New Orleans got some much-needed rain this morning! It was too late for several homeless folks in the city who were overcome by heat exhaustion and stroke. They are not alone, as there are victims throughout the Southern United States with similar fates.
President Biden will visit the site of the Maui Fires, which will take unprecedented federal resources to return many people to a new normal situation. Having been part of a diaspora and major disaster–Hurricane Katrina–I can attest to the remaining devastation here and the impact on the psyche of its victims that never entirely goes away. We’re just beginning to get information on the flooding and storms that have damaged cities like Palm Springs. National resources, Charitable funds, and ordinary citizens will come to the rescue with basic needs as well as much-needed hugs and comfort.
Prairie Meadows Burning, on the Missouri, George Catlin, 1852
These climate-change-related disasters are on the minds of concerned Americans who are reaching out with grace and resources to make their fellow citizens whole again. Scanning the headlines, I notice that a specific group of Americans doesn’t appear to be part of the massive acts of neighborly love that will begin so many paths to healing and restoration. Hurricane Ida is still an issue down here. Resources are still finding their way to those just trying to get back to some kind of routine. The only thing I can find on the Maui fires and Trump is a fake video telling his acolytes he visited there during the fires. This was obviously not true. The other headline is him lambasting President Biden for a “disgraceful” response. This after his response to Puerto Rico’s American citizens after a hurricane was to toss paper towels at them and appear surprised they were actually tax-paying and voting U.S. Citizens. Trump delayed $2 billion in aid. No word about the California Hurriquake from His Orange Assholines yet.
Even more than during the gripping performance of his various indictments, the theatre of his trials will subsume politics. There will not be another campaign, some semblance of a normal campaign of the past, a fantasy campaign, separate from Trump’s trials. The scenes from courtroom to courtroom will overlap with the primaries – the final ones taking place on 4 June 2024 – only intensifying the zeal of his base. And then Trump’s battle with the law will engulf the general election.
The trials are a continuous spectacle, featuring an all-star cast in far-flung locations. Political reporters are barely heard from, while legal analysts fill the airwaves. Every twist and turn, every motion, every argument is the breathless lead story. Everyone, from prosecutors to co-conspirators, named and unnamed, indicted and unindicted, are characters in Trump’s new reality show – part violent action movie (the insurrection), part sleazy porn flick (Stormy Daniels), part conspiracy thriller (Mar-a-Lago), and part mafia drama (the fake elector racket).
But the Trump trials are more than his means; they are his ends. The trials are not the sideshow, but the heart and soul of Trump’s campaign. They have become his essential fundraising tool to finance his defense, his platform for whipping up his followers into a constant state of excitement, and his instrument for dominating the media to make himself the center of attention and blot out coverage of anyone else.
The trials are the message. They are the drama around which Trump plays his role as the unjustly accused victim, whose rights are trampled and who is the martyr for his oppressed “deplorables”. He is taking the slings and arrows for them. The narcissist is the self-sacrificing saint. The criminal is the angel. The liar is the truth-teller. If any Republican lapses in faithfulness, they are more than a mere doubter or skeptic, but a betrayer and traitor. Trump’s trials are the rigorous trial of his followers’ faith. Rejection of temptation in an encounter with an impertinent fact that might raise a qualm shows purity of heart. Seduction by fact must be resisted. The siren song of critical thinking must be cast out as sin. Trump’s convictions are the supreme test of his followers’ strength of conviction.
Republicans are not prisoners of Trump’s narcissistic rage. They don’t reject it. They don’t regret it. They don’t apologize. They mirror it. They mimic it. They exult in it. It is the gratification they receive for passing through the ordeal of belief. His rage is their reward. It is their cheap vicarious defiance of the evil-doers: the establishment, the globalists, the Fauciists, the FBI, the Barbie movie. As Trump has received target letters, so judges, district attorneys, the special counsel, and their wives, too, must be targets. Fair game is fair play. Hallelujah!
If Vivek Ramaswamy wants to appear on Newsmax, he should pay to do it.
That was the message that network chief Chris Ruddy delivered to the Republican presidential candidate during a private call earlier this summer, according to two people to whom the candidate described the conversation. Ramaswamy had complained that the right-leaning network was sticking him in little-watched midday slots or ignoring him outright.
Ruddy also suggested a solution, Ramaswamy told associates: buy more television ads on the network. Ruddy, Ramaswamy told them, noted that such a transaction had helped Republican businessman Perry Johnson, a gadfly candidate who has thus far garnered only passing attention among mainstream and even conservative outlets covering the 2024 presidential cycle.
In a statement, Newsmax spokesperson Bill Daddi told Semafor that the insinuation “that Newsmax is asking candidates to advertise in order to ensure coverage as some quid pro quo … is categorically untrue and incorrect. Newsmax would take an assertion such as that very seriously. There is no correlation between advertising and editorial visibility for any candidate on Newsmax.”
“If candidates want to reach our audience outside of our programming, then, of course, advertising would be a good way for them to do this. That is the basis of all political advertising,” he said.
Tornado over Kansas, John Steuart Curry.1929
And all that time, the League of Woman Voters could’ve been collecting booty for the Voter’s Guides. But wait, there’s the House of Representatives that’s supposed to really care about the people, right? This is from Axios. “House Freedom Caucus fires warning shot over government shutdown.” Just as we need Federal resources to handle all these natural disasters, why shouldn’t we just close all of it down? What could be more important than helping our citizens in desperate need?
Members of the House Freedom Caucus are making it harder for leadership to avoid a government shutdown, announcing on Monday that they’ll oppose a stopgap funding bill unless it caves to their terms.
Driving the news: The HFC is demanding more funding for border enforcement, cuts to the Department of Justice and FBI, and an end to “woke” policies at the Department of Defense.
“We refuse to support any such measure that continues Democrats’ bloated COVID-era spending and simultaneously fails to force the Biden Administration to follow the law and fulfill its most basic responsibilities,” they said in a statement.
“Any support for a ‘clean’ Continuing Resolution would be an affirmation of the current FY 2023 spending level grossly increased by the lame-duck December 2022 omnibus spending bill that we all vehemently opposed just seven months ago.”
The big picture: Congress is unlikely to complete its work on appropriations bills by the deadline on Sept. 30, with leadership calling for a continuing resolution to provide themselves with more time.
“If you think we’re going to come in and in three weeks, three partial weeks in September and get the appropriations bills done — that seems unlikely, given the extent to which there was a total failure in settings, spending levels where they needed to be set in order to get to 218,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) told Axios.
What’s next: Some members have discussed potentially attempting to block a continuing resolution on legislation from reaching the House floor unless it meets their criteria, upping the likelihood of a government shutdown if Democrats don’t vote for the measure.
In a statement Monday, the Freedom Caucus said its official position was that the group’s members would oppose any bill unless it includes their preferred language on border security, new laws to address what they call the “weaponization” of the Justice Department and FBI and a shift in some of the Pentagon’s policies — although they didn’t detail all the changes they want.
More than a third of Americans are under heat alert early this week as a monster heat dome stifles a huge swath of territory across the central United States, threatening the hottest temperatures of summer. As officials warn of “life-threatening” conditions, numerous records in parts of the Midwest could be reached as the heat continues to pummel the South.
Excessive-heat warnings stretch from Texas and Louisiana to Wisconsin and Minnesota, including the entire states of Iowa and Missouri. Cities under excessive-heat warnings include Des Moines, Kansas City, Oklahoma City, Dallas and Little Rock. Combinations of heat and humidity will lead to feels-like values of 110 to 120 degrees across much of the Midwest and South, with some spots even surpassing those marks.
That already happened Sunday, with heat indexes in numerous locations topping 120, focused on Kansas, Iowa and Missouri.
More than 200 long-period record highs were set since Friday alone, including an all-time high of 112 degrees in College Station, Tex. Another all-time high was reached in Alexandria, La., where it reached 110 on Saturday. August records were set in Abilene, Tex., at 111, and in Stephenville, Tex., at 110.
But, hey, the majority party in the House of Representatives believes we need to stop responding to public health emergencies and start paying more attention to making Trump’s indictments about politics and not his crime spree. That sounds about right. It’s their idea of our priorities.
What’s on your blogging and reading lists today?
Let us know how you’re making out from the heat, the hurriquake, the fires, and the overall Republican plan to turn us into victims of their shame and plunder policies.
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Hurricane Hilary swirls near Baja California, Mexico, on Friday. (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
The stress from extreme weather should be sending a huge wake-up call to the community of humans sharing the planet. Relentless heat here is setting records week after week. Now we’re staring down a map of disturbances in the Atlantic and the Gulf that reminds me of Multiball mode in pinball. We’re still receiving unsettling news from Maui after fires destroyed a historic town. Now, we’re watching a Hurricane threatening a good portion of the west coast. I’m still worried about the koala population decimated by fires in Australia in 2020.
As the federal government prepares its response to the tropical storm expected to hit parts of Southern California on Sunday afternoon, FEMA is bracing for potentially devastating flooding.“Hurricane Hilary is going to produce some really significant impacts to Southern California,” FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell said Sunday during an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
Though the total amount of rain appears unlikely to exceed that of similar storms that more frequently make landfall on the East Coast, people should not downplay this threat, Criswell said.
“People really need to take this storm in California serious,” she said on ABC’s “This Week.” “I think it’s interesting that the total rain amounts aren’t like what we see in some of our Atlantic storms and Gulf storms, but it’s going to really be potentially devastating for them in these desert areas.
The emergency management agency already has a team embedded in California, and is moving additional resources into the state, Criswell said, as the storm moves north toward Mexico and the southwest United States, where it’s expected to cause “catastrophic” flooding.
“They’re a very capable state as well and they have a lot of resources,” Criswell said of California Sunday. But if it does exceed what their capability is, “we’re going to have additional search-and-rescue teams, commodities on hand to be able to go in and support anything that they might ask for.”
The storm is the latest in a series of natural disasters and extreme weather that left communities in need of federal assistance. Wildfires in Hawaii recently raged across a historic Maui town, leaving more than 100 dead and even more without shelter. President Joe Biden will visit Lahaina on Monday to see the devastation first-hand and “reassure” residents “that the federal government is there,” Criswell said.
Volunteers from the West Orange County Community Emergency Response Team load sandbags for local residents as the hurricane approaches. Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images
The obscure federal agency that oversees the nation’s immense tangle of pipelines, power lines, and transfer stations is unfamiliar to most Americans. But it has very much been on Sen. Joe Manchin III’s mind.
By the end of last year, the West Virginia Democrat had become deeply displeased with how the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission was helping the Biden administration advance its aggressive climate goals. Manchin, a staunch ally of fossil fuel interests, was particularly critical of the agency’s efforts to write regulations that more fully consider climate impact when it reviews new natural gas infrastructure.
So he kneecapped the agency. The chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Manchin refused to hold a confirmation hearing for the reappointment of Richard Glick, the agency’s chair and a key ally of President Biden, after Glick’s term expired at the end of the year. That has effectively stripped the board of its Democratic majority, leaving it deadlocked and limiting its ability to advance renewable energy projects.
Manchin isn’t the essential tiebreaking vote for Democrats in the Senate anymore, but a year after the enactment of the Inflation Reduction Act — which wouldn’t have passed without his support — he’s irate at the way Biden is implementing the law. And he’s fighting back: Besides his pressure on FERC, Manchin has vowed to oppose appointments to the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department. He is even publicly flirting with running for president in 2024, an unlikely prospect but one that could be devastating for Biden — and a situation that senior White House officials are closely monitoring.
In this photo provided by Tiffany Kidder Winn, burned-out cars sit after a wildfire raged through Lahaina, Hawaii, on Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2023. The scene at one of Maui’s tourist hubs on Thursday looked like a wasteland, with homes and entire blocks reduced to ashes as firefighters as firefighters battled the deadliest blaze in the U.S. in recent years. (Tiffany Kidder Winn via AP)
The cause of Maui’s wildfires has been attributed to multiple factors. When the blazes first began raging, experts pointed to drought conditions, dry vegetation, and strong winds caused by Hurricane Dora, which was several hundred miles away from Hawaii at the time. Media reports suggested the island’s first fire was likely caused by a power line in the woods of the Maui Bird Conservation Center. Hawaiian Electric, which services 95% of Hawaii’s residents, is facing several negligence lawsuits from residents alleging failure to maintain their equipment and clear vegetation located near utility poles. However, the power company told Forbes this week a cause for the fire had yet to be determined.
Believe me, it’s odd to live in a tropical zone, experiencing basically desert conditions week after week after week. It’s not normal. I haven’t opened my curtains in days, and I judge the heat by how many cold baths I take. Early in the morning, Temples panting worried me, and I put her in a cold bath. The relentless heat has been the most significant weather topic we’ve had since Hurricane Katrina. The biggest question is, “Will this be the new normal?
The summer of extremes continues. July was the hottest month ever recorded. The high-impact weather is continuing through August.
“This is the new normal and does not come as a surprise,” said Alvaro Silva, a climate expert with WMO. “The frequency and intensity of many extremes, such as heatwaves and heavy precipitation, have increased in recent decades. There is high confidence that human induced climate change from greenhouse emissions is the main driver,” he told a regular media briefing in Geneva.
WMO stresses the need to follow authoritative warnings from national meteorological and hydrological services to stay safe.
During the weekend of 19-20 August, maximum temperatures may reach up to 40 °C in parts of southern France, according to Meteo-France. It said it would be the most intense heatwave of the summer of 2023. This situation is due to a strong high pressure and subtropical warm air from North Africa. Meteo-Suisse has issued level 3 amber alerts for most of the country, with maximum daytime temperatures between 33 and 35 °C and high nighttime temperatures.
Spain, including Canary Islands and Portugal, also experienced extreme heat, fuelling an extremely severe fire risk. As of 17 August, the Tenerife wildfire continued out of control, with more than 2600 ha burnt area and people evacuated in some sites. Dry conditions, maximum temperatures above 30 °C, night temperatures above 20 °C, peak wind gusts above 50 km/h were observed on 16 and 17 in some AEMET weather stations of Tenerife.
Japan has also suffered a prolonged heatwave, with many station records broken, according to the Japanese Meteorological Agency, which issued concurrent warnings for torrential rain and typhoon-related floods.
While climate change is controversial to interests aligned with the oil, coal, and gas industries, data shows that America’s voters aren’t as skeptical as some would have you believe. “Climate change issues have a reputation for being divisive. Data show it’s not quite true. The majority of the country believes climate change is happening and is worried for the future. But experts say real change won’t happen until the beliefs are more personal.” This is reported by Grace Manthey.
Climate perspectives vary across the country, but by smaller margins than political leanings.
Yale’s program produces Climate Opinion Maps based on a large national survey dataset with more than 28,000 respondents collected between 2008 and 2021. And, the strong majorities nationwide don’t just apply to believing climate change is impacting the weather and might harm people. The data show widespread support for government intervention:
77% of Americans support funding research into renewable energy sources and tax credits for electric vehicles and solar panels
72% believe the government should regulate CO2 as a pollutant
66% support imposing strict limits on coal power plants and taxing fossil fuel companies
For context, the largest popular vote percentage in a presidential election in American history was in 1964, when President Lyndon B. Johnson won 61% of the popular vote.
President Ronald Reagan’s 1984 win was considered a landslide when he nearly swept electoral votes. But Reagan only won about 59% of the popular vote.
These climate change opinions vary by geography with some resemblance to political trends, and democrats are more likely to have pro-climate leanings, a recent Pew survey found.
But the issue isn’t black and white: republicans are not completely against climate-friendly changes and geographic trends on climate opinions aren’t as extreme as political ones.
Here’s something that seems contradictory.
In 92% of counties in the country, more than half of residents are worried about global warming.
That includes Mobile County, AL – the county surrounding the city of Mobile – where 58% of residents are worried about global warming and 59% believe it will harm people.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump received 55% of the 2020 presidential vote in Mobile County.
Lipsky is a contributor to the Rolling Stone. “How Sun Myung Moon ‘Digested the Scientists’ and Fueled Climate-Change Denial. In an excerpt from his new book The Parrot and Igloo, Rolling Stone contributor David Lipsky reveals a forgotten chapter in the climate crisis — when two once-respected scientists became merchants of doubt and mouthpieces for the Unification Church’s controversial leader.
IF THERE WERE A DENIAL Mt. Rushmore the two biggest heads would be S. Fred Singer and Frederick Seitz. Dishonesty’s Lincoln, lying’s Washington. Together, the two graybeard prophets launched a movement.
Frederick Seitz’s slab would be the larger and more solemn. Most decorated scientist ever to slip over to the dark side, the non-truth side. With just about the grandest possible resume entry: former President of the National Academy of Sciences.
He did it for the old man reasons. Because the new politics made him nervous. Because the new generation made him feel vulnerable and defensive, rickety. (Seitz called students “the youth.”) There are accomplished people who fear any change to the order that once promoted them is really a portent of chaos and doomsday. When Seitz was a university president, one student said hello — and he coolly explained college presidents are not people you say hello to. Fifty years later, climate denial’s most coveted honor is the Frederick Seitz Memorial Award. Its first statuette was delivered by Dr. S. Fred Singer.
Singer’s Rushmore head would smaller, sneakier, giving visible side-eye. He is the man responsible for all of it. There was a big denier convention a decade ago. (Held in Las Vegas; because denial is classy.) The president of a denial think tank raked his eyes across the denial ballroom, took in the denial faces at the denial tables making up his denial audience. “Fred Singer is the most amazing and wonderful person participating in the global warming debate today,” this president explained. “If there’s any person in the world responsible for the development of a skeptics movement on global warming, it’s Dr. S. Fred Singer… Fred is a giant. He is a hero.” Singer is the origin of denial. And here is his origin as a denier.
At this stage of the denial story — end of the eighties, that John Hughes decade — Frederick Seitz is already a denier. This is a story about how and where S. Fred Singer joined him. Singer began as a straight scientist — an environmentalist. Did not attain promotion at the EPA. (HR Departments: be careful who you disappoint.) So he quit. And came back changed. Served briefly in Washington as the Department of Transportation’s chief scientist. And then the surprising part, the historical part of Fred Singer’s journey — his real travels and adventures — began.
The thing this story shows about deniers: they will accept money from . . . anyone. (And once you deny — once your lips break that truth barrier — the succeeding denials become easier and easier. In a sense, you become deaf to the sound made by your own life. As you must.) That openness is what this story is also about. And about how everybody, even people with the most powerful friends, can eventually require the services of a professional denier.
Our friend @repeat1968 (John Buss) gets the last word.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today? And please stay safe wherever you are!
I had the pleasure of meeting, setting up her microphone, and listening close up to Etta James at Jazz Fest. Believe me, it’s one of the performances I’ve witnessed that I will never forget.
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John (repeat1968) Buss, @repeat1968 Panic in MAGAville as Fani is swinging for the fences. #FaniWillis #IndictmentWatch #GeorgiaOnMyMind #FoldingChair
Good Morning, Sky Dancers!
There’s some exciting news out from Congressman Jamie Raskin. Finally, after all the grifting, emoluments violations, and stealing items from the White House, Congressional Democrats will be releasing a report on how much money has gone missing since the Trump Family Crime Syndicate infested the White House. I’m still waiting for answers for Jerad and that 2 billion dollar deal with the Saudis.
This is from The New York Daily News. “As GOP attacks Bidens, Rep. Jamie Raskin promises report on ‘foreign government emoluments’ to Trump.” This is reported by Shant Shahrigian.
The Maryland Democrat promised a new report on cash that foreign governments gave to Trump businesses, though he did not go into detail.
“We’re going to release a report about all of the foreign government emoluments — millions of dollars — we can document that Donald Trump pocketed at the hotels, at the golf courses [and] business deals when he was president and that his family got,” Raskin told ABC’s “This Week.”
The comment came amid a series of questions to Raskin about GOP and federal probes of Hunter Biden. Republicans in Congress have been investigating whether the troubled son inappropriately benefited from his powerful father, among other accusations that remain unproven.
Raskin said his Republican counterparts should look closer to home.
“During the Trump administration, we saw the development of a completely new public philosophy, which is that government is not an instrument of the common good in the public interest,” he said.
While a frequent news subject during the Trump years, the former president’s business dealings with foreign governments drew no legal consequences. In 2021, the Supreme Court ended lawsuits accusing the president of taking illegal payments, saying they were irrelevant since he was out of office.
But Raskin accused Republicans including Rep. James Comer of Kentucky of having a double standard by probing the Bidens while ignoring Trump and his family.
Former Republican Lt Governor Geoff Duncan said he has been requested to appear on Tuesday, 15 August.
“I did just receive notification to appear on Tuesday morning at the Fulton County grand jury and I certainly will be there to do my part in recounting the facts,” he told CNN. “I have no expectations as to the questions, and I’ll certainly answer whatever questions are put in front of me.”
Journalist George Chidi also has announced that he is preparing to testify on Tuesday.
The case is the culmination of a wide-ranging investigation over the last two years following the former president’s pressure campaign targeting state officials to reject the results of the 2020 presidential election in the state.
Ms Willis opened an investigation shortly after news of Mr Trump’s call to Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, the state’s top elections official, who was pressed to find “11,870 votes” – just enough needed for then-President Trump to beat Joe Biden in the state.
A special grand jury previously heard testimony from 75 witnesses, including aides and former attorneys to Mr Trump. That jury concluded its report in January with recommendations for state prosecutors to bring charges that will soon be reviewed by the newly impaneled grand jury.
The investigation is among several facing the former president, who was separately charged with three criminal conspiracies and obstruction in a federal case stemming from the US Department of Justice special counsel probe into his attempts to subvert the election outcome.
Donald Trump slammed the judge presiding over his newest criminal case early Monday, testing her three-day-old warning that he refrain from “inflammatory” attacks against those involved in his case.
In a Truth Social post just before 1 a.m., Trump assailed U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan as “highly partisan” and “very biased and unfair,” citing as evidence a statement she made during the sentencing of a woman who participated in the mob that breached the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“She obviously wants me behind bars,” Trump wrote.
Trump was alluding to Chutkan’s remark during the October 2022 sentencing of Christine Priola of Ohio. Chutkan admonished Priola, before sentencing her to 15 months in jail, about the Jan. 6 mob’s threat to the peaceful transfer of power.
“I see the videotapes. I see the footage of the flags and the signs that people were carrying and the hats that they were wearing, and the garb,” Chutkan said. “And the people who mobbed that Capitol were there in fealty, in loyalty to one man, not to the Constitution, of which most of the people who come before me seem woefully ignorant; not to the ideals of this county and not to the principles of democracy. It’s blind loyalty to one person who, by the way, remains free to this day.”
Chutkan’s sentiments have been common among judges who have sentenced Jan. 6 rioters. Several have expressed discomfort over punishing rioters — who had been deluged with lies about the election by Trump and steered to the Capitol with a warning that their country was being stolen and their livelihoods were in danger — while those who misled them have faced no consequences. But Chutkan is the first of those judges to end up with Trump as a defendant in her court, charged by special counsel Jack Smith with seeking to subvert the 2020 election with lies and a plan to violate the constitution.
Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Sunday said he would support a federal ban on abortion after the first three months of pregnancy, but his campaign later said he “misunderstood” the question.
Speaking to NBC from the Iowa State Fair, Kennedy said, “I believe a decision to abort a child should be up to the women during the first three months of life,” but added: “Once a child is viable, outside the womb, I think then the state has an interest in protecting the child.”
He said he would sign a federal ban on abortion after 15 weeks or 21 weeks of pregnancy if he were elected president.
A longtime advocate of what he calls “medical freedom,” Kennedy has been in the public eye in recent years largely for discussions about public health issues, in particular his stated doubts about mandates for vaccinations and some conspiracy theories about Covid-19, including widely condemned suggestions that the virus could have been engineered to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people. (Kennedy used the phrase “medical freedom” in his exchange with Vitali.)
In June in a town hall in New Hampshire, he called himself “pro-choice” and spoke in favor of legal abortion.
“I’m not going be in a position, put myself in a position, where I am going to tell a woman to bring a child to term,” he said at the time.
I actually saw the wife of a friend in an RFK campaign shirt. Wow, was she taking big hits in the comments section. It’s nice to see the Bernie Bros go after some one else for a change besides a woman candidate.
AND speaking of that … save the date! It’s tonight!
So, that’s about it for me today. We’re breaking a record for the third week in a row of at least 4 days over 100 back-to-back. The entire city of New Orleans is crazy from the heat. I’m just still just hanging out in the bathtub.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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As usual, Trump steals the headlines. He’s good at this. As every toddler learns, not all attention is good attention. It’s also some of his worst schticks. He loves to attack strong women. He’s especially insecure about strong, brainy black women in powerful positions. I loved Mike Luckovich’s cartoon featured today. It’s easy to find the ongoing attack on these especially talented women.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on Wednesday flatly denied that she had a relationship with a former client and other rumors spread by former President Donald Trump in a new campaign ad.
In an email to her colleagues, obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Willis called the information in a television spot bankrolled by the Trump campaign “derogatory and false.” She urged her staff not to respond to any of the allegations.
“You may not comment in any way on the ad or any of the negativity that may be expressed against me, your colleagues, this office in the coming days, weeks or months,” Willis wrote in the email, sent early Wednesday. “We have no personal feelings against those we investigate or prosecute and we should not express any.”
In the minute-long ad, titled “The Fraud Squad,” the narrator refers to Willis as “Biden’s newest lackey.” It says that Willis presided over a sharp rise of violent crimes in Atlanta and highlights her office being disqualified from investigating Lt. Gov. Burt Jones in her long-running election interference case due to a political conflict of interest.
But the most incendiary allegation is that Willis “got caught hiding a relationship with a gang member she was prosecuting.” It cites as evidence a Jan. 25, 2023, article in Rolling Stone.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is expected to seek more than a dozen indictments when she presents her case regarding efforts by Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia before a grand jury next week, sources familiar with the matter told CNN.
Willis, a Democrat, has been eyeing conspiracy and racketeering charges, which would allow her to bring a case against multiple defendants. Her wide-ranging criminal probe focuses on efforts to pressure election officials, the plot to put forward fake electors and a voting systems breach in rural Coffee County, Georgia.
Trump acolytes who took part in each of those schemes believe they will face charges in Georgia next week, people familiar with their thinking said. Trump also believes he will be charged in the case, CNN has reported.
Willis’ office declined to comment.
The witnesses Willis has subpoenaed when she presents her case include former Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, former Georgia Democratic state Sen. Jen Jordan and independent journalist George Chidi. All of them previously testified before a special purpose grand jury that was tasked with investigating the Trump case and heard from more than 75 witnesses.
Willis launched her investigation into Trump in early 2021, soon after he called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and pressured the Republican to “find” the votes necessary for Trump to win the state.
At a campaign event Tuesday, Trump continued to insist it was a “perfect phone call.”
Willis has been reportedly weighing racketeering charges in the Trump case. RICO is a statute the district attorney has spoken fondly of and used in unorthodox ways to bring charges against teachers as well as musicians in the Atlanta area.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi is off the bench as former President Trump’s top adversary on Capitol Hill.
After stepping down as Speaker last year, Pelosi (D-Calif.) has flown largely under the radar in the Democratic caucus, allowing a crop of new leaders to take control of the group she steered for two decades.
But the California Democrat — now with the title of “Speaker Emerita” — resumed her role of top Trump antagonist following his latest indictment, landing blows on the former president, praising the charges, and showcasing her unique ability to get under the skin of the man with whom she went toe-to-toe during the four years he occupied the White House.
The bitter dynamics between the two leaders were on full display as Trump was indicted on charges stemming from his efforts to overturn the 2020 election ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol rampage — a day for which Pelosi has said she would “never forgive” Trump.
“I wasn’t in the courtroom, of course, but when I saw his coming out of his car and this or that, I saw a scared puppy,” Pelosi on Friday told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell of Trump arriving at his arraignment. “He looked very, very, very concerned about the fate.”
“I didn’t see any bravado or confidence or anything like that,” she continued. “He knows the truth — that he lost the election and now he’s got to face the music.”
Trump responded to the remarks on Tuesday, tearing into Pelosi — “She is a Wicked Witch” — while referencing last year’s violent attack on her husband, Paul Pelosi. An assailant looking for the then-Speaker entered the couple’s San Francisco residence and hit Paul Pelosi in the head with a hammer, leaving him with serious injuries.
Trump at the time called the attack “a terrible thing” without remarking further.
Trump continues to hold a grudge against the U.S. Women’s World Cup Soccer Team. He especially hates the athletic and erudite Megan Rapinoe. This is also from The Hill as reported by Sarah Fortinsky. “Trump knocks ‘woke’ US women’s soccer team after World Cup departure.”
Former President Trump knocked the “woke” U.S. women’s soccer team after its loss in the round of 16 of the Women’s World Cup over the weekend.
“The ‘shocking and totally unexpected’ loss by the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team to Sweden is fully emblematic of what is happening to the our once great Nation under Crooked Joe Biden,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social on Sunday evening.
“Many of our players were openly hostile to America – No other country behaved in such a manner, or even close. WOKE EQUALS FAILURE. Nice shot Megan, the USA is going to Hell!!! MAGA,” Trump continued, taking aim at 38-year-old midfielder Megan Rapinoe.
It is almost like Trump is begging to be thrown into custody. This is from The Rolling Stone.“Trump Promises to Violate Protective Order. The former president once again attacked Judge Chutkan, who is set to rule on a protective order requested by the Justice Department later this week.” Of course, his side thrill was to attack Judge Chutkan. This is reported by Nikki McCann Ramirez.
While speaking at a campaign event in New Hampshire, the former president told the crowd that prosecutors were attempting to take away his First Amendment rights through the protective order.
“Crooked Joe now wants the thug prosecutor, this deranged guy, to file a court order taking away my First Amendment rights so that I can’t speak…I will talk about it. I will. They’re not taking away my First Amendment right.”
Trump: I will talk about it. They are not taking away my first amendment right pic.twitter.com/HdFCWXbN12
At his arraignment on Thursday, the former president affirmed his understanding that — as explained by Magistrate Judge Moxila A. Upadhyaya — “it is a crime to try to influence a juror or to threaten or attempt to bribe a witness or any other person who may have information about your case, or to retaliate against anyone for providing information about your case to the prosecution, or to otherwise obstruct the administration of justice.”
Security has been increased around the federal judge overseeing the criminal case alleging Donald Trump used “unlawful means” in an effort to stay in power after he lost the 2020 presidential election.
U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan was seen by NBC News Thursday walking into the cafeteria inside Washington’s E. Barrett Prettyman courthouse for a cup of coffee while accompanied by U.S. Marshals. Some of the marshals then accompanied her back to her chambers.
Judges typically do not receive such escorts when moving around the courthouse and Chutkan was observed as recently as last week walking around the building without security.
The heightened security for the judge was first reported by CNN.
The change comes after the former president complained about the judge on his social media platform, Truth Social, this past week.
“There is no way I can get a fair trial with the judge ‘assigned’ to the ridiculous freedom of speech/fair elections case. Everybody knows this and so does she! We will be immediately asking for recusal of this judge on very powerful grounds,” he wrote in all caps in one of the posts on Sunday.
His legal team has yet to file a motion asking the judge to recuse herself. Trump has pleaded not guilty in the case and maintains the charges are part of a political “witch hunt” aimed at derailing his 2024 presidential run.
PROVO, Utah (AP) — An armed Utah man accused of making violent threats against President Joe Biden was shot and killed by FBI agents hours before the president landed in the state Wednesday, authorities said.
Special agents were trying to serve a warrant on the home of Craig Deleeuw Robertson in Provo, south of Salt Lake City, when the shooting happened at 6:15 a.m., the FBI said in a statement.
Robertson was armed at the time of the shooting, according to two law enforcement sources who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to discuss details of an ongoing investigation.
Robertson posted online Monday that he had heard Biden was coming to Utah and he was planning to dig out a camouflage suit and begin “cleaning the dust off the M24 sniper rifle,” a post that came after months of graphic online threats against several public figures, according to court documents. Robertson referred to himself as a “MAGA Trumper,” a reference to former President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan, and also posted threats against top law enforcement officials overseeing court cases against Trump.
Neighbors described Robertson as a frail, elderly man — his online profile put his age as 74 — who walked with the aid of a hand-carved stick. Though he regularly carried guns, they said he didn’t seem a threat.
I really can’t wait to be rid of this all. Just lock him the fuck up already!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
I’m in a Ramones sorta mood.
I hear the bells of freedom chimin’ And inside my heart, I feel I’m dyin’ Wise guys never compromise Then they lose their rights and they act surprised Jail really cuts ya down to size
Let the punishment fit the crime The footprints on the sand of time The philosophy of the poet’s rhyme Makes a man humble in his prime
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The TV at Vaugh’s taunts us with this week’s highs. 101, 99, 99, 100,100, 100, and 98. I’m afraid to watch for the “feels like” temperatures.
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
It’s another week of incredible heat here. Temple and I arrived at Vaughn’s last night to discover their new window units blasting cold air. At least one corner of the bar was cold. I was told it’s not so good over there on the opposite side. It was pretty quiet but much cooler than my house. There were quite a few moments last night when Temple and I were alone in the bar while others went out to smoke whatever. I’ve never experienced that before.
I go for short, quick walks with Temple, then scurry her home. I’ve noticed how many of the usual dog walkers do the same. The National Weather Service tells us to stay inside. Plus, there’s a surge in Covid. The kids have just started school, and I hope they don’t have to isolate again. It’s not good for kids. I’ve started to wonder if isolation is a new reality. I already go to places where I’m least likely to find a raging Trumper or a Piety Performance. I’ve been talking to a long-time friend about how worn-out and anxious that makes us. It’s just safer alone or with close friends or family if they’re nearby.
I have to admit that loneliness is not something in my emotional range. I like that safe feeling of being by myself, knowing that I can’t be interrupted by any outbursts or nonsense. I know how to entertain myself for long periods of time. That was a skill my mother taught me. I do realize that we’re more isolated now and that it’s bound to have differing impacts on different people. It’s a long read. It’s also an interesting one.
The question that preoccupied me and many others over much of the past eight years is how our democracy became so susceptible to a would-be strongman and demagogue. The question that keeps me up at night now—with increasing urgency as 2024 approaches—is whether we have done enough to rebuild our defenses or whether our democracy is still highly vulnerable to attack and subversion.
There’s reason for concern: the influence of dark money and corporate power, right-wing propaganda and misinformation, malign foreign interference in our elections, and the vociferous backlash against social progress. The “vast right-wing conspiracy” has been of compelling interest to me for many years. But I’ve long thought something important was missing from our national conversation about threats to our democracy. Now recent findings from a perhaps unexpected source—America’s top doctor—offer a new perspective on our problems and valuable insights into how we can begin healing our ailing nation.
In May, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy published an advisory, warning that a growing “epidemic of loneliness and isolation” threatens Americans’ personal health and also the health of our democracy. Murthy reported that, even before COVID, about half of all American adults were experiencing substantial levels of loneliness. Over the past two decades, Americans have spent significantly more time alone, engaging less with family, friends, and people outside the home. By 2018, just 16 percent of Americans said they felt very attached to their local community.
Prison Paintings 9 1972 Gulsun Karamustafa born 1946 Purchased with funds provided by the Middle East North Africa Acquisitions Committee 2019 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T15189
I feel very attached to my community, but recently, it’s just been easier to just stay home. Am I the only one here?
An “epidemic of loneliness” may sound abstract at a time when our democracy faces concrete and imminent threats, but the surgeon general’s report helps explain how we became so vulnerable. In the past, surgeons general have at crucial moments sounded the alarm about major crises and drawn our attention to underappreciated threats, including smoking, HIV/AIDS, and obesity. This is one of those moments.
The rate of young adults who report suffering from loneliness went up every single year from 1976 to 2019. From 2003 to 2020, the average time that young people spent in person with friends declined by nearly 70 percent. Then the pandemic turbocharged our isolation.
According to the surgeon general, when people are disconnected from friends, family, and communities, their lifetime risk of heart disease, dementia, depression, and stroke skyrockets. Shockingly, prolonged loneliness is as bad, or worse, for our health as being obese or smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day. Researchers also say that loneliness can generate anger, resentment, and even paranoia. It diminishes civic engagement and social cohesion, and increases political polarization and animosity. Unless we address this crisis, Murthy warned, “we will continue to splinter and divide until we can no longer stand as a community or a country.”
What does all of this loneliness and disconnection mean for our democracy?
Murthy carefully connects the dots between increasing social isolation and declining civic engagement. “When we are less invested in one another, we are more susceptible to polarization and less able to pull together to face the challenges that we cannot solve alone,” he wrote in The New York Times.
It’s not just the surgeon general who recognizes that social isolation saps the lifeblood of democracy. So do the ultra-right-wing billionaires, propagandists, and provocateurs who see authoritarianism as a source of power and profit.
There have always been angry young men alienated from mainstream society and susceptible to the appeal of demagogues and hate-mongers. But modern technology has taken the danger to another level. This was Steve Bannon’s key insight.
Long before Bannon ran Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, he was involved in the world of online gaming. He discovered an army of what he later described as “rootless white males,” disconnected from the real world but highly engaged online and often quick to resort to sexist and racist attacks. When Bannon took over the hard-right website Breitbart News, he was determined to turn these socially isolated gamers into the shock troops of the alt-right, pumping them full of conspiracy theories and hate speech. Bannon pursued the same project as a senior executive at Cambridge Analytica, the notorious data-mining and online-influence company largely owned by the right-wing billionaire Robert Mercer. According to a former Cambridge Analytica engineer turned whistleblower, Bannon targeted “incels,” or involuntarily celibate men, because they were easy to manipulate and prone to believing conspiracy theories. “You can activate that army,” Bannon told the Bloomberg journalist Joshua Green. “They come in through Gamergate or whatever and then get turned onto politics and Trump.”
Egon Schiele, Prisoner! (April 24, 1912). Courtesy of the Albertina.
Clinton’s analysis is just what you would expect. Full of research, examples, and elucidation of where this might lead. It’s a heavy read but fully worth it.
A federal judge on Monday dismissed a defamation counterclaim by Donald Trump against the writer E. Jean Carroll in her pending lawsuit that accuses the former president of defaming her after she wrote that he had raped her.
Judge Lewis Kaplan, in a separate order made public Monday, ruled that Carroll’s lawyers can give the Manhattan District Attorney’s office a videotape and transcript of their deposition of Trump that they took last fall for the lawsuit.
That order raises the chance that Trump’s sworn testimony in Carroll’s case could be used against the former president as part of the DA’s pending criminal prosecution.
DA Alvin Bragg Jr. charged Trump, 77, earlier this year with falsifying business records related to a 2016 hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels. That case, in which Trump has pleaded not guilty, is set to go to trial next May.
Trump’s counterclaim in the Carroll suit focused on what he argued were her false statements, which he alleged badly harmed his reputation, a day after a jury verdict in May in her favor for $5 million for sexual abuse and defamation in a related civil lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
Carroll during a CNN interview said that she thought in her head, “Oh, yes, he did — oh, yes, he did” — after jurors in that case did not find that Trump had raped her.
In the same interview, Carroll described her encounter in court with Trump’s lawyer Joseph Tacopina right after the jury verdict, when Tacopina shook hands with her attorney, Roberta Kaplan, who is not related to the judge.
“Well, Joe Tacopina is very likeable. He’s sort of like an 18th Century strutting peacock,” Carroll said on CNN. “So, he sticks out his hand — first he congratulated Robbie. And then, he was congratulating people on the team. And as I put my hand forward, I said, ‘He did it and you know it.’ Then we shook hands, I passed on.”
Judge Kaplan, in dismissing the counterclaim, wrote that Carroll’s statements repeating a claim that Trump had raped her were “substantially true” because the jury had found he digitally penetrated her, even if it did not find that he had penetrated her with his penis, as is required for a rape charge under New York law.
Many people in Fulton County are preparing for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to announce an indictment against former U.S. President Donald Trump for allegedly trying to overturn the results of the 2020 Presidential Election in Georgia.
An Atlanta-area lawyer tells 11Alive he believes Willis could indict Trump this coming week. It would be a state indictment and could be the most significant out of all the indictments since someone can only be pardoned on federal charges.
“I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have.”
That infamous phone call between the then president and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger happened on January 2, 2021. Almost three years later, bright barriers surround the perimeter of the Fulton County Courthouse in preparation for Trump’s possible indictment for election interference in Georgia.
“We’ve never had this happen before, so no one quite knows what’s going to happen,” attorney Darryl Cohen said.
Cohen is a former Fulton County assistant district attorney and said while there’s a lot we don’t know, there’s certain things that are likely to happen.
“There are going to be Trump supporters that love him. There’s going to be Trump haters that hate him, and we don’t know if they’re going to be together or if they’re going to clash,” Cohen said. “We don’t know how many people are going to turn out, so this could all be the beginning of a story that we cannot begin to understand until it unravels.”
Normally someone goes to Fulton County Jail after an arrest, but Cohen believes that’s unlikely for the former president.
“I think that he will be mug shot and fingerprinted at the Fulton County Courthouse. We have a serious, really serious security problem,” Cohen said.
Cohen said if Willis announced an indictment against Trump, it would be assigned to a Fulton County superior judge.
Barbara Ess, Fire Escape [Shut-In Series] (2018-19). Courtesy of Magenta Plains.
Donald Trump blared Sunday morning that his legal team would be “immediately asking for recusal” of U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan from his latest criminal case, proclaiming (but not revealing) “very powerful grounds” for the demand.
Hours later, his attorney John Lauro would publicly walk back that plan, saying Trump was speaking with a “layman’s political sense” and reacting primarily because Chutkan was nominated to the bench by a Democrat. (She was confirmed 95-0 by the Senate in 2014 after Barack Obama nominated her).
“We haven’t made a final decision on that issue at all,” Lauro said on a podcast hosted by Florida defense attorney David Markus. “I think as lawyers we have to be very careful of those issues and handle them with the utmost delicacy.”
On Monday morning, Trump was again hammering on the recusal issue, calling Chutkan “the Judge of [special counsel Jack Smith’s] ‘dreams’ (WHO MUST BE RECUSED!).”
The back-and-forth on public airwaves and social media underscores the familiar tension between Trump and his legal team, which has been rocked by infighting, departures and conflicting advice in recent months. All of it, however, is secondary to Trump’s own whims and instincts, which have served him politically but are grating against the rules and norms of behavior for those charged with serious federal crimes.
Paul Sérusier, Solitude, Huelgoat Landscape, c.1892, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes, Rennes.
If former President Donald Trump committed a “technical violation of the Constitution,” it doesn’t mean he necessarily broke any criminal laws, John Lauro, Trump’s criminal defense attorney, argued Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Lauro appeared to signal how he’d defend the former president in a trial that will stem from the four-count criminal indictment returned last week by a federal grand jury that had been examining Trump’s possible role in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot and his alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election.
Pressed by NBC’s Chuck Todd about Trump’s alleged pressure campaign to get former Vice President Mike Pence to reverse the election, Lauro claimed that Trump and Pence had merely disagreed over whether a vice president could constitutionally take actions that could lead to a presidential election’s being overturned.
“A technical violation of the Constitution is not a violation of criminal law,” Lauro contended, saying it was “just plain wrong” to suggest that Trump had pressed Pence to break the law.
“And to say that is contrary to decades of legal statutes,” he continued.
“These kinds of constitutional and statutory disagreements don’t lead to criminal charges,” Lauro said. “And one thing that Mr. Pence has never said is that he thought President Trump was acting criminally.”
In response to the latest indictment, Pence said he believes “that anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be president of the United States.” He said Wednesday that Trump surrounded himself after the 2020 election with “crackpot lawyers” who told him only what his “itching ears” wanted to hear.
My thought is that’s a very good way to get all those unindicted co-conspirators on the people’s side because it sure looks like they’re getting the fickle finger of blame from the Trump Team
Anyway, I’m going to go eat a fresh peach and yogurt with some honey in the coldest spot in the house.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
I’m eagerly awaiting this report. Meanwhile, the Fulton County, Georgia Grand Jury will meet this week and will likely return Trump’s 4th indictment. This is from The Independent. “At least two witnesses have been called to testify, signalling that a vote to indict could be imminent.”
Trump continues to attack Judge Chutkan. I hope she fines him, jails him, or gags him. I’m getting tired of all the news being about this bellicose, belligerent old man. This is from Politico. “Trump jabs at judge in election case, testing warning against ‘inflammatory’ statements. Overnight, Trump called Chutkan ‘biased and unfair’ for comments during 2022 sentencing of Jan. 6 defendant.” This is reported by Kyle Cheney.
We haven’t had this much bullshit in courts since they brought down the Mafia. Speaking of crazy old men, RFK Jr. makes Bernie look like a kind beacon of light. I can’t imagine how much he embarrasses his family, who are constantly releasing statements that state that he doesn’t represent any of them or the family trust. This is from Politico. “RFK Jr. backs 15-week federal ban on abortion, then reverses himself. “Today, Mr. Kennedy misunderstood a question,” his campaign said.” Yeah, right, there was interference in the tinfoil hat. He definitely doesn’t understand the gestation cycle.
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The Atlanta-area D.A. is expected to “seek more than a dozen indictments” according to CNN. This certainly leads to the question of how many will gladly turn on Trump.
Trump returns to Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi for his latest move in the Small Penis Energy category. This is from The Hill as reported by Mychael Schnell. “Pelosi reemerges as top Trump adversary.” 
Trump continues to hold a grudge against the U.S. Women’s World Cup Soccer Team. He especially hates the athletic and erudite Megan Rapinoe. This is also from The Hill as reported by Sarah Fortinsky. “Trump knocks ‘woke’ US women’s soccer team after World Cup departure.”
And here’s the result of his verbal threats as reported by NBC News today. “Security bolstered for judge overseeing Trump election case. The increase in security around U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan comes as the former president has been criticizing her on social media.
How many people does Orange Caligula need to threaten and how many of his droogs have to be caught in plots to follow through for someone to do something? Here’s the latest incident as reported by the AP. “Utah man suspected of threatening President Joe Biden shot and killed as FBI served warrant.”
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