The director of the National Security Agency, the powerful U.S. wiretapping and cyberespionage service, was fired Thursday, according to one former and two current U.S. officials.
Gen. Timothy Haugh, who also heads U.S. Cyber Command, was let go along with his civilian deputy at the NSA, Wendy Noble, according to the officials. Like others in this report, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel moves.
Far-right activist Laura Loomer advocated for the firings during a meeting with President Donald Trump on Wednesday, she confirmed to The Washington Post on Thursday evening.In the meeting,
Loomer, a fervent Trump supporter, pressed for the dismissals of a number of officials besides Haugh and Noble — in particular, National Security Council staff whose views she saw as disloyal to the president.
At least five key National Security Council aides were fired Thursday.
“NSA Director Tim Haugh and his deputy Wendy Noble have been disloyal to President Trump,” Loomer said in a post on X early Friday. “That is why they have been fired.”
Loomer told The Post that she urged Trump to dismiss Haugh because he was “handpicked” by Gen. Mark A. Milley, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2023 when Haugh was nominated to lead Cyber Command and the NSA.
Black Friday: The Great Crash
Posted: April 4, 2025 Filed under: #MAGAnomics, tRump crimes against humanity | Tags: @johnbuss.bsky.social John Buss, economic impact of #FARTUS tariffs, FARTUS, grand wizards of the kleptocracy, kakistocracy, Land of Confusion, tariffs and farmers 4 Comments
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
#FARTUS has deliberately tanked the equity markets and the dollar with record-level tariffs set with an equation that made no sense and included tariffs placed on islands with no human inhabitants. This is further evidence of the incompetency and utter ignorance of the Trump Administration. This is not economic policy. This is some personal brain fart of a very disturbed man.
The newest economic alignment is between Japan, Southern Korea, and China. They have negotiated a Trilateral Free Trade Agreement. The Europeans have basically given up on us. The dollar is no longer the safe currency as we saw in trading yesterday. It had its highest drop on record. The jobs report will be released shortly and will determine any further rate of decline. I watched an increasing level of lay-off announcements by major manufacturers, Whirlpool, Stellantis, and more have announced additional layoffs. This comes after Forbes announced, “Nearly 100 Companies Announce Layoffs In March, According To Reports.” This was the highest amount of layoffs since 2020 which was the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The USD has regained some of its footing, but frankly, when economic policy is ruled by hubris and ignorance, there’s very little you can get from a forecasting model.
None of this makes sense from an Economic Policy Basis. We now have retaliatory tariffs, which signal a massive trade war has begun. Like the last Trump Tariff-induced trade war, US farmers will be on the front line. Manufacturers will also be severely hurt. Of course, the ultimate loser is the average American. I still see stagflation in our near term future. High inflation plus very lousy unemployment. The Fed’s tools are not as useful with this kind of economy. Stimulate the economy to end unemployment, and you get higher prices. Stop the high inflation, and you worsen the recession. What really kills me is that this destructive policy was fully preventable. But then, elections brought us this mess, and elections must pull us out of it.
les pingouins résistent
You may read all my sources if you are so inclined. I know they’re not the most exciting reads. Here’s a trio of dismal headlines from The Guardian. Note: FTSE is the UK equivalent of the Dow Jones.
Global trade war escalates as Beijing hits back against Donald Trump with new tariffs on US goods
- China retaliates to Trump’s ‘bullying practice’ with 34% tariffs on US imports
- IMF warns of ‘significant risk’ to global economy from Trump tariffs as markets slide
- Analysis: Trump’s ‘idiotic’ and flawed tariff calculations stun economists
I’m going to quote from the Analysis. This is the full Headline. “Trump’s ‘idiotic’ and flawed tariff calculations stun economists
Richard Partington, The Guardian’s Senior economics correspondent, wrote this analysis. “‘Willing sycophants’ came up with simplistic formula that has thrown global economy into disarray.”
Waving a big chart as a prop in the White House Rose Garden, Donald Trump suggested his new tariff plan was simple: “Reciprocal – that means they do it to us, and we do it to them. Very simple. Can’t get simpler than that.”
Perhaps a bit too simple. The method used to calculate the most important numbers in international trade, politics and economics has left some of the world’s leading experts shocked.
For each country, the White House looked up its trade in goods deficit for 2024, then divided that by the total value of imports. Trump, to be “kind”, said he would, however, offer a discount, so halved that figure. The calculation was even distilled into a formula.
For example, take the figures for China:
Goods trade deficit: $291.9bn
Total goods imports: $438.9bn
Those figures divided = 0.67, or 67%
And halved = 34%
For countries without a large deficit, the White House applied a 10% baseline, ensuring tariffs would be applied regardless. This was the case for the UK, which the US Census Bureau reckons had an almost-$12bn surplus in 2024.
“[It is] quite an extraordinary calculation after months of work behind the scenes,” said Jim Reid, the global head of macro research at Deutsche Bank. “[It] didn’t add much confidence on there being an in-depth strategic implementation plan.”
For weeks, Washington had been talking about an in-depth policy exercise to establish figures based on a combination of tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade, as it perceived them to be; including alleged “currency manipulation”, local laws, regulations, and taxes such as VAT.
In itself that approach raised eyebrows with experts who said VAT was highly unusual to include, because it is a sales tax paid on domestically produced goods and foreign imports alike.
However, the White House appears to have confirmed it took a simplistic approach to making this judgment:
Reciprocal tariffs are calculated as the tariff rate necessary to balance bilateral trade deficits between the US and each of our trading partners. This calculation assumes that persistent trade deficits are due to a combination of tariff and non-tariff factors that prevent trade from balancing.
There are multiple problems with this – not least that it vastly oversimplifies the drivers of trade deficits. Trade deficits occur when a country buys more than it sells abroad. The US has run a deficit persistently since the 1970s. Typically trade deficits balance over time, as they create downward pressure on a country’s currency (as the result of demand for foreign currency, to buy imported goods, outstrips demand for domestic currency).
Another part of the reason is US goods are too expensive for consumers in developing economies to buy – helping to explain some of the particularly large trade deficits – and new tariffs – for poorer countries.
Adam Tooze, an economic historian at Columbia University in the US, said there were “grotesque” policies for south-east Asian countries, including a 49% Cambodian tariff, and rates of 48% for Laos and 46% for Vietnam.
“This is not because they discriminate viciously against American exports, but because they are relatively poor. The US does not make a lot of goods that are relevant for them to import,” he said.
Vietnam in particular has become part of the global supply chain for major manufacturers, including US tech and clothing companies such as Nike, Intel, and Apple.
Lesotho, the tiny southern African country, one of the poorest in the world, is another odd example, facing a tariff of 50%. Among its main exports to the US are diamonds and clothes – demonstrating how links around the world for rare minerals are important for the US economy, but also how the US sought to boost development in African nations in recent years – with policies to encourage manufacturing by companies including Levi Strauss and Wrangler.
There are three major trade models in economic theory. Basically, the first was mercantilism, which is the colonialist type of economy that caused the Boston Tea Party. The second is absolute advantage, and the third is comparative advantage. We generally have an absolute advantage in nearly all the markets because we’re a huge economy with many natural resources. There are still things we cannot provide, though. The example I always use is coffee.
This is where comparative advantage comes in. The countries in South America and Africa can sell us their coffee in return for goods and services we easily produce. We both benefit from the trade. It’s the basis of free trade. From this model, we’ve had many improvements as we’ve gone beyond the logic of the models to empirical testing. The last big change to this model was by Paul Krugman, but Stiglitz and Samuelson were prior researchers into trade between countries.
You may check out this short explanation from Google AI. Don’t worry, we haven’t got a semester to go through two classes in Internationl Economics and Finance. It took me about 10 years to achieve with my doctorate and thesis and publications on the topic.. I know there are very few of us who find it fascinating, but I really felt like I needed to give you a bit of information so you can figure out what’s going on. So, wherever those Tariff formulations came from, it appears to have come from a crazy theory that I would never have heard of if my Libertarian friends hadn’t noticed their right-wing buddies going off the deep end. You may have noticed that Senator Rand Paul was among the most outspoken Senators against the tariffs. Libertarians generally tend to be big on letting the factors of production and products go where they are most efficient. That basically means open borders for capital and labor plus free trade.
So, that’s when I discovered this unhinged hypothesis. I had never heard of Critical Trade Theory before. I had heard of Critical Theory which basically has Marxist roots. When I originally entered University, I studied various forms of political and economic systems in a comparative class. Those are no longer taught in Economics because we recognize now that we have mixed markets models. The old command economies of the Soviet Union no longer exist. Central planning has gone completely the way of the Dodo, but there are economies that have more public provision of goods than others. Maoist and Stalinist planning are no longer carried out. That’s why it’s important to bring poor countries like Vietnam into a modern trade paradigm so they may develop quickly.
From what I can read of it, it actually appears to have a similar Marxist underpinning. One of the clues is that they use the word “fair” instead of “efficient.” The guy quoted over there is a bit off the rails, but at least I found out what the deal was. You may want to check out the ITIF site for better ways of identifying and correcting trade distortions rather than just using some made-up formula and hitting islands with subsistence farmers, fishermen, and penguins.
- The White House has given the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, along with the departments of Treasury and Commerce, until April 1 to identify countries the administration should confront with corrective trade actions.
- It would be a mistake for the Trump administration to impose across-the-board tariffs on all nations, even if some run trade surpluses with America.
- The administration should focus on the nations that employ the most extensive arrays of unfair trade practices, including behind-the-border restrictions that specifically target U.S. companies or exports.
- Based on an index composed of 11 indicators covering America’s trade balances and key barriers U.S. industries face in markets around world, the administration should focus the greatest attention on China, India, and the European Union.
- While it is highly unlikely that tariffs or other pressure can convince China to reduce its trade distortions, such measures might work vis-à-vis U.S. relations with other nations.
I did go to Influence Watch to check out their biases and funding sources. The methodology is better, using specific parameters to identify where possible trade distortions can happen. Plus, they don’t target Volcano Islands, seals, and penguins. So, I’m going back to the fallout now, which is not likely going to put you to sleep.
This TNR link goes to a podcast with Greg Sargent. ““Horrifying”: Trump’s Weird, Confused Rant to Media as Markets Tanked. As Trump’s shockingly destructive global tariffs cause the markets to crater and he rambles bizarrely about it to reporters, congressional scholar Norm Ornstein walks through how this madness can be stopped.” #FARTUS is not in a state of mind to feed himself, let alone make policy decisions. He’s totally disconnected from reality.
After President Trump imposed sweeping tariffs on imports from all over the globe, prompting the markets to implode, he took a question about it on Thursday. He ranted and rambled delusionally about how everything is just great. He bizarrely likened the country to a patient that had just undergone advanced surgery without grasping why this metaphor is the opposite of reassuring. And he spouted more nonsense about money pouring into our country. On top of all that, his imposition of the tariffs is likely an enormous and grotesque abuse of power. And because of this, the prospects for stopping them are not wholly nonexistent. We talked to congressional scholar Norm Ornstein, who walks us through how Congress can act, what Democrats can do to pressure Republicans to join in doing just that, and why Trump’s engaged in “horrifying folly.” Listen to this episode here. A transcript is here.
And here’s a snip from the transcript.
Ornstein: They’re inexplicably high and a disaster. I agree. And obviously not only do the markets agree, but so do many people in the business world. I saw that the CEO of Restoration Hardware, as he watched his stock plummet today, responded with a simple two-word phrase, “Oh, shit.”And my guess is that that’s been replicated, probably in even more colorful language, by business leaders, economists, and investors all across America and probably around the world.
Sargent: “Oh, shit” seems like a pretty good reaction, or at least an apt one. So Trump was asked about all this on Thursday. The reporter pointed out that the markets are way down, that they’ve had their worst day in years because of his tariffs. Then the reporter asked Trump, “How’s it going?” Here’s Trump’s answer.
Donald Trump (audio voiceover): I think it’s going very well. It was an operation, like when a patient gets operated on. And it’s a big thing. I said this would exactly be the way it is. We have $6 trillion or $7 trillion coming into our country, and we’ve never seen anything like it. The markets are going to boom, the stock is going to boom, the country is going to boom.
What part of his dementia-riddled mind invents these things? Are there really people out there that consider him even lucid? Governors of many states–but especially farm states–are seeing if they can work around our incredibly insane President. This is from Axios. “Gavin Newsom angles for California exemptions to Trump trade war.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Friday he is pursuing agreements with other countries to ensure California is exempted from retaliatory tariffs stemming from President Trump’s escalating trade war.
Why it matters: Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs spurred global blowback. Newsom — a reported 2028 presidential hopeful — is looking to insulate his state from the fallout.
Driving the news: “Donald Trump’s tariffs do not represent all Americans,” Newsom said in a video message Friday.
- California, whom he touted as “the tentpole of the U.S. economy,” aims to maintain “stable trading relationships around the globe,” he added.
- “I’ve directed my administration to look at new opportunities to expand trade and to remind our trading partners around the globe that California remains a stable partner.”
- California is “ready to talk” with global trading partners, Newsom wrote on X.
- Referring to the state’s economic might, Newsom added his state is “not scared to use our market power to fight back against the largest tax hike of our lifetime.”
State of play: The Golden State’s economy and its workers are heavily reliant on trade with Mexico, Canada and China, and retaliatory tariffs stand to have an “outsize” impact on California businesses, farmers and ranchers, according to a press release from Newsom’s office.
- The tariffs could also impede the state’s efforts to rebuild from this year’s devastating Los Angeles wildfires, by hurting access to construction materials like timber, steel, aluminum, and the components of drywall, the press release noted.
The other side: “Gavin Newsom should focus on out-of-control homelessness, crime, regulations, and unaffordability in California instead of trying his hand at international dealmaking,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai told Axios Friday.
Zoom in: Newsom is particularly concerned with retaliatory measures from other countries could impact California’s agricultural sector, especially its almond industry, according to Fox News, which first reported the news of theagreements.
- California is the world’s fifth-largest economy and its agricultural sector is a key economic driver for the state.
This is from CNBC, as reported by Ruxandra Iordache. “China to impose 34% retaliatory tariff on all goods imported from the U.S.” Can you say Trade War?”
China’s Finance Ministry on Friday said it will impose a 34% tariff on all goods imported from the U.S. starting on April 10, following duties imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration earlier this week.
“China urges the United States to immediately cancel its unilateral tariff measures and resolve trade differences through consultation in an equal, respectful and mutually beneficial manner,” the ministry said, according to a Google translation.
It further criticized Washington’s decision to impose 34% of additional reciprocal levies on China — bringing total U.S. tariffs against the country to 54% — as “inconsistent with international trade rules” and “seriously” undermining Chinese interests, as well as endangering “global economic development and the stability of the production and supply chain,” according to a Google-translated report from Chinese state news outlet Xinhua.
Separately, China also added 11 U.S. firms to the “unreliable entities list” that the Beijing administration says have violated market rules or contractual commitments. China’s Ministry of Commerce also added 16 U.S. entities to its export control list and said it would implement export controls on seven types of rare earth-related items, including samarium, gadolinium and terbium.
Beijing has also filed a formal complaint against the U.S. with the World Trade Organization, the Ministry of Commerce confirmed in a Google-translated release, saying Washington’s tariffs policy “seriously violates WTO rules, seriously damages the legitimate rights and interests of WTO members, and seriously undermines the rules-based multilateral trading system and the international economic and trade order.”
circa 1908 and a reminder from my Grandparents’ peers
Okay, enough of this. It makes me crazy. Not like the following doesn’t, but at least I know nothing about the field. This is from the Washington Post. We have all these #FARTUS appointments breaking security rules and they do this to who? “National Security Agency chief ousted after far-right activist urged his removal. Gen. Timothy Haugh was fired Thursday as director of the powerful wiretapping and cyberespionage service, according to U.S. officials.”
We are so fucked. Have you managed to crawl out of bed yet?
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Finally Friday Reads: We Shall Overcome
Posted: July 19, 2024 Filed under: "presidential immunity", 2024 Elections, Biden Harris 2024, Feminists, fundamentalist Christians, House of Representatives, The Insurrectionists Club, The Media SUCKS, tRump crimes against humanity, Violence against women, Women's Rights | Tags: @repeat1968, John Buss 9 Comments
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I never wanted a week to end so much in my life as this one. I’m not one for TV viewing because reality shows are not my thing. There are very few movies and series that grab my attention, too. This time of year, it’s good to have the weather channel. You already know I’m a news junkie, but the news is more like a staged reality show than about actual events that matter. It also is getting too far into the Beltway gossip zone to be of any real use. The media is on a few stories like flies on rice. I searched for something beyond the Beltway jive talk today.
Today, Majority Leader Hakeem Jeffries put to rest a story at the Washington Post yesterday. I would like to think this will stop all the headlines out there speculating when and if President Biden will give up his bid for his second term.
The other big story was the Republican National Convention, which looked more like a North Shore Klan rally than a convention. The self-proclaimed ‘David Duke without the Baggage,’ Congressman Steven Scalise, even got a speaking spot. I questioned my affiliation with the Republican Party after the 1992 speech by Pat Buchannan. After that, I registered as an Independent for quite a while.
[17] Mr. Clinton, however, has a different agenda.
[18] At its top is unrestricted abortion on demand. When the Irish-Catholic governor of Pennsylvania, Robert Casey, asked to say a few words on behalf of the 25 million unborn children destroyed since Roe v. Wade, Bob Casey was told there was no place for him at the podium at Bill Clinton’s convention, no room at the inn.
[19] Yet a militant leader of the homosexual rights movement could rise at that same convention and say: “Bill Clinton and Al Gore represent the most pro-lesbian and pro-gay ticket in history.” And so they do.
[20] Bill Clinton says he supports school choice – but only for state-run schools. Parents who send their children to Christian schools, or private schools, or Jewish schools, or Catholic schools need not apply.
[21] Elect me, and you get two for the price of one, Mr. Clinton says of his lawyer-spouse. And what does Hillary believe? Well, Hillary believes that 12-year-olds should have the right to sue their parents, and Hillary has compared marriage and the family as institutions to slavery and life on an Indian reservation.
[22] Well, speak for yourself, Hillary.
[23] This, my friends, is radical feminism. The agenda that Clinton & Clinton would impose on America – abortion on demand, a litmus test for the Supreme Court, homosexual rights, discrimination against religious schools, women in combat units – that’s change, all right. But it is not the kind of change America needs. It is not the kind of change America wants. And it is not the kind of change we can abide in a nation that we still call God’s country.
[24] The President of the United States is also America’s commander-in-chief. He’s the man we authorize to send fathers and sons and brothers and friends into battle.
[25] George Bush was 17-years-old when they bombed Pearl Harbor. He left his high school graduation, he walked down to the recruiting office, and he signed up to become the youngest fighter pilot in the Pacific war. And Mr. Clinton? And Bill Clinton? When Bill Clinton’s time came in Vietnam, he sat up in a dormitory room in Oxford, England, and figured out how to dodge the draft.
That time I got to see both President HW Bush and President Bill Clinton together presenting aid to the city’s Universities on the Campus at UNO. I was sitting nearly up front and even had a nice chat with a secret service woman. Where did those days go? (December 7,2005)
Needless to say, I voted for Bill Clinton even though I had previously supported Bush against Reagan when he pulled that stunt about Welfare Queens. If you haven’t read Josh Levin’s book ‘The Queen’, you should. Here’s an interview with him from PBS by Hari Sreenivasan from June 2019. Reagan used a criminal who was an outlier to slur an entire group of women, as detailed in “The True Story Behind the ‘Welfare Queen’ Stereotype.”
Hari Sreenivasan:
Josh there’s this “welfare queen” moniker that’s been used really to demonize entire groups of people. You go through this entire book and take a dive not just into that phrase but really that it’s based on a real person. She was an outlier while at the same time becoming an icon for a whole category.
Josh Levin:
Yeah that’s exactly right. Her name was Linda Taylor and she was identified by the Chicago Tribune in 1974 as a person who had committed welfare fraud while driving fancy cars, including a Cadillac. And very quickly after that she was given the nickname the welfare queen. And it was a nickname and a stereotype that really very quickly blew up.
Hari Sreenivasan:
You know it was a Chicago paper that gave her that nickname but it’s really Ronald Reagan on the campaign trail that makes that phrase such a household idea. How did it get from the Chicago paper into his speeches?
Josh Levin:
One of his advisers had found a wire story about it and Reagan was looking for kind of outrageous stories about welfare because welfare reform had been one of his big accomplishments as governor of California. And it was also something that voters were outraged about in the mid 1970s increased welfare spending at a time when the economy was really poor. And this idea that there were welfare cheats out there was something that created outrage.
Ronald Reagan Campaign Speech, 1976: In Chicago, they found a woman who holds the record. She used 80 names, 30 addresses, 15 telephone numbers to collect food stamps, Social Security, veterans’ benefits for four nonexistent deceased veterans husbands. Her tax-free cash income, alone, has been running $150,000 a year.
Josh Levin:
He didn’t say the phrase “welfare queen” in his speeches he would talk about how there was this woman in Chicago who’d stolen as much as one hundred fifty thousand dollars in welfare money in a single year, which was an exaggerated sum. But there was such baggage attached to welfare at that point that I think the electorate really understood what he was saying and really knew what he was talking about. Welfare has been an effective talking point for a whole generation of politicians.
Me and the nuns at Congo Square protesting the caging of children and Donald’s family separation policy. (July 2,2017)
Now we have promises to deport and look up and one that is painted with the brush of ‘illegal immigrant with brown skin.’ They’re also developing a scheme of citizenship that would deprive citizenship for all kinds of folks that would actually include Melania if the law passed. This is from the page of America’s Voice.
Selected immigration components of Project 2025 are below:
Mass Detention and Family Separation: Project 2025 paves the way for mass family separation by eliminating important benefits for unaccompanied children and transfers the care of unaccompanied minors from Health and Human Services to DHS to allow for large scale detention of young children. The proposal recommends weakening standards for migrant detention, calling for mass detention in temporary structures such as tents.
Attacks on Dreamers and Parents of US Citizens: Project 2025 calls for the elimination of family-based immigration and DACA.
Raid Schools Hospitals and Religious Zones: Project 2025 removes prohibitions on ICE acting in ‘sensitive zones’ thus allowing raids on schools, hospitals, and religious institutions.
Suspending Due Process: Project 2025 removes legal processes allowing immigrants a day in court by expanding the use of expedited deportations to the ‘fullest extent’ throughout the country. It also gives DHS the authority to declare a ‘mass migration event’ and enact anything to avert it (e.g. scrapping all Title 8 requirements and automatically expelling migrants). The proposal further undermines due legal processes by allowing immediate expulsion of migrants in the case of ‘loss of operational control’ or USCIS backlogs which is caused by consistent underfunding from Republican officials. Project 2025 would create a show-me-your-papers style mandate and require ICE to remove, arrest, and detain immigration violators anywhere in the country and without warrant, if possible. The plan authorizes local law enforcement to participate in border security actions and penalizes jurisdictions that do not comply. The project also plans to remove oversight authorities from ICE and classify all USCIS operations.
Use of the Military: Project 2025 encourages the use of the US military to crack down on peaceful migrants arriving at the border. The proposal also considers engaging in war with drug cartels in Mexico.
Attacks Legal Immigration: Project 2025 seeks to restrict legal immigration by barring certain groups or nationalities from accessing work and student visas, eliminates DACA, family-based immigration, TPS, and visas for victims of crime, reduces asylum and discounts gang and domestic violence as grounds.
Yup, I am photobombing my friends at the Women’s March (Jan.23, 2013). All the Donald Cult probably thinks I doth protest too much.
These kinds of things happen when White Christian Nationalists take over a party and embrace a criminal, narcissistic, lying, and authoritarian leader. We’ve gone from a B-movie Actor to a Reality Show Actor who sure does a good job at Crisis Acting, too. I’ll rely on JJ to outline the absolute misogyny demanded by Project 2025. My point is that the RNC this year was basically the showboat for Project 2025. It was a festival of the Donald Cult wreaking racism, misogyny, and white Christian nationalism. Plus, the Vice Presidential nominee is a self-loathing hillbilly. His book is all about blaming poor people in Appalachia for the systemic problems they face. This is from Aja Romano, who is writing for VOX. “Revisiting Hillbilly Elegy, the book that made J.D. Vance. The bestseller proves Trump’s VP pick has abiding disdain for absolutely everyone.”
At one time, liberal and conservative centrists alike hailed Vance’s bestselling 2016 memoir of making it out of rural, poverty-stricken Appalachia, transforming himself from a tempestuous teen into a successful Yale law school grad.
Yet years on, Vance has undergone a transformation of a different sort, remolding himself from a fairly moderate professed conservative who once compared Trump to Hitler and wrote with disdain about the outer edges of the party into a would-be authoritarian.
That’s not to say Vance doesn’t have some nuanced and even appealing positions. His populist economic instincts are a running theme of Elegy, and today he makes deals across the aisle with Democrats like Sen. Elizabeth Warren. But to understand his larger worldview, you have to look past his economic ideas to his social ideas — and to what Vance actually displays about himself throughout the book.
Perhaps readers in 2016 were eager to look past the book’s highly loaded subtext and overt classism, as the promise of a sympathetic conservative who could unlock Trumplandia for liberals was just too appealing. It also seems likely that readers loved the book because it confirmed all of the negative stereotypes they already held about country hicks. As a read on Vance himself, though, in the context of his subsequent embrace of Trump and far-right ideology, Hillbilly Elegy paints a portrait of a man obsessed with status — and brimming with contempt for just about everyone he meets.
Another one about J.D. This is from the Independent. “I’m from the same place as JD Vance, and there’s nothing to celebrate now that he’s Trump’s VP. We are both Appalachians, with eerily similar working-class backgrounds which JD Vance wrote about in his bestselling book Hillbilly Elegy. Yet, says Skylar Baker-Jordan, our views — and our reactions to this attempted assassination — couldn’t be more different.”
Like so many millions of my fellow citizens, I watched in horror on Saturday as a would-be assassin came perilously close to murdering former president Donald Trump. This was not just an attack on him and those innocent people simply exercising their First Amendment right to attend a political rally. It was not just an attack on the Republican Party.
It was an attack on the very fabric of American democracy.
Political violence has become a norm in our divided and beleaguered nation. From the 2011 attack on Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords to the 2017 shooting of Republican Steve Scalise to the attack last year on Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, to this weekend’s horrific attack which left one of our fellow citizens dead, we are increasingly solving our differences not with ballots and votes, but bullets and violence.
Neither side in this cold civil war, now cataclysmically close to boiling point, can claim the moral high ground. Would that someone told my fellow Appalachian, JD Vance.
“The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs,” the junior senator from Ohio tweeted last night following the shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania. “That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.
So the man they’re hailing as being just a good old boy is really just another elite enthralled by bigger elites. That’s what reality television has done with political reality. It’s made an entire group of people believe that a staged, scripted, false narrative wrapped up in a box with reality printed on it must be true. Let me show you some data rather than speculation. This is from Newsweek. This was published two days ago. The data comes before that awful RNC ho-down. “Donald Trump’s Chances of Winning Election Are Declining.” This comes from who once was a candidate and has worked campaign since High School. Don’t trust polls too far away from Election Day!
According to the tracker, Biden is favored to win in 534 out of 1,000 of FiveThirtyEight’s simulations of how the election could go, while Trump wins in 462. The poll also shows that the simulations indicate that Biden is on track for a three-point win.
The polling website said its forecast is based on a combination of polls and campaign “fundamentals,” such as economic conditions, state partisanship and incumbency.
It comes after a Presidential Voting Intention poll of 3,601 swing state voters by Redfield & Wilton Strategies, found that Trump’s margins over President Joe Biden have narrowed since June in two key states: Florida and North Carolina.
Trump previously defeated Biden in both states in 2020, while he held a six-point lead over Biden in Florida in a Redfield & Wilton Strategies poll from that June.
This craziness at The Daily Beast has me seething. It’s written by Jake Lahut. “Trump’s Plan to Slam Dems for Their ‘Coup’ Against Biden: Campaign. No matter who may replace Biden, the Trump camp plans to attack Democrats for an unruly ouster of their nominee.”
However, he now only leads the current president by four points in Florida. The poll shows that 45 percent of participants plan to vote for Trump, compared to Biden’s 41 percent.
It is not the only recent poll to give Trump only a four-point lead in Florida. A June Fox News survey gave Trump 50 percent of the vote, compared to 46 percent for Biden.
You would think a few folks would be reading them just to notice the trend. But, nope. Not with a big dose of Potomac Fever going on. So this one from The Daily Beast has me seething. It’s written by Jake Lahut. “Trump’s Plan to Slam Dems for Their ‘Coup’ Against Biden: Campaign, No matter who may replace Biden, the Trump camp plans to attack Democrats for an unruly ouster of their nominee.” Notice how we get two for one here.
Donald Trump‘s campaign will attack the Democrats for conducting a “coup” if Joe Biden quits the presidential race, the GOP campaign co-chair told The Daily Beast on Thursday.
The former president’s campaign for president will try to throw the charge leveled at him over the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection back in Democrats’ faces, Chris LaCivita told The Daily Beast in an exclusive interview at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
“Here’s what’s fascinating about it,” LaCivita said as he mingled on the convention floor in Milwaukee. “You are watching a coup. Literally. In front of your eyes.”
LaCivita, the architect with Susie Wiles of Trump’s 2024 campaign, offered the first insight into how Republicans will deal with a new Democratic candidate as Biden appeared increasingly likely to accede to calls to step aside.
The attack as a “coup plotter” will be matched with a playbook that continues to attack Biden’s record especially if Biden is succeeded by his vice president, Kamala Harris.
The campaign will run the same strategy if Harris takes over, he said. Biden has already given Republicans too much fodder, he acknowledged. They will also demand that Biden step down as president if he won’t run. That would give them extra ammunition to attack Harris as a sitting president who benefited from a “coup.”
“It’s Joe Biden,” he added, even if the nominee will not, in fact, be Joe Biden, should he step aside.
And AOC says the quiet part out loud. We knew this. “AOC goes live on Instagram saying many who want Joe Biden to drop out of race also want to remove Kamala. ‘A lot of them are not just interested in removing the president. They are interested in removing the whole ticket,’ congresswoman says.” This is from the Independent.
New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez went on Instagram Live early on Friday morning to share her thoughts on Joe Biden’s floundering re-election campaign – and warning that many of those who want the President to drop out of the race, also want Vice President Kamala Harris off the ticket too.
“If you think that there is consensus among the people who want Joe Biden to leave … that they will support, Vice President Harris, you would be mistaken,” she told viewers.
She slammed her colleagues for giving anonymous quotes to the press, calling it “bull****” and urged those resigned to a loss to Donald Trump to give up their seats.
“My community does not have the option to lose,” she said.
“If they’re going to come out and say all their little things on background, off the record, but they’re not going to be fully honest, I’m going to be honest for them. I’m in these rooms. I see what they say in conversations,” the congresswoman said.
One last story that really shows what the ramping up of Wipipo privilege has done to our society. This is from CNN. “‘Treated like a convict’: NFL legend Terrell Davis describes getting handcuffed on a plane near his kids after asking for ice.” This story is reported by Holly Yan.
Terrell Davis and his family were looking forward to vacationing in California when pro football Hall of Famer was handcuffed and removed from a United Airlines plane – for no apparent reason.
“I was stripped of my dignity. I was powerless. I couldn’t do anything,” the two-time Super Bowl champion told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Wednesday.
The incident happened Saturday at the end of a flight from Denver to Orange County, California. Davis, 51, was flying with his wife, two sons and daughter when one of the sons asked for a cup of ice during beverage service, Davis wrote on Instagram. A flight attendant “either didn’t hear or ignored his request and continued past our row,” the post read.
Terrell Davis and his family were looking forward to vacationing in California when pro football Hall of Famer was handcuffed and removed from a United Airlines plane – for no apparent reason.
“I was stripped of my dignity. I was powerless. I couldn’t do anything,” the two-time Super Bowl champion told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Wednesday.
The incident happened Saturday at the end of a flight from Denver to Orange County, California. Davis, 51, was flying with his wife, two sons and daughter when one of the sons asked for a cup of ice during beverage service, Davis wrote on Instagram. A flight attendant “either didn’t hear or ignored his request and continued past our row,” the post read.
We should really be careful. It is getting ugly out there. But, if there is a protest of anything here in Orleans Parish, I will be there. I will also vote. I will also drag my neighbors to the voting booth if I have to.
We shall overcome.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Nothing reminds me of the worst stuff to come out of the 80s than Disco. Nothing says cultural appropriation like three white guys from the Isle of Man morphing funk and black slang into a song that’s all about themselves!!!!!! But it’s a good message to the pols and media that won’t settle down and do their damned jobs!
Finally Friday Reads
Posted: September 23, 2022 Filed under: campaign financing, corporate money, corruption, court rulings, executive privilege, misogyny, Republican politics, Treason and Sedition Republican Style, tRump crimes against humanity, War on Women 22 Comments
Caspar David Friedrich, Monk by the Sea, c. 1809,
Good Day Sky Dancers!
The headlines are filled with Republican Shenanigans. Holding them accountable for illegal actions appears difficult. This highlights the difference in treatment for everyone else and white men.
The case against Rep. Matt Gaetz has now been considered too difficult to prosecute because all of the witnesses are not upstanding citizens. What do you expect from a gang of sex traffickers of underage women? Devlin Barret, writing for The Washington Post, states: “Career prosecutors recommend no charges for Gaetz in the sex-trafficking probe. Investigators see credibility challenges for two of the main witnesses in the probe of the congressman’s past dealings with a 17-year-old.”
Career prosecutors have recommended against charging Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) in a long-running sex-trafficking investigation — telling Justice Department superiors that a conviction is unlikely in part because of credibility questions with the two central witnesses, according to people familiar with the matter.
Senior department officials have not made a final decision on whether to charge Gaetz, but it is rare for such advice to be rejected, these people told The Washington Post, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the deliberations. They added that it is always possible additional evidence emerges that could alter prosecutors’ understanding of the case.
Nevertheless, it is unlikely that federal authorities will charge Gaetz with a crime in an investigation that started in late 2020 and focused on his alleged involvement with a 17-year-old girlseveral years earlier. Gaetz,40, has repeatedly denied wrongdoing, saying he has never paid for sex. He has also said the only time he had sex with a 17-year-old was when he was also 17.
Chase William Merritt, Idle Hours .1894
The congressman is likely a role model for these guys. Again, this is from The Washington Post, written by Taylor Lorenz. “The online incel movement is getting more violent and extreme, report says. The Center for Countering Digital Hate analyzed more than 1 million posts showing a rise in advocacy of rape, mass killings.”
The most prominent forum for men who consider themselves involuntarily celibate or “incels” has become significantly more radicalized over the past year and a half and is seeking to normalize child rape, a new report says.
The report, by the Center for Countering Digital Hate’s new Quant Lab, is the culmination of an investigation that analyzed more than 1 million posts on the site. It found a marked spike in conversations about mass murder and growing approval of sexually assaulting prepubescent girls.
The report also says that platforms including YouTube and Google, as well as internet infrastructure companies like Cloudflare are facilitating the growth of the forum, which the report said is visited by 2.6 million people every month. “These businesses should make a principled decision to withdraw their services from sites causing such significant harm,” the report says.
“This is a novel, new violent extremist movement born in the internet age, which defies the usual characteristics of violent extremist movements that law enforcement and the intelligence community are usually used to,” said Imran Ahmed, founder and CEO of CCDH, a US-based nonprofit. “Our study shows that it is organized, has a cogent ideology and has clearly concluded that raping women, killing women, and raping children is a clear part of the practice of their ideology.”
Incels blame women for their failings in life. The term originated decades ago, and while the first incel forum was founded by a woman in the mid 1990s, incel communities have since become almost exclusively male. Incel ideology has been linked to dozens of murders and assaults over the past decade, the most prominent one involving Elliot Rodger, a 22-year-old self-described incel who murdered six people in a stabbing and shooting rampage in Santa Barbara, Calif., in 2014. Before killing himself, he posted a long manifesto and YouTube videos promoting incel ideology.
In March, the U.S. Secret Service’s National Threat Assessment Center released a report warning that anti-woman violence was a growing terrorism threat.
According to the CCDH analysis, members of the forum post about rape every 29 minutes, and more than 89 percent of posters support rape and say it’s acceptable. The CCDH analysis also found that posters on the forum are seeking to normalize child rape. More than a quarter of members of the forum have posted pedophilia keywords, the analysis found, and more than half of the members of the forum support pedophilia.
I don’t believe this is necessarily a new thing. This is the problem with the internet. It lets the worst of society hang together and leads to an evil gestalt. These men gain confidence and ideas from their online cult. Also, they can see how easy it is for certain types of men to avoid legal entanglements.
On Wednesday, New York Attorney General Letitia James compounded Trump’s legal woes, announcing that the state was suing Trump, his three adult children, the Trump Organization, and senior management in the company, alleging business fraud involving the value of assets to banks, insurance companies and the state tax authorities.
The sheer number of investigations and the increasingly tangled defenses his legal team is having to put on paper and argue in court amount to a stress test of Trump’s standard strategy to deny, deflect, delay, and not put anything in writing.
“I don’t think there’s any other president who was in a similar legal jeopardy” after leaving office, says Timothy Naftali, a historian at New York University and former director of the federal Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. Warren Harding was investigated by his own vice president and successor, Calvin Coolidge. Nixon would have been the target of investigations for years if Gerald Ford had not pardoned him in September 1974, a month after Nixon resigned from office.
“Even Nixon pales by comparison,” says Norman Eisen, an anti-corruption expert at Brookings Institution and the former special counsel to the Democrat’s House Judiciary Committee from 2019 to 2020 during Trump’s first impeachment. “Nixon just had one Watergate scandal. Trump has had a succession of them, each one more concerning than the last.”
In Georgia, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is looking into how Trump pressured election officials to swing the 2020 presidential election in his direction. The House Jan. 6 Committee and the Department of Justice are both looking at what role Trump played in the lead up to the deadly attack on the Capitol Building to stop the lawful counting of electoral college votes. Federal prosecutors have an active criminal investigation into how and why Trump took thousands of government documents—many containing state secrets—to his residence at Mar-a-Lago and why he refused repeated requests to return them.
And New York’s civil lawsuit announced by James on Wednesday is on top of a separate criminal investigation out of the Manhattan District Attorneys’ Office into the Trump Organization that is set to go to trial in October.
In all of the ongoing cases, Trump is employing the tried-and-true playbook he first learned all those years ago from Cohn for staying out of prison and staying in business, according to Jennifer Taub, a professor at Western New England University School of Law who has tracked the ways that Trump had evaded accountability for decades.
Beach in Pourville, Claude Monet, 1882
This exclusive headline from CNN really is fascinating. I imagine the move is to stop the prosecutors from being able to find and flip associates. “Exclusive: Trump’s secret court fight to stop grand jury from getting information from his inner circle.”
Former President Donald Trump‘s attorneys are fighting a secret court battle to block a federal grand jury from gathering information from an expanding circle of close Trump aides about his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, people briefed on the matter told CNN.
The high-stakes legal dispute — which included the appearance of three attorneys representing Trump at the Washington, DC, federal courthouse on Thursday afternoon — is the most aggressive step taken by the former President to assert executive and attorney-client privileges in order to prevent some witnesses from sharing information in the criminal investigation events surrounding January 6, 2021.
The court fight over privilege, which has not been previously reported and is under seal, is a turning point for Trump’s post-presidency legal woes.
How the fight is resolved could determine whether prosecutors can tear down the firewall Trump has tried to keep around his conversations in the West Wing and with attorneys he spoke to as he sought to overturn the 2020 election and they worked to help him hold onto the presidency.
This dispute came to light as former Trump White House adviser and lawyer Eric Herschmann received a grand jury subpoena seeking testimony, the people briefed said.
Other former senior Trump White House officials, including former White House counsel Pat Cipollone and his deputy Patrick Philbin, appeared before the grand jury in recent weeks, after negotiating specific subjects they would decline to answer question about, because of Trump’s privilege claims.
Have you ever seen anyone claim privilege this many times? Nixon didn’t get away with it, so what’s the deal with the Trump claims? This Trumper candidate seems pretty audacious with the lies too. Uh, that’s not how this works JR, this is not how any of this works.
But these folks will be bankrolled! Check out these links!
Alex Isenstadt / Politico: Trump to unleash millions in the midterms in possible prelude to 2024
Peter Stone / The Guardian: Alarm as Koch bankrolls dozens of election denier candidates
Former Justice Stephan Breyer warns the current Supreme Court Cartel not to take its backward-facing privilege too seriously. This is also from CNN, and then I am done with all these bad boys. “Breyer warns justices that some opinions could ‘bite you in the back’ in exclusive interview with CNN’s Chris Wallace.”
Retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer is warning his colleagues against “writing too rigidly” in their opinions, saying that such decisions could “bite you in the back” in a world that is constantly changing.
In a wide-ranging interview with CNN’s Chris Wallace on “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace,” which debuted Friday on HBOMax and airs Sunday night on CNN, Breyer also bemoaned his position in the court’s minority liberal bloc during his final year on the bench, addressed the court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade and spoke about the ongoing controversy regarding Ginni Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas.
Breyer said it was a “very frustrating” spot to be in as he found himself in dissent in a number of historically consequential cases where he said the majority side (conservatives — although the retired justice did not use that description) was unwilling to bend.
“You start writing too rigidly and you will see, the world will come around and bite you in the back,” Breyer said in his first televised interview since leaving the bench earlier this year. “Because you will find something you see just doesn’t work at all. And the Supreme Court, somewhat to the difference of others, has that kind of problem in spades.”
“Life is complex, life changes,” Breyer added. “And we want to maintain insofar as we can — everybody does — certain key moral political values: democracy, human rights, equality, rule of law, etc. To try to do that in an ever-changing world. If you think you can do that by writing 16 computer programs — I just disagree.
The comments from Breyer come days before the Supreme Court begins its first term without him in nearly 30 years. In the new term, the justices will consider issues including voting rights, immigration, affirmative action, environmental regulations and religious liberty — areas where the solid conservative majority can easily control the outcomes.
Okay, that’s “all I can stands and I can’t stands no more.” (To quote my childhood hero.)
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
The great nations of Europe were standing on the shore.
They’d conquered what was behind them
And now they wanted more
So they looked to the mighty ocean
And took to the Western sea
The great nations of Europe in the 16th century
Hide your wives and daughters, hide the groceries too
The great nations of Europe comin’ through
Freezing Friday Reads
Posted: January 21, 2022 Filed under: tRump crimes against humanity | Tags: Trump Family Crime Syndicate 13 Comments
Vue de toits (Effet de neige), Gustave Caillebotte, 1878/1879
Good Day Sky Dancers!
Wow was yesterday one of those news days! I settled in under my goose-down comforter while the temperatures dropped precipitously yesterday afternoon to read some things and watch a little Nicole. The breaking news was fast and furious. We’re beginning to see the fruits of investigations into the Trump Family Crime Syndicate. It’s almost too much to digest.
There are many nefarious players in the Republican Party these days. Most seem deeply connected to the right-wing conspiracy machine that geared up during the 1990s which was an unholy alliance of right-wing political interests, extremist fundamentalist patriarchal white christianists, and a bunch of nutter greedy billionaires funding a conspiracy mill that brought us all kinds of things. It went somewhat undercover during the Dubya years but popped up with full-fury when the country elected Obama. At that point, the leftover neo confederates raised their heads and we went full throttle white nationalism. Their combined fanaticism, fury, and years of stacking courts and local political positions brought Trump into seal the deal.
You may recall that none of what happened this decade was nothing new to me having grown up in Omaha, Nebraska, and unable to get out due to circumstances of birth and then marriage. Most of my real friends spent as little time there as possible and got out as quickly as possible. I lived in fear of Southern Baptists, big Barn Evangelicals, cultish Catholics, and libertarians who worshipped Donald Segretti. In short, they did a number on me and my children to the point I was afraid to leave my house. I finally got out. But, let me tell you if there’s one person that went to my high school that personified the worst of all of this it was Ginnie Lamp. She was a few years behind me and Kurt Andersen was a few years ahead. He got out. Ginnie did too but only to inflict massive damage on the country.
Cranes on Branch of Snow-covered Pine, late 1820s,Katsushika Hokusai
Ginnie Lamp rode into the District wearing a huge black hat. She’s in it out of malice and greed. No one has ever been able to convince me that she doesn’t have undue influence over the one man on the court just about anyone can influence with the right combination of religion, malice, and greed. I was thrilled to see this article in The New Yorker today by Jane Mayer who is one of our better investigative reporters. She especially excels at finding the villain in the room. “Is Ginni Thomas a Threat to the Supreme Court? Behind closed doors, Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife is working with many groups directly involved in controversial cases before the Court.” Spoiler Alert: of course she is and Janes brought the receipts.
In 2016, Republicans in Congress, in an unprecedented act, refused to let President Barack Obama fill a vacancy on the Court. Trump subsequently pushed through the appointment of three hard-line conservative Justices. Last summer, Democrats in Congress introduced a bill that would require the Judicial Conference of the United States to create a binding code of conduct for members of the Supreme Court. They also proposed legislation that would require more disclosures about the financial backers behind amicus briefs—arguments submitted by “friends of the court” who are supporting one side in a case.
So far, these proposals haven’t gone anywhere, but Gillers notes that there are extant laws circumscribing the ethical behavior of all federal judges, including the Justices. Arguably, Clarence Thomas has edged unusually close to testing them. All judges, even those on the Court, are required to recuse themselves from any case in which their spouse is “a party to the proceeding” or is “an officer, director, or trustee” of an organization that is a party to a case. Ginni Thomas has not been a named party in any case on the Court’s docket; nor is she litigating in any such case. But she has held leadership positions at conservative pressure groups that have either been involved in cases before the Court or have had members engaged in such cases. In 2019, she announced a political project called Crowdsourcers, and said that one of her four partners would be the founder of Project Veritas, James O’Keefe. Project Veritas tries to embarrass progressives by making secret videos of them, and last year petitioned the Court to enjoin Massachusetts from enforcing a state law that bans the surreptitious taping of public officials. Another partner in Crowdsourcers, Ginni Thomas said in her announcement, was Cleta Mitchell, the chairman of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a conservative election-law nonprofit. It, too, has had business before the Court, filing amicus briefs in cases centering on the democratic process. Thomas also currently serves on the advisory board of the National Association of Scholars, a group promoting conservative values in academia, which has filed an amicus brief before the Court in a potentially groundbreaking affirmative-action lawsuit against Harvard. And, though nobody knew it at the time, Ginni Thomas was an undisclosed paid consultant at the conservative pressure group the Center for Security Policy, when its founder, Frank Gaffney, submitted an amicus brief to the Court supporting Trump’s Muslim travel ban.
Bruce Green, a professor at Fordham specializing in legal ethics, notes, “In the twenty-first century, there’s a feeling that spouses are not joined at the hip.” He concedes, though, that “the appearance” created by Ginni Thomas’s political pursuits “is awful—they look like a mom-and-pop political-hack group, where she does the political stuff and he does the judging.” It’s hard to imagine, he told me, that the couple doesn’t discuss Court cases: “She’s got the ear of a Justice, and surely they talk about their work.” But, from the technical standpoint of judicial ethics, “she’s slightly removed from all these cases—she’s not actually the legal director.” Green feels that the conflict of interest is “close, but not close enough” to require that Thomas recuse himself.
David Luban, a professor of law and philosophy at Georgetown, who specializes in legal ethics, is more concerned. He told me, “If Ginni Thomas is intimately involved—financially or ideologically tied to the litigant—that strikes me as slicing the baloney a little thin.”
Boulevard Saint-Denis, Argenteuil, in Winter, Claude Monet, 1875
Read more at the link.
CNN releases a poll showing exactly unpopular the idea of overturning Roe v. Wade is among Americans. Will that stop the right-wing radicals on the Supreme Court?
Most Americans oppose overturning the Supreme Court’s Roe vs. Wade precedent, according to a new CNN Poll conducted by SSRS, with a majority saying that if the decision was vacated, they’d want to see their own state move toward more permissive abortion laws.
Just 30% of Americans say they’d like to see the Supreme Court completely overturn its Roe vs. Wade decision, with 69% opposed — a finding that’s largely consistent both with other recent polling and with historical trends. In a set of three surveys taken last autumn by different pollsters, support for overturning Roe vs. Wade stood between 20% and 31%, depending on the precise framing of the question. And in CNN’s polling dating back to 1989, the share of the public in favor of completely overturning Roe has never risen above 36%.
Fifty-nine percent of Americans say that if Roe vs. Wade were overturned, they’d like their state to set laws that are more permissive than restrictive toward abortion, a preference that stands in opposition to the prediction most make that abortions would likely be restricted or banned in the areas where they live. Another 40% say they’d like their state to set more restrictive laws.
Saturday marks the 49th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe vs. Wade decision, which established the constitutional right to an abortion, at least in the first three months of pregnancy. Six in 10 Americans, including 68% of women, say they personally know someone who’s had an abortion.
Meanwhile, the crusades continue for the right-wing christianists who appear to leave the Christ out of everything. It seems that Tennessee passed a law allowing adoption agencies to refuse adoptions to SAME-SEX couples on the basis of “written religious or moral convictions or policies.” Well, of course, they couldn’t just leave it at that.
Read more at The Miami Herald.
A Jewish couple is suing the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services, saying a state-sponsored adoption agency declined to help them because of their religion. At the beginning of 2021, Elizabeth and Gabriel Rutan-Ram were making plans to adopt a child from Florida, according to a news release from Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the nonprofit organization that filed the lawsuit on their behalf. Before they could do so, they had to complete state-mandated foster-parent training and receive a home-study certification. The child they were hoping to adopt had a disability, and the couple wanted to provide him a “loving and nurturing home” in Knox County, the lawsuit said.
The two of them turned to the only agency near them that would help out with an out-of-state adoption. But on the day they were set to begin their foster-parent training, they were told by the agency, Holston United Methodist Home for Children, that it only provided help to prospective families that “share our [Christian] belief system,” the lawsuit said. As a result, the lawsuit said, the couple was left unable to foster or adopt the child, as no other agencies in the Knox County area could provide the services necessary for out-of-state adoptions.
French: La Neige à Vaugirard II, ou Jardin sous la neige I
Garden under Snow, Paul Gauguin, 1879
Here are some of the latest findings on Trump, the Insurrection, and the Big Lie. That had me shivering beneath my comforter worse than the cold.
Betsy Woodruff Swan / Politico: Read the never-issued Trump order that would have seized voting machines — Among the records that Donald Trump’s lawyers tried to shield from Jan. 6 investigators are a draft executive order that would have directed the defense secretary to seize voting machines and a document titled “Remarks on National Healing.”
The draft executive order shows that the weeks between Election Day and the Capitol attack could have been even more chaotic than they were. It credulously cites conspiracy theories about election fraud in Georgia and Michigan, as well as debunked notions about Dominion voting machines.
The order empowers the defense secretary to “seize, collect, retain and analyze all machines, equipment, electronically stored information, and material records required for retention under” a U.S. law that relates to preservation of election records. It also cites a lawsuit filed in 2017 against Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
Additionally, the draft order would have given the defense secretary 60 days to write an assessment of the 2020 election. That suggests it could have been a gambit to keep Trump in power until at least mid-February of 2021.
If this isn’t an act of seditious conspiracy I’d be shocked. But then, there’s more.
Hokusai, Tea House at Koishikawa. The Morning After a Snowfall, (1830)
The Washington Post: Supreme Court, investigators force Trump and his children on the defensive on multiple fronts
A flurry of decisions by the Supreme Court and federal and state investigators has forced Donald Trump and his adult children to defend their conduct on multiple fronts, potentially jeopardizing their futures — or perhaps yet again allowing the former president to escape unscathed.
On Tuesday, New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) submitted a 157-page filing detailing much of the evidence her investigators have gathered so far on the business practices of Trump and his children, focused on a possible pattern of fraud. The civil investigation is separate from a criminal probe James is running in tandem with new Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D).
Then, on Wednesday, the Supreme Court rejected Trump’s request to block the release of some of his White House records to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.
Thursday brought a double whammy: The House committee sent a letter to Ivanka Trump requesting her voluntary testimony. In the letter, the panel said witnesses have told investigators that the former White House adviser might have direct knowledge of her father’s actions before, during and after the mob of his supporters tried to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden as president.
And in Atlanta, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D) requested a special-purpose grand jury to aid in her investigation into whether Trump and others committed crimes by trying to pressure Georgia election officials to overturn his loss in the 2020 election.
The Daily Beast: Ivanka Ghosts Trumpland as Investigators Turn Up the Heat
Whether it’s the lawmakers on Capitol Hill plumbing the depths of last year’s failed coup, or prosecutors in New York putting former President Donald Trump’s sprawling family business under a microscope, investigators working very different probes are increasingly looking to pressure the same person: Ivanka Trump.
There’s hardly any indication the corporate heiress is under investigation herself, or that she faces possible criminal charges. But sources on both sides—in law enforcement and those close to her—say Ivanka is a key witness to a litany of alleged crimes.
And it’s all coming to a head this week.
On Tuesday, the New York attorney general filed court documents that claim Ivanka Trump played a much more insidious role in the company’s web of financial deceit than previously known. Investigators are asking a judge to enforce a subpoena that would make her testify under oath.
And on Thursday, the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection formally asked Ivanka to sit down and answer questions about her interactions with her then-president father during the hours the Capitol building was under attack. The request for a “voluntary interview” is widely perceived to be a first pass that, should it be rejected, could be followed by a congressional subpoena—and the implicit threat of a Justice Department criminal prosecution if it’s ignored.
The DOJ is already pursuing a case against political strategist Steve Bannon and may soon do the same with another two of the president’s men.
On both fronts, Ivanka will be pressured to explain her father’s crooked tactics—tactics that Ivanka appears desperate to distance herself from now.
Caspar David Friedrich, ‘Winter Landscape’, probably 1811
Why does anyone want to involve themselves with these absolute vile people? Remind me to write Rudi G in Jail. This is from CNN: “Trump campaign officials, led by Rudy Giuliani, oversaw fake electors plot in 7 states” BB has written extensively about this. Rachel Maddow has been on top of it too.
Trump campaign officials, led by Rudy Giuliani, oversaw efforts in December 2020 to put forward illegitimate electors from seven states that Trump lost, according to three sources with direct knowledge of the scheme.
The sources said members of former President Donald Trump’s campaign team were far more involved than previously known in the plan, a core tenet of the broader plot to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory when Congress counted the electoral votes on January 6.Giuliani and his allies coordinated the nuts-and-bolts of the process on a state-by-state level, the sources told CNN. One source said there were multiple planning calls between Trump campaign officials and GOP state operatives, and that Giuliani participated in at least one call. The source also said the Trump campaign lined up supporters to fill elector slots, secured meeting rooms in statehouses for the fake electors to meet on December 14, 2020, and circulated drafts of fake certificates that were ultimately sent to the National Archives.
Trump and some of his top advisers publicly encouraged the “alternate electors” scheme in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin, Nevada and New Mexico. But behind the scenes, Giuliani and Trump campaign officials actively choreographed the process, the sources said.
When I was a sophomore at the High School I shared with Kurt Andersen and Ginnie Lamp, we spent a good amount of English class on Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. We watched the 1953 black and white edition even though a remake was around from 1970. My favorite quote is this one spoken by Mark Antony as played by Marlon Brando.
“The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.”
My thought today is there isn’t one person in the Trump Family Crime syndicate that will have enough good to take to the grave with them.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Monday Reads: Good News First
Posted: June 29, 2020 Filed under: Afternoon Reads, impeach trump, Iran, Iraq, Reproductive Rights, tRump crimes against humanity | Tags: self portraits women artists 23 Comments
Vivian Maier is often considered one of America’s greatest street photographers.
Good Day Sky Dancers!
Today’s pictures are of women artists and their self portraits from the National Geographic and other sources.
There’s some very good news out of the Supreme Court today for Louisiana Women and women every where in the country! From NBC News: “Supreme Court, in 5-4 ruling, strikes down restrictive Louisiana abortion law. The measure would have required abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at hospitals within 30 miles of a clinic.”
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that Louisiana’s tough restriction on abortions violates the Constitution, a surprising victory for abortion rights advocates from an increasingly conservative court.
The 5-4 decision, in which Chief Justice John Roberts joined with the court’s four more liberal justices, struck down a law passed by the Louisiana Legislature in 2014 that required any doctor offering abortion services to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles. Its enforcement had been blocked by a protracted legal battle.
Two Louisiana doctors and a medical clinic sued to get the law overturned. They said it would leave only one doctor at a single clinic to provide services for nearly 10,000 women who seek abortions in the state each year.
The challengers said the requirement was identical to a Texas law the Supreme Court struck down in 2016. With the vote of then-Justice Anthony Kennedy, the court ruled that Texas imposed an obstacle on women seeking access to abortion services without providing any medical benefits. Kennedy was succeeded by the more conservative Brett Kavanaugh, appointed by President Donald Trump, who was among the four dissenters Monday.
Justice Stephen Breyer, who wrote the Texas decision, also wrote Monday’s ruling. The law poses a substantial obstacle to women seeking an abortion, offers no significant health benefits, “and therefore imposes an undue burden on a woman’s constitutional right to choose to have an abortion.”
Roberts said he thought the court was wrong to strike down the Texas law, but he voted with the majority because that was the binding precedent. “The Louisiana law imposes a burden on access to abortion just as severe as that imposed by the Texas law, for the same reasons. Therefore Louisiana’s law cannot stand under our precedents.”
Even small victories based on stare decisis are still victories.
Self Portrait By Paula Modersohn Becker
Well, Iran always makes things interesting. You have to give them that. From The Sydney Morning Herald: “Iran issues arrest warrant for Donald Trump, requests help from Interpol.”
Tehran: Iran has issued an arrest warrant and asked Interpol to help detain US President Donald Trump and others it believes carried out a drone strike that killed a top Iranian general in Baghdad, a local prosecutor reportedly says.”
While Trump faces no danger of arrest, the charges underscore the heightened tensions between Iran and the United States since Trump unilaterally withdrew America from Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers.
Tehran prosecutor Ali Alqasimehr said Trump and more than 30 others whom Iran accuses of involvement in the January 3 strike that killed General Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad face “murder and terrorism charges,” the state-run IRNA news agency reported on Monday.
Alqasimehr did not identify anyone else sought other than Trump, but stressed that Iran would continue to pursue his prosecution even after his presidency ends.
Democrats on the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis are threatening to bar Republican members from participating future meetings in-person after they showed up to a hearing on Friday without masks.
Subcommittee Chair Jim Clyburn is sending a letter to ranking member Steve Scalise, warning he would not recognize members in hearings and meetings without proper face coverings; the chair must recognize members to speak and participate in committee business.
“Going forward, as long as the Attending Physician’s requirement to wear masks is in place, I will not recognize any Member of this Subcommittee to participate in person in any Subcommittee meeting or hearing unless the Member is wearing a mask and strictly adheres to the Attending Physician’s guidance,” Clyburn said in a letter to Scalise. The letter further recommends members participate remotely if they insist on not wearing masks.
The letter comes after a monthslong debate in Congress where Republicans have repeatedly disregarded recommendations and then a requirement from Capitol health experts to wear face coverings. The disagreement on the topic came to a head at the end of a Friday hearing when Clyburn reminded his Republican colleagues they were in violation of a mandate handed down by the attending physician, even as disposable masks were stationed outside the hearing room for members to use.
“For the United States House of Representatives meetings, in a limited and closed space such as a committee hearing room for greater than 15 minutes face coverings are required,” Clyburn said, reading the Capitol health official’s order. “And we’re not going to have another meeting in a confined space if we’re not going to abide by this. I will stay in the safety of my home as I would ask all you to do.”
Scalise responded to Clyburn by saying members of the House are following guidelines on how to social distance just fine, suggesting mask-wearing is an additional precautionary measure.
Self-Portrait, Lois Mailou Jones
From Kyle Cheney at Politico: “House Dems propose strengthening Congress’ contempt power to break administration stonewalls. “We’ve seen unprecedented and illegal obstruction by the Trump administration to Congress,” Ted Lieu said.”
House Democrats increasingly frustrated by the Trump administration for defying subpoenas are proposing legislation that would ratchet up their power to punish executive branch officials who reject their requests.
Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), and five other membersof the House Judiciary Committee, unveiled a rule change Monday to formalize and expand Congress’ power of “inherent contempt” — its authority to unilaterally punish anyone who defies a subpoena for testimony or documents.
Though Congress has long had inherent contempt power, it has been in disuse since before World War II. This power, upheld by courts, has included the ability to levy fines and even jail witnesses who refuse to cooperate with congressional demands.
But such extreme measures have fallen out of favor over the years, as Congress has relied instead primarily on litigation to enforce its subpoenas and officials across government have acknowledged the unappetizing prospect of using force to impose its will. It’s even trickier when applied to a coequal branch of government, which may have its own privileges and protections to assert.
Frida Kahlo Self Portrait With Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird
More news is coming forth about the Russian bounties. This is from WAPO: “Russian bounties to Taliban-linked militants resulted in deaths of U.S. troops, according to intelligence assessments.”
Russian bounties offered to Taliban-linked militants to kill coalition forces in Afghanistan are believed to have resulted in the deaths of several U.S. service members, according to intelligence gleaned from U.S. military interrogations of captured militants in recent months.
Several people familiar with the matter said it was unclear exactly how many Americans or coalition troops from other countries may have been killed or targeted under the program. U.S. forces in Afghanistan suffered a total of 10 deaths from hostile gunfire or improvised bombs in 2018, and 16 in 2019. Two have been killed this year. In each of those years, several service members were also killed by what are known as “green on blue” hostile incidents by members of Afghan security forces, which are sometimes believed to have been infiltrated by the Taliban.
The intelligence was passed up from the U.S. Special Operations forces based in Afghanistan and led to a restricted high-level White House meeting in late March, the people said.
Joni Mitchell Self Portrait
This is really unfolding in a particularly quick way. Here’s an opinion from Greg Sargent at WAPO’s Plum Line: “As Trump’s corruption gets worse, some Democrats want a tougher response.”
The big revelations of the moment — the reports that Russia may have paid bounties for the killing of U.S. troops, and the news that a U.S. attorney was ousted after investigating Trump cronies — are a reminder that Trump has found a gaping hole in our system.
If a president refuses to cooperate with congressional oversight in just about every conceivable way — and if that president has the near-total backing of a party that controls one chamber of Congress — any such scrutiny can basically be ground to a halt, with no repercussions.
But a group of House Democrats is now calling on its chamber to get a lot tougher in this regard.
This group of Democrats — which is led by Rep. Ted Lieu of California and includes other high-profile lawmakers on the Judiciary Committee — is introducing a resolution Monday that, if successful, would dramatically increase the House’s ability to compel compliance with oversight.
This resolution would create a new, modernized mechanism by which the House could seek to levy stiff fines on officials who defy subpoenas for testimony or documents. It would in effect bring into the 21st century a power that Congress has used only rarely in the past — the power to enforce its own subpoenas.
“The administration can simply choose not to have witnesses appear and not produce documents, and there’s nothing we can do about it,” Lieu told me, noting that “we’ve seen the Trump administration getting worse, not better, in terms of both obstruction and engaging in reckless conduct.”
Self-Portrait by South African Visual Artist Zanele Muholi
One last OpEd piece from WAPO by Elizabeth Spiers: “Trump’s ‘silent majority’ isn’t a majority, and it’s far from silent. But the rhetoric lays the groundwork for crying foul when the true majority wins.”
The Trump team’s declaration that a silent majority lurks, ready to return Trump to the White House, is at odds with almost everything else the president says and does. His efforts to make it harder to vote by opposing voting by mail in the middle of a pandemic, and his repeated claims that Democrats are plotting election fraud, suggest a distinct nervousness about the majority’s true will. He appears to be laying the groundwork for explaining away a Democratic victory in November, as the result of deception and trickery. On June 22 he tweeted, in typical fashion: “RIGGED 2020 ELECTION: MILLIONS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WILL BE PRINTED BY FOREIGN COUNTRIES, AND OTHERS. IT WILL BE THE SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES!” In a system where success usually depends on grasping what a majority of the electorate wants, the sound strategy might be to reach out from one’s base to voters in the middle. Trump instead is heavily invested in the assumption that his enthusiastic minority will determine the outcome — even if it means that the people who don’t like him are prevented from voting.
These are hopeful signs in a fight to stop some of the most disturbing trends of the Trumpist Regime. However, the fight is on so many levels and we battle the rich and powerful and the firmly entrenched like Mitch McConnell. Take this idiot as an great example. He’s not on the front pages like Police Reform and Abortion Restrictions. And we still don’t make enough noise about voter restrictions in so many Republican-controlled states.
They’re killing our land, our children, our hopes and dreams, our democracy, our economy, our climate and its ecosystems, our indigenous peoples, Black Men, and just about everything with their greed, racism, misogyny, and rigid theocratic ideologies that punish women, the GLBT community, and science and rational thought.
We just have to hang in there.
Remember we have leadership that will stand up to it all
Have a great week Sky Dancers! Do be safe! Stay home if possible! Wear a mask! Be kind, gentle, and giving to yourself and others!
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