartment all last weekend. But somehow I did get it, and it’s not fun. So I’m just going to post some stories, and then go back to bed.

Here’s what happening today.

AP, via Yahoo News: Israeli forces raid Gaza’s largest hospital, where hundreds of patients are stranded by fighting.

The Independent: Blow for Putin as Ukraine takes major step in bid to outflank Russian troops.

The New York Times: Ukraine Indicts Officials Linked to Efforts to Investigate the Bidens.

Marist Poll: The Looming Government Shutdown.

The Washington Post: House passes bill to avert government shutdown, sends to Senate.

Politico: Conservatives hold back on Johnson ouster threat — but plot other payback.

Axios: Speaker Mike Johnson calls separation of church and state a “misnomer.”

Politico: Senate Dems take major step towards ending Tuberville’s military holds.

The Washington Post: Fani Willis: Georgia trial involving Trump might not conclude until early 2025.

Brandi Buchman at Law and Crime: ‘Without regard to numbers, wealth or rank’: Special counsel rails against Trump ‘scattershot’ First Amendment claims as demand for ‘special exception.’

The Washington Post: Univision, the Spanish language news giant, shifts its approach to Trump.

Have a nice day everyone!

Lazy Caturday Reads

Posted: November 11, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Afternoon Reads, cat art, Cats, caturday, just because | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

Happy Caturday!!

michael-peter-ancher-sunday-afternoon-in-a-fisher-familys-house.-a-young-girl-reading

Michael Peter Ancher, Sunday afternoon in a fisher family’s house, a young girl reading.

Dakinikat provided us with plenty of scream-worthy news yesterday, so I’m going to try to find a few more upbeat stories today. Wish me luck.

First up, I looked around for cat news, and I found a heart-warming story about a lost cat and the dog who saved his life. BBC News: Dog leads owner to cat stuck 100ft down Cornish mine shaft.

A lucky cat was rescued by firefighters after falling 100ft (30m) down a mineshaft in Cornwall – and it was all thanks to a quick-thinking dog.

After six days of searching, Mowgli’s owner Michele Rose said she had “almost given up hope” of finding her missing pet.

But she said she saw her dog Daisy “going berserk”, running in and out of woods near their home in Harrowbarrow.

Daisy’s intervention led to the rescue of her feline friend, Ms Rose said.

Daisy guided her along a footpath toward the Prince of Wales old mine workings, she said, before “stopping dead in her tracks” next to the mineshaft.

“Daisy is a superstar, she’s an amazing dog.

“Without Daisy doing that Mowgli could still be down there, that’s for sure,” Ms Rose said.

“She was persistent in making me follow her, it was amazing.”

The RSPCA and Cornwall Fire and Rescue were called but it was “too dark” on the first night to access the mineshaft, the RSPCA said.

The next morning the team, led by RSPCA animal rescue officer Stephen Findlow, spotted Mowgli, who was 100ft down – but remarkably uninjured – and he was pulled to safety.

The family has another cat, Baloo, who greeted Mowgli after he was pulled up.

Ms Rose said she adopted kittens Mowgli and Baloo in December 2022 and oversaw a gentle introduction to Daisy, who was already resident.

She added: “Daisy was already a year old when the kittens arrived and they have all been inseparable ever since.

“She is quite matriarchal and puts up with them, they love her and she’s very protective of them.”

Here’s a story about cats being “crime fighters.” The Chicago Tribune, via Police1.com: Ill. PD to expand program ‘deputizing’ feral cats to contain city’s rat population.

NILES, Ill. — Police in Niles, Illinois — a suburb of Chicago — expressed satisfaction with a pilot program begun in August to “deputize” five feral cats to control the rat population, a police official told Pioneer Press. Now, the department says it is looking to extend the program.

The cats have lived around the 7800 block of Nordica Avenue for about three years under the care of a resident. The Niles police department recruited the cats because they are a natural deterrent to rats, according to Niles Police.

Earlier in the year, Niles officials passed a wildlife ordinance to curb rat problems in the village. According to the village’s website, the Community Development Department tracks and investigates rat complaints and inspects alleys and properties. The department gives out free rat traps to residential properties.

By James Pelham, 1800s

By James Pelham, 1800s

Niles Police Sergeant Dan Borkowski told Pioneer Press through email that the department reviewed complaint data from the Development Department and resident feedback and decided to continue and expand the feral cat program. Borkowski said the department had yet to determine where the cats will be placed because it’s contingent on cat availability and host families to take care of the cats.

Borkowski said they would keep the cats in a more defined territory. The village’s animal control officer gave Sarwat Hakim, the resident who has been watching over the feral cats, three makeshift, tarped shelters for the felines….

Hakim said the cats usually stay in the neighborhood or head off into the forest preserves, where they hunt for rats.

Hakim said before the cats were in the neighborhood, she used to see a lot of rats and rat traps. She hasn’t seen a rat trap in the neighborhood for about a year, which she is a fan of because she worries about kids potentially playing with them.

Hakim said she started caring for one feral cat three years ago when it kept returning for food. The cat gave birth to 15 cats, most of which were put up for adoption, with four of the cats staying behind.

“They’re so united you wouldn’t believe it,” said Hakim.

Hakim said she and her daughter-in-law feed the cats chicken in the morning, canned tuna for lunch and dinner, with cat food, both dried and canned, served as a snack. The cats also like to drink milk, she said.

“I hope nobody harms them and lets them stay because they’re benefiting us getting rid of the rats,” she said.

I suppose I should find some politics news.

The Washington Post’s Philip Bump has a great piece about Rep. James Comer. (He’s the guy who wants to impeach President Biden for lending money to his brother.): The political perils of taking James Comer’s word for it.

One can think of the claims presented by House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) as though they are the experiments of a ninth-grade physics class.

The assignment is simple: Build a contraption that will ensure an egg survives a fall from the roof of the school. So Comer and his friends get together and sketch out little parachutes and agree that the parachutes will work great and talk about how cool the different little parachutes are.

They build the parachutes and take them over to Fox News’s desk and Fox News takes the eggs and puts them in the parachute and holds it one hand over the other and lets go: the egg survived! What a parachute! Going to hype this parachute for a few days until you come up with a new one.

Sometimes, though, Comer or one of his buddies has to take the egg to the actual roof. Maybe Comer thinks some of the parachutes will actually work; probably he knows that a lot of them won’t. But either way, the teacher holds them over the edge of the building and subjects them to reality.

Ssssssssssplat. Over and over and over again. Different eggs and different parachutes but the same result.

Thanks to his incessant chatter about his parachutes and how cool they are, Comer has — despite this pattern — built a reputation with his peers as a really great parachute-maker. A lot of them have only heard Comer talk about his parachutes or have only seen the Fox News tests of the parachutes, so they really think he’s got it, he’s a master of Newtonian physics. Asked to head to the roof for their own tests, they simply grab the parachutes that Comer’s made. Bad move.

So what happened when another Republican Congressman tried to use Comer’s “evidence” in a non-Fox appearance?

On Thursday morning, Rep. Greg Murphy (R-N.C.) put some to the test. Murphy appeared on CNN to discuss subpoenas issued by Comer’s Oversight Committee to President Biden’s son Hunter and the president’s brother, James Murphy sits on the House Ways and Means Committee, which, along with Oversight and Rep. Jim Jordan’s (R-Ohio) Judiciary Committee, is tasked with leading the stalled impeachment investigation into the president.

Murphy was asked by host John Berman whether he would vote to hold the Bidens in contempt should they not comply with the subpoena. “Absolutely,” Murphy replied. Then he got out the parachute.

WC Mills, Gentleman in a top hat reading with his cat beside him

WC Mills, Gentleman in a top hat reading with his cat beside him

“You know, here’s the deal, John,” he said with the confidence of a guy who has never seen Comer’s physics experiments at work. “It’s very, very clear. Why … would Hunter and Jim create 20 shell companies to not — to be legal? We’ve seen time and time again — and Representative Comer has proved this — there was money, influencing peddling that Biden had during his last couple of years as vice president. And then after, right afterwards, they wanted to gain the money back.”

Sssssssssplat.

Comer likes to talk about the “shell companies,” ignoring that a number are simply corporate entities like one that serves as the structure for Hunter Biden’s law firm and another that’s a consulting company he ran. The Washington Post examined each of these “20 shell companies” finding that — despite Murphy’s insinuations — they were created because this is how business structures often work. (Comer tends not to talk about the much more extensive web of corporations controlled by the Trump Organization, which might have given Murphy pause.)

What happened when Murphy tried to explain what Joe Biden did that was criminal?

Comer also has not by any stretch proved that there was influence peddling by Joe Biden. That’s the crux of what he wants to prove and what his investigations are pointed toward. He’s shown, with an abundance of evidence, the already-obvious efforts by Hunter Biden to leverage his last name as he sought out business deals — but has also accrued numerous sworn statements from former Hunter Biden partners that Joe Biden wasn’t involved in the effort. (Among those drawing that line was Devon Archer.)

Berman, however, took the conversation in a different direction. He asked Murphy why he’d vote to hold Hunter or James Biden in contempt when he voted against holding former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon in contempt in 2021 after Bannon failed to provide testimony to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.

“Well, I think it’s a little bit different when you have a president of the United States,” he said. “We have somebody who’s not an elected official. You know, the president of the United States was selling his influence, his son was selling his influence—”

Berman interjected: “I don’t understand. We’re talking—”

“It’s a little bit different of standards, John, when you have somebody who’s in elected office,” Murphy continued, “versus somebody who’s not in elected office.”

Berman then asked what elected office Hunter Biden held. Oops!

Unfortunately for Rep. Comer, it turns out that he also lent money to his brother.

Roger Sollenberger at The Daily Beast: James Comer, Like Joe Biden, Also Paid His Brother $200K.

House Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-KY) on Wednesday subpoenaed President Joe Biden’s brother, James Biden, who Comer has implicated in unsubstantiated allegations of “shady business practices” in the Biden family.

Comer has in particular been trying to make hay out of two personal loan repayments from James Biden to his brother, for $40,000 and $200,000—with all transactions occurring in 2017 and 2018, when Joe Biden was neither in office nor a candidate.

Escha van den Bogerd

By Escha van den Bogerd

But if Comer genuinely believes these transactions clear the “shady business practices” bar, he might want to consider a parallel inquiry into his own family.

According to Kentucky property records, Comer and his own brother have engaged in land swaps related to their family farming business. In one deal—also involving $200,000, as well as a shell company—the more powerful and influential Comer channeled extra money to his brother, seemingly from nothing. Other recent land swaps were quickly followed with new applications for special tax breaks, state records show. All of this, perplexingly, related to the dealings of a family company that appears to have never existed on paper.

But unlike with the Bidens, Comer’s own history actually borders a conflict of interest between his official government role and his private family business—and it’s been going on for decades.

While Comer and House GOP allies have tried to cast the Biden transactions as evidence of unsavory and possibly impeachable offenses, multiple news organizations—including CNN, The Wall Street Journal, FactCheck.org, and the conservative-leaning Washington Examiner—have all thrown cold water on the notion that the payments are evidence of anything other than a brother helping a brother.

Click the link to read the rest.

Speaking of conflicts involving people holding high-level positions, The Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus has an op-ed about serious ethics issues for Clarence and Ginni Thomas: The Crystal Clanton case shows a system failure.

Well, so much for getting to the bottom of the story of Crystal Clanton, the judicial law clerk accused of sending racist texts. And so much for all the talk about having Supreme Court justices abide by the code of conduct that covers other federal judges. In this case, at least, the mechanism to enforce that code turned out to be toothless. The judicial discipline system is better at self-protection than self-policing.

To review: Clanton is a protégé of Justice Clarence Thomas and Ginni Thomas. She met Ginni Thomas while working at the conservative youth group Turning Point USA. Her employment was terminated in 2017 after the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer unearthed texts apparently sent by Clanton: “I HATE BLACK PEOPLE. Like f— them all … I hate blacks. End of story.” Clanton told Mayer in an email that “I have no recollection of these messages and they do not reflect what I believe or who I am and the same was true when I was a teenager.” (Clanton was 20 when the texts were sent in 2015, and evidence suggests that this was not an isolated episode).

After leaving Turning Point, Clanton went to work for Ginni Thomas and lived in the Thomas’s home for almost a year. She attended George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School and, with enthusiastic backing from Clarence Thomas, secured one of the most prestigious judicial clerkships in the country, for William H. Pryor Jr., chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. Pryor, a reliable “feeder” of clerks to Thomas and other conservative justices, recommended Clanton for a district court clerkship, with Judge Corey Maze of Alabama, before she joined his chambers.

girl-with-cat-merle-keller

Girl with cat, by Merle Keller

And she appears to be en route to the high court. “It is certainly my intention to consider her for a clerkship should she perform as I expect and excel in her clerkships,” Thomas has written.

When the news of Clanton’s clerkships surfaced in 2021, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee filed an ethics complaint; the matter was assigned to the 2nd Circuit to handle. Chief Judge Debra Ann Livingston dismissed the complaint without even appointing a special committee to look into the facts, as provided for under the rules and suggested by the 11th Circuit judge who conducted the initial review.

Livingston did not examine the underlying question of whether Clanton sent the racist texts. Rather, she found only that Pryor and Maze “performed all of the due diligence that a responsible judge would undertake” before hiring Clanton. The judges, she said, were “in possession of information that the allegations were false — that the anonymous sources relied on in the media accounts were not trustworthy,” and that “they have been repeatedly informed that the allegations of racist text messages and remarks are not true.”

In fact, there were on-the-record sources and screen shots of the texts. Turning Point spokesman Andrew Kolvet confirmed to me that Clanton was “terminated from Turning Point after the discovery of problematic texts.”

There’s much more at the link.

Of course, creepy news keeps breaking about the new Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. Tori Otten at The New Republic: Why Is Mike Johnson Flying a Christian Nationalist Flag Outside His Office?

House Speaker Mike Johnson has three flags hanging outside his office: the American flag, the Louisiana state flag, and a flag representing a movement that wants to turn the United States into a religious Christian nation.

Normal stuff, you know?

The flag is white with a green evergreen tree in the middle and the phrase “An Appeal to Heaven” at the top. A report published Friday by Rolling Stone confirmed that the flag is outside his district office in Washington.

The flag was originally used as a banner during the Revolutionary War, but over the past decade, it has been embraced by a sect of Christianity called the New Apostolic Reformation, or NAR. A central tenet of NAR’s belief system is that it is God’s will for Christians to take control of all aspects of U.S. society—including education, arts and entertainment, the media, and businesses—to create a religious nation.

The NAR fully embraced Donald Trump when he announced he was running for office, endorsing him early on and helping endear him to other Christian movements. As a result, the Appeal to Heaven flag has become popular among Trump supporters.

The flag has appeared in photos of far-right politicians and election deniers such as Doug Mastriano, the Trump-endorsed candidate for Pennsylvania governor. Mastriano lost to Democrat Josh Shapiro.

The flag was also everywhere at the January 6 insurrection. Rolling Stone estimated that there may have been hundreds of Appeal to Heaven flags throughout the mob.

It should not be surprising that Johnson subscribes to the NAR belief system. He has a well-documented history of opposing abortion access, LGBTQ rights, and environmental policy on the grounds that they are non-Christian.

But it’s upsetting and deeply concerning that he is able to embrace it so openly without so much as a slap on the wrist. What’s more, Rolling Stone’s revelation comes just days after the House of Representatives censured Rashida Tlaib for her comments about Israel and Palestine.

1935.13.99_1.tif

Man reading with cat, by Gustaf Dalstrom

One more politics story about the Democratic Mayor of New York City. The New York Times: F.B.I. Seizes Eric Adams’s Phones as Campaign Investigation Intensifies.

F.B.I. agents seized Mayor Eric Adams’s electronic devices early this week in what appeared to be a dramatic escalation of a criminal inquiry into whether his 2021 campaign conspired with the Turkish government and others to funnel money into its coffers.

The agents approached the mayor after an event in Manhattan on Monday evening and asked his security detail to step away, a person with knowledge of the matter said. They climbed into his S.U.V. with him and, pursuant to a court-authorized warrant, took his devices, the person said.

The devices — at least two cellphones and an iPad — were returned to the mayor within a matter of days, according to that person and another person familiar with the situation. Law enforcement investigators with a search warrant can make copies of the data on devices after they seize them.

A lawyer for Mr. Adams and his campaign said in a statement that the mayor was cooperating with federal authorities, and had already “proactively reported” at least one instance of improper behavior….

The surprise seizure of Mr. Adams’s devices was an extraordinary development and appeared to be the first direct instance of the campaign contribution investigation touching the mayor. Mr. Adams, a retired police captain, said on Wednesday that he is so strident in urging his staff to “follow the law” that he can be almost “annoying.” He laughed at the notion that he had any potential criminal exposure.

The Mayor’s attorney says that Adams is not personally under investigation. We’ll see, I guess.

The federal investigation into Mr. Adams’s campaign burst into public view on Nov. 2, when F.B.I. agents searched the home of the mayor’s chief fund-raiser and seized two laptop computers, three iPhones and a manila folder labeled “Eric Adams.”

The fund-raiser, a 25-year-old former intern named Brianna Suggs, has not spoken publicly since the raid.

Mr. Adams responded to news of the raid by abruptly returning from Washington, D.C., where he had only just arrived for a day of meetings with White House and congressional leaders regarding the migrant influx, an issue he has said threatens to “destroy New York City.”

On Wednesday, he said his abrupt return was driven by his desire to be present for his team, and out of concern for Ms. Suggs, who he said had gone through a “traumatic experience.” [….]

The warrant obtained by the F.B.I. to search Ms. Suggs’s home sought evidence of a conspiracy to violate campaign finance law between members of Mr. Adams’s campaign, the Turkish government or Turkish nationals, and a Brooklyn-based construction company, KSK Construction, whose owners are originally from Turkey. The warrant also sought records about donations from Bay Atlantic University, a Washington, D.C., college whose founder is Turkish and is affiliated with a school Mr. Adams visited when he went to Turkey as Brooklyn borough president in 2015.

I guess we’ll learn more as time goes on.

I hope everyone has a great Caturday and Veteran’s Day weekend!!

Wednesday Reads: So Much Winning

Posted: November 8, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: abortion rights, Afternoon Reads, Democratic Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Good Afternoon!!

Brunner Frantisek Dvorak, Woman reading

Brunner Frantisek Dvorak, Woman reading

Are you tired of winning yet? Despite the efforts of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the DC media generally, Democrats won big last night. It must be so frustrating for those media bosses who are Jonesing for another Trump term. Never mind that that would likely mean the end of the free press in the USA. Of course they are still claiming that the Democratic wins happened despite Biden. It couldn’t possibly mean that the polls saying Biden is a loser could be wrong. Meanwhile, Trump has been losing ever since the 2018 midterms. Let’s review last night’s results:

The New York Times: Abortion Rights Fuel Big Democratic Wins, and Hopes for 2024.

Democrats won decisive victories in major races across the country on Tuesday evening, overcoming the downward pull of an unpopular president, lingering inflation and growing global unrest by relying on abortion, the issue that has emerged as their fail-safe since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year.

In races in parts of the South and the Rust Belt, Democrats put abortion rights at the center of their campaigns, spending tens of millions of dollars on ads highlighting Republican support for abortion bans.

The Democratic governor of Kentucky, Andy Beshear, won a second term, after repeatedly criticizing his Republican opponent for initially backing a state abortion ban that contains no exceptions for rape or incest. In Virginia, Democrats won control of both chambers after an avalanche of advertising focused on abortion. In Pennsylvania, Democrats won a seat on the State Supreme Court, in a race that also saw a flurry of abortion-related ads.

And in Ohio, a ballot measure establishing a right to abortion in the State Constitution won by a double-digit margin, a striking demonstration of support for abortion rights in a conservative state that Donald J. Trump won twice by convincing margins.

woman-reading-ulisse-caputo

Woman reading, by Ulisse Caputo

But, the NYT says: What about Biden’s unpopularity? Will these issues still be powerful when he is on the ballot?

The results amounted to a resounding victory for abortion rights, proving once again that the issue can energize a broad coalition of Democrats, independents and even some moderate Republicans. As the country heads into the 2024 presidential election, the Republican Party continues to search for an answer to a topic that has vexed them since the fall of Roe. Democrats, meanwhile, face a daunting question of their own, in a year when President Biden’s record, personal brand and perceptions of his fitness to serve another term will be inescapable.

Will abortion still pack enough of an electoral punch to overcome Mr. Biden’s political weaknesses?

Historically, re-elections have been referendums on the incumbent president and his leadership. Democrats are hoping to transform the 2024 contest into something different — an election that revolves not around the present occupant of the White House but around the previous one, Mr. Trump, and his party’s embrace of abortion bans that are out of step with a majority of voters.

Already, Democrats have launched plans to use referendums, like the one that passed in Ohio, as a way to energize their base in 2024. There are efforts underway to get such measures on the ballot in swing states including Arizona, Florida, Nevada and Pennsylvania. For his part, Mr. Biden’s campaign released an early ad highlighting Mr. Trump’s support for overturning Roe.

Maybe, just maybe, the polls are wrong about Biden too? No, the NYT would never ever ask that question.

More bad news for Biden from Politico: Democrats romp, Youngkin flops: 4 takeaways from Tuesday’s election.

Joe Biden has had a very bad few days. His party just had a banner year.

In Tuesday night’s off-year elections, the incumbent Democratic governor in Kentucky — a state President Joe Biden lost by 26 points — handily won reelection. Democrats not only rebuffed Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s bid for total control of the state legislature by keeping the state Senate — they flipped the state House, too. And the party held a state Supreme Court seat in the nation’s largest Electoral College battleground of Pennsylvania.

anker-die-andacht-des-grossvaters-1893 Albert Anker

Painting by Albert Anker, 1893

None of these wins guarantee success for the party in 2024. Biden is losing to former President Donald Trump in a host of recent polls, and Democrats are underdogs to hold their Senate majority.

But for now, the results on Tuesday — taken together with a string of special elections throughout the year that showed Democratic candidates outperforming Biden’s vote shares in districts across the country — serve as a powerful counterpoint to the party’s doom-and-gloom over the president’s poll numbers.

Democrats’ victories won’t make those polls go away, but they should prompt a rethinking of the current political moment, with a year to go until the next general election.

Yes, last night’s wins are really bad news for Democrats in 2024. The polls were wrong about Democratic candidates, but they must be right about Biden being in trouble, right?

AP News: Virginia Democrats sweep legislative elections after campaigning on abortion rights.

Virginia Democrats who campaigned on protecting abortion rights swept Tuesday’s legislative elections, retaking full control of the General Assembly after two years of divided power.

The outcome is a sharp loss for Gov. Glenn Youngkin and his fellow Republicans, who exerted a great deal of energy, money and political capital on their effort to secure a GOP trifecta.

“It’s official: there will be absolutely no abortion ban legislation sent to Glenn Youngkin’s desk for the duration of his term in office, period, as we have thwarted MAGA Republicans’ attempt to take total control of our government and our bodies,” Virginia Senate Democratic Caucus Chair Mamie Locke said in a statement referencing Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.

Virginia was one of just four states holding legislative races this year, and it’s something of a microcosm of other closely divided states that will be critical in next year’s presidential election. That fueled outsized interest in the expensive, hard-fought legislative races, as both parties closely monitored the results for signs about voter moods heading into the 2024 campaign.

The AP thinks these results could sort of be good for Biden.

The results in Virginia — along with a win for abortion rights supporters on an Ohio ballot measure and Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s reelection in Kentucky — will comfort the national party as President Joe Biden and other Democrats are expected to prioritize abortion rights in next year’s campaign to energize their voters.

Alabaster, Vera, 1889-1964; Girl Reading

Vera Alabaster, Girl Reading

“This is a huge sign of Democrats’ continued momentum heading into 2024. With so much on the line, voters showed up at the ballot box and sent the GOP a stark warning — betting big on the MAGA agenda doesn’t fly with everyday Americans, and it will cost them once again in 2024,” Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison said of Virginia’s results in a statement.

“This is a huge sign of Democrats’ continued momentum heading into 2024. With so much on the line, voters showed up at the ballot box and sent the GOP a stark warning — betting big on the MAGA agenda doesn’t fly with everyday Americans, and it will cost them once again in 2024,” Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison said of Virginia’s results in a statement.

The New York Times: Ohio Vote Continues a Winning Streak for Abortion Rights.

Ohio’s resounding approval of a ballot measure enshrining a right to abortion in the State Constitution continued a winning streak for abortion-rights groups that have appealed directly to voters after the demise of Roe v. Wade.

Abortion rights advocates who 18 months ago saw few paths around a conservative Supreme Court and gerrymandered legislatures, have instead found success by tapping into popular support.

Issue 1, as the ballot measure is known, had become the country’s most-watched race in the off-year elections, as both parties try to gauge whether voter anger over the loss of the federal right to abortion could help Democrats in next year’s presidential and congressional races.

National groups on both sides of the debate poured money into Ohio in recent weeks, delivering a frenzy of ads and canvassers, arguments and misinformation.

While abortion-rights groups prevailed in six out of six state ballot measures last year, Ohio was considered the toughest fight yet. And the victory lifted the hopes of abortion-rights groups pushing similar measures next year in red and purple states, including Arizona, South Dakota, Missouri and Florida.

“Seven times abortion has been put on the ballot across the country, and seven times voters have turned out overwhelmingly to defend it,” said Mini Timmaraju, president of Reproductive Freedom for All, formerly Naral. “Once again, voters sent a clear message to Republicans and anti-abortion extremists: We believe in the right to abortion, and we are the majority.”

NBC News: Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear wins re-election in Kentucky.

Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky has won re-election, defying the usual political leanings of the red state, NBC News projects.

Beshear defeated GOP state Attorney General Daniel Cameron in an expensive and hard-fought race.

Beshear’s re-election in a state President Joe Biden lost by 26 percentage points in 2020 was due in part to the unique brand he has built in Kentucky, separate from the national party. But the victory is still a welcome sign for Democrats ahead of next year’s presidential race, with recent governor’s elections in Kentucky having previewed presidential victories to come.

In his bid for a second term, Beshear leveraged the popularity he built over the last four years, touting the state’s economic progress and his response to natural disasters, including devastating floods.

Beshear also ran on abortion.

Kentucky has a near-total ban on abortion, which took effect last year after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and eliminated federal protection for the right to an abortion. An ad from the Beshear campaign featured a young woman whose stepfather raped her when she was 12 years old.

“Anyone who believes there should be no exceptions for rape and incest could never understand what it’s like to stand in my shoes,” the woman said in the ad. “This is to you, Daniel Cameron: To tell a 12-year-old girl she must have the baby of her stepfather who raped her is unthinkable.”

It is a powerful ad. I’d like to post it here, but WordPress won’t let me.

A couple of smaller victories for Democrats:

GM-105-Gabriel-Metsu-A-Woman-Reading-a-Book-by-a-Window, 1653-4

A woman reading, by Gabriel Metsu, 1653-4

The Hill: Democrat flips deep-red New Jersey assembly seat in upset.

Democrats have successfully flipped a seat in New Jersey’s General Assembly in a a deep-red district that has not elected a Democratic legislator in three decades.

Decision Desk HQ projects that Democrat Avi Schnall has won a seat in the assembly, unseating incumbent Republican Assemblyman Ned Thomson. Voters in each New Jersey legislative district choose two assembly members to represent them, so the contest was a four-way race featuring two Democrats and two Republicans. 

Schnall was elected alongside incumbent Republican Assemblyman Sean Kean in the 30th District.

Schnall is a former New Jersey director of an organization that advocates for the interests of Orthodox Jews called Agudath Israel of America. He received significant backing from the township of Lakewood’s Orthodox Jewish community.

He’s also reportedly a former Republican and could vote with Republicans in the assembly on some issues. But the flip is still a big win for Democrats.

The Daily Beast: Moms for Liberty Candidates Take a Beating in Some School Races.

Moms for Liberty, the right-wing “parental rights” group advocating a hardline anti-woke agenda in America’s schools, had a rough night in Tuesday’s elections for school board seats around the country.

The organization, considered an extremist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, endorsed scores of candidates in school districts in several states from Alaska to North Carolina. But the group’s record backing book bans, opposing racially inclusive lessons in classrooms, and pushing anti-LGBTQ messages seemingly failed to connect with voters in multiple ballots.

A key battleground for MfL was Pennsylvania, where the group endorsed over 50 candidates in some 28 districts.In 2021, Moms for Liberty claimed credit for 33 seats in Bucks County, claiming that eight out of 13 districts “now have a majority of school board members that value parental rights.” Ahead of Tuesday’s election, MfL endorsed only a single candidate in the county—though some of this year’s candidates in Philadelphia suburbs sympathetic to the extreme organization may have feared that an outright endorsement from the extreme organization could scare off moderate voters, according to ThePhiladelphia Inquirer.

A “voter guide” from the group earlier this year recommended candidates in five districts but stressed that the messaging was “not an official endorsement.” All five of the Republican candidates in Central Bucks—which has been roiled for years by culture war rows—were included in the guide. But after Tuesday’s vote, the district’s school board was swept by Democrats who won five seats.

More wins described at the link.

Not election related, but a very big win for Biden and Democrats:

NBC News: Senate confirms Biden’s 150th judge.

President Joe Biden has hit a milestone as the Democratic-led Senate confirmed his 150th federal judge.

Back-to-back votes Tuesday made Kenly Kiya Kato and Julia Kobick district court judges in California and Massachusetts, respectively, totaling 113 district court judges chosen by Biden.

Reading Woman, by Patrick Bornemann

Reading Woman, by Patrick Bornemann

He has also secured lifetime appointments for 36 appeals court judges — who have the final word on most matters of federal law — and one Supreme Court justice: Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called it “a very important day in the Senate.”

“Our 150th judge confirmed under President Biden,” he told reporters. “That’s really a great record: 150 judges who have brought integrity and impartiality to the bench, 150 judges who’ve expanded the diversity and dynamism of our courts, 150 judges who are restoring Americans’ trust in the federal judiciary.”

Schumer added that Kobick, who was confirmed on a 52-46 vote Tuesday evening, is “our 100th female judge” the Senate has confirmed in the Biden era.

“We’re making the bench look more like America. It never did,” he said. “And we’re making giant strides, more than any other Senate has, to get that done.”

Reshaping the courts with more public defenders and greater diversity has been a high priority for Biden and Schumer. In four years, former President Donald Trump and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky steered through 234 federal judges — most of them young, conservative and poised to serve for decades — including three Supreme Court justices who tilted the court to the right and paved the way for the landmark ruling last year that overturned Roe v. Wade.

I’ll end with some commentary on last night’s election results:

Noah Berlatsky at Public Notice: Elections are more important than polls.

Some 48 hours ago, pundits were rushing to explain how, why, where, and exactly to what extent the Democratic Party is doomed.

A New York Times/Sienna poll released last weekend showed President Joe Biden catastrophically trailing indicted orange gasbag of hatred former President Donald Trump in virtually every key swing state. According to the poll, Trump leads Biden by five points in Arizona, four in Pennsylvania, six in Georgia, and 11 in Nevada. Analysts like Nate Silver and Matt Yglesias made panicky noises, condemning Dems for not mounting a serious primary challenge to the incumbent. There was weeping, there was gnashing of teeth.

And then, we had an actual election.

Young Woman Reading, by Nagy Vilmos

Young Woman Reading, by Nagy Vilmos

Tuesday night’s results are difficult to square with the “Biden and Democrats are doomed” narrative. In an off-year election, with the incumbent president’s approval rating mired below 40 percent, you would normally expect the president’s party to be stomped, crushed, spindled, and obliterated.

But instead, Democrats did fine. In fact, they did better than fine, and then even better than that. Tuesday looked a lot like a blue wave, with Democrats romping to victory in blue and purple states and overperforming dramatically in red ones.

It’s difficult to predict what this means for 2024. But we know that in 2022 and now in 2023, Biden’s low approval rating appeared to be entirely disconnected from Democratic performance. That should at least give the likes of Silver and Yglesias a moment’s pause in their punditing of apocalypse….

The most impressive victory for Democrats on Tuesday was in deep red Kentucky. Democrat Andy Beshear managed to win the governor’s race in 2019, when Donald Trump’s unpopularity helped Democrats to a strong national performance. Beshear’s polling for 2023 showed a close race between him and Trump-endorsed challenger Daniel Cameron; conventional wisdom was that Beshear could win, but would probably have a narrower margin given Biden’s approval numbers.

Instead, Beshear won easily, 52.5 percent to 47.5 percent, far outpacing his narrow .4 percent win in 2019. For the second straight year, Trump’s endorsement backfired in a key race (remember Dr. Oz and Herschel Walker?).

Many analysts attributed Beshear’s win in a Trump +26 state to his personal brand and relentless campaigning. And it’s clear that Beshear is an extremely talented politician. But in general, when your party’s president has an approval rating 17 points underwater, even talented politicians struggle. A five point win for a Democrat in Kentucky cannot be reasonably described as a struggle.

Read more analysis at the link.

David Kurtz at Talking Points Memo: Please, Please, It’s Too Much Winning. We Can’t Take It Any More.

Republicans are licking their wounds and surveying the carnage from yesterday’s election, but there’s no sign that it will break Donald Trump’s grip on the GOP.

You probably remember Trump’s immortal line from 2016: “We’re going to win so much, you may even get tired of winning.” The next line in that riff is the pièce de résistance: “Please, please, it’s too much winning. We can’t take it any more.”

Here’s how all that winning is looking right now 😭😭😭 …

  • Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) on Newsmax: “It was a secret sauce for disaster in Ohio. I don’t know what they were thinking. Thank goodness that most of the states in this country don’t allow you to put everything on the ballot because pure democracies are not the way to run a country.”
  • Sean Hannity on Fox News: “Democrats are trying to scare women into thinking Republicans don’t want abortion legal under any circumstances.”
  • Newsmax anchor: “It does seem like the Republican Party generally has a real problem with winning.”

Watch the videos at the link, because I’m not allowed to post them here. Santorum really stepped in it, but that’s nothing new for him.

It was a great night, and I don’t believe the polls. They’ve been wrong since 2016. Besides, the 2020  election is a year away. Polls are meaningless at this point, despite what the pundits want you to believe.

Soooo much winning! Can you stand it? Have a great Wednesday everyone!!

Lazy Caturday Reads

Posted: November 4, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: abortion rights, Afternoon Reads, cat art, Cats, caturday, just because, LGBTQIA+ | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments
By Daniel Ryan

By Daniel Ryan

Happy Caturday!!

It’s the weekend, and I don’t feel like getting down in the weeds about all the bad stuff that’s happening; so I’m going to share a mixed bag of recent stories that caught my fancy. Since it’s Caturday, I’m going to begin with a story about cats.

Margaret Osborne at Smithsonian Magazine: Cats Make Nearly 300 Different Facial Expressions.

…[R]esearchers have discovered that cats use nearly 300 distinct facial expressions to communicate with one another, according to a study published in October in the journal Behavioral Processes.

“Many people still consider cats—erroneously—to be a largely nonsocial species,” Daniel Mills, a veterinary behaviorist at the University of Lincoln who was not involved in the study, tells Science’s Christa Lesté-Lasserre. “There is clearly a lot going on that we are not aware of.”

To collect data on these furry subjects, researcher Lauren Scott of the University of Kansas Medical Center frequented a cat cafe located in Los Angeles for about a year and recorded video footage of interactions between 53 cats. All were adult domestic shorthairs, and the group included males and females, per the study.

In total, Scott gathered 194 minutes of feline footage that contained 186 interactions. With the help of her co-author, evolutionary psychologist Brittany N. Florkiewicz of Lyon College, she analyzed the cats’ facial signals. 

By Michael Bridges

By Michael Bridges

The pair discovered 276 expressions made up of a combination of 26 facial movements, including shifts in ear position, blinks, nose licks and whisker and mouth movements. (In comparison, humans make about 44 facial movements, and dogs have 27.) Of all expressions, about 45 percent—or 126—were categorized as friendly, 37 percent were aggressive and 18 percent were ambiguous, writes Jennifer Nalewicki for Live Science. 

“These findings show it is good to look at a cat’s ears, eyes and whiskers to understand if they are feeling friendly,” Florkiewicz tells Earth.com’sAndrei Ionescu. “Their mouth provides a lot of information about whether a cat fight is likely. People may think that cats’ facial expressions are all about warning other cats and people off, but this shows just how social and tolerant pet cats can actually be.”

The team also identified a “common play face” among cats, which was characterized by a dropped jaw and drawn back corners of the mouth, per Live Science. People, dogs and monkeys share similar expressions in playful scenarios.

There’s a bit more at the link.

NBC News published an interesting AP story from Massachusetts: Group seeks to clear names of all accused, convicted or executed for witchcraft in Massachusetts.

In 1648, Margaret Jones, a midwife, became the first person in Massachusetts — the second in New England — to be executed for witchcraft, decades before the infamous Salem witch trials.

Nearly four centuries later, the state and region are still working to come to grips with the scope of its witch trial legacy.

The latest effort comes from a group dedicated to clearing the names of all those accused, arrested or indicted for witchcraft in Massachusetts, whether or not the accusations ended in hanging.

The Massachusetts Witch-Hunt Justice Project, made up of history buffs and descendants, is hoping to persuade the state to take a fuller reckoning of its early history, according to Josh Hutchinson, the group’s leader.

Hundreds of individuals were accused of witchcraft in what would become the Commonwealth of Massachusetts between 1638 and 1693. Most escaped execution.

While much attention has focused on clearing the names of those put to death in Salem, most of those caught up in witch trials throughout the 1600s have largely been ignored, including five women hanged for witchcraft in Boston between 1648 and 1688.

By Matt McCarthy“It’s important that we correct the injustices of the past,” said Hutchinson, who noted he counts both accusers and victims among his ancestors. “We’d like an apology for all of the accused or indicted or arrested.”

For now, the group has been collecting signatures for a petition but hopes to take their case to the Statehouse.Among those accused of witchcraft in Boston was Ann Hibbins, sister-in-law to Massachusetts Gov. Richard Bellingham, who was executed in 1656. A character based on Hibbins would later appear in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter,” published in 1850.

Another accused Boston witch, known as Goodwife Ann Glover or Goody Glover, was hanged in the city in 1688. A plaque dedicated to her is located on the front of a Catholic church in the city’s North End neighborhood, describing her as “the first Catholic martyr in Massachusetts.” It’s one of the few physical reminders of the city’s witch trial history.

The group has also encouraged Connecticut to clear the names of accused witches in their state. Read more at the NBC News link.

Mark Meadows is in more trouble–his book publisher is suing him. The Daily Beast: Mark Meadows’ Publisher Sues Him for Millions Over Election Lies in Book.

The publisher of Mark Meadows’ book The Chief’s Chief has filed suit against the former White House chief of staff, seeking millions in damages after he reportedly copped to lying in the book about the 2020 election being “rigged” and “stolen.”

Meadows reportedly met repeatedly with Jack Smith’s team in its investigation into election interference and had admitted the 2020 election was the most secure in U.S. history—contradicting much of what he’d claimed in his book and allegedly breaking his agreement with the publisher.

“Meadows’ reported statements to the Special Prosecutor and/or his staff [sic] and his reported grand jury testimony squarely contradict the statements in his Book, one central theme of which is that President Trump was the true winner of the 2020 Presidential Election and that election was ‘stolen’ and ‘rigged’ with the help from ‘allies in the liberal media,’ who ignored actual evidence of fraud, right there in plain sight for anyone to access and analyze,” the lawsuit from All Seasons Press states.

ABC News, citing unnamed sources, reported that Meadows negotiated an immunity agreement with the special counsel’s office and in the process admitted to his lies about the 2020 election. Meadows’ lawyer later disputed the accuracy of the report….

The lawsuit claims that Meadows agreed that “all statements contained in the Work are true and based on reasonable research for accuracy,” and that he claimed to have “not made any misrepresentations to the Publisher about the Work.”

The book weighs heavily on Meadows’ claims that the election was “rigged” —debunked claims that All Seasons Press was happy to run at the time, but that now come under renewed scrutiny with Meadows’ reported admission that he propagated falsehoods.

More details at the link.

Some Senate Republicans have finally had it with Tommy Tuberville’s antics. Politico: Republicans, fed up with Tuberville, plot ways to bust his military blockade.

Republicans have had it with Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s nine-month blockade of military promotions. And after publicly putting pressure on the Alabama Republican to lift his hold on hundreds of officers, GOP senators are plotting new ways to break the impasse.

During a special meeting planned for next week, some will ask Tuberville to focus his obstruction on only the Pentagon’s civilian nominees and not uniformed officers who have nothing to do with the policy he’s protesting. Others want to shift the fight to the courts to challenge the policy at the center of the hold, which reimburses troops who have to travel to obtain abortions and other reproductive services.

fare-thee-well-elisheva-nesis

Fare Thee Well, by Elisheva Nesis

Democrats, meanwhile, are devising their own ways to get around the blockade, and are hoping the GOP frustration they see will push Republicans to support their idea.

The deadlock reached a dramatic and very public phase when a cadre of GOP senators confronted Tuberville on the Senate floor Wednesday night, blaming the Alabama lawmaker’s blanket hold for weakening the military at a precarious moment for the world.

The four-hour-plus event, which forced Tuberville to object to votes on 61 nominees, marked a pivotal moment for Republicans as their private frustrations with the freshman lawmaker spilled over onto live TV for all to see.

“I think what it says about where things are is Tommy’s losing support,” Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota said of the Republican-on-Republican fight. “And you’re seeing the frustration build up because the consequences are building up.”

And while the attempt was doomed — those Republicans knew Tuberville wouldn’t budge — it’s also made some Senate Democrats optimistic that enough GOP members will join their push to confirm most of the promotions in one big bloc.

What an idiot. Alabama should be ashamed. Tuberville doesn’t even live there. He’s reportedly lived in Florida for decades.

Rolling Stone’s Cameron Joseph on Tuberville: Is Tommy Tuberville the Most Ignorant Man in D.C.?

Tommy Tuberville’s Republican colleagues had finally had it with him.

For months, the Alabama senator and former college football coach has blocked the confirmation of hundreds of senior military officers because he’s mad about a Pentagon policy that ensures soldiers have abortion access.

The group of anti-abortion Republicans had worked with him since February to try to find a solution. They’d flattered his ego. They’d mostly defended him in public as his game of chicken stretched nine months, punishing hundreds of senior service members who have no say over the policy and hurting U.S. military readiness at a time of global chaos.

But on Wednesday, their patience had worn out.

Five of Tuberville’s GOP colleagues took to the Senate floor to lambast his positions, begging him to relent and forcing him to object over and over again to allow a vote on more than 60 nominations that he’s blocked. The senators read off the sterling biographies of dozens of service members with increasing frustration.

Stranger, by Rudolf KosowAlaska Sen. Dan Sullivan, a colonel in the Marine reserves who served as assistant secretary of state during George W. Bush’s administration, was particularly irate.

“Xi Jinping is watching this right now,” Sullivan, at times yelling, declared on the Senate floor as Tuberville looked on from his desk. “He’s loving this. So is Putin. They’re loving this! How dumb can we be, man?”

“We’re going to look back at this episode and just be stunned at what a national-security suicide mission this became,” Sullivan exclaimed later on during the hours-long standoff. He later mocked Tuberville’s repeated claim that his holds weren’t hurting the military’s preparedness: “That this is not impacting readiness is patently absurd.”

On Tuberville’s history:

Tuberville spent most of his career coaching football — most notably at Auburn University, which made him a household name in the state he now represents. He still prefers being called “coach” instead of by his current job title — his official Senate website calls him “Coach Tommy Tuberville.” But his old nickname from his sideline days may be more appropriate: “The Riverboat Gambler.”

Back then, Tuberville was known to ignore the odds and pick the most aggressive play. It’s a habit that’s stuck now that he’s in the Senate.

That policy that triggered Tuberville’s anger was put in place by the Biden administration after the Supreme Court struck down the federal right to an abortion. Fifteen states, including Tuberville’s Alabama, have banned the procedure. Enlisted service members don’t get to choose where they and their families live — they’re stationed wherever they’re needed, many of them in ruby-red states where abortion access no longer exists and other reproductive care is severely limited. The Pentagon’s fix was to offer soldiers and their families time off and funds to travel to states where abortion remains legal.

Tuberville was irate when he found out about the workaround. His obstructionist response has hamstrung the Pentagon and forced officers who have nothing to do with the policy to serve as pawns in his policy fight….

There’s some irony that Tuberville, who frequently says he ran for office so he could give back to America in the same way his own father did with his years of military service, has almost single-handedly paralyzed the entire leadership of the U.S military — in a time of global conflagration, no less. (Tuberville reiterated that he won’t budge even after Hamas attacked Israel.)

In some ways, Tuberville is a mustache away from being the bizzarro Ted Lasso of the Senate — a folksy and affable former college football coach who makes a radical career change, then makes things up as he goes along while blithely ignoring the status quo. But instead of an aw-shucks success story, he’s a testament and a cautionary tale for those who wing it.

There’s still more at the link.

Speaking of idiots, a couple of stories on the new House Speaker Mike Johnson.

Andrew Kaczynski at CNN: Before he became a politician, House Speaker Mike Johnson partnered with an anti-gay conversion therapy group.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson closely collaborated with a group in the mid-to-late 2000s that promoted “conversion therapy,” a discredited practice that asserted it could change the sexual orientation of gay and lesbian individuals.

Prior to launching his political career, Johnson, a lawyer, gave legal advice to an organization called Exodus International and partnered with the group to put on an annual anti-gay event aimed at teens, according to a CNN KFile review of more than a dozen of Johnson’s media appearances from that timespan.

Founded in 1976, Exodus International was a leader in the so-called “ex-gay” movement, which aimed to make gay individuals straight through conversion therapy programs using religious and counseling methods. Exodus International connected ministries across the world using these controversial approaches.

1-hug-needed-anita-zotkina

Hug Needed, by Anita Zotkina

The group shut down in 2013, with its founder posting a public apology for the “pain and hurt” his organization caused. Conversion therapy has been widely condemned by most major medical institutions and has been shown to be harmful to struggling LGBTQ people.

At the time, Johnson worked as an attorney for the socially conservative legal advocacy group, Alliance Defense Fund (ADF). He and his group collaborated with Exodus from 2006 to 2010.

For years, Johnson and Exodus worked on an event started by ADF in 2005 known as the “Day of Truth” – a counterprotest to the “Day of Silence,” a day in schools in which students stayed silent to bring awareness to bullying faced by LGBTQ youth.

The Day of Truth sought to counter that silence by distributing information about what Johnson described as the “dangerous” gay lifestyle.

“I mean, our race, the size of our feet, the color of our eyes, these are things we’re born with and we cannot change,” Johnson told one radio host in 2008 promoting the event. “What these adult advocacy groups like the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network are promoting is a type of behavior. Homosexual behavior is something you do, it’s not something that you are.”

Sigh . . .

The New York Post got the goods on Johnson’s so-called “adopted son.”: Mike Johnson’s adopted son says he’s thankful to the House Speaker’s family after his troubled past is revealed.

House Speaker Mike Johnson’s adopted son has had a string of run-ins with law enforcement for crimes ranging from drug possession to theft since leaving the care of the Louisiana Republican congressman and his wife Kelly, records show, but he’s since turned his life around.

The Johnsons met Michael T. James, now 40, when he was a teenager while the couple were doing charity work for a Christian ministry in Baton Rouge, La., in 1996.

The newlyweds took the troubled then-14-year-old into their home and filed court papers to become his legal guardians in 1999 after James became homeless.

However, once the Johnsons moved from Baton Rouge to Mike’s hometown of Shreveport in 2002, James stayed behind and struck out on his own, as he was then legally an adult. 

Since 2003, James has been arrested more than a dozen times, according to records reviewed by The Post.

Charges against him in Florida ranged from marijuana and cocaine possession, theft, possession of a concealed weapon, violating a protective order, and possession of drug paraphernalia.

On two occasions he was sentenced to prison time, serving 37 days on the cocaine possession rap in 2003 and a 30-day term in 2007 on a retail theft charge.

He was also ordered by a court to take an anger management class in 2017.

James is understood to have moved around to a number of places during this time period, at times living with his biological mother and older brother, moving to both Florida and Texas.

Additional court documents seen by The Post indicated James was indicted on a theft charge in 2003 while living in Houston.

One more read before I wrap this up. This is the best thing I read this week.

Brian Karam at Salon: Far-right MAGA theocrats: Most dangerous threat to America.

The world inches closer to a war that only psychopaths want to see.

On Tuesday the FBI issued a warning that the chance of staged terrorist attacks in the United States has grown since the war began in Gaza. In the White House briefing later that day, Fox News reporter Peter Doocy asked National Security Council spokesman John Kirby: “Has the White House considered the possibility that a terrorist could be in the country right now after crossing the southern border?”

Obviously they have, or the FBI wouldn’t have issued the warning. The question remains, however, what our government response would be to such an attack. That has already been discussed at the highest levels in our government, and the public has a right to know what that reaction would be.

So, although I wasn’t called on, as Kirby left the stage I interrupted to ask the only question I thought mattered: “John, wait a minute. Before you leave: If Hamas terrorists attack the U.S., would the U.S. put boots on the ground in the Middle East?”

Cat Messenger, by Elisheva Nesis

Cat Messenger, by Elisheva Nesis

Kirby stopped his retreat from the stage, and press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre let him answer. Kirby was succinct: “I won’t speculate about that, Brian. We’ll obviously do what we have to do to protect our troops and our people.” 

On that same day, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer showed up at the White House with a bipartisan group — Sens. Todd Young, R-Ind., Mike Rounds, R-S.D. and Martin Heinrich, D-N.M. — to talk to President Biden and help steer a congressional response to the threat posed by SKYNET … sorry, I mean AI. It’s a bipartisan effort, but there are both Republicans and Democrats who remain opposed.  

Bipartisanship, once seen as a laudable goal on many issues, is now sneered at by most remaining members of the Republican Party. Working with Democrats, for them, is like choosing death over a slice of cake. (Apologies to Eddie Izzard.)

Most Republicans are so dismayed at the prospect of working with Democrats that they want to scuttle efforts to fund the war in Ukraine, virtually isolating Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who seems to be nearly alone on an island calling for aid to continue. It’s a rare display of common sense from the 81-year-old Kentuckian, whose primary focus is on political power. 

“No Americans are getting killed in Ukraine,” McConnell said. “We’re rebuilding our industrial base. The Ukrainians are destroying the army of one of our biggest rivals. I have a hard time finding anything wrong with that. I think it’s wonderful that they’re defending themselves — and also the notion that the Europeans are not doing enough. They’ve done almost $90 billion, they’re housing a bunch of refugees who escaped. I think that our NATO allies in Europe have done quite a lot.” 

Few Democrats have said it any better, and it spelled out exactly what the stakes are for the U.S. in the ongoing war in Ukraine. Remember that Vlad “The Impaler” Putin has clearly suggested that he wants to get the old Soviet Union band back together — Ukraine is just the first stop in a quest for global hegemony.

Karam on Mike Johnson:

Fellow Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said that McConnell was “out of touch” with his party’s base while Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley chided McConnell for siding with Democrats — and that was before Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas gave Hawley a tongue-lashing on border issues later that afternoon. It looks like Putin still has a few fans in the GOP.

In the House, those would likely include newly-minted House Speaker Mike Johnson (and that still sounds like a Bart Simpson prank call to Moe’s Bar), who took on McConnell directly, pushing to unlink aid to Israel from aid to Ukraine.  

While the world burns, Johnson and the MAGA wing of the Republican Party — which seems to have swallowed the evangelical movement while also embracing it (a T-1000 morphing into Sarah Connor is just about the right image) — is embracing the darkest verses of the Bible, apparently pushing for apocalypse with an enthusiasm only rivaled by Saul’s slaughter of Christians before he changed his name to Paul.

I’m waiting for Mel Brooks to break out into song: “Let all those who wish to confess their evil ways and accept and embrace the true church convert now or forever burn in hell — for now begins the Inquisition!”

The House of Representatives, now run by Johnson, offers a discount version of the apocalyptic orgasm the holy rollers have dreamed of for years. They’ve renewed the Inquisition and seem determined to convert the U.S. into a theocracy run by people who will thump you with the Bible, but haven’t read much of it. 

Lord, how they love to preach fire and brimstone. But the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes? Forget it. Matthew 25:40: “Whatever you did it for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me”? Not a chance. They’ve embraced only the Old Testament angry God and the apocalyptic parts of Revelation brought on by ergot poisoning. 

I know I’ve quoted too much, but there’s still a lot more to read at the link.

That’s my contribution for today. Let me know what you think. And have a great weekend!!

Wednesday Reads

Posted: November 1, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Afternoon Reads, Donald Trump | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Good Afternoon!!

Gauguin_1888_Pêcheur_et_baigneurs_sur_l'Aven Paul Gauguin

Paul Gauguin, Pêcheur et baigneurs sur l’Aven

How long has it been since we had normal news cycles during the week and slow news days on the weekends? Was it this crazy before 2015, when Trump decided to make our lives a living hell?

I know there were crises during the Obama administration–the financial meltdown, the Tea Party, but it wasn’t this insane, was it? I don’t know. I don’t recall lying awake at night from anxiety over the state of our nation when Obama was president. That has been happening to me since Trump’s 2016 campaign.

I don’t think we lived in fear of losing our democracy before Trump came along. There was a rise in racist incidents after Obama was elected, but we didn’t have public officials inciting an insurrection with neo-fascist groups leading a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol, injuring hundreds of police officers in the process. 

Now we have a former “president” who was impeached twice and has been indicted four times running for the Republican nomination for president in 2024. The man is also on trial for damages in two civil cases, having already been found liable for bank, tax, and insurance fraud, defamation, and sexual assault.

His plans if elected include pulling the U.S. out of NATO, handing over Ukraine to Russia, firing long-term federal employees and replacing them with political appointees, politicizing the DOJ in order to prosecute his political enemies, and getting rid of the FBI. I’m sure I’ve left things out of this list.

Despite all this, the media largely treats Trump as if he were a legitimate political candidate, ignoring his violent threats against judges, prosecutors, and other “enemies,” and his obviously declining cognitive abilities, while accepting Republicans’ claims that President Biden is the one who is too old and befuddled to be president.

There have been more unsettling developments just recently, with the terrifying war between Israel and Hamas and the new House Speaker who openly promotes policies that would overturn the Constitution. We’ve already focused quite a bit on Speaker Mike Johnson, but there is still more to examine. 

But first, the latest on the war.

NBC News: Desperate search for survivors after Gaza refugee camp is hit in Israeli airstrike.

Desperate Palestinians were using their bare hands Tuesday to retrieve bodies buried in the ruins of a Gaza refugee camp moments after it was hit by an airstrike that reduced more than a dozen buildings to rubble, killed dozens and wounded hundreds of people, according to local health officials.

The Israeli military said its attack on the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza killed senior Hamas commander Ibrahim Biari, who they said was an architect of the Oct. 7 terror attack that left more than 1,400 people dead in Israel across kibbutzim, at a music festival and throughout in the nation’s south, with hundreds more taken hostage.

“Tonight we eliminated the murderous terrorist Ibrahim Biari,” IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari said.

Biari was the commander of Hamas’ Central Jabaliya Battalion and he was targeted as part of a wide-scale “strike on terrorists and terror infrastructure,” the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement.

“During his assassination, many terrorists were killed, terrorists who stayed with him in Mena and in the underground area of the building,” Hagari said.

The aftermath:

Footage of the aftermath of the attack showed hundreds of anguished people clambering in and out of what appears to be several giant craters and struggling to find buried victims.

Brynhild Parke, Tuscan Landscape“My three kids are gone, my kids, no one is alive,” one despondent man named Jabar could be heard saying as his friends tried to console him.

Dr. Atef Al-Kahlot, director of the nearby Indonesian Hospital, said the total number of people wounded and killed is about 400.

“We are still searching for missing persons and carrying out rescue operations from under the rubble in Jabalia,” Al-Kahlot said at a press conference.

Mohammad Al-Khatib, who lives in the Beit Lahia project, next to the Indonesian Hospital, said that after they heard the bombs, then ambulances and private cars trying to rescue people, he and others rushed to the hospital. 

“Oh God! The things we found!” he said. 

“We found people reducing the wounded and the martyred and taking them to the hospital. … The problem is that there’s no empty spaces in the hospital. The people and the wounded are lying on the floor.”

CBS News: First foreigners leave Gaza through Rafah border crossing into Egypt.

Hundreds of foreign passport holders and some of the wounded trapped in Gaza started leaving the war-torn territory Wednesday as the Rafah border crossing to Egypt opened to them for the first time since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel. A list of foreign passport holders who can leave Gaza via the Rafah crossing has been released by Gaza’s Hamas-controlled Interior Ministry.  

At least five NGO workers who have been confirmed as Americans are listed as approved to cross on Wednesday, but it remains to be seen how many of at least 400 American citizens the U.S. State Department says are stuck in Gaza will be able to cross in coming days.

One American trapped in Gaza told CBS News she does not expect to cross yet. 

“They started letting foreigners out today but it’s not Americans because I guess we’re not as important as we thought,” Utah resident Susan Beseiso told CBS News on Wednesday.  

“The American Embassy and the State Department haven’t called us since the last time we went to the border and got bombed four times. They haven’t been communicating with us or doing anything to get us out,” Beseiso said….

Footage showed the gate of the crossing on the Palestinian side of the border being opened Wednesday morning as people began to cross into Egypt for the first time since the war began. Convoys of desperately needed aid have previously passed between Egypt and Gaza but no people had been allowed through the Rafah crossing up until now.

At least 320 foreign passport holders had crossed into Egypt from Gaza, Reuters reported Wednesday. Some 545 foreigners and dual nationals along with dozens of sick and wounded were expected to leave throughout the day. 

AP (via Politico) reports on more Israeli attacks that took place today: Another wave of Israeli strikes hit Gaza refugee camp as crossing opens for foreigners and wounded.

RAFAH, Gaza Strip — Israeli airstrikes hit apartment buildings in a Gaza refugee camp for the second day in a row Wednesday, Palestinian officials said, as the territory’s only functioning border post opened to allow foreign passport holders to leave for the first time since war broke out over three weeks ago.

autumn-landscape Vincent Van Gogh

Autumn Landscape, Vincent Van Gogh

Al-Jazeera television, one of the few media outlets still reporting from northern Gaza, aired footage of devastation in the Jabaliya camp near Gaza City and of several wounded people, including children, being brought to a nearby hospital. The Hamas-run government said the strikes killed and wounded The Al-Jazeera footage showed nearly identical scenes as the day before, with dozens of men digging through the gray rubble of demolished multistory buildings in search of survivors.many people, but the exact toll was not yet known.

The toll from Tuesday’s strikes was also unknown, though the director of a nearby hospital said hundreds were killed or wounded. Israel said those strikes killed dozens of militants, including a senior Hamas commander who was involved in the militants’ bloody Oct. 7 rampage that ignited the war, and destroyed militant tunnels beneath the buildings.

The strikes came as Israeli ground forces pushed to the outskirts of Gaza City, days after launching a new phase of the war that Israel’s leaders say will be long and difficult. As when Israeli troops first pushed into Gaza in larger numbers over the weekend, internet and phone service was cut for several hours Wednesday.

Just one story about the new House Speaker–on his response to war–and a few more links to check out.

The Washington Post: GOP plan to fund Israel aid with IRS cuts would cost $90 billion, tax chief says.

House Republicans’ plan to pay for emergency aid to Israel by cutting the Internal Revenue Service’s budget would increase the deficit by $90 billion over 10 years, the chief of the tax agency said Tuesday.

Seeking to pay for $14 billion in proposed aid to Israel sought by both parties, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Monday unveiled legislation that would cut roughly $14 billion from funds recently approved by Democrats to expand the IRS. But Daniel Werfel, who was appointed by President Biden as the IRS commissioner last year, said the cuts would make the bill more expensive, by reducing audits of the wealthy and large corporations and hampering the agency’s ability to collect revenue that funds the government.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said last year that the $80 billion IRS expansion would cut the deficit by more than $100 billion by improving collections and enforcement. The IRS expansion was approved to pay for Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act, Biden’s signature economic legislation, in 2022.

Although it specifies that taxpayer services would be spared from cuts, the House GOP bill does not identify precisely how it would cut $14 billion from that $80 billion expansion that has improved a broad range of agency functions. The legislation would also prohibit the CBO from counting the legislation against existing domestic spending caps. The nonpartisan budget office estimated that the bill would add $12.5 billion to the deficit through 2033 — far less than Werfel’s estimate.

“This type of the cut, over the cost of the Inflation Reduction Act, would actually cost taxpayers $90 billion — that’s with a ‘B,’” Werfel told The Washington Post.

Of course this bill is going nowhere, because Democrats and Senators of both parties won’t support it. And if it got to Biden’s desk, he would veto it. What it will do is slow down necessary support for Israel and Ukraine.

More interesting stories on Johnson:

David Firestone at The New York Times: Mike Johnson Just Confirmed How Unserious He Is.

Amanda Marcotte at Salon: “A kind of Stepford wife”: It’s more than a prayer keeping Mike Johnson’s wife suddenly out of view.

Thomas Zimmer at Substack: “Faith and Family” vs Democracy. On the normalization of Mike Johnson, the media’s inclination to accommodate power, and the perpetuation of “real American” extremism.

Roger Sollenberger at The Daily Beast: Does New Speaker of the House Mike Johnson Have a Bank Account?

On Trump’s trials

Today Don Jr. is expected to testify in the New York fraud case. Ivanka and Eric Trump, as well as Donald Trump himself are also scheduled to testify in coming days.

The Washington Post: Transformed Trump family will take center stage in New York courtroom.

Donald Trump had been a pariah on Wall Street for years when a banker in Deutsche Bank’s private wealth department started speaking with his daughter Ivanka. After a number of meetings, the banker emailed a supervisor in 2011with an important update about the future of the Trump business.

“Ivanka Trump will become a client for sure. She is the heir apparent of this Empire,” wrote the banker, Rosemary Vrablic,according to an email that is part of a filing in a civil case against Trump now underway in New York.

autumn_leaves, John Everett Millais

Autumn Leaves, John Everett Millais

Grounded in its real estate empire, the family’s future seemed clear then.

But Trump’s four-year presidency — and the tumultuous period of investigations and criminal and civil litigation since he left office — have reshaped much of the Trump family’s wealth, business and dynamics with one another, according to court filings, financial records, emails and interviews with people close to the family.

Ivanka Trump, once considered by Trump’s business partners to be the most likely of his children to take over the Trump Organization, has largely stepped away from the limelight of both business and politics, at times telling others she was stung by the scrutiny she received in Washington,according to people who know her. She and husband Jared Kushner, who both served as senior White House aides when her father was in office, now spend most of their time in Miami, after purchasing a mansion on a private island while Kushner luresMiddle Eastern business for his investment fund.

These days, it is Trump’s second son, Eric,who as executive vice president of the Trump Organizationis most involved in the family real estate business, while his eldest, Donald Trump Jr., is said by campaign advisers to be more interested in politics. Of the three, Eric Trump now speaks most regularly to his father, Trump advisers say, as the two have grown closer as a result of the second Trump son’s leadership of the family business. One adviser estimated the two now speak multiple times a day.

The relationships between Trump and his three eldest children are likely to be on display over the next two weeks, as Donald Jr., Eric and Ivanka are all scheduled to take the witness stand in the civil fraud trial in New York over the Trump Organization’s business practices. Donald Jr., 45, is up first, scheduled to appear on Wednesday; Eric Trump, 39, is scheduled to appear the following day, and Ivanka Trump, 42, on Nov. 8. Trump himself is scheduled to testify on Monday.

The four criminal trials Trump separately faces potentially threaten his freedom and could affect next year’s elections, as Trump is the leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. They involve allegations that he tried to overturn a presidential election, mishandled classified documents, obstructed justice and directed a hush money payment to an adult-film actress.

But the New York civil trial potentially has more immediate ramifications for Trump’s family.

Read more at the WaPo.

One more on Trump, recommended by J.J. This is by Mark R. Reiff of UC Davis from The Conversation, via Raw Story: Trump’s rhetoric echoes a fascist commitment to a destructive and bloody rebirth: expert​.

Reiff highlights the media’s failure to deal with Trump’s insane, violent rhetoric.

Former President Donald Trump’s rhetoric has regularly bordered on the incitement of violence. Lately, however, it has become even more violent. Yet both the press and the public have largely just shrugged their shoulders.

As a political philosopher who studies extremism, I believe people should be more worried about this.

Mark Milley, the outgoing chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, is guilty of “treason,” Trump said in September 2023, just for reassuring the Chinese that the U.S. had no plans to attack in the waning days of the Trump administration. And for this, Trump says, Milley deserves death.

Watts, James Thomas, 1853-1930; Autumn Evening on the Wharfe

Watts, James Thomas; Autumn Evening on the Wharfe

And back in April, Trump said that his indictment by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg would result in “death and destruction.” Then, in early October, Trump urged people to “go after” Letitia James, the New York attorney general who filed suit against him for business fraud.

Trump’s prior rhetoric is also now on record as having inspired many of those convicted to engage in insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

But it is not just government officials whom Trump suggests be targeted for extrajudicial killings. Mere shoplifters should be killed too. “Very simply, if you rob a store, you can fully expect to be shot as you are leaving,” Trump said to cheers at the California Republican Party convention in September.

This rhetoric may seem like crazy bluster, which is no doubt why many people appear prepared to ignore it. But put in its historical context, what Trump is doing is echoing views that are part of a long tradition of illiberal and outright fascist thought. For fascists have always seen the use of violence as a virtue, not a vice.

First, this is the natural result of the way that fascist communities define themselves. According to Carl Schmitt, a prominent Nazi and for a time the official legal theorist of the party under Adolf Hitler, one builds and maintains a community by identifying and vilifying its enemies. And in this kind of highly polarized environment, the threat of violence always hangs in the air.

Second, among fascists, machismo is much admired. Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, whose own outrageous rhetoric has also encouraged violent behavior by his supporters, simply “beamed” when Russian President Vladimir Putin praised him for his masculinity.

Trump often acts as a sycophant for Putin too, and machismo also is a big part of Trump’s own public persona.

Third, fascists are obsessed with purity. They long for a world where they can live among their own racial, ethnic, religious and ideological kind on land they view as exclusively theirs.

But in the real world, people are too intermixed for this to occur naturally. True purity of community is an aspiration that can be made real only through violence and subjugation. Hence the Holocaust,genocide and ethnic cleansing, and other more limited attacks on minority and immigrant populations.

Please read the rest at the link above.

That’s all I have for you today. What’s on your mind?

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