Friday Reads: A House Divided

Posted: March 19, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: Mid Day Reads | Tags: , , , | 11 Comments

Norah Neilson-Gray
SELF PORTRAIT IN CLOCHE HAT

Good Day Sky Dancers!

We continue to find more about just exactly how violent the insurrectionists were as they were attacking the Capitol. We’ve also found that Republicans are eager to remove access to voting seeing it as the only path to remaining front and center in the culture wars as a white nationalist christianist party while being a minority party.   The third thing we learned yesterday was that election interference from foreign countries hostile to the US and democracy are moving the process along.

Anne Applebaum writes this lede for The Atlantic: “The Science of Making Americans Hurt Their Own Country. A new report lays bare why Russian disinformation succeeds.” Konstantin Kilimnik figures prominently. He was core to passing Russian disinformation to Rudy Gulliani in 2020.

When I read the report, my instinctive reaction was I know all of this already. No wonder the story is familiar—most of it appeared in newspapers as it was unfolding. Giuliani’s contacts with Derkach can’t be described as an open secret, because they weren’t secret at all. In 2019 the two men appeared together on the One American News Network, a far-right channel that breathlessly described Derkach as part of a group of “actual whistleblowers,” talked about the “impeachment hoax,” and referred to the FBI’s “personal hatred for Donald Trump.” Giuliani and Derkach provided the channel with doctored tapes and other material designed to create the impression that Biden was somehow involved in corruption in Ukraine.

Kilimnik, too, has become an old and familiar face in American politics, one that appears in election after election. During the 2016 campaign, Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager, passed polling information to him. Although this fact turned up in former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of the 2016 election, nobody has ever explained why Kilimnik wanted this polling information or what he might have done with it. Now here he is, back again, front and center in 2020. The new report says that—in addition to providing kompromat to OANN—Kilimnik, Derkach, and others “met with and provided materials to Trump administration–linked US persons to advocate for formal investigations; hired a US firm to petition US officials; and attempted to make contact with several senior US officials.”

All of that helps explain why my second reaction was If I know this already, and none of it seems to matter, then something is seriously wrong with the American political system. If the link between Russian security services and the stories about the Biden family was bleedingly obvious at the time, why did anyone go along with it? Why were American journalists, American politicians, and the American president’s advisers messing around with Russian intelligence agents?

Self Portrait with Cloud & Cigarette
Joan Brown
1964

That’s the question we keep asking here.  It was obvious.  Why were so many drawn into the narrrative.  Applebaum continues.

The problem is not only the outgrowth of the peculiar climate created by Donald Trump—however simple and satisfying such an explanation might be. Think, for a moment, about why the Russian state indulges in this kind of activity, year in and year out, despite the political costs and the risk of sanctions: Because it’s very cheap, it’s very easy, and a lot of evidence suggests that it works.

For decades now, Russian security services have studied a concept called “reflexive control”—the science of how to get your enemies to make mistakes. To be successful, practitioners must first analyze their opponents deeply, to understand where they get their information and why they trust it; then they need to find ways of playing with those trusted sources, in order to insert errors and mistakes. This way of thinking has huge implications for the military; consider how a piece of incorrect information might get a general to make a mistake. But it works in politics too. The Russian security services have now studied us and worked out (it probably wasn’t very hard) that large numbers of Americans—not only Fox News pundits and OANN broadcasters but also members of Congress—are very happy to accept sensational information, however tainted, from any source that happens to provide it. As long as it suits their partisan frames, and as long as it can be used against their opponents, they don’t care who invented it or for what purpose.

In other words, there’s an eager market here for all those false narratives. It’s basically a group of Republican White Men of a certain flavor of Christianity eager to maintaing Patriarchy and Hegemony.  They’re desperate and they’re doing whatever they can to fight the changing US demographics.   Hence, nearly every republican-controlled statehouse in the country is rushing through Jim Crow Redux.  This is at the roots of the insurrection, the elevation of Trumpism, and the total Republican Meltdown about every Mexican or South American that shows up at the border. Racism, Sexism and Xenobia is all they have any more.

Self-portrait Zinaida Serebriakova 1921

The Washington Post‘s David Ignatious has this analysis and opinion this morning. “Russia’s disinformation campaign will keep rolling, as long as Republicans are gullible enough”.

The most startling conclusion that emerges from the intelligence reports is that Republicans close to Trump continued to peddle Moscow’s line even after they were warned about the Russian disinformation campaign. They eagerly took the bait.

One persistent pro-Kremlin manipulator was Andriy Derkach, a Ukrainian legislator who the first report alleged “has ties to Russian officials as well as Russia’s intelligence services.” Derkach met in Kyiv on Dec. 5, 2019, with Rudolph W. Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, to pass disinformation about Biden. Haines noted that Russian President Vladimir Putin “had purview over the activities” of Derkach.

The intelligence community warned the White House back then, in December 2019, that “Giuliani was the target of an influence operation by Russian intelligence,” according to a story 10 months later in The Post.
865c0432629618a13203944a6a747de8

Self Portrait, Joni Mitchell,

 
Maybe both the press and social media outlets are beginning to come around to this nonsense. This is from CNBC: “Twitter suspends GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene as Democrats push to expel her from Congress.”

Twitter has once again suspended the account of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., her office said Friday, as dozens of House Democrats move to expel the conspiracy-embracing lawmaker from Congress.

Greene, who has previously promoted the baseless pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy and supported calls for violence against Democrats, said in a campaign message that Twitter suspended her account around 1 a.m. Friday “without explanation,” her office told CNBC.

Greene’s account is locked for 12 hours, according to that campaign message.

Spokespeople for Twitter did not immediately confirm the suspension or provide comment on Greene’s claims.

Twitter had previously temporarily suspended Greene in January for spreading misinformation.

Greene’s office raised suspicions about the timing of the social media giant’s latest action, which allegedly came hours before Rep. Jimmy Gomez, D-Calif., introduced a resolution to expel Greene from Congress. There was no immediate evidence to back up the suspicions.

Amrita Sher-Gil · Self Portrait · 1933

We’re finding more about the Capitol Insurrectionsists. We knew they were violent but any one watching the news last night saw it first hand.  This is from NPR: “Yes, Capitol Rioters Were Armed. Here Are The Weapons Prosecutors Say They Used”.

In the wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, a popular narrative has emerged: that because rioters did not fire guns that day, they were not really “armed.”

But a review of the federal charges against the alleged rioters shows that they did come armed, and with a variety of weapons: stun guns, pepper spray, baseball bats and flagpoles wielded as clubs. An additional suspect also allegedly planted pipe bombs by the headquarters of the Democratic and Republican parties the night before the riot and remains at large.

Those weapons brought violence and chaos to the Capitol. Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick died one day after two rioters allegedly sprayed him and other officers with what prosecutors describe as an “unknown chemical substance.” Four other people in the crowd died in the insurrection, and more than 100 police officers suffered injuries, including cracked ribs, gouged eyes and shattered spinal disks.

Some supporters of former President Donald Trump have argued that the dangerousness of the Capitol rioters has been overblown. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., has said, for example, “This didn’t seem like an armed insurrection to me.”

Natalia Goncharova
Self-portrait
1907

Then there is this little bit of news from VIce : “Trump Official Charged In Capitol Riot Has Family Ties to Argentina’s Military Junta.  Federico “Freddie” Klein, a Trump appointee, repeatedly praised the Argentinian military junta of the 1970s and 80s while working at the State Department.”  Look, another one of those very nice people on both sides.

A Trump administration official who’s been charged with playing a major role in the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol had a history of praising a military dictatorship that seized power in a coup—and close family ties to that junta.

Federico “Freddie” Klein, a former mid-level political appointee at the State Department who sits in jail awaiting a trial for his role in the riots, repeatedly praised the Argentinian military junta of the late 1970s and early 1980s while working at the State Department, according to three former colleagues.

“He had warm feelings about the Argentine junta. His father’s Argentine, and he expressed some frustration about how history remembers that brutal dictatorship,” one former State Department official who’d heard Klein praise the junta told VICE News.

It turns out that those views may run in the family.

Klein’s uncle Guillermo Walter Klein Jr. was a senior economic official in the Argentine military junta shortly after came to power in 1976. While he pushed through drastic neoliberal economic reforms, the military and its allies were busy murdering as many as 30,000 Argentine students, trade union organizers and other dissidents. And he may not have been the only relative with pro-junta views.

Bob Cox, a former newspaper editor in Argentina, told VICE News that he knew both Walter and Federico, Freddie’s father—and while he hadn’t met Freddie, who was born in the U.S. in 1978, Cox said was “not a bit surprised” about his alleged involvement in the insurrection given his father’s and uncle’s politics.

“There is a connection of the belief that you use military force, if you can. That ran in the family,” he said.

A number of Argentina experts—as well as some of Freddie Klein’s former colleagues — noted unsettling parallels between his family’s support for a right-wing coup that toppled a democratically elected regime in Argentina and Freddie’s own alleged role in the attempted pro-Trump coup at the Capitol on January 6.

So, I don’t know what we’re going to do about it but I do believe that media coverage is still part of the primary cause and effect as well as solution. Then there’s the still wild wild frontier approach adopted early on by social media prior to them becoming a force in merchandising and monetizing everything.  Let’s not even think about the Dark Web. At the heart of this is that these Republicans officials are willing to do anything to stay in power including push false narratives to their gullible base.  That’s not the way a democracy is supposed to work.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Monday Reads: Daylight Wasting Time Daze edition

Posted: March 15, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: just because | 11 Comments

Vernal Yellow, Solstice series, 1980, Lee Krasner

Good Morning Sky Dancers!

I’m slow and groggy today!  I can never get used to this time change. It feels like I’m surrounded by a cloud and this will go on for quite some time. I’m grading midterms right now so you can only imagine how many times I read the same thing over and over before I realize my mind keeps trying to drag me back to bed and I just can’t.  The older I get the worse it gets even though I generally don’t do any thing in the early morning this time of year because the time change forces us in to the dark during the morning commute which I hated even more when I had to do it.  But it still feels like I’m frantically trying to get caught up with everything including the post.

My paintings today are by women abstract expressionists because their work pretty much represents the blur going on in my mind right now!

So, two white men have been arrested and charrged in the “assault on police officer Brian D. Sicknick, who died after Jan. 6 Capitol riot.”  This is from WAPO.

Federal authorities have arrested and charged two men with assaulting U.S. Capitol Police officer Brian D. Sicknick with bear spray during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot but have not determined whether the exposure caused his death.

Julian Elie Khater, 32, of Pennsylvania and George Pierre Tanios, 39 of Morgantown, W.Va., were arrested Sunday and are expected to appear in federal court Monday.

“Give me that bear s—,” Khater allegedly said to Tanios on video recorded at the Lower West Terrace of the Capitol at 2:14 p.m., where Sicknick and other officers were standing guard behind metal bicycle racks, arrest papers say.

About nine minutes later, after Khater said he had been hit with bear spray, Khater is seen on video discharging a canister into the face of Sicknick and two other officers, arrest papers allege.

Khater and Tanios are charged with nine counts including assaulting three officers with a deadly weapon — Sicknick, another U.S. Capitol Police officer identified as C. Edwards, and a D.C. police officer identified as B. Chapman. They are also charged with civil disorder and obstruction of a congressional proceeding. The charges are punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

Prosecutors filed charges after tipsters contacted the FBI allegedly identifying Khater and Tanios from wanted images released by the bureau from surveillance video and officer-worn body camera footage, the complaint said. It said the men grew up together in New Jersey, and that Khater had worked in State College, Pa., and Tanios owns a business in Morgantown.

Perle Fine, The Tolling Bell, 1954

So, just a bit more on one of the arrestees. from The Washingtonian.  ““Sandwich Nazi” Charged in Assault on Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick”.  He’s one of the many good people on boths sides I guess.

Tanios has trademarked Sandwich University, “Sandwich U,” and “King of the Fat Sandwich,” according to a United States Patent and Trademark Office database. A 2014 BuzzFeed article described Sandwich University as a “drunk person’s paradise” and recommended the entire menu for its innovations in fried food. The Fat Freshman, for instance, is a sandwich comprising cheesesteak; chicken tenders; bacon; mozzarella sticks, and “secret sauce.”

A May 2019 post from Tanios’s Instagram page spotlights a one-star review that appears to describe him as resembling Donald Trump, if he were a restaurant manager. Tanios says it’s “To epic not to share” and includes the hashtag “#Dontletpoliticsdivideus.”

Next up in Biden’s economic plan is an increase in taxes on the very wealthy and finding ways to close corporate tax loophooles.  Bloomberg reporters Nancy Cook and Laura Davison  liken it to the one that happened in 1993 when Clinton put his policies into effect.

With each tax break and credit having its own lobbying constituency to back it, tinkering with rates is fraught with political risk. That helps explain why the tax hikes in Bill Clinton’s signature 1993 overhaul stand out from the modest modifications done since.

For the Biden administration, the planned changes are an opportunity not just to fund key initiatives like infrastructure, climate and expanded help for poorer Americans, but also to address what Democrats argue are inequities in the tax system itself. The plan will test both Biden’s capacity to woo Republicans and Democrats’ ability to remain unified.

“His whole outlook has always been that Americans believe tax policy needs to be fair, and he has viewed all of his policy options through that lens,” said Sarah Bianchi, head of U.S. public policy at Evercore ISI and a former economic aide to Biden. “That is why the focus is on addressing the unequal treatment between work and wealth.”

While the White House has rejected an outright wealth tax, as proposed by progressive Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, the administration’s current thinking does target the wealthy.

The White House is expected to propose a suite of tax increases, mostly mirroring Biden’s 2020 campaign proposals, according to four people familiar with the discussions.

The tax hikes included in any broader infrastructure and jobs package are likely to include repealing portions of President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax law that benefit corporations and wealthy individuals, as well as making other changes to make the tax code more progressive, said the people familiar with the plan.

The following are among proposals currently planned or under consideration, according to the people, who asked not to be named as the discussions are private:

  • Raising the corporate tax rate to 28% from 21%
  • Paring back tax preferences for so-called pass-through businesses, such as limited-liability companies or partnerships
  • Raising the income tax rate on individuals earning more than $400,000
  • Expanding the estate tax’s reach
  • A higher capital-gains tax rate for individuals earning at least $1 million annually. (Biden on the campaign trail proposed applying income-tax rates, which would be higher)

White House economist Heather Boushey underlined that Biden doesn’t intend to boost taxes on people earning less than $400,000 a year. But for “folks at the top who’ve been able to benefit from this economy and haven’t been this hard hit, there’s a lot of room there to think about what kinds of revenue we can raise,” she said in a Bloomberg TV interview Monday.

Alma Thomas , A Fantastic Sunset

The Vatican continues its assault on any thing that wasn’t determined to be  cool by some old cranky white men some time in the Dark Ages. This is from CNN: “Vatican says it will not bless same-sex unions, calling them a ‘sin'”.

The Vatican said Monday that the Catholic Church would not bless same-sex unions, in a combative statement approved by Pope Francis that threatens to widen the chasm between the church and much of the LGBTQ community.

Explaining their decision in a lengthy note on Monday, the Holy See referred to same-sex unions as a “choice,” described them as sinful and said they “cannot be recognized as objectively ordered” to God’s plans. The stance is certain to disappoint millions of gay and lesbian Catholics around the world.

“The blessing of homosexual unions cannot be considered licit,” the Vatican’s top doctrinal office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, wrote in the statement.

God “does not and cannot bless sin,” the statement added.

So this study from Nature is something I can truly relate to: “Pandemic burnout is rampant in academia. Remote working, research delays and childcare obligations are taking their toll on scientists, causing stress and anxiety.”

A year into the coronavirus pandemic, many in the academic scientific workforce are experiencing a state of chronic exhaustion known as burnout. Although it is not a medical condition and can occur in any workplace where there is stress, burnout is recognized by the World Health Organization as a syndrome. Its symptoms are physical and emotional, and include feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion; increased mental distance from and feelings of negativity or cynicism towards one’s job; and a reduced ability to do one’s work.

At its core, burnout is caused by work that demands continuous, long-term physical, cognitive or emotional effort.

Indicators of the syndrome have risen sharply in some higher-education institutions over the past year, according to surveys in the United States and Europe. In a poll of 1,122 US faculty members that focused on the effects of the pandemic, almost 70% of respondents said they felt stressed in 2020, more than double the number in 2019 (32%). The survey, conducted last October by The Chronicle of Higher Education and financial-services firm Fidelity Investments in Boston, Massachusetts, also found that more than two-thirds of respondents felt fatigued, compared with less than one-third in 2019. During 2020, 35% felt angry, whereas just 12% said that in 2019. The results were released last month.

And with that, I’m getting back to grading!

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Friday Reads: Saying Goodbye to Donny’s Dank Dystopia

Posted: March 12, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: Biden’s First 100 Days | 9 Comments

Self-Portrait: The Inn of the Dawn Horse (1937 – 1938), LEONORA CARRINGTON

Good Day Sky Dancers!

It was quite the contrast between the coverage of what what was happening a year ago with the pandemic and massive shutdowns of schools and businesses last night right before Biden’s speech and then seeing the coverage of the speech after.  Here’s how The New Yorker‘s Susan B. Glasser characterized it: “It’s Morning (and Mourning) in Biden’s America.

Fifty-one days into his Presidency, on the first anniversary of our collective quarantine, Joe Biden pivoted to optimism. He spoke of “finding light in the darkness,” vaccines for everyone by the end of May, and a country open for barbecues by the Fourth of July. That certainly counts as an upbeat message in the midst of the pandemic, although it was appropriately accompanied by the expressions of concern and communal grief at which this new President so excels. Good news is a lot easier than bad to deliver.

For much of his short time in office, Biden has stuck to the sober facts of the covid-19 crisis that he inherited. He has been the perpetual un-Trump, wielding science and seriousness against the pandemic and the political toxicity that has accompanied it. Even in his twenty-four-minute address to the nation from the East Room of the White House, on Thursday night, Biden did not abandon that approach. How could he? Everything that he does and says to address the pandemic, which has killed more Americans than all combat deaths in the last century’s wars combined, is a rebuke to his predecessor. Trump’s failed stewardship of the nation during the coronavirus outbreak is both the signal fact of his Presidency and the inescapable emergency of Biden’s nascent one. Yet Biden did more than lament or lecture on Thursday. He offered, for the first time since he took office, the gauzy optimism that predecessors from Roosevelt to Reagan have embraced at times of national trouble, speaking of “real progress” and getting the job done, of setting goals and beating them, of “hope and light and better days ahead.”

The clichés did not really bother me. That is because I spent the few minutes right before Biden’s speech listening to Trump’s nine-minute address to the nation from the same night a year earlier. In the awful hindsight created by the deaths of more than five hundred thousand Americans, it’s a true horror to again hear Trump promising the country that “the virus will not have a chance against us,” and insisting, “I will never hesitate to take the necessary steps to protect the lives, health, and safety of the American people.” Watching this risible B.S. a year later, it seemed to me that even Trump had had a hard time believing his own bluster. When he read off the teleprompter that he was “confident” of victory over the pandemic, he appeared to be gasping for air.

Autoportrait (Self-Portrait in a Green Bugatti) (1929),TAMARA DE LEMPICKA

The partisan response to the speech which just obvious in the right wing media.  It’s just that the character of the two men couldn’t be more opposite. Here’s some good news from Axios on the Trump Chidren in Cages Travesty: “Biden to end Trump-era agreement between ICE and agency housing migrant children.”  Remember children being scurried around in the darkness too?  My hope is there is a full blown 911 commission on reforming ICE.

The Biden administration will prevent the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) from sharing any information about families who accept migrant children with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), according to administration officials.

Why it matters: By terminating a 2018 legal agreement between HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement and ICE, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, the Biden administration hopes to encourage more sponsors to work with the government to accept unaccompanied minors apprehended at the border.

  • Moving those children out of HHS shelters and into sponsors’ homes helps free up space, which is needed to process the surge of unaccompanied minors crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.
  • HHS has some 8,500 minors in custody, with an additional 3,500 still being held at border patrol stations, according to the Washington Post.
  • To alleviate strain on HHS shelters, CBP has eased COVID-19 protocols that were limiting the number of minors in a given facility, allowing them to fill up to full capacity. “We are aggressively adding hundreds of beds by the week,” said an administration official.

Self portrait, Rosa Bonheur

New York Magazine published a harrowing story of sexual harassment written by reporter Jessica Bakemen: “Cuomo Never Let Me Forget I Was a Woman” .  Calling him a cad doesn’t even begin to capture his lewd and loutish behavior.

I walked up to the governor, who was in the middle of a conversation with another reporter, and waited for a moment when I could interject. He took my hand, as if to shake it, then refused to let go. He put his other arm around my back, his hand on my waist, and held me firmly in place while indicating to a photographer he wanted us to pose for a picture.

My job was to analyze and scrutinize him. I didn’t want a photo of him with his hands on my body and a smile on my face. But I made the reflexive assessment that most women and marginalized people know instinctively, the calculation about risk and power and self-preservation. I knew it would be far easier to smile for the brief moment it takes to snap a picture than to challenge one of the most powerful men in the country.

But my calculation was a bit off. I was wrong to believe this experience would last for just a moment. Keeping his grip on me as I practically squirmed to get away from him, the governor turned my body to face a different direction for yet another picture. He never let go of my hand.

Then he turned to me with a mischievous smile on his face, in front of all of my colleagues, and said: “I’m sorry. Am I making you uncomfortable? I thought we were going steady.”

I stood there in stunned silence, shocked and humiliated. But, of course, that was the point.

I never thought the governor wanted to have sex with me. It wasn’t about sex. It was about power. He wanted me to know that I was powerless, that I was small and weak, that I did not deserve what relative power I had: a platform to hold him accountable for his words and actions. He wanted me to know that he could take my dignity away at any moment with an inappropriate comment or a hand on my waist. (The Cuomo administration has declined to comment.)

It’s not that Cuomo spares men in his orbit from his trademark bullying and demeaning behavior. But the way he bullies and demeans women is different. He uses touching and sexual innuendo to stoke fear in us. That is the textbook definition of sexual harassment.

And then some great young black female atheletes endured this last night.

Self Portrait, Anna Bilinska

Self Portrait. Anna Bilinska

The Bulwark‘s Amanda Carpenter writes it like it is: ““Election Integrity” Means Restriction. You can’t have a reasonable debate about voting rights with people who wanted to cancel votes.”

If you value more voter participation, then you want more Americans to have access to the voting options that worked so successfully in 2020. If you prefer lower voter participation, then you want those options either rescinded or restricted. This isn’t rocket science.

Also not rocket science: It’s clear that one of our country’s two political parties overtly prefers less voter participation and so, as a consequence, is now actively pursuing avenues designed to reduce—or suppress, or depress, or whatever perfectly non-judgmental verb you’d like to use—the number of votes cast in future elections.

Republican lawmakers, still testifying to lies about a “stolen” election from 2020 loser Donald Trump, are currently advancing hundreds of bills on the state level to restrict voting rights in the name of restoring “election integrity.” Go ahead and take a look at some of these “integrity-filled” proposals.

Former Vice President Mike Pence, having avoided a lynching by Trump supporters on January 6, has decided to use the fight for “election integrity” as his way back to the warm embrace of MAGA. He emerged from his new post at the Heritage Foundation to announce that “Voter Integrity Is a National Imperative” at the same moment that Heritage Action plans to spend $10 million to tighten election laws in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, Texas, and Wisconsin.

But what exactly does “election integrity” mean to Mike Pence and those pushing restrictionist laws? For the MAGA crowd, it’s code for eliminating “fraud.” No matter that Trump’s Attorney General Bill Barr said, “There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud.” Or that officials at Trump’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said, “There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was in any way compromised,” and the election was “the most secure in American history.”

Pence’s piece is a work of art, designed to simultaneously appease both his lawyers and the QAnon chat boards. He writes, “Many of the most troubling voting irregularities took place in states that set aside laws enacted by state legislatures in favor of sweeping changes ordered by governors, secretaries of state, and courts.” He doesn’t say what these “irregularities” were exactly. Or mention that the “sweeping changes” were made to ensure the election would go smoothly during the pandemic. Which it did.

The only thing that was “irregular,” as Pence puts it, was the exceptionally high number of Americans who voted. Against him.

The plain fact is that more Americans voted against Trump and Pence—both singularly in 2020 and cumulatively in combination with 2016—than any other ticket in the long history of our nation. That’s the real problem Republicans have with the 2020 election.

So, I think I’ll stop here and let you take over.  Again, celebrate Women’s History Month by discovering Women in all kinds of places !!!  And again, discover the misogynyist patriarchal bastards who want to keep them down too!  Tucker Carlson thinks mocking pregant service members is cool.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Monday Reads: Another Blow to the Big Lie

Posted: March 8, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , | 17 Comments

Frida Kahlo, self portrait

Good Day Sky Dancers!

It’s women’s history month!  Today is International Women’s Day and I’m focusing on women artists and their work.  It’s just a small selection of women’ painters, singer/songwriter and actress!  I’m going to keep it up for the month so keep your eyes and ears open!

SCOTUS rejected Trump’s final attempt to throw out legitimate elections.  This time the state of Wisconsin was the target of the lawsuit chase.  From The Hill: “Supreme Court rejects final Trump bid to nullify 2020 election results”.

The Supreme Court on Monday denied a bid by former President Trump to nullify his electoral loss in Wisconsin, rejecting the former president’s final pending appeal over the results of the 2020 election.

In an unsigned order without noted dissent, the justices declined to take up Trump’s lawsuit alleging Wisconsin election officials violated the Constitution by expanding absentee voting amid the global coronavirus pandemic.

The justices’ move brought an end to Trump’s scattershot and ineffective legal campaign to overturn President Biden’s victory and added to the abysmal post-election court record of Trump and his allies, which included more than 60 losses and just one narrow win.

Carrying Clay Pots, Helen Mmakgabo Mmapula Sebidi

Georgia Republicans continue to push “election integretity” laws that are clearly aimed at suppressing minority votes.  This is from NBC News: Georgia Republicans are pushing dozens of ‘election integrity’ bills. Black voters are the target, rights groups say.As the battle over voting rights plays out in legislatures across the country, advocates say federal protections are more necessary than ever.”

After 15 years allowing voters to cast absentee ballots without excuses, Georgia Republicans say the practice has got to go.

The Republican-controlled state Senate votes Monday on a package of legislation that would, among other things, limit mail-in voting primarily to Georgians who are elderly, disabled or out of town on Election Day — one of dozens of restrictive election-related measures under consideration in state legislatures.

Supporters of the measures, who include allies of former President Donald Trump and those who stood up to his bogus allegations of fraud after Joe Biden upset decades of Republican dominance to win the state, say the bills are commonsense election security efforts. Democrats, voting rights advocates and civil rights groups say something else is going on.

“It’s pathetically obvious to anyone paying attention that when Trump lost the election and Georgia flipped control of the U.S. Senate to Democrats shortly after, Republicans got the message that they were in a political death spiral,” state Rep. Renitta Shannon, a Democrat from Decatur, said during a floor debate over the Republican proposals in Georgia last week. “And now they are doing anything they can do to silence the voices of Black and brown voters specifically because they largely powered these wins.”

Untitled, Bridget Bate Tichenor

NPR reports that President Biden has established a Gender Policy Council within the White House.  I’m withholding judgement on this.

President Biden marked International Women’s Day on Monday by signing two executive orders geared toward promoting gender equity, both in the United States and around the world.

In a statement, Biden said: “In our nation, as in all nations, women have fought for justice, shattered barriers, built and sustained economies, carried communities through times of crisis, and served with dignity and resolve. Too often, they have done so while being denied the freedom, full participation, and equal opportunity all women are due.”

The first executive order establishes a Gender Policy Council within the White House, reformulating an office from the Obama administration that was later disbanded by the Trump administration, and giving it more clout.

Under former President Barack Obama, the office was called the White House Council on Women and Girls. The name change to the Gender Policy Council is intentional, according to an administration official speaking on background, “to reflect the fact that gender discrimination can happen to people of all genders.”

But, the official said, “there will be a focus on women and girls, particularly women and girls of color, given the historical and disproportionate barriers that they face.”

Poppies, Georgia O’Keefe

Zack Beauchamp at Vox writes “The stimulus shows why the left should stop worrying and learn to love the suburban voter. Contrary to the left’s fears, the road to redistribution runs through the suburbs”.

But a funny thing happened over the past few years: As Democrats made inroads into the suburbs, they also became more progressive on economics.

Consider President Biden’s economic policy agenda.

To date, it is almost certainly the most left-leaning since Lyndon Johnson’s. The stimulus is more than twice the size of the one passed by President Obama’s majority in 2009, and includes (among other progressive priorities) $1,400 checks for tens of millions of Americans and a generous child tax credit. His broader legislative agenda includes a $2 trillion climate change plan, a public option for health care, and a plan to expand Section 8 housing vouchers that would radically reduce the poverty rate. This ambitious program would be paid for primarily by deficit spending and tax hikes on corporations and Americans making over $400,000 per year.

Some leading political scientists and Democratic pollsters see this agenda as perfectly consistent with an influx of college-educated white suburbanites — for the simple reason that this demographic has, in recent years, become much more progressive on economic issues than it was in the past.

This is certainly a relief to hear from the Save our planet and sacred/historical spaces for the future agenda.

The Biden administration has withdrawn an environmental review for a massive copper mine in eastern Arizona, temporarily blocking a multinational mining corporation, Resolution Copper, from taking over a parcel of land sacred to the San Carlos Apache Nation and other Native communities. The U.S. Forest Service said it needs more time to consult with Native people about the mine’s impact on Oak Flat, an ancient forest with spiritual and cultural significance. Advocates say the proposed mine would destroy Oak Flat and contaminate a large swath of southern Arizona. Arizona Democratic Congressmember Raúl Grijalva is set to reintroduce the Save Oak Flat Act, which would repeal the appropriation of the site.

Emmie and her child, Mary Cassatt

Now that we’re beginning to get vaccinnated there’s some additional good news for those of us through our first doses.  My friend Nancy across the street and I frequently get together but it still feels akward to have our little picnics and dinners while doing all the hand washing and masking.  We’re both fully vaccinated so this is great news!  Now, we just have to get to a place where we get the kids into the mix.  I’m sure there’s a lot of grandparents missing hugs!  Another one from NPR: “CDC Says It’s Safe For Vaccinated People To Do These Activities”.

The CDC has issued new guidance for vaccinated people, giving the green-light to resume some pre-pandemic activities and relax precautions that have been in place.

Specifically, people who are fully vaccinated can gather indoors with other fully vaccinated people without wearing masks or social distancing. People are considered fully vaccinated two weeks after they have gotten the second shot of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines (or two weeks after receiving the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine).

Vaccinated people can also gather, unmasked, with people from another household who are not yet vaccinated, as long as those people are at low risk of serious illness from the virus. However, the agency said, vaccinated people should continue to mask when they’re in public, avoid crowds and take other precautions when gathering with unvaccinated people who are at high risk of serious illness from COVID-19.

The CDC said this new guidance is a “first step” to returning to everyday activities. There’s accumulating evidence to show that people who are fully vaccinated are less likely to become infected and also “potentially” less likely to spread the virus to others, agency officials wrote in a press release.

The good news is that Trump is still under his Mara LaLa rock.  The bad news is Mike Pence may take his show on the road.  He’s headed to South Carolina which is definitely an important state in presidential primaries.

Well, that’s it for me today!  What’s on your reading and blogging list today!  Happy International Women’s Day!

Friday Reads: Scoundrels and Deplorables edition

Posted: March 5, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: Biden’s First 100 Days, morning reads | Tags: , | 11 Comments

Rhythm, Joy of Life (1930) – Robert Delaunay

Hi Sky Dancers!

I got through my second vaccine with just another sore arm so I’m pretty thrilled to be done with that! This afternoon I’m doing a zoom meeting wiith Greg Mankiw and other of my colleagues in the Dismal Science Field to talk about the equally dismal subject of the Covid-19 Economy.  I’ll let you know if any one sees any sunshine yet.

There’s a couple of things in the news today where there’s some Clean up in Aisle Trumpist Regime Corruption and Crimes going on today.  This first one is something that slipped my mind. Marcy Wheeler (aka EmptyWheel) is on it though.  Remember that banker that tried to bribe Manafort to get him a position in the Trumpist Regime?  The SDNY has him in their sites.

It will be interesting to see what role–if any–a freed and pardoned Manafort will have and if the fifth or the pardon have any impact.  We figured there would be Trump appointees storming the Capitol with the other insurrectionists and it seems they’ve caught a fish.  This is from WAPO: “State Department aide appointed by Trump stormed the Capitol, beat police with a riot shield, FBI says”.  Sounds like one of many nice people on both sides kinda guys.

On Thursday, the FBI arrested a political appointee of President Donald Trump on charges that he stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, according to a criminal complaint, marking the first member of the former administration arrested in connection with the insurrection.

Federal agents arrested Federico Guillermo Klein, 42, a former State Department aide, on multiple felony charges related to the Capitol riot, according to a criminal complaint published by the New York Times. (Politico first reported the arrest.) The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment early Friday.

Klein, who is also a former Trump campaign employee, did not immediately respond to a request for comment early Friday. It is unclear if he has hired a lawyer.

Klein was still employed at the State Department as a staff assistant on Jan. 6 when he joined a mob in a tunnel leading into the U.S. Capitol, the FBI said. Then he allegedly “physically and verbally engaged with the officers holding the line” at the building’s entrance, according to the complaint. After ignoring officers’ orders to move back, he assaulted officers with a riot shield that had been stolen from police, the complaint said, and then used the shield to wedge open a door into the Capitol.

At one point, Klein was caught on video shouting for more insurrectionists to come to the front lines, where officers were struggling to hold back the mob.

“We need fresh people, need fresh people,” he said, according to the complaint.

Zebra (1937) – Victor Vasarely

You should  go to the article just to see his picture in his tweedy jacket and MAGA hat.  He looks like some one’s long lost accountant.  Funny how the dull boring white guy types tend to be the angriest of the Trumpers!. But, there he is out beating up police officers and stirring up insurrection.  I imagine he’ll likely spend his time in the Prison Library if he’s smart or he’ll get the usual white supremacist tatoo and hook up with the rest of them and do their taxes in his spare time.

Oh, btw, I’m sharing 10 MOST FAMOUS ABSTRACT ARTISTS AND THEIR MASTERPIECES for today.  Abstract Art is so much better than abstract conspiracy theories.   The internacine back and forth in the Republican party has a new page as Trump v Rove is the newest Argle bargle from Maro Laga.  This is from Reuters and Steve Holland: ” Civil War: Trump attacks Republican strategist Rove, who fires back.”  Talk about to Skunks in a pissing contest!

Former President Donald Trump intensified his war with the Republican establishment on Thursday by attacking Karl Rove, a longtime Republican strategist who criticized Trump’s first speech since leaving office for being long on grievances but short on vision.

…

Rove wrote of the 90-minute speech: “There was no forward-looking agenda, simply a recitation of his greatest hits. People like fresh material. Repetition is useful to a point, but it grows stale.”

The spat was the latest round in the civil war that has erupted within the Republican Party, with establishment figures such as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell eager to put Trump in the rearview mirror, and others, like Trump ally Senator Lindsey Graham, believing the party’s future depends on the energy of the pro-Trump base.

Black Iris III (1926) – Georgia O’Keeffe

These baby men need naps. Now, let’s talk about Paul Gosar who is a completely different kind of animal.  This is from HuffPo and the keyboard of Christoper Mathias: “Paul Gosar Spoke At A White Nationalist Conference. The GOP Doesn’t Care.  The congressman was the keynote speaker at a conference run by a virulent racist and anti-Semite. HuffPost tried to find a Republican lawmaker to rebuke him.”  He’s one of the chief deplorables with no redeeming qualities to be found as far as I’m concerned.

Last week a sitting U.S. congressman delivered a keynote speech at a white nationalist conference in Florida.

“Wow, what a group,” Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) said as he took his place behind a podium emblazoned with the letters “AFPAC” — an acronym for America First Political Action Conference, the second annual gathering of the white nationalist “groyper” movement.

After speaking about “cancel culture,” Big Tech’s supposed censorship of right-wingers, and the need for a big border wall to keep “America First,” Gosar said goodbye to the AFPAC crowd, who’d traveled from across the country to attend the secret gathering inside the Hilton Orlando.

“May God bless you,” Gosar said. “And may God bless the United States of America.”

The crowd — a motley crew of unabashed racists and anti-Semites — broke into a chant of “Gosar! Gosar!” to which the congressman responded with a wave, a smile and what looked like an earnest, heartfelt “Thank you.”

AFPAC’s organizer, white nationalist figurehead Nick Fuentes, took the stage next, telling the crowd that “white people are done being bullied” and that America needs to protect its “white demographic core.”

The next day, Fuentes and Gosar sat down for coffee, according to a photo Fuentes posted to Twitter.

“Great meeting today with Congressman Gosar,” tweeted Fuentes, a 22-year-old Holocaust denier who once compared Jews killed in Nazi gas chambers to cookies baking in an oven. “America is truly uncancelled.”

Okay. That’s not deplorable or even despicable.  It’s evil.  We’re about to see how low they can go as the debate on the Covid 19 relief bill is happening on the Senate floor after yesterday’s public reading forced by Senator Johnson (asshole, Wisconsin).

Composition VII (1913) – Wassily Kandinsky

Well, that about sums it up.  Politico reports that “Dems strike new unemployment benefits deal in $1.9T Covid bill. This legislative endurance run is part of the budget reconciliation process, which Democrats are using to pass Biden’s plan without the need for GOP support.” This puts Vice President Harris front and center in the process.

Senate Democrats struck a new deal on the unemployment benefits in President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package on Friday, shortly before debate on the bill reached its peak.

A new amendment readied by Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) would change the aid bill’s boosted weekly federal unemployment payments from $400 weekly, as approved by the House, to $300. But the Senate’s deal would extend benefits through September instead of August, and the first $10,200 of unemployment benefits will now be non-taxable income. The agreement was hatched by both moderate and progressive Democrats.

Woman I (1952) – Willem de Kooning

So, that’s going on today and CSpan has it all as usual. “Senate Debates Minimum Wage Amendment to $1.9 Trillion COVID-19 Relief Bill. “

Okay, so the good news is that the QAnon cult did not manifest much of anything yesterday.  This is from Newsweek “QAnon’s March 4 Failure Prompts Wave of Trump Inauguration Jokes, Memes.”

QAnon conspiracists believed Trump would return to the White House on Thursday because it was the original date of the presidential inaugurations, before it switched to January 20 when the 20th amendment was passed in 1933.

Federal agencies, like the U.S. Capitol Police and the Department of Homeland Security, prepared for possible violence, following the Capitol riots in early January that involved QAnon supporters, among others, storming the seat of government.

After March 4 passed without violence, Twitter users mocked the QAnon theorists on Twitter, sharing jokes and memes about the inauguration that never happened.

So, today I have no gratuitious Ted Cruz bashing so maybe we can return more to normal!

Mask Up!  Be Safe!  Get that Vaccine!  Let us know you’re okay!  We care!

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

 

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