Friday Reads: Many Americas, Two Realities

Posted: February 5, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads | Tags: | 12 Comments

Picasso,  Jacqueline with flowers, 1954

Good Day Sky Dancers!

Have you seen a list of headlines in the news lately and realized there are not two Americas, there are really lots of Americas but there do seem to be two sets of realities?

You can read about the struggling economy and lackluster jobs reports, or how the Biden Administration pushed through a budget bill including a Covid-19 rescue plan with the deciding vote caste by Kamala Harris, and just anything that seems regular goings on in a developed nation.  That’s a total relief because if your an Indigenous American struggling to survive on a Reservation, or a Farmer in a hard hit middle of the country state, or any number of flavors of people struggling in big cities you can certainly breathe a sigh of relief to see things working in your direction.

You’re also seeing some clean up in aisle Congress and hoping some of this remaining Trump detritus goes away or at least has limited impact on those of us living in the reality of science and the warts of our democracy.  This is certainly good news: House votes to remove Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene from committee assignments.

1914 Man Balcony by Albert Gleizes

Or, you can continue down the rabbit hole and read what Trumpism has left us.  It’s not going away. It’s festering and leaving us a group of people with a severe disconnect from the rest of us.

Here’s an interview I read this morning in Politico with an ex Trump National Security person who is also an evangelical Christian on what she sees as the growing radicalization of White Nationalist Evangelical Extremists.  It’s a jolt to read this as you realize that the Q cult is spreading like wildfire in many churches. “It’s Time to Talk About Violent Christian Extremism. There’s a “strong authoritarian streak” that runs through parts of American evangelicalism, warns Elizabeth Neumann. What should be done about it? “

In March, even before the shutdowns, I had my staff look at the research we use for developing behavioral indicators of individuals who might mobilize to violence. If we go down this path of having to all stay home, does that increase stress factors? Does it increase risk factors known to be common in people who carry out attacks? The answer was yes.

You started hearing the anti-government conspiracies — which was totally predictable. Anybody who has spent any time in Republican or libertarian politics knows you’re going to have people unhappy about the government. That’s fine; you can predict that. The question then is that if you know that’s going to be a challenge, what can the government do to help individuals understand why it is issuing stay-at-home orders, why it’s necessary, why it’s legal and constitutional? If the government had done a better job at that, we would have seen slightly less anger, slightly less of that victim-persecution complex.

With the pandemic, you had what was perceived to be government overreach; you had social isolation, which is a known risk factor [for extremism]; you had some people with a lot more time on their hands because they were not commuting, not taking kids to ballgames and not going to happy hour after work; you had economic stress — another known risk factor — as people lost jobs or moved to part-time status; you had people who lost loved ones. There was this great sense that people had lost control; our lives as we knew them had been upended.

People who had a strong, healthy sense of self or community were able to mitigate their isolation. But for individuals already on the cusp, this made them vulnerable. We use that word, “vulnerable,” to describe people who are not necessarily radicalized yet, but have factors in their lives that make it easier for them to move on a pathway towards extreme radicalized thought — and then, for a smaller subset, mobilizes them to violence.

That’s what we saw in 2020. We saw any number of people spending more time online looking for answers. You had increases in militia movements. The Moonshot CVE Group, which studies radicalization, said that in states with stay-at-home orders that lasted 10 days or longer, [online] searches for white-supremacist content increased by 21 percent. In states where there either weren’t stay-at-home orders or they lasted nine days or fewer, that increase was only 1 percent. We weren’t sure how it was going to happen, but we predicted that we would see violence in some form or fashion. The militia that attempted to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer — that was horrible, but not really shocking. The violence at protests? Not surprising. And the fact that you had white-supremacist groups using the protests to commit accelerationist violence was also not surprising — even though the president thought it was Antifa. We knew we were going to see more radicalization and violence.

That’s a fairly scary number of people believing something totally off-the-wall and easily disprovable.   It seriously is improvisational reality building as labelled in this NPR interview with Travis View.

The evolving movement has embraced new conspiracies, including that Trump will be sworn into office for a second presidential term on March 4.

View has posted screenshots showing exchanges between QAnon supporters as they discuss their delusional beliefs.

“They come to their conclusion first,” View says. “They decide what makes them feel best and then they construct conspiracy theories that help them convince themselves why that’s true.”

“It’s really kind of like an improvisational reality building,” he continues. “They don’t look to the outside world to try and figure out what is true and what is not, and as a consequence, sometimes have to face harsh truths such as the electoral victory of Joe Biden.

Last year, QAnon spread into the mainstream. As president, Trump repeatedly retweeted accounts tied to QAnon. Newly elected Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert have spoken openly in support of QAnon.

John D. Graham, “Head of a Woman,” 1926.

Meanwhile, Trump and his Death Cult are planning to punish any Republicans who dared to question the reality he’s built for himself.  Part of it’s playing out in Congress like this article describing the plans for Nebraska’s Senator: “Sen. Ben Sasse slams Nebraska GOP committee’s plans to censure him for criticizing Trump “.  This week, they failed to remove Liz Cheney from leadership in the House.  Her constituents are going to have the last say though.  Here’s a WAPO  headline “Rep. Liz Cheney’s vote to impeach Trump prompts a voter rebellion in her home state”.

A star of the Republican Party widely seen as a potential future House speaker, Cheney has suddenly emerged as a vivid example of something completely different — a traditional Republican who may no longer have a home in a party dominated by Trump and the far right.

No matter that she voted with Trump more than 90 percent of the time, or that she occupies the lone Wyoming congressional seat that her father, the former vice president, held for 10 years. Few voters care that as the third-ranking Republican in the House she is well positioned to bring home federal spending.

In this city in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, her reputation has boiled down to a simple question: whether she is for Trump or against Trump. And, as far as many people here are concerned, with her Jan. 13 impeachment vote, Cheney staked her claim.

What is even more frightening is this headline from The Business Insider: “Trump is plotting a campaign revenge tour targeting GOP defectors after Senate impeachment trial.” 

Donald Trump is plotting a comeback revenge tour targeting GOP defectors after his Senate impeachment trial. Trump is talking with aides about a road trip to campaign against Republicans who supported his removal.

We may only have to hear about these things but I truly fear that the targets will need lifelong secret service protection should the events happen.

This is from Raw Story. 

The former president is planning a nationwide speaking tour intended to target the 10 Republicans who backed his impeachment and any GOP senators who speak out against him at next week’s trial, reported Insider.

“I’m sure he wants to get out a roulette wheel with all their faces on it,” said one Republican who speaks to Trump.

However, the former president is waiting until the trial ends and seems to understand Americans needed a break from his antics.

“Even he recognizes that we have Trump fatigue,” said the Republican source. “Even he knows that you can get overexposed, and he wore the electorate out, and that was part of the problem. He clearly wore the country out with his behavior between the election and the inauguration.”

John D. Graham, “Head of a Woman,” 1944

Is that the understatement of the year or what?

This article from Salon shows that crazy comes in at all income levels.  “How one billionaire family bankrolled election lies, white nationalism — and the Capitol riot.  Rebekah Mercer is “one of the chief financiers of the fascist movement,” says longtime GOP insider Steve Schmidt ”  Igor Derysh is the author.

While Charles Koch and his late brother David have dominated Republican fundraising in recent decades, the Mercers’ recent strategic investments in far-right candidates bought them a disproportionate level of influence in the Republican Party before culminating in an effort to subvert the election that fueled the deadly Capitol siege.

“The Mercers laid the groundwork for the Trump revolution,” Bannon told The New Yorker in 2017. “Irrefutably, when you look at donors during the past four years, they have had the single biggest impact of anybody, including the Kochs.” Steve Schmidt, a former Republican strategist and co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, sees it differently. Rebekah Mercer, he said in an interview with Salon, is the “chief financier or one of the chief financiers of the fascist movement, and that’s what it is.”

Hours after the pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, killing five people and injuring dozens of police officers in a futile bid to stop the counting of electoral votes, Hawley joined with top Mercer beneficiaries in objecting to the results to back Trump’s “big lie” that the election was somehow stolen. There was Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, whose super PAC got $13.5 million from the Mercers during the 2016 presidential campaign — before the family dropped another $15.5 million to back Trump. There was House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., defending the majority of the GOP House caucus voting to overturn legal election results after his Congressional Leadership Fund received $1.5 million from the Mercers. And there was Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., who received $21,600 from the Mercers before speaking at the rally that preceded the riot and objecting to the results. Brooks was later named by “Stop the Steal” organizer Ali Alexander as having helped orchestrate the event, though his office said he has “no recollection communicating in any way with whoever Ali Alexander is.”

Alexander himself may have benefited from the Mercers’ millions while working for the Black Conservative Fund, a small and mysterious group that received $60,000 from Robert Mercer in 2016. Though the group did not raise any money in 2020, it promoted the White House rally to tens of thousands of followers, according to CNBC.

So, that should give the FBI something to chew on for awhile.


Interior artwork from DC Universe Halloween Special 2009 vol. 1, Oct 2009 Art by Ibraim Roberson, pencils and inks, and Giovani Kososki, color

Abraham Lincoln has a lot of quotable phrases but the one that always sticks with me.  The powerful warning was given in his House Divided speech and is a turn of phrase in several of the gospels.

“A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.”

The quote seems appropriate at this time but in a quite abstracted way.  The abhorrent institution of slavery and the so-called “southern way of life” stood as the rebel cause then.  It was not complete devoid of reality.  It was just completely devoid of morality even though it stood firmly on a Bible pointing out all the folks that had slaves back then.

This moment seems like a product of much of the same with the twist of there now being a lot more interactive visuals and playthings for Death Cults with apocalyptical visions.  How do you connect reality with bizzaro world?

So, anyway, we can at least breathe when we watch the regular news or catch a glimpse of the headlines for the most part.  We have a break.  But, we and the FBI and the National Security Department need to be vigilant because it seems we’re going to have an insurgency and eventually, it really will start getting very ugly on Main Streets everywhere.

And with that spirit I leave you with this WAPO Op Ed by Eugene Robinson.

At the state level, the Republican Party is, if anything, even less tethered to reality. The Arizona state GOP actually censured former senator Jeff Flake and Cindy McCain, widow of the late senator John McCain, for failing to blindly support Trump. A few Republican governors, such as Jim Justice of West Virginia, are doing well in the vaccination phase of the pandemic. Others, such as Ron DeSantis of Florida, continue to put politics over public health.

Trump led the GOP’s base deep into the wilderness. Republican leadership in Washington lacks the skills and the guts to lead the party back to reality — and back to constructive participation in addressing the massive challenges we face. Don’t blame “both sides” for ruining the elegant, strategic, productive political competition we’d like to see. One party is trying to move the chess pieces. The other is trying to eat them.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Monday Reads: What Still Works?

Posted: February 1, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads | 6 Comments

Good Day Sky Dancers!

Kate McKinnon did the #SNL cold open as herself doing a news-style talk show asking folks “What  Still Works?” in the USA.  It’s full of all kinds of topics we discuss a lot here and though it is certainly one of the funniest openers I’ve seen in awhile, it’s also a serious question.

This New York Times headline certainly sums up the situation with the badly broken Republican Party.  I mean it couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of greedy, power hungry, no-nothings but sheesh, we have a two party system.  How does this not break most of our government and it certainly has meaning in states like mine where the leges are basically Camp Run Amok for Right Wing nut jobs.

“An Emboldened Extremist Wing Flexes Its Power in a Leaderless G.O.P. . As more far-right Republicans take office and exercise power, party officials are promoting unity and neutrality rather than confronting dangerous messages and disinformation.”

There’s plenty of examples there to choose from in terms of what’s going on in state Republican Parties as well as the chaos ruling the Republicans in the District.

Damaged windows of an old abandoned factory.

I had to laugh/cry at this headline from New York Magazine and Jonathan Chait.  “McConnell: Trump Tricked Me Into Backing His Coup”. Are we seriously expected to believe this?

Needless to say, that explanation looks even worse now. McConnell and his allies are trying to launder their reputations. McConnell’s excuse is contained within a deeply reported New York Times narrative account of Trump’s election challenge. Apparently, McConnell was duped by Trump and his wily son-in-law:

The senator was also under a false impression that the president was only blustering, the officials said. Mr. McConnell had had multiple conversations with the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and the senator’s top political adviser, Josh Holmes, had spoken with Mr. Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser. Both West Wing officials had conveyed the same message: They would pursue all potential avenues but recognized that they might come up short. Mr. Trump would eventually bow to reality and accept defeat.

Poor sweet, naïve Mitch McConnell was told that Trump would graciously concede defeat, only to eventually realize Trump had misled him.

Clearly the Republican party is broken and the legislative sausage-making process is in dire shape.  Perhaps they need a School House Rocks watch session to remember how it’s all supposed to work?

It goes without out saying that the global climate isn’t in good shape, our immigration system isn’t working, and we dont’ seem to be able to get the economy working for every on or the justice system to work for people of color or the poor.  The media is already picking on the Biden Harris administration for their first 10 days which is yet another example of how our media is clearly broken without even mentioning the entire channels dedicated to right wing lies and conspiracy theories.  Even the one governor that seemed to have it together on the COVID-19 Pandemic was faking rather than making it.  Cuomo’s undercount of nursing home deaths and a flight of experts from his administration has me wondering has every one in this country just trying to blow smoke in our face?

Here’s a good question from The Atlantic which could actual be one of those turning points in urban economics.

As a general rule of human civilization, we’ve lived where we work. More than 90 percent of Americans drive to work, and their average commute is about 27 minutes. This tether between home and office is the basis of urban economics. But remote work weakens it; in many cases, it severs the link entirely, replacing spatial proximity with cloud-based connectivity. What knock-on changes will this new industrial revolution bring?

I’m one of those people with a job that could work from any one and I’ll tell you, that cabin on an island in the Peugeot Sound just keeps calling to me.  I’ve been a Zillow traveler for at least 6 years with that project and the Covid-19 thing may have slowed me down along with a friend that needed an escape from a brutal husband but it hasn’t stopped me from searching out where the next place might be.  I’ve found there’s a lot to be said about holding up at home and avoiding as much work place drama as possible even when you’ve got an office with a door that closes.

The one thing I might never be able to escape unless we do something is the gun violence even though I am in a place where the sounds of gun shots are quite common.  The most threatening thing I’ve seen in awhile are those imagines of angry white militia jerks armed to the teeth. The Rev. Sharon Risher writes this op ed at WAPO: “Guns are white supremacy’s deadliest weapon. We must disarm hate.” 

The defining photograph of the attempted insurrection on Jan. 6 was that of a man strolling through the broken halls of our national Capitol, amid the smashed windows and assorted rubble of the failed coup, proudly brandishing a Confederate flag on his shoulder and hoping to overturn an election decided largely by Black voters. It’s an image that tells the story not only of Jan. 6 or of the Trump presidency, but also of all the steps that led to that moment — the whole history of hate in America captured in one frame.

For me, the echoes of that picture reverberated back nearly six years, to the day my mom — Ethel Lee Lance — was shot and killed while praying in Charleston’s Mother Emanuel Church along with eight other Black Americans, including two of my cousins and one of my closechildhood friends. In the months leading up to that tragic day, my mom’s killer posed for pictures with the Confederate flag, sometimes even slinging it over his shoulder just like that insurrectionist in the Capitol did.

The similarities between these two days don’t end there: Both days ended in deaths, both attacks were perpetrated (at least in part) by white supremacists chasing a lost cause, and tragically, the perpetrators of both incidents were carrying more than just flags. My mother’s killer was armed with a handgun; the Capitol insurrectionists were armed with enough live ammunition to shoot every member of the House and Senate five times.

This is no kind of a  situation to leave to the kids of America or the World for that matter.  We’ve become more of a menace than ever before.  And it all seems to be wrapped up in the flags of traitors.

So, I’ll just leave this topic here for you to talk about.  I’m not sure what all this means in terms of trusting Joe, Kamala, Nancy, and Chuck to get the job done frankly.  There’s a lot at stake and like Kate said, there’s a lot not working right now.    There’s a lot of stuff that’s just really broken.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qr1-WpWOUk8

Friday Reads: Deplorables Do the District

Posted: January 29, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: Domestic terrorism, right wing hate grouups | 11 Comments

Good Day Sky Dancers!

We just can’t seem to get rid of them!  It’s like there’s a plague of locusts in every nook, crack, and cranny of our government incessantly making a horrid buzzing sound and devouring everything in sight!  I’ve read stories today about these persistent right wing pests in just about every level and branch. Trump’s Deplorables are hunkering down for a long fight.

Chief Judge Beryl Howell –chief Judge of the Federal Court in the District–has to deal with the capitol riot suspects.  CNN has the story on one of them who is going to be in jail for some time.

The chief judge of the federal court in Washington scorched Capitol riot suspects during a hearing on Thursday, calling their actions an assault on American democracy and ruling that a man who had bragged about putting his feet on a desk in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office should stay in jail as he awaits trial.

“This was not a peaceful protest. Hundreds of people came to Washington, DC, to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power,” Chief Judge Beryl Howell of the DC District Court said in the hourlong hearing for Capitol riot defendant Richard Barnett on Thursday.

Howell’s remarks are some of the first from a federal district judge over the more than 150 criminal cases that resulted from the siege. Her decision on Barnett also marks the first ruling in an appeal from the Justice Department after a magistrate judge out of Washington denied its request to keep a Capitol riot suspect in jail. At least four others are awaiting rulings from district judges in Washington after appeals.
Howell made clear she believes the crowd was trying to thwart the federal legislative branch from carrying out its duties.

“We’re still living here in Washington, DC, with the consequences of the violence that this defendant is alleged to have participated in,” she said.

“Just outside this courthouse … are visible reminders of the January 6 riot and assault on the Capitol,” the judge said, noting that she can see National Guard troops from the window in her chambers in the courthouse.

Barnett is charged with entering the restricted grounds of the Capitol, violent entry and disorderly conduct, and for theft of public property, after he allegedly took a letter from Pelosi’s office.

“The titles of those offenses don’t even properly capture the scope of what Mr. Barnett is accused of doing here,” Howell said at the hearing.

The judge noted that Barnett had bragged to a reporter that he had written “a nasty note, put my feet up on her desk and scratched my balls” in Pelosi’s office. Barnett’s lawyer says he hadn’t seen the report of that quote from his client in The Washington Post.

As BB wrote yesterday,  Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene is a problem for every one with some of the most extremist, racist views as well as the entire Q Anon list of conspiracy theories as her guiding lights.  Axios had this to say today: “Scoop: GOP ignored its early fears about Marjorie Taylor Greene”.

During previously unreported meetings last summer, House Republican leaders discussed — but then largely set aside — fears that QAnon-supporting conspiracy theorist Marjorie Taylor Greene would end up a flaming trainwreck for their party.

Why it matters: Greene has emerged not just as an embarrassment but a challenge for the GOP, with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy now forced to weigh whether to maintain his policy of sanctioning members who make dangerous statements.

In a series of conversations described to Axios by sources with direct knowledge of their contents, former Rep. Mark Walker was especially vocal about the “crazy” Greene. Reps. Liz Cheney and Steve Scalise also spoke up. But McCarthy and others ultimately did little to stop her.

  • A spokesperson for Greene did not respond to a call or email from Axios.

Behind the scenes: John Cowan, Greene’s opponent in August’s primary runoff for Georgia’s 14th District seat, recalls separate conversations he had with McCarthy and Scalise, the House GOP whip, in which both men acknowledged Greene was a serious problem for the party.

  • Cowan detailed a phone conversation he had with McCarthy in July, during which he warned him about wild opposition research they had against Greene.
  • “I said, ‘She’s bad for the party,'” Cowan told Axios during a 30-minute interview Thursday. “I said she has real problems and does not represent, at least what I think of as, someone who would be allowed even in a big-tented party. I mean, at some point, you have to say, ‘No shoes, no shirt, no service.'”
  • While both McCarthy and Scalise condemned Greene, and Scalise endorsed and raised money for and donated to Cowan, it wasn’t enough to overcome the vocal support for Greene from Trump’s then-chief of staff Mark Meadows.

The backing of Meadows, his wife, Debbie, and Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio was so strong that Cowan never had a real shot against Greene, he said.

  • “The House Freedom Caucus put their fingers on the scale in a big way,” said Cowan, a neurosurgeon. “By default it was sort of, ‘She must be Trump’s person.’ If those guys are going to bat for her, she must be Trump’s endorsed person.”

Greene also came up repeatedly during McCarthy’s leadership meetings last summer, a source with direct knowledge told Axios.

  • Scalise, Cheney and Walker gathered for the weekly meeting in the conference room of McCarthy’s office in the Capitol and plotted how they should deal with her.
  • Walker, now running for North Carolina’s open Senate seat in 2022, strenuously argued they needed to do more to stop this “crazy” woman who threatened to bring down the party, according to a source with direct knowledge.
  • Cheney (R-Wyo.) also spoke up aggressively in these meetings about the danger of having Greene in the party.
  • Scalise (R-La.) and McCarthy (R-Calif.) ended up putting out statements condemning her, yet McCarthy didn’t do much beyond that once it was clear she was going to win the race by a healthy margin.

The bottom line: “Everybody was well aware of her previous persona and who she is. I would say they all knew she was going to be a problem,” Cowan told Axios.

  • “Maybe they just assumed that the awe of winning an election would calm her down a little bit, and so she would actually be interested in governing and be interested in policy, and she’s just clearly not. She is literally there for a stage production.”

Greene’s a subject of Jonathan Chait’s latest and the list of her belief system just gets more over the top with every finding.   You  may have seen this little doozy down thread in yesterday’s post by BB.  ” GOP Congresswoman Blamed Wildfires on Secret Jewish Space Laser”. 

The top example of a conservative mischief-maker, presented in perfect symmetry, is Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Greene’s views are just a bit more controversial. They include, but are by no means limited to, the following:

The QAnon conspiracy theory, which holds that Donald Trump is secretly fighting a worldwide child-sex-slavery ring that was supposed to culminate in the mass arrest of his political opposition, is “worth listening to.”

• Muslims don’t belong in government.

• 9/11 was an inside job.

• Shootings at Parkland, Sandy Hook, and Las Vegas were staged.

• “Zionist supremacists” are secretly masterminding Muslim immigration to Europe in a scheme to outbreed white people.

• Leading Democratic officials should be executed.

The most recent Greene view to be unearthed comes via Eric Hananoki. Just over two years ago, Greene suggested in a Facebook post that wildfires in California were not natural. Forests don’t just catch fire, you know. Rather, the blazes had been started by PG&E, in conjunction with the Rothschilds, using a space laser, in order to clear room for a high-speed rail project.

Naill Stanage writes this in The Hill: ” The Memo: Center-right Republicans fear party headed for disaster”.

The centrists’ worry is that the party is branding itself as the party of insurrectionists and conspiracy theorists. This spells catastrophe for the GOP’s ability to appeal beyond a hardcore base, they say.

Ten House Republicans voted to impeach President Trump for inciting the Jan. 6 ransacking of the Capitol, but the chances of him being convicted in the Senate seem close to zero.

The GOP activist base still loves Trump, and a related ecosystem of bellicose conservative media has lambasted those who have broken from him.

Now the GOP is spending the critical early days of President Biden’s administration squabbling over what to do about Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.).

Greene, a backer of the QAnon conspiracy theory, has also backed social media posts calling for the execution of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). Video has emerged of Greene taunting David Hogg, the young gun control activist who survived the 2018 high school massacre in Parkland, Fla.

Greene has, so far, not been stripped of her committee assignments by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), even though this fate befell then-Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) in 2019 when he suggested that white supremacism was not offensive.

Tensions within the party are at boiling point.

The biggest problem is that our democracy is built on the assumption of two functioning parties in charge of the process and system.    Today’s Washington Post notes: “Hostility between congressional Republicans and Democrats reaches new lows amid growing fears of violence”.

Open hostility broke out among Republicans and Democrats in Congress on Thursday amid growing fears of physical violence and looming domestic terrorism threats from supporters of former president Donald Trump, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi leveling an extraordinary allegation that dangers lurk among the membership itself.

“The enemy is within the House of Representatives, a threat that members are concerned about, in addition to what is happening outside,” Pelosi (D-Calif.) said at a Thursday morning news conference.

But even as she and others sounded the alarm, Republicans continued to deepen their ties to the former president, who has been impeached on a charge of inciting an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

Hours after Pelosi’s remarks, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) met with Trump in Florida. In a statement, the pair vowed to work together to take back the House. On Thursday afternoon, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), a Trump acolyte, traveled to the district of Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), a member of the House GOP leadership, to hold a rally criticizing her vote to impeach Trump earlier this month.

The events reflected the extent to which the country’s legislative branch, which has for years been mired in partisan bickering, has reached new levels of animosity just as newly inaugurated President Biden is seeking to win passage of a massive bill designed to help lift the country out of the pandemic.

Some Democrats are expressing fears that Republican lawmakers — who in some cases have tried bringing weapons onto the House floor — cannot be trusted. Some have bought bulletproof vests and are seeking other protections.

And Democratic leaders are putting maximum pressure on the Republican leadership to denounce freshman Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who once endorsed violence against members of Congress. One Democrat advanced a resolution to expel her from Congress.

The threat from right wing militia groups looms over the entire country.

The video’s title was posed as a question, but it left little doubt about where the men who filmed it stood. They called it “The Coming Civil War?” and in its opening seconds, Jim Arroyo, who leads an Arizona chapter of Oath Keepers, a right-wing militia, declared that the conflict had already begun.

To back up his claim, Mr. Arroyo cited Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona, one of the most far-right members of Congress. Mr. Gosar had paid a visit to the local Oath Keepers chapter a few years earlier, Mr. Arroyo recounted, and when asked if the United States was headed for a civil war, the congressman’s “response to the group was just flat out: ‘We’re in it. We just haven’t started shooting at each other yet.’”

Less than two months after the video was posted, members of the Oath Keepers were among those with links to extremist groups from around the country who took part in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, prompting new scrutiny of the links between members of Congress and an array of organizations and movements that espouse far-right beliefs.

Nearly 150 House Republicans supported President Donald J. Trump’s baseless claims that the election had been stolen from him. But Mr. Gosar and a handful of other Republican members of the House had deeper ties to extremist groups who pushed violent ideas and conspiracy theories and whose members were prominent among those who stormed the halls of Congress in an effort to stop certification of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.

This is from Nance’s op Ed.

This week, the Department of Homeland Security issued a bulletin warning that domestic violent extremists might be “emboldened” by the Capitol assault “to target elected officials and government facilities.” DHS is right to be worried. As an expert in counterinsurgency, I believe we need to take seriously the possibility that Trump’s most zealous supporters are now creating the conditions for long-term conflict — extending, at its worst, to persistent terrorist or paramilitary violence.

The 2014 U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual defines insurgency as “organized use of subversion and violence to seize, nullify, or challenge political control of a region.” The insurgent’s goal is to make existing governments seem powerless, feckless and incapable of protecting the common citizen — and then exploiting that vacuum to seize political power. The self-styled militia members, conspiracy theorists and Trump zealots who stormed the Capitol demonstrated their aspiration to thwart the workings of American democracy. How far are they willing to go?

Achieving Trump’s disruptive goals on a national scale might be simpler than we want to admit. An NBC poll reveals Trump commands the loyalty of 87 percent of Republicans — even after the Jan. 6 assault. And his followers have successfully employed a cultural tool so powerful many deny it even exists: White privilege.

During the assault on the Capitol, the deference encountered by some violent insurrectionists — in stark contrast to the massive preemptive deployments of force experienced by Black Lives Matter activists in similar situations — could only have served to confirm their assumption that they were protected by their Whiteness. Despite dire intelligence warnings that seizing the Capitol was the goal of the protest, the sergeants-at-arms for both the Senate and the House viewed it as bad “optics” to have National Guard troops present. The massive surge of insurrectionists, shielded by their inherent White privilege, were able to overpower the police, murder a policeman and freely hunt for elected representatives, including Vice President Mike Pence.

So long as these insurrectionists believe they are thus shielded, any act of defiance is within the realm of possibility. Subversion, sabotage, and attacks using snipers or explosives could be utilized to plague urban areas, damaging water- and power-supply systems or computer networks. Even spectacular deadly terrorist attacks, akin to Timothy McVeigh’s 1995 truck bombing in Oklahoma City, are not out of the question.

Trump’s fledgling insurgents are embracing the narrative that they are a modern-day, hyper-patriotic version of the “Sons of Liberty” or the defenders at Lexington or Concord. For them, this faith in their own purity is a force multiplier, but it is also a major vulnerability. We must attack this belief head-on.

Here’s something from a cultist that got out of it.  You’ll also note she was Bernie supporter prior to switching to Trump if you read the article.

And, then there’s this from The Guardian that reminds us who is most happy from the chaos the Trumpist regime has brought us:  “‘The perfect target’: Russia cultivated Trump as asset for 40 years – ex-KGB spy”.  BB has covered this before but this is from today with some updates in a book.

Donald Trump was cultivated as a Russian asset over 40 years and proved so willing to parrot anti-western propaganda that there were celebrations in Moscow, a former KGB spy has told the Guardian.

Yuri Shvets, posted to Washington by the Soviet Union in the 1980s, compares the former US president to “the Cambridge five”, the British spy ring that passed secrets to Moscow during the second world war and early cold war.

Now 67, Shvets is a key source for American Kompromat, a new book by journalist Craig Unger, whose previous works include House of Trump, House of Putin. The book also explores the former president’s relationship with the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.

“This is an example where people were recruited when they were just students and then they rose to important positions; something like that was happening with Trump,” Shvets said by phone on Monday from his home in Virginia.

Shvets, a KGB major, had a cover job as a correspondent in Washington for the Russian news agency Tass during the 1980s. He moved to the US permanently in 1993 and gained American citizenship. He works as a corporate security investigator and was a partner of Alexander Litvinenko, who was assassinated in London in 2006.

It appears we cannot possibly relax completely even though the Biden administration is going through the Pentagon and other places trying to oust Trump plants. The WSJ today reported that the Russian hacks went deeper than just Solar Winds too.  Plagues and Pandemics are not easy things to get rid of.

So, it’s been nice to see more signs of normalcy in the TV news but we’re hardly done.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Monday Reads: All Quiet in the West Wing Front

Posted: January 25, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: The Media SUCKS | Tags: | 23 Comments

NBC newscaster John Cameron Swayze was television’s first “anchor man” – though not for presenting the news. The term referred to his status as permanent panelist of the quiz show Who Said That?

Good Morning Sky Dancers!

What a difference a week makes!  The headlines today actually contain more news and analysis than melodrama and craziness.  Perhaps it’s time to turn some focus to the news outlets and the way their approach to the last four years actually created a good deal of the havoc.  A good first place to start is Fox News which basically turned into a propaganda arm of a deranged and out of control President by repeating and reinforcing every deranged lie and conspiracy theory out of his pouty little potty mouth.

This is from Mother Jones and Kevin Drum: “What Can We Do About Fox News?”.

However, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I’ll say again that all the attention being given to social media is basically a distraction. Sure, the insurrectionists used social media to help organize things, but people have organized protests in Washington DC before with little trouble. Nor was social media necessary to inflame to mob. The 2009 tea party movement did just fine without much in the way of social media.

The source of all this was, as usual, Fox News and the mainstream right-wing media empire. It wasn’t social media that convinced 70 percent of Republicans that the election was stolen. It was Fox News. It wasn’t social media that relentlessly took seriously all the moronic lawsuits filed by Donald Trump’s team of idiot lawyers. It was Fox News. It’s not social media that has any serious appeal outside the folks who are already conspiracy theorists. It’s Fox News.

But of course there’s nothing we can do about Fox News, is there? And they all dress so nicely, too. They can’t really want to overturn the peaceful transfer of power after an election, can they?

I have no idea what they really want to do. Maybe it’s all a game, maybe it’s just a way to make money, or maybe they really do want to overturn an election. But it doesn’t matter. Regardless of their intentions, they’re the ones responsible for this insurrection. And we aren’t completely helpless to stop them, either.

The Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan writes this Op-Ed : “Fox News is a hazard to our democracy. It’s time to take the fight to the Murdochs. Here’s how.” 

Last week, two key members of Fox News’s decision desk abruptly departed the network. One was laid off, the other has retired, and some insiders are calling it a “purge.”

Apparently, at a network that specializes in spreading lies, there was a price to pay for getting it right. (“Fox News isn’t a newsgathering organization,” surmised press critic Eric Boehlert, arguing in response to the purge that its White House credentials should be revoked.)

In recent days, Fox has taken a sharp turn toward a more extreme approach as it confronts a post-Trump ratings dip — the result of some of its furthest-right viewers moving to outlets such as Newsmax and One America News and some middle-of-the-roaders apparently finding CNN or MSNBC more to their liking.

With profit as the one true religion at Fox, something had to change. Eighty-nine-year-old Rupert Murdoch, according to a number of reports, has stepped in to call the shots directly. Most notably, the network has decided to add an hour of opinion programming to its prime-time offerings. The 7 p.m. hour will no longer be nominally news but straight-up outrage production.

Why? Because that’s where the ratings are.

And in a move that should be shocking but isn’t, one of those who will rotate through the tryouts for that coveted spot will be Maria Bartiromo, whose Trump sycophancy during the campaign may well have been unparalleled. She was among those (including Lou Dobbs and Jeanine Pirro) recently forced under threat of a lawsuit to air a video that debunked repeated false claims on her show that corrupt voting software had given millions of Trump votes to Biden.

At the same time, Sean Hannity, who likes to blast Biden as “cognitively struggling,” and Tucker Carlson, who tries to sow doubt about the prevalence of white supremacy, have become even more outlandish as they try to gin up anti-Biden rage within their audiences.

Even James Murdoch, while not naming names, blasted the harm that his family’s media empire has done. “The sacking of the Capitol is proof positive that what we thought was dangerous is indeed very much so,” he told the Financial Times. “Those outlets that propagate lies to their audience have unleashed insidious and uncontrollable forces that will be with us for years.”

1956 Canadian reporter Angela Burke

There’s plenty of blame to spread around when it comes Trump’s media coverage and the minute by minute blasting of lies, conspiracy theories, and displays of id.  Here’s one from New York Daily News  and Pete Vernon: “Giving up the ‘Golden Goose’ how the Trump presidency shaped the media and what’s to come.”

The Trump era, marked by vitriolic attacks on the media and the failure to stand up for press freedoms abroad, did, however, harbor a cynical silver lining when it came to news organizations’ bottom lines. In 2016, then CBS executive chairman and CEO Leslie Moonves said of Trump’s candidacy, “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.” By admitting the quiet part out loud, the since-disgraced media mogul hit on a truth about the 45th president: whether Americans loved him or loathed him, they couldn’t turn away.

With Trump now ensconced at Mar-a-Lago, stripped of the Twitter account which served as his method for instigating so much madness, the political press is left to confront a as-yet-unanswerable question: What happens when the shiny objects of politics are no longer gilded in Trumpian ratings gold?

Journalists acknowledge Trump’s frequent claims that he was great for their business, unlike so many of his other boasts, were not lies. Newspapers like the New York Times and the Washington Post saw subscriptions surge, while cable news ratings skyrocketed. The Times and Post reportedly tripled their digital subscriber base over the past four years. CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC all notched record audiences in 2020.

Trump was “a controversy factory” in office, says Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker. “Controversy sells and attracts readers, no question about it. We would get hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people to tune into a story just because he said or did something outrageous.”

Under Joe Biden, the news, of course, is no less important. Biden has taken office in the midst of a raging pandemic, an economic crisis, a period of racial reckoning, and an impending impeachment trial of his predecessor. While it is unclear if the American public will continue to follow developments from Washington with the same intensity they did over the past four years, journalists are hoping that the audience remains tuned in.

Yes, folks in the media, you certainly do need to do better.

Since the Capitol siege of Jan. 6, federal and local officials have been scrambling to fortify Washington and its institutions against the threat of white supremacy and violence, but one national institution remains painfully vulnerable: the mainstream media.

The breaches to our Fourth Estate came long before Jan. 6, of course. From the moment Trump entered the 2016 race, endless oxygen was given to his racism and lies. White supremacists were deemed worthy of profiles noting their haircuts and wardrobes or allowed NPR airtime to rank the intelligence of the races. The breaches continued as ex-Trump officials were allowed to profit from distorting the truth to the American people, through TV analyst spots, book deals and Harvard fellowships.

Our media ushered all this through the door, under the aegis of “balance” and “presenting both sides” — as if racism and white supremacy were theoretical ideas to be debated, not life-threatening forces to be defeated. Never would I have imagined that I would say Biden’s stance on white supremacy is more progressive than the media’s. But here we are.

From the start, many non-White journalists grasped the threat that recognizing and calling out white supremacy was a life-or-death matter. And many paid a price for it. Black on-air commentators were literally laughed at by White counterparts for sounding the alarm. Journalist Jemele Hill was reprimanded by ESPN after calling Trump a white supremacist.

It took White blood being spilled, and elite lawmakers being threatened, for other sectors to confront the need to forcefully guard against extremism. In the wake of the Capitol insurrection, which left five dead, corporations pulled support from GOP politicians who supported the assault. Several Capitol officials resigned. Twitter kicked Trump off its platform, and Apple and Google removed Parler, which has increasingly become a haven for extremism, from their app stores.

But the media still seems unwilling or unable to reform itself. There have been no major efforts as an industry to systematically examine the role we played in America’s journey to the brink.

Then there is the entire debate around the role of social media as platform or publisher?  

Outside the White House in the early 1900s

There’s a lot before this snip worth reading.  This is from The New Yorker.   It’s written by Andrew Marantz

The Trump problem hardly caught Twitter by surprise. In 2019, Jack Dorsey did a round of podcast interviews and press appearances, hoping to boost “conversational health”—and, surely, Twitter’s stock price—with yet more public conversation. The podcast host Joe Rogan asked Dorsey whether he’d considered getting rid of Donald Trump, one of the most influential and least healthy conversationalists on the platform. Dorsey demurred, arguing that the words of a President are inherently newsworthy. “We should see how our leaders think and how they act,” he said. “That informs voting, that informs the conversation.” In the end, Twitter banned Trump, ostensibly, for two tweets posted on January 8th. The first, in which he referred to the seventy-five million Americans who had voted for him as “patriots,” was hardly one of the most incendiary things he’d ever posted. (It wouldn’t even make the top fifty.) The next tweet read, in its entirety, “To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.” This was, ironically, one of the tiny minority of Trump’s tweets that really was unambiguously newsworthy. Twitter argued that “President Trump’s statement that he will not be attending the Inauguration is being received by a number of his supporters as further confirmation that the election was not legitimate”; to my eyes, on the contrary, it looked like the closest Trump will ever come to a concession. If you take Twitter’s reasoning at face value, then the most generous way to interpret the ban is that the company made the right decision for the wrong reasons. Perhaps the real reasons for the ban were simpler—that Trump is now a lame duck who can no longer punish Twitter with the levers of the federal government; that the siege of the Capitol was simply one bad press cycle too many; that the company is worried about violence in the near future, and is trying to avoid ending up with even more blood on its hands. If Twitter is being coy about its real motivations, or if the thinking leading to this monumental decision was really as muddled as the official explanation suggests, then there is little cause to think that its future decisions will be much more coherent.

“I doubt I would be here if it weren’t for social media, to be honest with you,” Donald Trump said in 2017. He may have been wrong; after all, he uttered those words on Fox Business, a TV network that will surely continue to have him on as a guest long after he leaves the White House, and even if he loses every one of his social-media accounts. Perhaps Trump could have become President without social media. There were plenty of other factors militating in his favor—a racist backlash to the first Black president, the abandonment of the working class by both parties, and on and on. Still: Trump wanted to be President in 1988, and in 2000, and he couldn’t get close. In 2012, just as social media was starting to eclipse traditional media, Trump was a big enough factor in the Republican race that Mitt Romney went to the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas to publicly accept his endorsement. Only in 2016, when the ascent of social media was all but complete, did Trump’s dream become a reality. Maybe this was just a coincidence. There is, tragically, no way to run the experiment in reverse.

We’ve been seeing normal pressers the last few days  with Biden’s White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki that are a breath of fresh air compared to days of trying to watch Sean Spicer or Sarah Huckabee Sanders or Kayleigh McEnany  McEnany out there on TV giving whining interviews about every one hating on Trump.  Huckabee Sanders is trying to run for Governor of Arkansas.  We’ll see how that goes.  We’ll also see how this new coverage goes.  I bet they bothersider Psaki by the end of the month.

I’m going to leave you with this from The Atlantic:  “TV Captured Trump by Looking Away”.  This is by Sophie Gilbert.  She argues with the eye of some one who looks at culture.

 

Television during the Trump era faced a paradox: The 45th president was obsessed with TV, was saved by TV (The Apprentice resurrected him as a public figure in one of the lowest periods of his career), was influenced by TV, and seemed made to be analyzed by it. But early on, creators appeared befuddled by the project of portraying someone whose self-satirical physicality and distorted psyche defied pastiche. It didn’t help that so many viewers were, like me, exhausted by the antics of the real-life Trump and emotionally numbed by cortisol spikes of outrage.

And yet, Trump exerted a centripetal force on pop culture. Broad swaths of works that weren’t about him at all seemed newly crucial in understanding his ascent, even as the stakes for shows that tried to deal with him directly as a subject grew impossibly high. What became clear while taking stock of TV over the past four years is that the shows and artists that most clearly and urgently responded to him did so by looking past his theatrics as an individual, and focusing instead on the elements—recurrent throughout American history—that led to his rise.

There are some disturbing things that still needs some focus.  Trump basically represented elements that have been recurrent through American History as Gilbert states.  The blatant racism, xenophobia, and misogyny were obvious to nearly all of us.  However, the media coverage did not originally and still may not fully study the mistakes made when we called your basic White Christian Nationalists present throughout the KKK movement and the American Nazi Party just sympathetic old white dudes misplaced by the economy.

It’s the same way that the Capitol Hill Insurrectionists got so far into the Building.  No one thought all theses white police, ex-military, and Karens were truly capable of anything. Trump was the catalyst and the symbol but the underlying currents must be reported in a different way.  Also, while holding Biden to account, the media should not go out of its way to prove it’s unbiased by unnecessarily going after any one in the Biden Administration.  I’m seeing that now and not only in Fox News.  Of course, the New York Times appears to be going right down that road.  The Trump administration deserved the microscope.  A lot of what Biden will do is likely yawn worthy in its return to normalcy.

And speaking of the New York Times: “After touting Trump as “populist,” New York Times paints Biden as elitist”.  The Rolex nonsense is dissected by Eric Boehlert. So, here we go already.

I have to say that it’s nice to read more news that just something about the daily Trump crazies, meltdowns, and weirdness. 

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Friday Reads: A Return to ‘Radical Normalcy’*

Posted: January 22, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: academia, Afternoon Reads | Tags: , | 20 Comments

Fellini – Satyricon (1969)

Good Day Sky Dancers!

For the first time in four years I had CNN or MSNBC news on during the day while I was working with students and grading. It’s been my background noise for years but I gave it up for at least the last two. Yesterday and today,  it’s like being a kid on Christmas morning just about every hour.  Presents! Presents! Presents!

We heard an unleashed Dr Fauci give a press conference filled with facts and science!  There were presidential signatures with actual pens–not childlike sharpie markers–placed on executive orders giving us a Federal Response to Covid-19 and to future Pandemics.  And freeing us from so much of the damage Trump has done to the environment, diplomacy, and collective bargaining.

We welcomed back the idea that women have a right to moral agency and to make decisions concerning their own bodies without politicians. Two wonderfully able people were put into cabinet posts for the nation’s defense and intelligence.  *Katie Tur called it a return to ‘radical normalcy’.  I felt years of stress fall from my shoulders and today, I slept in late again with no Felliniesque Dystopian nightmare.

Today, Jane Yellen was approved for Treasury Secretary.  I’m thrilled.

La Strada (1954, dir. Fellini) – The Fool: “What a funny face! Are you a woman, really? Or an artichoke?”

The House will send its Articles of Impeachment to the Senate on Monday where Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and the new Democratic majority will work with what’s left of the Trump-Free Republican Party to deal with sedition charges.  This is from Axios and Zachary Basu.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced that the House will deliver the article of impeachment against former President Trump for “incitement of insurrection” on Monday.

Why it matters: The Senate is required to begin the impeachment trial at 1 p.m. the day after the article is transmitted.

  • Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had been pushing for the trial to begin in mid-February to allow senators more time to gather evidence and to give Trump proper due process.
  • Schumer had countered that it would force the Senate to delay other important business, such as passing COVID relief.

What they’re saying: “I’ve heard some of my Republican colleagues argue that this trial would be unconstitutional because Donald Trump is no longer in office. An argument that has been roundly repudiated, debunked by hundreds of constitutional scholars — left, right, and center — and defies basic common sense,” Schumer said in a speech on the Senate floor.

  • “It makes no sense whatsoever that a president or any official could commit a heinous crime against our country and then be permitted to resign so as to avoid accountability and a vote to disbar them from future office. It makes no sense,” he continued.

The bottom line: Trump is the first president to be impeached twice, and he will be the first to face a Senate trial after leaving office.

Talking Heads consider Trump’s choice of lawyers to be a signal he’s taking this impeachment with more gravitas.  He’s no longer protected by the Presidency and he’s already facing financial problems.  This should be a seriously good watch.

Some Trump allies believe the president plans to use his trial to further his baseless claims that the election was stolen from him, according to two former aides familiar with his strategy. One of the aides cautioned that no defense strategy had been definitively agreed upon, though.

Bowers’ history suggests that the ex-president is keen on focusing on how votes were cast and counted during the 2020 cycle.Bowers served under President George W. Bush as special counsel for voting matters in the Justice Department, and worked as counsel in Florida for John McCain’s 2008 presidential run.

“All I can say is based on the Butch Bowers I know and respect, I would hope that he wouldn’t be sucked in as a tool in advancing the president’s conspiracy theories,” Sanford said.

Trump’s push to bolster his defense team comes one week after House Democrats impeached him for a second time on charges of inciting an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Hundreds of pro-Trump demonstrators stormed the building — injuring law enforcement officials and forcing the evacuation of members of Congress — after rallying with the ex-president outside the White House.

https://twitter.com/jsrailton/status/1352652099910307841

Clowns: ‘one of Fellini’s most complex, allusive and elusive pictures’.

There’s actually a lot of there there.

Meanwhile, back in the Trump clown car that still functions in and around Capitol Hill, one of the whack-a-do QAnon Congresswomen Margorie Taylor Greene is fundraising off of it as reported by Newsweek.   Hunter Biden’s Laptop is the new What about her emails?

According to a press release posted to Twitter by Greene, the impeachment articles are for Biden’s “corrupt actions involving his quid pro quo in Ukraine and his abuse of power by allowing his son, Hunter Biden, to siphon off cash from America’s greatest enemies Russia and China.”

There’s already a twitter troll army out there that seem to be freshly minted like a few hours ago.

The lawyers on the Impeachment side are an impressive list of prosecutors.  But so are the ones waiting to hit him with all kinds of suits now that he’s left office.

On the other side of Donald Trump’s turbulent presidency, the lawyers are waiting.

Leaving aside his Senate impeachment trial, mounting government investigations include a civil probe by New York Attorney General Letitia James, a criminal probe by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., and a federal probe by acting U.S. attorney for D.C. Michael Sherwin that may include Trump’s role in the catastrophic storming of the U.S. Capitol this month.

But already pending for the South Florida retiree is a trio of lawsuits that allege defamation, fraud and more fraud — all of which are helmed by one attorney.

Roberta Kaplan’s clients include writer E. Jean Carroll, who filed a defamation case after Trump claimed she was “totally lying” about her allegation that he raped her a quarter-century ago in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room, and niece Mary L. Trump, who claims that Trump and two of his siblings deprived her of an inheritance worth millions.

“I became the go-to person to sue the president,” says Kaplan, 54, with considerable relish.

She is in many ways the ideal legal adversary to take on Trump. Kaplan is a brash and original strategist, with neither a gift for patience nor silence, a crusader for underdogs who has won almost every legal accolade imaginable. Kaplan, says New York Democratic Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in an email, “has been indispensable in the fight against the cancer of hate and division that Trump spent four years exacerbating.”

Before the presidency, Trump was often as engaged in legal tussles as he was in real estate, suing and threatening to sue his way out of financial trouble. With a return to private life, “his terror is that he will no longer be protected by the office and will have to deal with these lawsuits,” says his niece. Trump faces the prospect of spending considerable time in the role of defendant. Kaplan says she will seek to depose him in all three cases. Trump’s lawyers did not respond to requests for comment on the cases in this article.

8 1/2, (1963)

So, if you like Law and Order Shows, we have what seems an endless stream of them coming for Unindicted Co-conspirator Number One.  Radical Normalcy will indeed by Radical for the Trump Crime Family.  The reckoning is coming.

Meanwhile,  GOOD NEWS EVERYONE!  Buck up White Christian Nationalists! You snowflakes you!

From  WAPO:   Biden calls for LGBTQ protections in Day 1 executive order, angering conservatives

On his first day in office, President Biden issued a sweeping executive order making it clear that gay and transgender people are protected against discrimination in schools, health care, the workplace and other realms of American life.

Via  KLRT-TV: President Biden has button used to order Diet Coke removed from Oval Office’s Resolute Desk—  (NEXSTAR)

The furniture and artwork may be largely the same, but one ornament has apparently quickly disappeared disappeared from the White House Oval Office following the inauguration of President Joe Biden.

Marcello Mastroianni in 8 1/2 (1963)

From Susannah George at the  Washington Post: U.S. to resume processing thousands of stalled visas for Afghans who aided Americans

The U.S. Embassy in Kabul will soon resume processing thousands of stalled special visa applications for Afghans who aided U.S. forces after halting visa interviews in March because of the pandemic.

A State Department official said the U.S. Embassy in Kabul would begin “a phased resumption” of in-person interviews in February. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under rules imposed by the State Department, would not comment on how many visas the embassy expects to process.

More than 7,000 special visas allocated to Afghans by Congress in 2020 went unissued, compared with about 5,000 the year before, according to State Department data. Nearly 19,000 visa applications were stuck in processing as of September 2019, according to a State Department audit last year, a number that was all but guaranteed to grow with the coronavirus disruptions.

Doesn’t Radical Normalcy feel grand?  I, for one, am looking forward to another boring Press Conference where we learn endless details and actually information about all kinds of things that just go along with basic competent governance.   No more of any of this:

I’m beginning to feel human and alive again!

How are y’all doing? What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

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