Yesterday, the Boston area was supposed to get up to a foot of snow. For several days, meteorologists predicted a huge winter storm was on the way. They were confident it would happen. But at the last minute, Mother Nature changed her mind. There was a big storm, but its path shifted to the South, and guess what we got where I live? Nada. Some sleet and rain.
I really love snowstorms, and I was looking forward to this one. In addition, the entire Boston school system was shut down and many businesses closed for the day. That has to be expensive, right?
We’ve had several of these failed predictions this winter. What is the problem? Are meteorologists predicting these storms too many days ahead? I don’t know. But I’m disgusted. I’m never believing their forecasts again. There is supposedly another snowstorm on the way. I’ll believe it when I see it.
On with today’s reads.
Yesterday’s Special Elections
Democrats got some good news last night as they won special elections in New York and Pennsylvania.
Democrat Tom Suozzi won a hotly contested special election for Congress on Tuesday, the Associated Press projected, retaking a seat in suburban New York and offering his party some reassurance amid high anxiety about President Biden’s political vulnerabilities.
Suozzi beat Republican nominee Mazi Pilip to replace Republican George Santos, who was indicted on a charge of fraud and then expelled from Congress late last year amid revelations that he fabricated much of his life story. The race for New York’s 3rd District — long viewed as a dead heat — played out in a suburban part of Long Island that favored President Biden by eight points in 2020 but then swung toward Republicans, backing Santos by the same margin.
With more than 93 percent of the vote counted early Wednesday, Suozzi led Pilip by nearly eight percentage points.
National issues dominated the campaign, making Tuesday’s vote this year’s first high-profile test of the parties’ messages on abortion, the economy and, above all, immigration. Suozzi represented the area for six years previously and campaigned as a moderate who wanted to work across the aisle. But with New York City struggling to absorb more than 100,000 migrants arriving from the southern border, much of the campaign centered on what polling suggests is Democrats’ toughest issue….
In New York, Suozzi’s victory capped a long list of Democratic wins in recent special elections, which have showcased the party’s ability to turn out its base and tap into anger at GOP-backed abortion restrictions since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Democrats spent millions of dollars attacking Pilip’s “pro-life” stance even though she said she would not support a national ban on abortion.
Road in the Village of Baldersbronde, Winter Day 1912, by Laurits Anderson Ring
I’m not sure immigration will be the Democrats’ “toughest issue” anymore, since Republicans in Congress refused to pass an immigration bill that was supported by the Border Patrol Union and the U.S. Chamber of Congress simply because Donald Trump order them to vote no.
Democrat Tom Suozzi is heading back to Congress after defeating Republican Mazi Pilip in the special election to replace serial fabulist and expelled former GOP Rep. George Santos. The result will further narrow the GOP’s already thin House majority and hand President Joe Biden’s party a boost as the general election campaign comes into focus….
Both parties poured cash into the race for New York’s 3rd congressional district, but Democrats’ fundraising and registration advantage combined with Suozzi’s brand – he’s spent most of the last 30 years at or around the center of Long Island politics – and a fired-up base, angry over the Santos fiasco, delivered a victory that means the House GOP will now become even harder to corral.
For Pilip, who has vowed to run again in the fall, defeat meant an almost immediate rebuke from Trump, who called her a “very foolish woman” in a social media post Tuesday night. Pilip refused until the final days of the campaign to say whether she voted for Trump in 2020, though she did follow his lead in dissing a highly touted bipartisan Senate border bill – a decision that helped Suozzi tie her more tightly to the former president over the last week….
The campaign was staked on a series of issues from the beginning: immigration, inflation, Israel and abortion. Suozzi talked about reproductive rights but didn’t make it a centerpiece of his campaign. Inflation has mostly leveled out. And there was no political or policy space to speak of between the candidates who both fully backed Israel.
On the immigration issue:
Understanding this, Pilip and Republicans set about hammering Suozzi over the migrant crisis in New York City, claiming he caused it along with Biden – a line that ultimately didn’t quite wash with voters who have long recognized Suozzi as a moderate or centrist. When Pilip suggested he was in league with the progressive “squad,” Suozzi at their debate was prepared.
“For you to suggest I’m a member of the squad,” he said, “is about as believable as you being a member of George Santos’s volleyball team.” (And that was before a knowing reference to Rick Lazio, which only seasoned New York voters would appreciate.)
Most notably, though, Suozzi and state Democratic leaders didn’t repeat their mistakes from 2022. They aggressively countered Pilip’s migrant message and it never felt like the issue, typically a winner for the GOP, put Suozzi on the backfoot.
The weather was a factor in this election. Many Democrats vote early or by mail, while Republicans mostly vote on election day. The snowstorm may have kept Republicans from getting to the polls.
Democrats won a state House special election in Pennsylvania on Tuesday night, preserving the party’s narrow majority in the closely watched battleground state, The Associated Press projected.
In the race for the open seat in the 140th state House District, Democrat Jim Prokopiak, a school board member in Bucks County, defeated Republican Candace Cabanas.
Prokopiak’s victory gives Democrats a narrow 102-100 majority in the state House, preventing another tie in the chamber.
The party had a one-seat majority, 102-101, before Democratic Rep. John Galloway resigned after he won a judgeship in November.
His departure created a tie. But another resignation Friday, by Republican Joe Adams, gave Democrats a fresh 101-100 advantage.
Republicans control the state Senate, while Democrats hold the governorship.
The win in Bucks County — a purple slice of the northern suburbs of Philadelphia — was hailed as positive news by national Democrats, some of whom had viewed the contest as an early bellwether of the party’s fortunes among suburban voters ahead of the 2024 election.
Even the Biden campaign weighed in on the victory, touting it as evidence that Bucks County voters would reject Donald Trump in the fall.
“With control of the state House on the line, Pennsylvanians again defeated Republicans’ anti-abortion agenda and voted for Jim Prokopiak, a Democrat who has stood up for women and working people,” Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said in a statement.
More News:
House Republicans spent yesterday impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas based on zero evidence.
The GOP-led House finally got its act together enough to stage an impeachment performance last evening, claiming the scalp of Biden Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
The same three Republican members who stymied the effort last week voted against impeachment again, but Rep. Steve Scalise’s return from cancer treatment gave the Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) the critical vote he needed to complete the flimsiest impeachment in history:
It’s totally appropriate to categorize these kinds of maneuvers by Republicans as performative or as playing politics or as engaging in political stunts. All true. But it’s also fundamentally an abuse of power. House Republicans are hikacking the levers of power that come with the offices they hold to advance their own partisan political aims and hold on to that power.
Not every example of an alignment between official acts and partisan political advantage is an abuse of power. But when you strip away any ostensibly objective motive for the official act, when you offer no pretense for the official act, when you’re only using the powers of the office to further your own political aims, when you stretch the law and the rules and bend them to your own grubby ends, you’re engaged in abuse of power. When, at the same time, you’re engaging in the wholesale breaking of government and institutions for the sake of it, all you’re left with is politics of the grimy, self-serving, and self-perpetuating variety.
There will have to be a trial in the Senate, but the “impeachment” is dead there. This is disgusting.
Sven Kroner, Hocuspocus
President Biden condemned Trump’s attack on NATO and his encouragement to Russia to attack our European allies.
Last May, Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) visited Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv, warmly embracing the embattled leader and later urging President Biden to “do more” to help the nation as it fights off Russia’s invasion.
But this week, Graham voted repeatedly against sending $60 billion in aid to that nation as well as against other military funds for Israel and U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific. The longtime hawk dramatically announced on the Senate floor that he also would no longer be attending the Munich Security Conference — an annual pilgrimage made by world leaders to discuss global security concerns that’s been a mainstay of his schedule.
“I talked to President Trump today and he’s dead set against this package,” Graham said on the Senate floor on Sunday, a day after the former president said at a rally that he would let the Russians do “whatever the hell they want” to NATO allies that did not spend enough on defense. “He thinks that we should make packages like this a loan, not a gift,” Graham said.
Claude Monet, A Cart on the Snowy_Road at Honfleur, 1865 or 1867
Graham’s about-face on Ukraine aid sends a stark warning signal to U.S. allies that even one of the most aggressive advocates for U.S. interventionism abroad appears to be influenced by the more isolationist posture pervading the Republican Party.
It marked a departure for the senator who was harshly critical of Donald Trump’s “America First” foreign policy when he ran against him for president in 2015, in part on a message of launching a U.S. invasion of Syria. And even as he cozied up to Trump once he became president on numerous other issues, the Air Force veteran continued to criticize Trump on foreign policy, including for wanting to withdraw from Afghanistan and Syria….
The episode has also eroded Graham’s credibility among colleagues who worked closely with him to shape a bipartisan package of border policy reforms that Republicans demanded be attached to the foreign aid in exchange for their votes — only to backtrack and help kill it in the end.
Merrick Garland is highly unlikely to serve a second term as attorney general amid mounting criticism of the Biden classified documents report, a law professor has said.
Professor Anthony V. Alfieri, a law professor at the University of Miami in Florida, was reacting to Garland’s appointment of Robert Hur as special counsel to investigate President Biden’s handling of the documents.
Garland has been under pressure for the perceived unfairness of the report and his silence in its aftermath.
The report said that Biden claimed he couldn’t remember details of classified documents he held after leaving the White House as vice president, and would likely claim forgetfulness if put on trial.
“Garland’s lack of fairness in this case, and the ensuing political fallout, renders a second term of service highly unlikely,” Alfieri told Newsweek.
“Attorney General Garland’s appointment of Robert Hur as Special Counsel, despite a notably conservative pedigree and record, is less controversial than Garland’s conclusion that Hur’s report was neither ‘inappropriate’ nor ‘unwarranted’,” Alfieri said.
“That conclusion and his release of the report to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees without addition, redaction, or modification, both explicitly and implicitly approves formally descriptive but substantively gratuitous, ad hominem and politically charged language prejudicial to Mr. Biden.”
Read more at the link.
That’s all I have for you today. What are your thoughts on all this? What stories have you been following?
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We’ve crossed a Rubicon. Trump, Tucker Carlson, and many other Republicans are no longer denying that Putin’s Russia is deeply involved with Republican Politics and Trump’s campaign. The Republicans of my Daddy’s Republican Party are tossing in their graves. It’s essential we take the 2024 elections seriously and that we do not join “The Evil Empire.”
Do you remember Ronald Reagan borrowing that term from Star Wars? It happened a few days before I gave birth to my oldest daughter, and I had just finished my term as the director of the Women’s Festival in Omaha, where I had spent my term meeting Maya Angelou, Betty Friedan, and Kate Millet. We were talking about the future. Reagan’s speech was delivered to the National Association of Evangelicals. This speech frames the frontline of the battle they’d fight in the Culture War, eventually leading to much of the neighbor-versus-neighbor warfare we see today. I won’t mention the number of rights we’ve also lost on that road and journey. The one thing I never would’ve foretold at the time was how cozy Republicans would become with Russians. But then, Putin decided to let American Evangelicals into the country, and that bargain put us on the road to cozying up with everything Republicans used to hate.
“Well, because these “quiet men” do not “raise their voices,” because they sometimes speak in soothing tones of brotherhood and peace, because, like other dictators before them, they’re always making “their final territorial demand,” some would have us accept them at their word and accommodate ourselves to their aggressive impulses. But if history teaches anything, it teaches that simpleminded appeasement or wishful thinking about our adversaries is folly. It means the betrayal of our past, the squandering of our freedom.”
That’s the part of the speech they’ve all conveniently forgotten.
Contrary to the beliefs of many Republicans these days, Russia is not our ally. Putin–the holdover from the age of KGB and the Berlin Wall–was stationed on the Russian side of the Wall in what was East Germany. He was there when the wall fell and was none too happy about it.
Putin’s five-year sojourn in Dresden, which abruptly ended in 1990, has come under renewed scrutiny as the 70-year-old Russian president prosecutes an increasingly brutal and bloody war in Ukraine — a neighboring sovereign state that for the last 16 months has fiercely resisted a total Russian takeover.
Against that backdrop, analysts point to the lingering legacy of Putin’s Dresden years: His determination never to allow domestic dissent to turn to a tidal surge like the one he witnessed. The realization that even a powerful elite wielding a ruthless police apparatus could suddenly find itself vulnerable. His grievance-laced dreams of a Russian empire greater than the one that slipped away before his eyes.
“It was an important time in his life,” said Douglas Selvage, a historian who works at the main Berlin archive of the Stasi, the onetime East German secret police. “It probably contributed to his sense of how everything could fall apart.”
The former president recalled that the leader of a “big country” had presented a hypothetical situation in which he was not meeting his financial obligations within Nato and had come under attack from Moscow.
He said the leader had asked if the US would come to his country’s aid in that scenario, which prompted him to issue a rebuke.
“I said: ‘You didn’t pay? You’re delinquent?’… ‘No I would not protect you, in fact I would encourage them to do whatever they want. You gotta pay.’
The frontrunner for the Republican nomination for this year’s presidential election did not make clear which nation or leader he was speaking about, or even when this conversation took place.
According to Nato’s own figures for 2023 spending, 19 of its 30 member nations are spending below the target of 2% of their annual GDP on defence – among them Germany, Norway and France.
But most countries which border Ukraine, Russia, or its neighbour and ally Belarus, are exceeding this guideline.
At over 3.9% of its annual GDP, Poland spends even more than the US. Romania, Hungary, Finland and the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia range between 2.3 and 2.7% for defence expenditure.
Former U.S. head of state and presidential candidate Donald Trump stoked the ire of U.S. lawmakers and international leaders, after remarking he would not protect NATO countries from Russian attacks if they lag on their membership payments.
Speaking at a rally in South Carolina on Saturday, Trump said that, as president, he warned NATO allies that he “would encourage” Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to a member country that didn’t meet its defense spending guidelines.
Trump, who has a long history of criticizing the trans-Atlantic military alliance, recounted a time when an unspecified president of a NATO member challenged him on his threat not to defend them from a potential Russian invasion if they failed to meet NATO’s target of spending at least 2% of their gross domestic product on the military.
“You didn’t pay, you’re delinquent. … No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You got to pay. You got to pay your bills,” Trump said.
The U.S. has historically had the largest number of military personnel out of all NATO countries, counting 1.35 million troops in 2023, according to Statista.
Trump has been accused of entertaining close ties with Russia during his first presidential mandate. The Kremlin declined to address Trump’s remarks.
Does anyone other than me find it ironic that the man who never pays his lawyers–at least from his own pocket–and files bankruptcy constantly to avoid paying bills is chiding our allies over the level of their financial commitments to their own safety?
Tucker Carlson discovers Putin is spooky, John Buss, @repeat1968
I’m not the only old-school blogger unnerved by all of this. Here’s Digby writing at Salon. “Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson gave Putin exactly what he wants. It is no coincidence that Trump made his biggest threat against NATO right after Tucker Carlson sat with Putin.”
As we all know, the biggest story in the world is the breaking news that President Joe Biden is old. Sure 9/11 was something of a big deal and the war in Iraq and the global pandemic required all of our attention for a time, but this is the most important news of our lifetime, maybe anyone’s lifetime and there’s no telling when, or if, the nation will ever recover. Still, it’s probably important to at least pay a tiny bit of attention to other things happening in the world just in case they might also be affected by Biden’s age in some way.
In fact, we probably should be just a little bit curious about what former Fox News celebrity Tucker Carlson was doing in Moscow last week interviewing Russian president Vladimir Putin. Carlson has demonstrated his affinity for Putin for years now and is commonly extolled on the Russian state television channels as a model American with all the right ideas. Back in March of 2022, Mother Jones obtained a copy of a Kremlin memo with talking points for the media:
“It is essential to use as much as possible fragments of broadcasts of the popular Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who sharply criticizes the actions of the United States [and] NATO, their negative role in unleashing the conflict in Ukraine, [and] the defiantly provocative behavior from the leadership of the Western countries and NATO towards the Russian Federation and towards President Putin, personally,” advises the 12-page document written in Russian. It sums up Carlson’s position: “Russia is only protecting its interests and security.” The memo includes a quote from Carlson: “And how would the US behave if such a situation developed in neighboring Mexico or Canada?”
(People like Carlson used to be called “useful idiots.”) Russian state media has followed those instructions and for the past two years has featured Carlson’s commentary regularly. It’s therefore not all that surprising that he would be granted the coveted interview with Putin.
As it turns out the interview ended up mostly being a twisted history lesson from Putin with Carlson sitting there like a potted plant with a feigned fascinated expression on his face. The point of Putin’s tutorial was to explain why Russia has every right to invade Ukraine and anywhere else he might fancy. Putin went to great pains to explain why it was the victims of WWII who made Hitler do what he did, specifically the people of Poland, whom Putin blamed for balking at Hitler’s invasion of its country. The entire thrust of the conversation was a very thinly veiled threat to invade Poland. The Polish government certainly heard it that way.
Over the weekend, Putin and Donald Trump seem to have come to public agreement that, if elected in November, Trump would help Putin pursue Greater Russia.
In his session with Tucker Carlson, after all, Putin corrected the propagandist, informing him that, no, he didn’t invade Ukraine because of concerns about NATO expansion, but because he considers Ukraine — and much of Eastern Europe — part of Greater Russia. He subjected Tucker to a half hour lesson in his, Putin’s, mythology about Russia.
Tucker Carlson:Mr. President, thank you.
On February 24, 2022, you addressed your country in your nationwide address when the conflict in Ukraine started and you said that you were acting because you had come to the conclusion that the United States through NATO might initiate a quote, “surprise attack on our country”. And to American ears that sounds paranoid. Tell us why you believe the United States might strike Russia out of the blue. How did you conclude that?
Vladimir Putin:The point is not that the United States was going to launch a surprise strike on Russia, I didn’t say so. Are we having a talk show or serious conversation?
Tucker Carlson:That was a good quote. Thank you, it’s formidably, serious!
Vladimir Putin: Your education background is in history, as far as I understand, right?
Tucker Carlson: Yes.
Vladimir Putin: Then I will allow myself – just 30 seconds or one minute – to give a little historical background, if you don’t mind.
Tucker Carlson: Please.
Vladimir Putin: Look how did our relations with Ukraine begin, where does Ukraine come from.
[snip]
Tucker Carlson: May I ask… You are making the case that Ukraine, certain parts of Ukraine, Eastern Ukraine, in fact, has been Russia for hundreds of years, why wouldn’t you just take it when you became President 24 years ago? Your have nuclear weapons, they don’t. It’s actually your land. Why did you wait so long?
Vladimir Putin: I’ll tell you. I’m coming to that. This briefing is coming to an end. It might be boring, but it explains many things.
And then, within a day, Trump told a fabricated story that served to promise that not only wouldn’t he honor America’s commitment to defend NATO states, but would instead encourage Russia to do “whatever they hell they want.”
I’m mad at the New York Times Op-Ed Editor who let the page run away with the Biden Fitness weirdness, but I’ll use this link anyway. This is from Peter Baker. “Trump, Putin, Carlson and the Shifting Sands of Today’s American Politics. An interview with Russia’s leader and congressional resistance to aid for Ukraine underscore the transformation of the parties and electorate in the United States more than three decades after the Cold War.” Remember, I’m old enough to have lived through the damned Cold War.
With the help of a populist former Fox News star and America’s richest man, Mr. Putin has gained a platform to justify his actions even as Russian and American journalists languish in his prisons. His favored candidate is poised to win the Republican presidential nomination while Congress weighs abandoning Ukraine to the tender mercies of Russian invaders.
Mr. Putin’s filibuster-style appearance with Tucker Carlson on Elon Musk’s social media platform amid the security aid debate on Capitol Hill driven by Donald J. Trump offers a moment to reflect on the head-spinning transformation of American politics in recent years. A Republican Party that once defined itself through muscular resistance to Russia has turned increasingly toward a form of neo-isolationism with, in some quarters, strains of sympathy for Moscow.
Instead of a ruthless autocrat seeking to conquer territory through the most violent war in Europe since the Nazis fell, Mr. Putin has made himself into something of a like-minded ally of certain right-wing forces in the United States, not least of all Mr. Trump, who praised his aggression as “genius” just before Russian forces stormed across the border into Ukraine in 2022. And Mr. Putin seems to be prevailing in the American capital in a way that would have once been unthinkable, with the help of a party that still pays homage to Ronald Reagan.
“For Putin, it’s a manifestation of the American weakness,” said Yevgenia Albats, an independent Russian journalist who moved to the United States last year after threats of prosecution. To Mr. Putin, she said, the Carlson interview proves that “Americans realized that they lost the war with him” and were “sending him a close-to-the-next-president envoy to confirm his success.” It also serves a domestic purpose for Mr. Putin, she added. “It is a message to elites, who are arguing the cease-fire: You see, Americans blinked.”
American politics did not need Mr. Putin to roil it. The rise of nativism, populism and polarization are homegrown phenomena with historical roots. After decades of a rough Cold War bipartisan consensus on America’s role in the world, globalization, mass immigration and foreign wars have discredited the old thinking for many and opened the door to figures like Mr. Trump, whose promise to put “America first” resonated in broad swaths of the country.
That’s not blinking. That’s batting your eyelashes at fascism and a fascist dictator. Carlson is great at that.
Mr. Carlson is among those who have grown more willing to listen and convey Russia’s message to Americans. As others have noted, Mr. Carlson used to refer to Mr. Putin as the “Russian dictator” who is “in league with our enemies,” but now he argues that Moscow has been misunderstood, or at least not heard. His commentaries assailing Ukraine have been gleefully repeated on Russian state media.
In a video explaining his decision to interview Mr. Putin, Mr. Carlson asserted that Americans and other English-speaking people were unaware of what was really happening regarding the war in Ukraine. “No one has told them the truth,” he said. “Their media outlets are corrupt. They lie to their readers and viewers.”
I guess he’s still reeling from his latest pink slip from Faux News. I had two students in one of my econ classes back in the 80s who obsessively worried and thought about Russia. It’s probably because Reagan was constantly beating a drum about them. One day, I put down the chalk and told them that if modern history teaches us anything, civil wars come along, and things change when people spend a lot of time in line for food and clothing. I mentioned the USSR hadn’t been in existence long enough to figure out who it was and that Stalin was dead. Just wait a few years. I wish I could talk to them both today. Because I guaranteed them a Russian Civil War by the end of the century. They beat me to that date. Plus, Putin is not what you would call a charismatic leader. He came close to being ousted by a crony not that long ago.
I now apply that logic to the US. January 6 was a canary; we still live in a coal mine. We need to be alert on this one. It wasn’t a tourist visit. It wasn’t a riot. It was an American President attempting a self-coup. Putin may be in over his head, but the Republicans are back there, lost in the woods. We have seen the enemy, and he is us.
Yesterday the press again focused on the Hur report that found no crimes in President Biden’s inadvertent possession of classified documents from his time as Vice President. But reporters only cared about one tiny portion of the report, in which Hur said Biden would be sympathetic to a jury because he comes across as a “well meaning elderly man with a poor memory.”
The gossip columnists at the NYT and WaPo were out in force. I’m not going to dignify these yellow journalists by excerpting their articles. It’s James Comey in 2016 all over again, except that the Hur report didn’t come out less than 2 weeks before the November election.
Meanwhile, the mainstream media overlooks Trump’s confusion, verbal flubs, and inability to form coherent sentences. Just last night he gave a speech full of examples of his cognitive issues.
The former president slurred when saying the word “subsidies,” said “dino-dollars” instead of “dollars,” and even said he doesn’t like being frontpage news every time he “said one word a little bit mispronunciation.” He also said that three years ago things were great, despite that being when Joe Biden became president, and he claimed twice there were no terror attacks during his tenure as president. He also said that Biden hasn’t spoken in months despite him addressing the press last night.
The flubs drew wide criticism from online onlookers.
Democratic youth activist Harry Sisson, in response to the ex-president’s “subsidies” flub, said, “Yikes.”
“Trump is slurring his speech again claiming that ‘Rich people are given $7,000 subsies.’ Uh…subsies?” he asked. “I’m not sure what that is and I don’t think anyone else does either. He can’t say subsidies properly so he must have dementia. Right, Republicans?”
Regarding the “subsies,” former prosecutor Ron Filipkowski said, “Dementia Trump is staring at the teleprompter, pauses to think about it, and still can’t say it.”
In yet another instance pointed out by the Biden-Harris HQ account on social media, Trump “gets distracted with bizarre story.”
“I know all about the marbles. I can tell you every marble,” Trump said.
Trump also appeared to mistake what day it was, saying, “If I wasn’t here, I’d be having a nice Saturday afternoon.” He said that, of course, on a Friday. This one was also picked up by Biden-Harris HQ.
Imagine if Biden were that befuddled? The press would have a field day.
The Biden campaign and the White House have landed on an initial strategy for responding to special counsel Robert Hur’s report that has spurred questions about the president’s fitness to hold office: Attack Hur and the media covering the report.
Woman Holding Black Cat, by TAkehisa Yumeji, 1919
The morning after Biden flashed anger at Hur for what he and other senior advisers argue was an inappropriate and excessive focus on his age, Ian Sams, a spokesperson for the White House counsel, sparred with the press corps for cherry-picking findings in the report, which he suggested was written in a way to shield Hur from political pressure from Republicans.
“I know it’s hard to wade through 400 full pages,” he said. “The report lays out example after example of how the president did not willfully take classified documents.”
Behind the scenes, Biden advisers in both the White House and his campaign were more scathing. One Biden ally said the report angered some of his supporters and, as a result, it was rallying them to his defense.
“People who are supporters of Biden are looking at that thinking that’s a cheap shot and he was playing politics,” the ally said.
The White House’s simmering animosity toward the media also burst into the public. One Biden aide said the media was “shameful” in its handling of the highly sensitive political moment.
“Hur couldn’t make his case and he takes partisan, personal and untrue swipes at Joe Biden,” one aide, who requested anonymity to speak frankly about internal views of the president’s team, said. “[He] did it so the media would take the bait, and none of you have learned a damn thing since 2016.”
The aide was referring to another fraught episode when then-FBI Director James Comey determined that while Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton had been “extremely careless” in handling classified information, she would not face charges for using a private email server.
On Sunday, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson went on television and mixed up Iran and Israel. “We passed the support for Iran many months ago,” he toldMeet the Press, erroneously referring to an aid package for the Jewish state. Last night, the Fox News prime-time host Jesse Watters introduced South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem as hailing from South Carolina. I once joined a cable-news panel where one of the participants kept confusing then–Attorney General Jeff Sessions with Representative Pete Sessions of Texas. I don’t hold these errors against anyone, as they are some of the most common miscues made by people who talk for a living—and I’m sure my time will come.
Yesterday, President Joe Biden added another example to this list. In response to a question about Gaza, he referred to the Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah al-Sisi as the president of Mexico. The substance of Biden’s answer was perfectly cogent. The off-the-cuff response included geographic and policy details not just about Egypt, but about multiple Middle Eastern players that most Americans probably couldn’t even name. The president clearly knew whom and what he was talking about; he just slipped up the same way Johnson and so many others have. But the flub could not have come at a worse time. Because the press conference had been called to respond to Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report on Biden’s handling of classified documents, which dubbed the president an “elderly man with a poor memory,” the Mexico gaffe was immediately cast by critics as confirmation of Biden’s cognitive collapse.
Tama the Cat by Hiroaki Takahashi
But the truth is, mistakes like these are nothing new for Biden, who has been mixing up names and places for his entire political career. Back in 2008, he infamously introduced his running mate as “the next president of the United States, Barack America.” At the time, Biden’s well-known propensity for bizarre tangents, ahistorical riffs, and malapropisms compelled Slate to publish an entire column explaining “why Joe Biden’s gaffes don’t hurt him much.” The article included such gems as the time that then-Senator Biden told the journalist Katie Couric that “when the markets crashed in 1929, ‘Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed. He said, “Look, here’s what happened.”’” The only problem with this story, Slate laconically noted, was that “FDR wasn’t president then, nor did television exist.”
In other words, even a cursory history of Biden’s bungling shows that he is the same person he has always been, just older and slower—a gaffe-prone, middling public speaker with above-average emotional intelligence and an instinct for legislative horse-trading. This is why Biden’s signature moments as a politician have been not set-piece speeches, but off-the-cuff encounters, such as when he kneltto engage elderly Holocaust survivors in Israel so they would not have to stand, and when he befriended a security guard in an elevator at The New York Times on his way to a meeting with the paper’s editorial board, which declined to endorse him. And it’s why Biden’s key accomplishments—such as the landmark climate-change provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act, the country’s first gun-control bill in decades, and the expected expansion of the child tax credit—have come through Congress. The president’s strength is not orating, but legislating; not inspiring a crowd, but connecting with individuals.
As part of his Don Quixote-like quest to avoid criticism, Attorney General Merrick Garland has binged on special counsel appointments throughout his tenure at the U.S. Department of Justice.
Now, following a string of debacles, including allowing Special Counsel John Durham to continue his useless four-year probe of the Mueller investigation—elevating the Hunter Biden prosecutor, David Weiss, to special counsel status after a half-decade of investigation—Garland’s hand-picked Special Counsel Robert Hur has produced a report on President Joe Biden’s handling of classified information that rivals former FBI Director James Comey’s infamous political hatchet-job on Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
Hur concludes what everybody already knew—namely that no criminal charges are warranted in Biden’s handling of classified materials—but gratuitously slams Biden’s fitness for office by describing him as a “sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.” By allowing this unprofessional, partisan dig to be published, Garland plays right into the hands of former President Donald Trump and the extreme right’s ageist attacks on the president.
by Ayako Ishiguro
To be fair, maybe Hur was only trying to exercise what he thought was proper prosecutorial discretion in not bringing a weak case. Or perhaps, he may just be an inept, clumsy writer/editor.
But it was Garland’s responsibility to ensure that Hur’s report did not stray from proper Justice Department standards. Garland should have known the risks when he picked Hur—who had clerked for conservative Chief Justice William Rehnquist, served as the top aide to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who assisted Bill Barr’s distortion of the Mueller Report, and who was a Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney.
The bottom line is that Hur has produced a report that should have reassured the American people that President Biden did nothing wrong, but instead supplies Biden’s political rivals with ammunition for baseless attacks on Biden’s fitness for office.
Hur opens his report in a way that invites misinterpretation, by stating he “uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials.” But Hur waits until the next paragraph to state that the evidence does not establish Biden’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
The verb “uncovered” suggests evidence was hidden and only Hur’s skillful investigation discovered it. Nothing could be further from the truth, as the rest of the report demonstrates that President Biden hid nothing from the investigation and was entirely forthcoming. Hur’s wording also makes it sound like he believes Biden committed a crime, but he just can’t prove it when his report actually concludes there is a lack of evidence of Biden possessing criminal intent to commit a crime.
A report explaining the reasons for declination should be written in a very factual, non-pejorative way. Hur should have simply said that the evidence found in the investigation did not support a recommendation of criminal prosecution, and then gone on to explain what evidence had been evaluated.
Joe Biden has told aides and outside advisers that Attorney General Merrick Garland did not do enough to rein in a special counsel report stating that the president had diminished mental faculties, according to two people close to the president, as White House frustration with the head of the Justice Department grows.
Cats practicing their music, Utagawa Kuniyoshi
The report from special counsel Robert Hur ultimately cleared Biden of any charges stemming from his handling of classified documents that were found at Biden’s think tank and his home. But Hur’s explanation for not bringing charges — that Biden would have persuaded the jury that he was a forgetful old man — upended the presidential campaign and infuriated the White House.
Biden and his closest advisers believe Hur went well beyond his purview and was gratuitous and misleading in his descriptions, according to those two people, who were granted anonymity to speak freely. And they put part of the blame on Garland, who they say should have demanded edits to Hur’s report, including around the descriptions of Biden’s faltering memory.
In White House meetings, aides have questioned why Garland felt the need to appoint a special counsel in the first place, though Biden has publicly said he supported the decision.
While Biden himself has not weighed in on Garland’s future, most of the president’s senior advisers do not believe that the attorney general would remain in his post for a possible second term, according to the two people.
A bit more:
“This has been building for a while,” said one of those people. “No one is happy”
Frustration within the White House at Garland has been growing steadily.
Last year, Biden privately denounced how long the probe into his son was taking, telling aides and outside allies that he believed the stress could send Hunter Biden spiraling back into addiction, according to the same two people. And the elder Biden, the people said, told those confidants that Garland should not have eventually empowered a special counsel to look into his son, believing that he again was caving to outside pressure.
Garland moved sooner in his investigation into former President Donald Trump’s election interference, a trial may already be underway or even have concluded, according to two people granted anonymity to discuss private matters. That trial still could take place before the election and much of the delay is owed not to Garland but to deliberate resistance put up by the former president and his team.
A plea to my Democratic friends: It’s time to start calling Joe Biden a great president. Not a good one. Not a better choice than Donald Trump. Joe Biden is a historically great president. Say it with passion backed by the conviction that it’s true.
Because it is.
Yes, the desire to see the 2024 election as a choice between a normal, stable president versus an erratic thug under indictment in multiple states is seductive. But don’t base a campaign on that contrast. Don’t go into 2024 with the game plan to win because Donald Trump is an existential threat to democracy. That’s true, he is, but that’s only making the case that Donald Trump shouldn’t be president. It’s not the reason Joe Biden should be reelected.
Joe Biden should remain president because of his historic level of achievement here at home while standing on the side of freedom versus tyranny in the largest land war in Europe since World War II, a role no American president has played since the Roosevelt-Truman era. Be bold. Walk into this campaign with swagger and confidence and pride.
It’s become a 2024 trope that Donald Trump is the only Republican whom President Biden could beat, and that Biden is the only Democrat whom Trump could defeat. Like a lot of things in politics, it’s true if you accept it. But that acceptance is voluntary. Reject that framing for the industrial political complex bullshit that it is, brought to you by the same class of experts who knew without question that Bill Clinton was dead in June 1992, when he was running third to Ross Perot and George Bush, with 24 percent of the vote.
Stop the nonsense that only a weak opponent gives Joe Biden a chance to win. It’s more than wrong—it’s dangerous, completely misjudging Donald Trump’s strength. Trump is dominating a contest for a presidential nomination like no candidate in modern history because he’s the weakest candidate?
No. Donald Trump is going to win the Republican nomination easily, be endorsed by all his opponents not named Christie or Hutchinson, and emerge from the primaries better positioned to face an incumbent president than any candidate since Ronald Reagan in 1980. If you don’t want to wake up with Trump as your president a year from now, stop fantasying that Trump might not be the Republican nominee. End the whining about a Trump-Biden choice that only helps Trump and get about the business of uniting behind a great president.
A bit more:
As someone who worked in Republican campaigns for almost 30 years, I say without hesitation that the Democratic Party is the only pro-democracy party in America. But guys, why do so many of you have this need to act like ungrateful children of wealthy parents—impossible to please and always demanding more? Name a president who accomplished as much in his first term.
A shapeshifting cat, by Utagawa Kuniyoshi
The stock market is hitting record highs. Unemployment is at a record low, with 14 million new jobs. Talk to small-business owners, and the biggest problem they are facing is finding workers. A child born in the first Republican “infrastructure week” would have been entering grade school by the time President Biden passed the largest public spending initiative in American history. As a Republican media consultant, I made hundreds of ads about the high cost of prescription drugs. But it took President Biden to give Medicare the power to directly negotiate with Big Pharma to lower prices and cap the cost of insulin for Medicare beneficiaries at $35. For all the bitching about gas prices, the United States is now producing more oil than any country in history. Yes, more than Russia or Saudi Arabia, and that’s one of the reasons gas prices are now lower in inflation-adjusted prices than in 1974. Yeah, I know, fossil fuels suck, and the world should run on solar power. But the Biden administration also launched a $7 billion solar power investment project.
What is most amazing is that Biden got this done in a world in which the majority of Republicans believe he is not a legal president. Ponder that for a minute. You are a White House staffer working to help pass Biden initiatives, and you are dealing with members of Congress and senators who don’t just disagree with your boss—they think he’s an illegitimate president.
Wake up and show some gratitude. You wanted student loan forgiveness. You got it, for three million borrowers. You wanted a president who would finally pass gun safety legislation. You got the most comprehensive bill in nearly 30 years, the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which passed with the support of 15 Republican senators and 14 Republican House members, opening the door to some hope that laws on gun violence might finally start to reflect the wishes of the majority of the country. Maybe you’re a Democrat who actually cares about the federal deficit, unlike the Republicans who fake concern. Since Biden took office, the deficit has decreased by $1.7 trillion.
Yesterday, Dakinikat wrote about Jack Smith’s arguments to Judge Aileen Cannon that secret grand jury information from government witnesses should not be made public or given to Trump and his co-defendants. Yesterday Cannon ordered Smith to hand over the files today. It’s not clear yet what will happen, but Smith could appeal this to the 11th Circuit. One reason Smith wants to keep the documents sealed is because there is an active investigation of witness intimidation involved.
Federal authorities are currently investigating a series of threats made online to a potential witness related to special counsel Jack Smith’s classified documents case against former President Donald Trump, according to a new court filing from Smith’s team.
In the filing late Wednesday in federal court in Florida, Smith’s team asked U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, the judge overseeing the case, to let them file an exhibit under seal because, they wrote, “The exhibit describes in some detail threats that have been made over social media to a prospective Government witness and the surrounding circumstances, and the fact that those threats are the subject of an ongoing federal investigation being handled by a United States Attorney’s Office.”
“Disclosure of the details and circumstances of the threats risks disrupting the investigation,” the filing said.
The targeted witness was not identified.
The three-page filing discussing the probe was submitted as part of a dispute between Smith’s team and Trump’s lawyers over how much information should be redacted — or totally withheld from public view — in certain court filings.
In their filing Wednesday, Smith’s team urged Judge Cannon to let them file the exhibit completely under seal because, they said, simply redacting names or other parts of the document could still “provide information to the suspect to which he/she may not otherwise be entitled.”
Donald Trump and his legal team will receive unredacted FBI witnesses’ reports as part of the classified documents case after Special Counsel Jack Smith failed in his bid to withhold the information.
Beauty and the Cat , by Kunisada Utagawa
Judge Aileen Cannon, who is overseeing the trial against the former president, ordered federal prosecutors to hand over unredacted materials sought by Trump’s legal team in discovery, as well as the two other co-defendants in the case, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira….
On Thursday, Smith accused Cannon of making a “clear error” when she allowed that the documents be handed over. He said in filings that the move would reveal the identities of numerous potential witnesses, as well as potentially exposing them to “significant and immediate risks of threats, intimidation, and harassment.” Newsweek contacted the Department of Justice on Saturday via email.
Cannon had originally paused deadlines for Smith’s team to hand over the documents while she considered the special counsel’s motion. However, the stay lasted only a few hours, and later she ruled on Friday that the information must be delivered to Trump and the other defendants by Saturday, February 10.
The judge ruled that the information, including the names of potential witnesses, will be sealed from the public until a later court order.
Cannon, who was nominated to the bench by Trump, has long faced calls to recuse herself from the case after she made a number of decisions that favored the former president; these include ones that could potentially delay the start of the trial, scheduled for May.
Twitter lawyers are still suggesting that Jack Smith may take his case to the 11th Circuit. I’ll post in the comments if anything happens.
A crucial system of ocean currents may already be on course to collapse, according to a new report, with alarming implications for sea level rise and global weather — leading temperatures to plunge dramatically in some regions and rise in others.
Using exceptionally complex and expensive computing systems, scientists found a new way to detect an early warning signal for the collapse of these currents, according to the study published Friday in the journal Science Advances. And as the planet warms, there are already indications it is heading in this direction.
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (the AMOC) — of which the Gulf Stream is part — works like a giant global conveyor belt, taking warm water from the tropics toward the far North Atlantic, where the water cools, becomes saltier and sinks deep into the ocean, before spreading southward.
The currents carry heat and nutrients to different areas of the globe and play a vital role in keeping the climate of large parts of the Northern Hemisphere relatively mild.
For decades, scientists have been sounding the alarm on the circulation’s stability as climate change warms the ocean and melts ice, disrupting the balance of heat and salt that determines the currents’ strength.
While many scientists believe the AMOC will slow under climate change, and could even grind to a halt, there remains huge uncertainty over when and how fast this could happen. The AMOC has only been monitored continuously since 2004.
Scientists do know — from building a picture of the past using things like ice cores and ocean sediments — the AMOC shut down more than 12,000 years ago following rapid glacier melt.
Now they are scrambling to work out if it could happen again.
This new study provides an “important breakthrough,” said René van Westen, a marine and atmospheric researcher at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands and study co-author.
Read the rest at CNN. Maybe Quixote will comment on this story if she comes by.
I hope everyone is having a great weekend!
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This symbol of the endless knot features the Green Wood-Dragon. Wood Dragon years come every 60 years. The dragon is associated with incredible strength, positive transformation, and challenges. The element wood symbolizes creativity and adaptability.
𝗟𝗢𝗦𝗔𝗥 𝗧𝗔𝗦𝗛𝗜 𝗗𝗘𝗟𝗘𝗞!
Happy New Year of the Wood Dragon, Sky Dancers!
It would be now if we ever needed an auspicious Lunar New Year prediction. Fortunately, we are in the year of the Green Wood Dragon. So, here’s the soothsaying for the year from CNN. “What’s in store for the Year of the Dragon?” The Dragon is the only mythical creature in this zodiac. That’s special.
“This year will also be significant because it’s the year when the world enters a new chapter from the eighth period to the ninth period of Xuan Kong flying star.”
She explains that there are nine Xuan Kong flying stars that affect the feng shui of the world. Each of them lords over us for two decades before passing the torch to the next star.
The year 2024 marks the beginning of the next 20-year reign under the ninth flying star.
“The number nine star represents feminine energy – so ladies are going to take over in a lot of the areas. It also represents technology, art and design as well as spirituality,” says Chow.
I always see reading these forecasts as aspirational; in other words, if we think about them, we can make them happen. We certainly need to make something happen right now.
Yesterday was an insane news day. The SCOTUS hearing on the Colorado 14th Amendment was heard yesterday morning. There weas a live stream broadcast of the voices only. I heard Clarence Thomas fall asleep a few times and leave early via a young activist I follow on Threads. I also found out that was not unusual. When you’re just a paid vote, there’s not much to say, do, or think about.
I will make this our top story today, even though it appears the media is more interested in parsing every word President Biden spoke while looking through one of the more opinionated special counsel reports I’ve ever seen. The press is less involved with the idea that Joe was not determined to have any grounds for prosecution than with the description of him as an elderly man who forgets many things. If I were questioned on the past 40 years of my life while trying to handle the US response to the Hamas attack on Israel, I’d be a bit muddled, too. We also learned that Special Counsel Jack Smith is questioning a decision on how flooded everyone will be with various top-secret documents that the folks who moved the boxes around probably didn’t even see.
This is from NBC News. “Supreme Court signals unlikely to let Colorado kick Trump off the ballot. Trump is appealing a Colorado Supreme Court ruling that said he could be barred from the Republican primary ballot because of his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.”
he Supreme Court on Thursday signaled deep skepticism that Colorado had the power to remove former President Donald Trump from the Republican primary ballot because of his actions trying to overturn the 2020 election results.
A majority of the justices appeared to think during the two-hour argument that states do not have a role in deciding whether a presidential candidate can be barred from running under a provision of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment that bars people who “engaged in insurrection” from holding office.
Justices from across the ideological spectrum raised concerns about states reaching different conclusions on whether a candidate could run, and several indicated that only Congress could enforce the provision at issue.
Throughout the argument, the justices barely touched upon the meaty issue at the center of the case: whether Trump participated in an insurrection. The ruling is unlikely to hinge on that question.
The Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, is tackling several novel and consequential legal issues concerning Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, enacted in the wake of the Civil War. Colorado voters filed a lawsuit saying Trump should be barred because of his efforts to defy the 2020 election results in events that led to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Section 3, aimed at preventing former Confederates from returning to power in the U.S. government, says anyone who had previously served as an “officer of the United States” and was then involved in an insurrection would be barred from holding federal office.
But during the oral argument, justices pushed back on the idea that the provision can be enforced by states.
So many of these oral arguments were framed around various words. Trump’s lawyers have been arguing various things around the applicability of the presidency to the idea of an “office.” I just have one question. If that’s the case, why have a big parade and inaugural whoop-ti-do surrounding the president taking “the oath of office.” If we’ve done this inaugural oath for a long time and named it as taking an ‘oath of office’, doesn’t that mean he’s an “officer of the United States.” I hate word games, and this seemed a lot like one.
You might find it interesting that this case is known as Trump V Anderson. Norma Anderson is a 91-year-old Legislator from Colorado and a lifelong Republican. This is from Politico.
Norma Anderson — the Anderson in the Trump v. Anderson case that the Supreme Court will hear on Thursday — is taking on Trump over whether he is eligible to serve as president after his role in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.
Anderson, a lifelong Republican who rose through the state party to become one of the top GOP lawmakers in Colorado, said she immediately agreed to participate when recruited by an attorney working with the liberal government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
“When asked, and when duty calls, you do it,” she told POLITICO. “My reason for doing it is saving democracy. Because Donald Trump will destroy our democracy.”
The case rests on an interpretation of a clause in the 14th Amendment that says those who “engaged in” an insurrection against the United States after taking an oath to “support” the Constitution are ineligible to hold future office.
It takes a lot of chutzpah and bravery to face down the crazies in the Trump Cult. This is from The Atlantic. “The Supreme Court Is Eager to Rid Itself of This Difficult Trump Question. It just doesn’t know how.” This analysis is written by Quinta Jurecic
Two things seemed clear after the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Trump v. Anderson, the case concerning whether Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment bars Donald Trump from the presidency as an insurrectionist. First, most of the justices want to rule in Trump’s favor. Second, they’re struggling to figure out how to do so.
Maybe Section 3 doesn’t apply to the presidency per se, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Ketanji Brown Jackson said—and perhaps, along those same lines, it doesn’t prohibit oath-breaking former presidents from holding future office either? Or perhaps, Justice Samuel Alito pondered, the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits insurrectionists from holding office, but not from running for it? Justice Brett Kavanaugh seemed enamored of the idea that the amendment doesn’t allow states to disqualify candidates for federal office—as Colorado did here—without Congress first giving the go-ahead. In a related line of inquiry, which the justices seemed to coalesce around as arguments went on, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Elena Kagan suggested that perhaps there’s something inappropriate about allowing individual states to make decisions that could potentially determine a national election.
Brandi Buchman reports on Special Counsel Jack Smith’s move last night in the Stolen Documents Case. This is from Law & Crime. “‘Relentless and misleading’: Jack Smith shreds new Trump motion as proof he will ‘stop at nothing’ to delay Mar-a-Lago documents case.” Judge Loose Cannon is at it again.
In a new motion, special counsel Jack Smith shredded Donald Trump’s latest attempt to indefinitely delay the classified documents case in Florida before U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, urging the court to resist the former president’s efforts to “stop at nothing” to delay facing a jury.
“Their objective is plain — to delay trial as long as possible. And the tactics they deploy are relentless and misleading — they will stop at nothing to stall the adjudication of the charges against them by a fair and impartial jury of citizens. The Court should promptly reject the defendants’ motion,” Smith wrote in the 9-page brief filed in Florida late Thursday.
A tentative May 20 trial date has been set but it increasingly looks like that won’t get off the ground as Cannon has agreed to extend deadlines for other pretrial issues. For now, the next hearing approaches on March 1 when federal prosecutors and Trump’s lawyers will convene to discuss the schedule.
Meanwhile, Smith is eager to keep things on track and in the terse motion, lamented to Cannon that Trump’s pretrial motions for the indictment were due in November and yet, he reminded her, that deadline was vacated the same day.
Trump’s lawyers were either simply unprepared or were flatly ignoring court orders, according to the special counsel, and now, three months on, as Trump’s team has filed requests to adjourn the case completely, they still come asking for more time to file pretrial documents.
“This sequence of events fully exposes the defendants’ motive here: to achieve delay,” Smith wrote.
So, I have to write about the Hur Report, which basically showed a contrast between a President who did everything to hold on to documents he purposefully heisted and one who thought his aides were doing everything correctly and didn’t check on them. It’s turned into a discussion about Biden’s mental state, which is way out of this guy’s pay level. Now, we’re just endlessly hearing about the age thing. This is from Josh Marshall, who wrote it in Talking Points Memo. People age somewhat differently. My mother was unable to fend off dementia in her 70s. My father was good up until his 90s. I have senior moments, but I can’t do my job or live my life. Trump’s got advanced dementia. Biden has senior moments.
Let me share a few thoughts on the Biden special counsel report.
First off, this is another example of the universal rule: Republican special counsels are chosen to investigate Democrats. And Republican special counsels are chosen to investigate Republicans. It may not have been a great idea for Merrick Garland to have a two-time Trump appointee investigate Joe Biden. But here we are. Robert Hur totally slimed Biden with these gratuitous comments about his mental acuity and memory, referring to him as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” Even if you assume they are the product of a good faith evaluation they are still wildly inappropriate.
DOJ guidelines make clear that if you’re not bringing charges you don’t bash the subject of the investigation in your announcement (a la James Comey). You certainly aren’t supposed to affirmatively attempt to demean the subject of the investigation with clearly political attacks that aren’t even related to what you’re investigating. Hur might as well have called him “Fake News Joe Biden.” It’s really that transparent and that bad.
Are we sure that Hur let his political bias get in the way of his professional judgment? Can we draw that from his background as a politically connected Republican lawyer? I don’t even think it’s a serious question. The lengthy and gratuitous comments speak for themselves. Of course he did.
The descriptions in the report sound bad because they are designed to sound bad. These are from a five hour discussion the day after the October 7th attacks on Israel when I’m sure Biden was focused on that unfolding crisis. Without watching the interview we have no way of knowing whether these are representative of the tenor of the conversation or cherry-picked gotchas.
But there’s no crying in baseball. Entirely justified outrage from Biden supporters won’t counter whatever damage these comments will have. The White House will need to get Biden in front of interviewers, where he actually does quite well, and in widely seen venues, to counter it. It’s really as simple as that.
On the merits, some of these quotes that Hur came up with really do suggest that Biden knew in some sense that he had classified material in the documents or at least made references to it being in his possession. I need to look more closely at the specifics. And it’s still a prosecutor’s brief. But that did surprise me. And not in a good way.
This is a closing argument. This language is wildly inappropriate in a declination memo, because Hur didn’t find the evidence to back this story!
Worse still, it’s stupid. Because all Biden needed for vindication was that 40-page memo, the one he mentioned in the very same sentence as he mentioned the classified documents. The one stored inside the house, not in a discarded box in the garage. The one he never used during the 2020 election.
But Hur was undeterred by a stupid motive argument.
Next, after admitting that the FBI never succeeded in tracing the Afghan documents, much less proving they were in the basement of the Virginia house, he used this photo analysis to claim that the box found in the garage is the same one that appeared in two pictures taken in Biden’s Wilmington office in 2019, shortly after everything was shipped from Virginia to Delaware.
If you look at news aggregators like Memorandum, you’d think this was the only story in the world to follow right now. What we have here is a failure to communicate. A few articles like this are up today, given Nevada’s debacle of a primary/caucus vote. Blocking votes is a Republican strategy. “How Trump turned the GOP into the party of lawless disorder. Can Republicans win by promoting contempt for the rule of law? We’re about to find out.” It’s written by David R Lurie at Public Notice.
In the wake of his loss, Trump gave up any pretense of standing for law and order. He schemed to undue the outcome of the election, culminating in a violent attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters in a desperate attempt to prevent the certification of Biden’s victory.
With his recent victories in the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary, Trump made it a virtual certainty that he will again be the Republican Party’s presidential candidate. But as he prepares for his third general election campaign, Trump is making clear that he will be a very different candidate this time.
It is Trump the insurrectionist who will be running at the top of the 2024 GOP ticket. Trump has discarded even the pretense that he intends to “fix” the nation, let alone foster order and respect for the rule of law. The upcoming election is therefore lining up as a test of whether an anti-law and order Republican can win the presidency. Trump and his supporters have made that all the more clear over the past several weeks, after Trump’s early primary victories sealed his status as the presumptive GOP presidential candidate.
Trump celebrated his New Hampshire win by setting out to further alienate women voters. During his “victory” speech, he relentlessly engaged in misogynistic and racist attacks on his sole remaining primary opponent, Nikki Haley.
Trump them flew to New York for the apparent purpose of drawing further attention to the fact that a jury found him liable for sexually assaulting and then defaming E. Jean Carroll. He devoted his short time in the courtroom to expressing contempt for Carroll, the judge and even the jury, which proceeded to award Carroll more than $83 million.
Unsurprisingly given all this, a recent Quinnipiac University poll found that, just over the past several weeks, Trump managed to widen the already gaping gender gap he faces in November. Women voters now support Biden over Trump 58 to 36 percent, versus 53 to 41 percent in December 2023. Apparently pleased with that debacle, Trump indicated that he plans to spend the campaign shuttling between courtrooms wherein he is a criminal defendant.
Then, after the GOP successfully forced Biden to accept a “border security” bill filled with GOP priorities in return for providing funding for Ukraine, Trump stepped in to successfully pressure Republicans to scuttle the Republican bill.
Trump, and his most loyal MAGA acolytes, were open and transparent about the reason for their about face: They want the Department of Homeland Security to remain as overwhelmed and under-resourced as possible during the months prior to the election. In short, they want to maintain an appearance of chaos.
All this chaos is really tough on this old lady. But I’m now near the incoherent stream of blather from the Orange One. Neither too much wine or lack of sleep or signs of aging make me sound this insane. Trump sounds like he has an inchoate understanding of reality day in and day out.
Krugman: 'Disgusting' obsession with Biden’s age ignores Trump’s 'incoherent rambling' https://t.co/GHhZB0hbDB
My dad traded my flute for a guitar in the 8th grade, and I taught myself to play and pick “Both Sides Now.” That was 1968. She sang it last night at the age of 80. Judy Collins first made it famous, but it was all Joni. I saw Joni perform at my first Jazz Fest in New Orleans in 1995 before I started playing around town and doing sound for the Fest. I cannot tell you how much I wanted to see her live. I watched how she did all those alternative tunings. I played her album ‘Free Man in Paris’ in my first year at university. There I was, watching those fingers work their magic as close as I could get. I’d already worn the tracks off of ‘Blue’.
In 2024, the Grammys lived up to their often-dubious claim to being “music’s biggest night,” with highs like Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs’ “Fast Car” duet, lows like the shocking arrest of Killer Mike, and whoas like Album of the Year winner Taylor Swift announcing a new album titled The Tortured Poets Department. But for me, the highlight of the evening was a quieter, if no less historic moment: Joni Mitchell taking the Grammy stage for the first time, at 80, to perform her classic ballad “Both Sides, Now.” I’d like to think Swift—the woman of the hour, night, and year, as well as a Joni superfan who calls Mitchell’s Blue her favorite album—would agree.
The song began as a piano playing through darkness, out of which Mitchell emerged, spotlit and facing backstage in a regal Victorian chair. Decked out in her signature beret and braids, and surrounded by crystal chandeliers, she used a bejeweled cane to keep time. And as she sang the opening lines, voice deeper now than that of the soprano who trilled its high notes on her 1969 album Clouds, her throne revolved until she was staring straight at the audience. Seated around Mitchell, like acolytes at her feet, were younger musicians—Brandi Carlile, Jacob Collier, Allison Russell, SistaStrings, Blake Mills, and Lucius—accompanying her with guitar, strings, woodwinds, and backing vocals. She didn’t strain her voice, but she sounded strong and clear.
Joni Mitchell at the 2024 Grammys
If Joni ruled my guitar picking in the sixties and seventies, Tracy Chapman grabbed me in the 1980s. I jumped on singer-songwriter Tracy Chapman’s ‘Give Me One Reason’, a track from Chapman’s 1988 album, with a 5-year-old daughter sitting beside me. When I moved to New Orleans and started performing again, that older and mouthier daughter corrected my timing several times. Given my lack of interest in country music, some singer I’d never heard that recorded her song shared the stage with Mitchell at the Grammies last night. Her album that enriched my life has never been re-released. I bet it will now. It topped the iTunes Chart after her Grammy performance. She looks and sounds better than ever!
“Fast Car,” the folk anthem by Tracy Chapman, is continuing to have its renaissance moment.
Chapman joined country singer Luke Combs for a rare performance of the song at Sunday’s Grammys ceremony. Moments after, “Fast Car” shot to No. 1 on the iTunes Top Songs chart. Her 1988 debut album, Tracy Chapman, also sat at No. 1.
Chapman’s original song peaked at No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart following its release. She has performed the song on the Grammy stage before, when she won best female pop vocal performance for it at the 1989 Grammys.
Combs’ version peaked at No. 2 on the Hot 100 chart after it was released last year and was nominated for a Grammy this year, though it did not win.
Chapman was not listed as an official performer this year, and the crowd cheered loudly when she appeared onstage, providing one of the most powerful moments at a Grammys show that was packed with memorable moments. Artists Taylor Swift and Jelly Roll were seen standing and singing along, and Chapman herself beamed with a smile.
Chapman has won four Grammys in the past, three of which were tied to her self-titled album, which included “Fast Car.” For that, she won Best Contemporary Folk Album, Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, and Best New Artist in 1989.
And yes, Taylor was there. A shot of her standing, dancing, clapping, and singing ‘Fast Car’ is viral today. ‘I became a Swifty’ with her 2014 hit ‘Shake it off’. It got a lot of play during Hillary’s campaign. She was a Hillary supporter but never quite got around to “endorsing’ her. Here’s a typical headline for that time of my life. “Can Hillary Clinton Shake It Off?” was all over the media. It was a meme-worthy song once Clinton stood on a town hall stage with Stalking Donnie Dotard and actually shook off his hateful rhetoric.
Swift won her 4th Album of the Year last night with intense competition. This is from People Magazine. “Taylor Swift Makes History as She Wins 4th Album of the Year at 2024 Grammys: ‘Unbelievably Blown Away’.”
Taylor Swift was awarded album of the year at Sunday’s awards show in Los Angeles for her album Midnights, making her the only artist to ever win album of the year four times.Midnights, Fearless, 1989 and Folklore have all won the achievement.
Next up for Swift is watching The Super Bowl and more grief on all those nutty conspiracy theories from the left-hand tail of the MAGA IQ charts. Don’t even ask where the mean sits for these freaks of nature. She’s reportedly turned down performances for its Half Time Program several times, according to Fortune.
I would like to honor these two women in the category of causing all other female artists to have hope and awe. They are Annie Lennox and the late Sinead O’Connor. I love to tell this story of what the neighborhood kids said about me when I was in the skinny as hell and even balder stage of having chemotherapy in 1980. They went around telling everyone that I was a big music star! They thought I was Sinead! That’s the best compliment I’ve ever gotten!
This is from Rolling Stone. “Annie Lennox Calls for Gaza Ceasefire During Sinéad O’Connor’ Grammys Tribute.”
After performing “Nothing Compares to U” on Sunday, the singer became the first artist to call for a ceasefire in Gaza at a major awards show this year.
“Artists for a ceasefire. Peace in the world,” Lennox said with her fist in the air, as an image of O’Connor displayed in the background.
Fans celebrated the Eurythmics icon for making the bold statement and honoring O’Connor in the “most meaningful and honest way.” O’Connor, who was also known for speaking up, famously ripped an image of the Pope to call out the Catholic church’s approach to clergy child sex abuse while performing on Saturday Night Live in 1992.
Oh, Annie of THAT voice! She killed it. The song written by Prince has one of the more gut-wrenching melodies and lyrics you’d ever want to croon.
So, anyway, that’s all I want to do today. I am glad that these female singer-songwriters are finally getting their due at the Grammys. Okay, I’ve shared my inner fan girl and inspirations with you. You probably need more coffee now.
Have a great week! And go on! Listen to their music!
Here’s a bonus: Annie with the Queen of Soul singing that funky music in 1985. It’s Aretha!!!
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This is from 
So many of these oral arguments were framed around various words. Trump’s lawyers have been arguing various things around the applicability of the presidency to the idea of an “office.” I just have one question. If that’s the case, why have a big parade and inaugural whoop-ti-do surrounding the president taking “the oath of office.” If we’ve done this inaugural oath for a long time and named it as taking an ‘oath of office’, doesn’t that mean he’s an “officer of the United States.” I hate word games, and this seemed a lot like one.
It takes a lot of chutzpah and bravery to face down the crazies in the Trump Cult. This is from 
Brandi Buchman reports on Special Counsel Jack Smith’s move last night in the Stolen Documents Case. This is 
So, I have to write about the Hur Report, which basically showed a contrast between a President who did everything to hold on to documents he purposefully heisted and one who thought his aides were doing everything correctly and didn’t check on them. It’s turned into a discussion about Biden’s mental state, which is way out of this guy’s pay level. Now, we’re just endlessly hearing about the age thing. This is from Josh Marshall, who wrote it in 
If you look at news aggregators like 
Next up for Swift is watching The Super Bowl and more grief on all those nutty conspiracy theories from the left-hand tail of the MAGA IQ charts. Don’t even ask where the mean sits for these freaks of nature. She’s reportedly turned down performances for its Half Time Program several times, according to 
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