With authoritarians and tyrants on the march across the world, Poland is an emerging test case of whether a corrupted democracy can be revived. The discouraging early signs are that it might be harder than building one from scratch.
Contempt for the niceties of representative and pluralistic democracy, along with florid rhetorical excess, were the trademarks of the man who controlled Poland’s ruling party for the past eight years, before a shock electoral defeat last fall cast him into political exile.
Ghost Cat, by Chikanobu Toyohara 1838-1912
Now Jaroslaw Kaczynski, having meted out death by a thousand cuts to Polish democracy in a failed effort to cement his grip on power, leads an irreconcilable opposition.
His escalating standoff with the new government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk is a stress test that is likely to subject Eastern Europe’s biggest and most influential country to a bitter contest of wills for the foreseeable future. And it is far from clear that Poland can regain the vibrant democracy, independent judiciary and robust institutions it worked so hard to establish from the ruins of communism more than 30 years ago.
“It was easier then because there was broad consensus in society and the political class about the general direction,” Piotr Buras, head of the European Council on Foreign Relations’ Warsaw office, told me. “Now this is the core of the conflict.”
Tusk, who was prime minister from 2007 to 2014, took office again last month. It doesn’t mean that he took power.
Over the course of its two terms in government, Kaczynski’s Law and Justice party jury-rigged systems, rules and institutions to its own partisan advantage, seeding its allies in the courts, prosecutors’ offices, state-owned media and central bank. Kaczynski’s administration erected an intricate legal obstacle course designed to leave the party with a stranglehold on key levers of power even if it were ousted in elections.
On top of that, President Andrzej Duda, a Kaczynski ally, is set to remain in office until his term expires in August next year. He retains broad powers, including to veto legislation, and has already thwarted Tusk’s agenda where possible.
Mostly Monday Reads: Say Goodnight Ronnie!
Posted: January 22, 2024 Filed under: just because | Tags: Election 2024, Jive Turkey Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Primaries 2024, Racist Republicans, Running on Empty, Trump trials 11 Comments
Welcome back to the fold, DeSantis. John Buss, @Repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
We no longer have Ron DeSantis to kick around! Well, we’ll still kick him around for a least a few more days here. He’s such an easy target. DeSantis ended his bizarro world campaign with a hat tip to a fake Churchill Quote just before bending the knee. This is from The Daily Beast. Jake Lahut has the coverage. “DeSantis Campaign Uses Fake Churchill Quote in Final Message. “The International Churchill Society once referred to it as “a double misquote” in a blog post on the same set of words.” I’m pretty sure SNL will have a heyday with this one. His campaign was as misbegotten as his personality. Do all Republicans appear to have Personality Disorders, or is it just my take from the few courses I took at University?
The Ron DeSantis large language model appeared to hallucinate on Sunday, with the campaign running an apparently fake Winston Churchill quote as the title of the candidate’s drop-out announcement video.
It was a fitting touch for a campaign whose launch was a glitchy mess on Twitter, ending with another farce on the same site now called X.
“Defeat is never fatal. Victory is never final: it is the courage to continue that counts,” the quote attributed to Churchill by the DeSantis campaign read.
Unfortunately, Churchill not only never said that, but he didn’t even say the next closest quote that’s more commonly falsely attributed to him—amounting to what the International Churchill Society once referred to as “a double misquote” in a blog post on the same set of words.
According to the Churchill remembrance outfit, the former British prime minister and military leader never said anything close to the phrase that the DeSantis campaign attributed to him.
“Ok, one more toon drop in celebration of the glorious crash and burn that was Awkward Himmler’s campaign of cringe.” Jesse Duquette.
I’m not sure these days how some of these folks even made it out the door for kindergarten, let alone a public career. Bye, Felicia!
NBC News has this analysis of the crash and burn. “‘A total failure to launch’: Why Ron DeSantis was doomed from the start. Muddled messages, hiring too many staffers and even a puzzle — how it all went wrong for DeSantis’ presidential bid.” I thought this guy was the worst candidate I’ve ever seen. No amount of high-paid staffers and public relations gurus can correct that. I really wonder about the brains of those Dark Money Billionaires that got behind him. I think a toddler could slice and dice this disaster.
Iowa was supposed to be make-or-break for Ron DeSantis.
The Florida governor essentially moved his campaign there late last year, and Never Back Down, his allied super PAC, spent tens of millions of dollars knocking on doors in the state.
“We’re going to win Iowa,” DeSantis declared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Dec. 2
But in the week before the all-important caucuses, Scott Wagner, the recently installed head of the super PAC, was doing something that aides found puzzling: He was literally doing a puzzle.
In the headquarters of Never Back Down in West Des Moines, Iowa, Wagner was, according to some of his staff, spending a significant amount of time in the precious final few days constructing a peaceful 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle of a landscape.
In a photo taken on Jan. 9, shared with NBC News by a Never Back Down team member, others in the room were hunched over their laptops.
“Staffers are putting their dedication and devotion to electing Gov. DeSantis and they come in and the CEO, the chairman of the organization, is sitting there working on a puzzle for hours,” said a Never Back Down staffer who was there.
Another Never Back Down staffer also said Wagner worked on it for “hours” in the week before Iowa.
Let me reconsider the value of those “high-paid staffers and public relations gurus.” My guess is they’ll never put Humpty DeSantis back together again. This guy probably put that “Churchill” quote in the final speech.
The fact that one of the top people in charge of securing a win for DeSantis in Iowa was spending time on something unrelated to the caucuses was emblematic of the mismanagement and wasted efforts that many of DeSantis’ own supporters say have plagued the campaign from the very beginning.
In a comment to NBC News, Wagner noted that the “office puzzle” was “there when we arrived” and “became a sense of pride for the entire team and everyone chipped in a few minutes a piece to get it done.”
“I could not be more proud of every person in our Iowa office. I came out to work with our Iowa team and our incredible COO Jordan Wiggins in person for the final two week push in Iowa and I came away with a group of people I would go to war with any time, anywhere. We worked non-stop together on operations in terrible weather conditions,” he said, adding, “The operation worked nearly 24/7 throughout for the Gov and was absolutely seamless. I am so proud of what we achieved in Iowa and will achieve beyond.”
Desantis quit and then endorsed Orange Caligula. This is from the New York Times. “Ron DeSantis Ends Campaign for President. The Florida governor, who once appeared to be Donald Trump’s most daunting challenger, ran a costly, turbulent campaign that failed to catch on with Republican voters.” Is it just me, or do all these headlines sound like something that should be in a film noir review?
Mr. DeSantis’s devastating 30-percentage-point loss to Mr. Trump in the Iowa caucuses last Monday had left him facing a daunting question: Why keep going? On Sunday, he provided his answer, acknowledging there was no point in soldiering on without a “clear path to victory.”
“I am today suspending my campaign,” Mr. DeSantis said in a video posted after The New York Times reported he was expected to leave the race, adding: “Trump is superior to the current incumbent, Joe Biden. That is clear. I signed a pledge to support the Republican nominee, and I will honor that pledge. He has my endorsement because we can’t go back to the old Republican guard of yesteryear.”
Tell that to all those folk still pissing themselves and lying about the presidency of Ronald Reagan.
Peter Wehner–writing at The Atlantic–has the bigger picture. “The Party of Malice. Donald Trump has made the Republican Party cruel, xenophobic, exclusionary, and bigoted.” Ya think? But, after all that’s what they were going for with the Southern Strategy, right? Ronald Reagan announced his presidency with a slap in the face-like hint. Republicans have been after this a long time since John Brown and Abe Lincoln’s bodies have been moldering in the grave. Reagan read it like the C-level actor he was over and over. But back to the current state of the party.
You knew it was coming.
As soon as former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley emerged as the main threat to Donald Trump in the battle for the Republican nomination, it became inevitable that she would be targeted by him. Any front-runner would do the same thing. But Trump did it with his typical touch.
Last week, Trump reposted on his Truth Social account a conspiracy theory that Haley, who was born in South Carolina, was not qualified to be president because her parents, born in India, were not U.S. citizens at the time of her birth. In fact, the Fourteenth Amendment establishes that any person born on American soil is a citizen of the United States and therefore can serve as president.
Last Tuesday, Trump decided to ratchet up the racism a few notches. On Truth Social, he wrote this about his former ambassador to the United Nations:
Anyone listening to Nikki “Nimrada” Haley’s wacked out speech last night, would think that she won the Iowa Primary. She didn’t, and she couldn’t even beat a very flawed Ron DeSanctimonious, who’s out of money, and out of hope. Nikki came in a distant THIRD! She said she would never run against me, “he was a great President,” and she should have followed her own advice. Now she’s stuck with WEAK POLICIES, and a VERY STRONG MAGA BASE, and there’s just nothing she can do!
That was three days ago. Dark Brandon isn’t waiting for the New Hampshire Primary tomorrow.
Why wait for Haley to throw in the towel? They have attacked Trump in a series of new ads. This is from The Hill. “Biden campaign features OB-GYN who left Texas for abortion in new ad.”
President Biden’s reelection campaign on Monday dropped an ad to mark the 51st anniversary of Roe v. Wade that features an OB-GYN who couldn’t receive an abortion in Texas after the landmark law was overturned
The 60-second ad, entitled “Forced,” is narrated by Dr. Austin Dennard, an OB-GYN in Texas and mother of three, who placed the blame squarely on former President Trump, the GOP front-runner in the 2024 election, for having to leave the state for the procedure.
Dennard said in the ad she had a planned pregnancy two years ago and learned the fetus had a fatal condition with no chance of survival.
“In Texas, you are forced to carry that pregnancy and that is because of Donald Trump overturning Roe v. Wade. The choice was completely taken away. I was to continue my pregnancy, putting my life at risk,” she added.
The ad went live Monday in battleground states and will broadcast nationally during the season premiere of ABC’s “The Bachelor.” It will also run on channels like HGTV, TLC, Bravo, Hallmark, Food Network, and Oxygen, according to the Biden campaign.
It hits right at the heart of Trump being in charge of turning women into walking coffins. That will be one of the core issues of 2024. But also, Dark Brandon and company have gone for Trump’s jugular. His mental decline is oblivious. They even dare to use Nikki against him.
Other issues haunt Trump. He’s got all those court appearances and trials. This is from Ankush Khardori, who is writing for Politico. “Polls Show Trump Could Be Doomed If He’s Convicted. Will a Trial Happen in Time? Here’s the real timeline for Trump’s criminal trials. “
The results in Iowa last week were a win for Donald Trump, but they also underscored that the former president’s ongoing legal troubles are among his biggest liabilities in a rematch with Joe Biden.
Nearly a third of Republican caucusgoers told pollsters that Trump would not be “fit” for the presidency if he is convicted of a crime — a sizable defection that, if it held, would likely doom Trump’s general election chances.
Polling in this area is challenging, so it is best to take this figure with a considerable grain of salt. Some portion of these people, for instance, may believe Trump would literally be incapable of serving as president if convicted of a crime — perhaps because he would immediately be hauled off to prison or disqualified — which is not true, and which they would eventually come to learn if things moved in that direction.
But what is clear is that some lingering courtroom questions are now essential electoral questions as well: When will Trump’s myriad trials take place? And can any jury deliver a verdict before this November?
The answers are crucial to understanding how the 2024 campaign could ultimately unfold. Over the coming year, federal and state prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges — including the Supreme Court — will have to maneuver amid an inflexible political calendar. Here’s the timeline for how it’s likely to go.
Hurry! … Oops, too late. The Disgraced Former Guy running again and again and again. John Buss,@repeat1968
Khadori argues that “Among All Trump’s Trials, the Jan. 6 Case Is Key. For both political and legal reasons, the most important case is the Justice Department’s prosecution over Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election.” You may read more at the link.
This one story is from The Washington Post, where Trump’s antics have been outrageous. ” In Judge Kaplan’s court, Trump plays with fire. “
In the high-stakes world of presidential trials, there are no judges like Lewis A. Kaplan.
At 79, after decades on the bench, the senior judge is one of the most well-regarded legal minds in New York. And he has a unique history that makes Donald Trump’s courtroom behavior over the past
Trump is on trial in a civil case as writer E. Jean Carroll seeks damages from Trump, who has been found liable for defaming her when he made disparaging remarks denying he sexually assaulted her decades ago in a department store.
Trump has claimed that he intends to testify in the case on Monday — which would probably produce a dramatic courtroom showdown. But it’s unclear whether Trump will really show up. For one thing, he has made similar claims in the past, then not appeared. For another, Tuesday is the New Hampshire primary, and Trump is again running for president.
If he does testify, legal experts said, his time on the witness stand could be something akin to a suicide mission.
Over the past week, Kaplan’s handling of the damages trial in Lower Manhattan shows how different a federal courtroom is from most other parts of public life — even state court, where Trump and his lawyers had more leeway to squabble with a judge overseeing a different civil trial in another New York courthouse over the past several months. Kaplan has not tolerated similar behavior, and Trump has railed on social media that the federal judge is “a totally biased and hostile person.”
The former president claimed that he only lost a previous lawsuit brought by Carroll over the sexual assault and a different set of defamatory commentsbecause he didn’t appear in court personally. Kaplan oversaw that lawsuit, too.
In recent weeks, Trump has been attending more court hearings than he needs to, seemingly deciding that the best way to fight his legal critics — and win the GOP nomination — is to try to shout them down. He has spoken out of turn in the courtroom and denounced the proceedings.
Legal experts warn that if he does so on the witness stand in Kaplan’s courtroom, he could end up humiliated and threatened with contempt of court.
Robert Katzberg, a veteran New York white-collar criminal defense lawyer, said Kaplan is “the worst possible draw for Trump,” not because of any personal or political bias, but because of the type of judge he is.
“He’s really smart and takes no guff from either side. He expects lawyers to be professional and toe the line, and if they do not, holds them accountable,” said Katzberg, who is now consulting counsel for Holland & Knight.
“Even if you had the most pro-Trump judge in America overseeing the trial, Donald Trump should not testify. Multiply that by a million with Lewis Kaplan on the bench,” he said. “Given both his lack of any relevant facts as to the only issue remaining — the damages suffered by Ms. Carroll — and Donald Trump’s inability to control himself emotionally, he is begging not only to be debased before the jury, but contempt citations will be looming large.”
Media outlets are already taking notice of Biden’s ads and the basic look of Trump in Court. So are Political Cartoonists! This is from The Guardian. “Video released of petulant Trump in civil fraud trial deposition. Smirking, pouting and defiant ex-president bragged about properties and claimed he prevented nuclear war with North Korea.”
Months before Donald Trump’s defiant turn as a witness at his New York civil fraud trial, the former president came face to face with the state attorney general who is suing him when he sat for a deposition last year at her Manhattan office.
Video made public on Friday of the seven-hour, closed-door session last April shows the Republican presidential frontrunner’s demeanor going from calm and cool to indignant – at one point ripping into the lawsuit of the attorney general, Letitia James, against him as a “disgrace” and “a terrible thing”.
Sitting with arms folded, an incredulous Trump complained to the state lawyer questioning him that he was being forced to “justify myself to you” after decades of success building a real estate empire that is now threatened by the court case.
Trump, who contends James’s lawsuit is part of a politically motivated “witch-hunt”, was demonstrative from the outset. The video shows him smirking and pouting as the attorney general, a Democrat, introduced herself and told him that she was “committed to a fair and impartial legal process”.
James’s office released the video on Friday in response to requests from media outlets under New York’s Freedom of Information Law. Trump’s lawyers previously posted a transcript of his remarks to the trial docket in August.
James’s lawsuit accuses Trump, his company and top executives of defrauding banks, insurers, and others by inflating his wealth and exaggerating the value of assets on annual financial statements used to secure loans and make deals.
Judge Arthur Engoron, who will decide the case because a jury is not allowed in this type of lawsuit, has said he hopes to have a ruling by the end of January.
Friday’s video is a rare chance for the public at large to see Trump as a witness.
Sahil Kapur of NBC reports this headline as Democratic candidates look poised to flip some seats. ‘It’s embarrassing’: Republicans worry they have no achievements to run on in 2024. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, has openly questioned whether the GOP deserves to keep the House majority, lamenting the lack of accomplishments this Congress. He’s not alone.” Ah, poor widdle babies.
When Congress began the new year, Rep. Andy Biggs gave a television interview and made a startling confession: House Republicans have done nothing they can run on.
“We have nothing. In my opinion, we have nothing to go out there and campaign on,” the Arizona Republican said on the conservative network Newsmax. “It’s embarrassing.”
Anchor Chris Salcedo responded with a bemused chuckle. “I know,” he said. “The Republican Party in the Congress majority has zero accomplishments.”
The exchange captured a dynamic that looms over Republican lawmakers heading into the 2024 election: They’ve passed little substantive legislation since winning the majority in 2022 and struggled to do the basics of governing with a Democratic-led Senate. Their first year was instead marked by fractiousness and chaos, complicating the party’s pitch to voters this fall. The challenge is accentuated by likely GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump making “retribution” against his enemies, rather than shared policy goals, the centerpiece of his comeback bid as he continues to spread fabricated claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
With 10 months until Election Day, Republicans still have a few opportunities to salvage what has been a historically unproductive congressional session and pass new laws in the divided government.
A spending deal between House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., gives the GOP a chance to achieve spending cuts. A potential Senate immigration deal gives them an opportunity to toughen asylum and border laws. And a bipartisan tax bill that overwhelmingly passed through committee on Friday presents a rare opening to deliver tax breaks for GOP backers in the business community.
Yet none of those measures are guaranteed to become law. Right-wing members, including Biggs, are rebelling against some of them for being insufficiently conservative. The emerging immigration bill’s prospects may hinge on Trump, who is seeking to wield chaos at the border as a weapon against President Joe Biden in the general election.
The tax bill faces some skepticism from Senate Republicans and fierce opposition from the business-aligned Wall Street Journal editorial board, which complained that it would “give Democrats a huge policy victory” on the child credit. “Republicans haven’t done much in the 118th Congress, and in their scramble to compensate they may now do real policy harm,” the paper wrote.
It’s not looking like Trump or Republicans have the momentum right now, even though polls don’t reflect that. I’m waiting until at least Super Tuesday to really take any poll seriously. I’m just focused on the insane weather around me right now. It’s supposed to get better tomorrow. I hope you have some bright and sunny days! No matter where you are, it will not be bright or sunny during the election 2024 season.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Lazy Caturday Reads
Posted: January 20, 2024 Filed under: 2024 Elections, 2024 presidential Campaign, cat art, caturday, Donald Trump | Tags: "the face of evil", Biden's Israel policies, continuing resolution, Hezbollah, Houthis, iran, israel, Japanese cat art, Niki Haley, Poland, Racism, saving democracy, Trump's cognitive decline, Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky 8 CommentsHappy Caturday!!
I’m really late getting started today, so I’m just going to get right to today’s news. Things are getting out of hand in the the Middle East, and Republicans in the House are determined to make the worse. They are also working hard to shut down the government unless they get all the goodies they are demanding. Johnson did manage to get a continuing resolution passed, but he depended on Democratic votes. Meanwhile the Republicans are holding back funding for Ukraine’s fight against Russia.
This is from Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American: January 18, 2024.
This afternoon, Congress passed a new continuing resolution necessary to fund the government past the upcoming deadlines in the previous continuing resolution. Those deadlines were tomorrow (January 19) and February 2. The deadlines in the new measure are March 1 and March 8. This is the third continuing resolution passed in four months as extremist Republicans have refused to fund the government unless they get a wish list of concessions to their ideology.
Today’s vote was no exception. Eighteen Republican senators voted against the measure, while five Republicans did not vote (at least one, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, is ill). All the Democrats voted in favor. The final tally was 77 to 18, with five not voting.
In the House the vote was 314 to 108, with 11 not voting. Republicans were evenly split between supporting government funding and voting against it, threatening to shut down the government. They split 107 to 106. All but two Democrats voted in favor of government funding. (In the past, Jake Auchincloss of Massachusetts and MIke Quigley of Illinois have voted no on a continuing resolution to fund the government in protest that the measure did not include funding for Ukraine.)
This means that, like his predecessor Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) had to turn to Democrats to keep the government operating. The chair of the extremist House Freedom Caucus, Bob Good (R-VA), told reporters that before the House vote, Freedom Caucus members had tried to get Johnson to add to the measure the terms of their extremist border security bill. Such an addition would have tanked the bill, forcing a government shutdown, and Johnson refused.
Republican extremists in Congress are also doing the bidding of former president Donald Trump, blocking further aid to Ukraine in its struggle to fight off Russian aggression and standing in the way of a bipartisan immigration reform measure. Aid to Ukraine is widely popular both among the American people and among lawmakers. Immigration reform, which Republicans have demanded but are now opposing, would take away one of Trump’s only talking points before the 2024 election.
Richardson discusses a column in yesterday’s Washington Post about what happens when a country backslides on democracy: Poland is a test case for reviving a corrupted democracy, by Lee Hochstader. This could apply to Ukraine and potentially to the U.S.
Read more at the WaPo. This is the danger we face if we let Trump gain power again.
This is funny. From The Kiyv Independent: Zelensky invites Trump to Ukraine.
President Volodymyr Zelensky has extended an invitation to Donald Trump to visit Kyiv, with a specific condition attached.
Speaking with U.K. broadcaster Channel 4 News, Zelensky said that Trump would be warmly received in the capital under one stipulation: the former U.S. president must demonstrate his ability to bring an end to the war with Russia within 24 hours, as he once promised.
Trump has repeatedly said that the war would not have happened if he was still in power in Washington, and that he would bring it to an immediate end if voted back in because he has what he described as “a good relationship” with both Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
Beyond that, former U.S. president has provided no details of what his peace deal would involve.
Zelensky, who has previously extended the invitation without receiving a response, emphasized that if Trump indeed has a “formula” for resolving the war, he is eager to learn the specifics.
“So, I invite President Trump. If he can come here, I will need 24 minutes — yes, 24 minutes. Not more. Yes. Not more — 24 minutes to explain [to] President Trump that he can’t manage this war. He can’t bring peace because of Putin.”Zelensky said on air: “He is very welcome to come here, but I think he can not end the war in 24 hours, without giving our land to Putin.”
On the Israel situation, from The Washington Post: Growing number of Senate Democrats question Biden’s Israel strategy.
Five Senate Democrats on Friday signed onto a measure that would condition aid to Israel on its compliance with international law, bringing the total number of co-sponsors to 18. And a prominent Democrat, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, is rounding up support for his amendment to stop President Biden from circumventing Congress when he orders weapons transfers to Israel, a maneuver the president has pursued twice in recent months.
Kobayashi Kiyochika, Cat and Lantern
Earlier this week, 11 senators voted for a bill by Sen. Bernie Sanders aimed at forcing the Biden administration to examine potential human rights abuses by Israel.
After weeks of unquestioning support, the Senate is emerging as a center of resistance to Biden’s unwavering embrace of Israel — at least in modest ways — as even centrist Democrats are signaling their discomfort with the president’s “bear hug” of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A number of prominent Democrats have proposed or backed measures that aim to hold Israel accountable or to shift American strategy, even if they are unlikely to garner enough support to pass.
The growing willingness of establishment Democrats to criticize or push back on Israel — a move that would have come with serious political ramifications just a few months ago — signals a shift in the politics of the party since the war in Gaza began more than 100 days ago. Senators from swing states, including Georgia, Wisconsin and Minnesota, have signed on to some of these measures as polls show a notable drop in support for Biden among young, Muslim and Arab American voters over his handling of the issue.
While few senators are voicing full-throated criticism of Biden’s Israel policy, the new, more skeptical tone reflects an increasing unease as the civilian toll in Gaza rises and Israel repeatedly flouts U.S. requests to modify its military onslaught.
“Every week the Netanyahu coalition promises the Biden administration that we will see meaningful changes, and every week it never materializes,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who, along with Kaine, organized the effort to impose conditions in exchange for aid. Van Hollen noted that some members of Netanyahu’s far-right coalition are even “bragging” about ignoring American requests.
Read more at the WaPo.
Iran’s involvement in the conflicts is getting scary. From Reuters: Iranian and Hezbollah commanders help direct Houthi attacks in Yemen.
Commanders from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and Lebanon’s Hezbollah group are on the ground in Yemen helping to direct and oversee Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping, four regional and two Iranian sources told Reuters.
Iran – which has armed, trained and funded the Houthis – stepped up its weapons supplies to the militia in the wake of the war in Gaza, which erupted after Iranian-backed militants Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, the four regional sources said.
Tehran has provided advanced drones, anti-ship cruise missiles, precision-strike ballistic missiles and medium-range missiles to the Houthis, who started targeting commercial vessels in November in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, the sources said.
IRGC commanders and advisers are also providing know-how, data and intelligence support to determine which of the dozens of vessels travelling through the Red Sea each day are destined for Israel and constitute Houthi targets, all the sources said.
Washington said last month that Iran was deeply involved in planning operations against shipping in the Red Sea and that its intelligence was critical to enable the Houthis to target ships.
The Guardian: Iran accuses Israel of killing Revolutionary Guards spy chief in Damascus.
A suspected Israeli strike killed the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ espionage chief for Syria and three other guard members on Saturday, Iran has said, in an attack that destroyed much of a multistorey residential building in Damascus.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said six people were killed in the Israeli strike on the upmarket Mazzeh neighbourhood in the Syrian capital.
Four Cats Sleeping, by Inagaki Tomoo
In recent weeks, Israel has been accused of intensifying strikes on senior Iranian and allied figures in Syria and Lebanon, raising fears the war in Gaza could expand into a regional conflict.
“The Revolutionary Guards’ Syria [intelligence] chief, his deputy and two other guard members were martyred in the attack on Syria by Israel,” Iran’s Mehr news agency said.
In a statement, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) confirmed it had lost four of its members and blamed Israel.
When asked about the strike, the Israeli army said: “We do not comment on reports from the foreign media.”
Tensions between Iran and Israel have risen to a new high after the bloody surprise attack launched by Hamas into Israel on 7 October.
Trump has been directing racist attacks against Niki Haley, now that the Republican primary campaign has moved to New Hampshire.
The Washington Post: Trump lobs racially charged attacks against Haley ahead of N.H. primary. [For the WaPo headline writer: the attacks are racist, not “racially charged.”
Former president Donald Trump is lobbing racially charged attacks at Republican rival Nikki Haley, a daughter of Indian immigrants who served as his U.N. ambassador, days before a hotly contested New Hampshire primary that could determine the trajectory of the party’s nominating contest.
Meanwhile, Trump is demonstrating his cognitive decline in his campaign speeches. Yesterday, he confused Nicki Haley with Nancy Pelosi–claiming Haley was responsible for Congressional security on January 6, 2021.
Donald Trump on Friday was skewered online for apparently confusing Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi, resulting in the ex-president blaming the former for the events of Jan. 6.
Leisure Day by Togyu Okumura
Trump was delivering remarks in Concord, New Hampshire, on Friday, when he said that Haley was “offered 10,000 people” on Jan. 6, and implied that she was involved in the deleting of video evidence. These are common allegations that the former president has previously lobbed at Pelosi and the Jan. 6 subcommittee.
The video quickly went viral, causing people to make fun of Trump and even suggest he has mental health concerns.
“Do we need to do the dementia test again?” asked national security attorney Bradley P. Moss. MSNBC personality Mehdi Hasan had a similar take, asking, “Does he need to take the ‘person woman man camera TV’ test again?”
Hasan had been responding to a Biden-Harris HQ post in which the campaign says a “deeply confused Trump confuses Nancy Pelosi and Nikki Haley multiple times.”
Trump has also begun bragging again about how he “aced” a cognitive test as president. Actually the test he took is designed to detect dementia and has nothing to do with IQ or intelligence generally.
The Washington Post: A ‘whale’ of a tale: Trump continues to distort cognitive test he took.
Donald Trump this week bragged about purportedly acing a widely used cognitive test that was administered to him when he was president, suggesting that the test included identifying drawings of three animals.
CBS News: Deposition video shows Trump claiming he prevented “nuclear holocaust” as president.
Combative, angry and prone to grandiose claims — newly unveiled footage of an April 2023 deposition gives a glimpse into how former President Donald Trump behaves when testifying under oath.
Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, Looking Tiresome
The video, released to CBS News on Friday in response to a freedom of information request, shows Trump claiming to have averted a “nuclear holocaust” and “saving millions of lives” as president. A transcript of the deposition was previously made public as an exhibit in Trump’s New York civil fraud case.
Trump testified at trial on Nov. 6, and his testimony that day often mirrored the April deposition.
During the trial, Trump said he was too “busy in the White House” to worry about his businesses. “My threshold was China, Russia and keeping our country safe,” he said.
It echoed a response he gave in his April 2023 testimony in a small conference room with New York Attorney General Letitia James. He went further that day, explaining just what he believes he kept Americans safe from:
“I was very busy. I considered this the most important job in the world, saving millions of lives. I think you would’ve had nuclear holocaust if I didn’t deal with North Korea. I think you would’ve had a nuclear war if I weren’t elected. And I think you might have a nuclear war now, if you want to know the truth,” Trump said.
Read more from the deposition at the link.
One more on Trump’s issues from Raw Story:
Appearing on MSNBC on Saturday morning, conservative attorney George Conway was asked how the jury in the E.Jean Carroll defamation trial is likely viewing Donald Trump in the flesh as opposed to just seeing clips of him on TV.
Getting right into it with the hosts of MSNBC’s “The Weekend,’ Conway explained, “When you see little clips of him, you kind of think you know, it’s reality TV. He’s silly, he’s harmless, it’s just nonsense and he just does his thing, he does his schtick. But when you see him up close and in person you start to realize there’s something seriously wrong with him.”
“And that’s what happens with his own people,” he continued before recalling, “Remember how his chief of staff, General Kelly, brought in a book, like the psychiatrists had written about Donald Trump, saying he was completely out of his mind, and he [Kelly] is like, ‘This is the key. We could figure this out!'”
“People learn, there is something seriously wrong with this guy, and I think what this jury is going to learn, which is like you are in this solemn proceeding you are taking this seriously, and jurors generally don’t look at scams and people behaving badly in the courtroom, and here, they have this psychopath sitting right there,” he elaborated. “It’s got to be off-putting and scary, and just appalling to them, because they were actually seeing him in the flesh, this real person, not this caricature on TV, this self-caricature on TV. They’re seeing the face, the face literally, of evil right there.”
Yes, the face of evil is accurate–I agree.
What do you think about all this? What other stories are you interested in?
Finally Friday Reads: A Difficult Year
Posted: January 19, 2024 Filed under: just because | Tags: 2024 Elections, 2024 Supreme Court Rulings, Trump "presidential immunity", Trump crimes, Trump High Crimes 4 Comments
DRILLERS by Reima Ratti 1936
“We are the United States of Amnesia; we learn nothing because we remember nothing.”
Gore Vidal
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
There are some alarming headlines in the News today. Most of them are related to messes made by Donald Trump or his Republican enablers. The Republican-appointed judges on the Supreme Court continue to be the focus of alarm. Their continued efforts to reshape policy continue to kill people and give concentrated power to the Federalist billionaires that brought them there.
The economy is good, but corporations are taking advantage of the recent spate of inflation to line their pockets. Prices are higher than they should be. Again, this is because of a decades-effort by billionaires to rig policy. I’ve been horrified at Trump whining about being Herbert Hoover but simultaneously hoping the stock market crashes. Rather than focus on dealing with the budget, that same group of crazies in Congress are turning committees into bedlam. What on earth possesses people to send folks uninterested in solving problems but quite interested in creating drama where there should be none?
You’ll notice that my paintings today come from another difficult time in US history. Please enjoy the paintings by the CCC artists who painted the workers rebuilding the American dream in the 1930s. Maybe some of the Infrastructure Money landing around the country will turn into these kinds of good jobs. Here’s an interesting tidbit. You know all that inflation that’s still hanging around? The reason is pretty disgusting. This is from The Guardian and was written by Tom Perkins. “Half of recent US inflation due to high corporate profits, report finds. Thinktank report says ‘resounding evidence’ shows companies continue to keep prices high even as their inflationary costs drop.”
A new report claims “resounding evidence” shows that high corporate profits are a main driver of ongoing inflation, and companies continue to keep prices high even as their inflationary costs drop.
The report, compiled by the progressive Groundwork Collaborative thinktank, found corporate profits accounted for about 53% of inflation during last year’s second and third quarters. Profits drove just 11% of price growth in the 40 years prior to the pandemic, according to the report.
Prices for consumers rose by 3.4% over the past year, but input costs for producers increased by just 1%, according to the authors’ calculations which were based on data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and National Income and Products Accounts.
“Costs have come down substantially, and while corporations were quick to pass on their increased costs to consumers, they are surprisingly less quick to pass on their savings to consumers,” Liz Pancotti, a Groundwork strategic advisor and paper co-author, told the Guardian.
Since pandemic inflation spiked in 2021, a high-stakes debate has played out about its sources. Many progressive economists pointed to corporate profits – or “greedflation” – and supply chain issues as a driver of high prices, while their more conservative counterparts singled out government stimulus cash and high wages.
The report’s authors scoured corporate earnings calls and found executives bragging to shareholders about keeping prices high and widening profit margins as input costs come down.
The findings come as the Federal Reserve has hiked interest rates to their highest point in 20 years. The report casts serious doubt on the need for further interest rate hikes, and instead calls for stronger policies to rein in “corporate profiteering”.
Greg Sargent takes on the “Presidential Immunity” defense at The New Republic. “Trump’s Angry Rant About His Legal Mess Reveals an Ugly MAGA Truth. His immunity defense isn’t merely a legal argument. He’s priming his base to back wanton lawbreaking if he wins back the White House.”
Donald Trump’s lawyers have been arguing in court that he should have immunity from prosecution for crimes related to his insurrection because they constituted official acts committed while he was president. Special counsel Jack Smith has countered that this is tantamount to saying presidents should “operate in a realm without law.”
Now Trump has effectively confirmed it: A presidential realm without law is exactly what I want, Jack. In an angry, all-caps social media rant, Trump declared that “A PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES MUST HAVE FULL IMMUNITY” in order to “PROPERLY FUNCTION.” As observers quickly noted, this is best seen as a threat and a promise: A second Trump term, if voters give him one, will certainly include an untold amount of presidential lawbreaking.
But there’s more. What if this openly telegraphed intention to strain the boundaries of the law in office—or even to commit crimes—is not merely an incidental by-product of Trump’s legal defense but has become a key feature of his political appeal? There are strong indications that Trump is intentionally trying to raise expectations among his core supporters for just that—a presidency unbound by the law. And there are even signs it’s having exactly that effect.
To be clear, Trump’s demand for immunity—which is being decided by a federal appeals court—is weak and likely to fail, as I recently detailed. Indeed, this is exactly why Trump is loudly calling on the Supreme Court to rescue him from accountability by enshrining the notion that post-presidents cannot be prosecuted for crimes committed in office:
ALL PRESIDENTS MUST HAVE COMPLETE & TOTAL PRESIDENTIAL IMMUNITY, OR THE AUTHORITY & DECISIVENESS OF A PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES WILL BE STRIPPED & GONE FOREVER. HOPEFULLY THIS WILL BE AN EASY DECISION. GOD BLESS THE SUPREME COURT!
Trump also declared that even presidential acts that “CROSS THE LINE” must be given “TOTAL IMMUNITY” from prosecution. The Justice Department has a long-standing rule against prosecuting sitting presidents. But here Trump insists (inflating his lawyers’ arguments into something even more grotesquely absurd) that for presidents to be effective, they must be free to cross legal lines with immunity from future prosecution that is absolute.
Isn’t this the sort of thing that caused the colonists to overthrow the king in 1776? At least Trump’s enablers are beginning to face the music. “U.S. seeks jail for Trump adviser Navarro in Jan. 6 contempt case. The former Trump White House trade adviser acted without a lawyer in defying a House subpoena and failed to substantiate a claim that Trump asserted executive privilege to bar his testimony.” This is from Spencer S. Hsu, reporting for the Washington Post. Six months in jail is for contempt, not that crime.
Federal prosecutors asked a judge Thursday to sentence former White House trade adviser Peter Navarro to six months behind bars for contempt of Congress, saying he put allegiance to former president Donald Trump over the rule of law in refusing to cooperate with a House committee probing the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.
Navarro, 74, was found guilty in September of two contempt charges for refusing to produce documents or testify after receiving a House subpoena in February 2022. A former trade and pandemic adviser who served throughout Trump’s term in office, Navarro claimed credit for hatching a scheme with longtime Trump political adviser Stephen K. Bannon to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential race.
In a 20-page sentencing request, prosecutors said Navarro’s “bad-faith strategy of defiance and contempt” deserved severe punishment. Like the rioters, Navarro “put politics, not country, first, and stonewalled Congress’s investigation” even after learning that his claim of executive privilege would not excuse his actions, the prosecutors said.
We must remember that Trump’s plans for his next move into the West Wing include lower lifeforms than this guy. We’ve already had hints about how “radical” his staffing would be. Trump was inkling Tucker Carlson as VEEP. This week, he offered up Elise Stefanik. This is from NBC. “‘She’s a killer’: Trump eyes Rep. Elise Stefanik as a potential VP pick. The former president has spoken highly of the New York congresswoman, and his allies say she’s high on the list of vice presidential prospects.”
Ever since then, Trump and a growing group of allies have started to look more closely at Stefanik as a running mate, according to eight people familiar with the matter, including people in Trump’s orbit, Stefanik fundraising bundlers and former Trump administration officials.
At the time, the 39-year-old congresswoman was at the crest of a wave of national publicity after taking on the top leaders of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Their answers to the question, “Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate [your college’s] rules on bullying and harassment?” eventually resulted in two of them resigning and brought a firestorm of criticism on the schools.
But Stefanik was on Trump’s radar long before that hearing, because she possesses one of the key attributes he’s looking for in a 2024 running mate: loyalty. That, mixed with her ability to drive the news on key issues, may be an irresistible mix for a vice presidential pick.
“Stefanik is at the top,” said Steve Bannon, who was Trump’s chief strategist in the White House and the architect of his 2016 campaign strategy.
“If you’re Trump, you want someone who’s loyal above all else,” a Republican campaign operative said. “Particularly because he sees Mike Pence as having made a fatal sin.”
On Wednesday, after this story was published, Stefanik announced she would be campaigning with Trump in New Hampshire.
Once a moderate Republican who worked on Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, Stefanik shifted to the right and rebranded herself as one of Trump’s top allies on Capitol Hill after he won the White House in 2016.
“She’s come a long way, and now she’s really, really with us,” Trump said during a lunch in the spring of 2022, according to a source familiar with his comments, adding, “She was kind of with us before, but she’s really with us now.”
Stefanik declined to comment on whether she would be interested in being Trump’s running mate, telling NBC News she was focused on her role in Congress.
“I’m not going to get into any of my conversations with President Trump. I’m honored to call him a friend. I’m proud to be the first member of Congress to have endorsed his re-election, and he had a huge win in Iowa. So we’re very excited about that,” she said.
We will also be dealing with an insane amount of propaganda and disinformation like this crazy one fact-checked by Reuters on Journalist Mehdi Hassan.
Journalist Mehdi Hasan was not arrested by the U.S. Navy’s legal branch for “treason,” as suggested by an article from a website that regularly publishes false claims about high-profile arrests.
The website Real Raw News published an article on Jan. 9 with a headline that reads: “JAG Arrests Mehdi Hasan.” Screenshots of the Real Raw News headline, “JAG Arrests Mehdi Hasan” surfaced on X, and Facebook.
The Jan. 9 article falsely claims that the MSNBC host was arrested by the Navy’s Judge Advocate General’s Corps (JAG Corps), the body that provides legal services to the Navy and Marines soldiers and the Army, for his coverage of COVID-19 vaccines after Hasan announced on Jan. 7 that he was leaving the U.S. TV news channel MSNBC, where he presented his own show.
There is no such case involving Hasan logged in Navy-Marine Court filings, or in cases logged by the U.S. Court Martial Public Record System.
All this stuff is so crazy you wish it wouldn’t take up valuable news space. For example, I’d like to hear more about what’s happening in Ukraine. But wow, we need to know how crazy and how far off normal the Republican party has gone. We’re still facing a possible government shutdown because the Republicans in Congress prefer performance art to governing. We are facing yet another threat of a government shutdown, and possibly another tossed Speaker of the House. This is from Newsweek. “Mike Johnson’s Problems Are Getting Worse.”
Despite Mike Johnson passing a Congressional funding deal on Thursday, the House speaker is still facing political pressure from within his party.
On Thursday, the House of Representatives voted for a short-term funding extension to avoid a government shutdown. It is a temporary fix while Congress decides on details of a $1.66 trillion deal that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Johnson, a Louisiana Republican who became House speaker in October, agreed to earlier this month.
However, more Republicans voted against the bill than voted against a similar bill to avoid a government shutdown in November, with 106 opposing Thursday’s continuing resolution and 93 opposing the November deal, meaning 13 more Republicans were against it than last time.
The Republican Party’s obsession with ensuring the USA maintains a white ruling majority is not only impact how the budget bill goes in the US Congress but pops up all over red states in some truly awful ways. This is from The Guardian. “Outrage as Oklahoma Republican’s bill labels Hispanic people ‘terrorists’. Lawmaker JJ Humphrey seeks punishments for ‘acts of terrorism’ and defines terrorist as ‘any person who is of Hispanic descent’.” MAGA Republicans continue to enable blatant racists.
An Oklahoma lawmaker is facing backlash for proposing a discriminatory bill that deems people of Hispanic descent as “terrorists”.
The Republican state representative JJ Humphrey introduced the bill, HB 3133, which seeks to combat problems in the state, such as drug and human trafficking, and lay out punishments to those who have committed these “acts of terrorism”.
The punishment for such a crime would be forfeiting all assets, including any and all property, vehicles and money.
In addition to “a member of a criminal street gang” and someone who “has been convicted of a gang-related offense”, the bill defines a terrorist as “any person who is of Hispanic descent living within the state of Oklahoma”.
You would think someone who spends time in Oklahoma City would know precisely who the terrorists have been there.
I can’t imagine any of these hijinx will improve over the year. The New Hampshire Primary is on Tuesday. I can’t imagine it being anything to follow on the news. That doesn’t seem right for a country that claims to be a democracy. Elections used to be like Baseball games to me. Now, they’re more like being hit by a baseball bat.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Wintry Wednesday Reads
Posted: January 17, 2024 Filed under: Corrupt and Political SCOTUS, court rulings, Donald Trump, just because, SCOTUS | Tags: DC Circuit Court, defamation case, E Jean Carroll, Federal agencies, Jack Smith, Joseph W. Fischer v. United States, Judge Aileen Cannon, Loper Bright case, Neil Gorsuch, Supreme Court, Trump's Twitter feed 4 CommentsGood Day Sky Dancers!!
Winter Moonlit Scene by Hendricks Hallett ( American, 1847-1921)
We finally got some snow here in the Boston area. It snowed overnight on Monday and for most of the day yesterday. It’s also quite cold, but our weather can’t compare to the deep freeze that has hit the South. Dakinikat’s house was only 54 degrees indoors this morning!
There’s another storm moving across the Midwest and it will dump more snow in the East over the weekend. I talked to my sister in Portland, OR last night, and they are also getting below normal temperatures. She said there was an ice storm happening when I called her.
In the news, there’s quite a bit about Trump’s legal messes. This post will focus on those as well as some SCOTUS news.
Yesterday was the first day of the second E. Jean Carroll defamation trial. Trump chose to show up, even though he doesn’t need to be there. He’s in court again today; I have to assume he is there trying to intimidate Carroll. Here’s the latest:
CNN: Takeaways from first day of Trump’s defamation trial.
Donald Trump attended the first day of his civil defamation trial, watching as a jury was selected to determine how much, if any, damages the former president must pay to E. Jean Carroll for his 2019 defamatory statements about Carroll’s sexual assault allegations….
Trump watched as prospective jurors were asked about their political donations to him and his political opponents, whether they believed the 2020 election was stolen and how they got their news. He left court before opening statements to travel to New Hampshire for a campaign event Tuesday evening with the primary one week away.
Trump may return to New York later this week for the rest of the trial, and his lawyers have suggested he could testify in the case, though the judge has ruled that Trump cannot try to contest a previous jury’s verdict that he sexually abused and defamed Carroll….
Trump left court Tuesday before opening statements began, where Carroll’s lawyer Shawn Crowley told the jury that it had already been proven that Trump sexually assaulted Carroll in a high-end department store in the 1990s.
That jury’s finding stemmed from statements Trump made in 2022, while the current case is dealing with statements Trump made while he was president in 2019.
“Donald Trump sexually assaulted E. Jean Carroll. He managed to get her alone in an empty department store one evening and sexually assaulted her. That’s a fact,” Crowley said. “That fact has been proven and a jury sitting in the exact seats where you’re sitting now found that it happened.”
Crowley said that Trump’s attacks on her while he was president “unleashed his followers” and caused her to receive threats. “Trump was president when he made those statements, and he used the world’s biggest microphone to attack Ms. Carroll to humiliate her and to destroy her reputation,” Crowley said.
The damages awarded to Carroll “should be significant, very significant,” her lawyer argued.
“You will also be asked to decide how much money Donald Trump should have to pay as punishment for what he’s done and to deter him and others from doing it again,” Crowley said, noting Trump continued to post about her on social media, even as the trial got underway on Tuesday.
Read more at CNN.
David Kurtz in the TPM Morning Memo: Trump Is Playing With Absolute Fire In The Carroll Case. Is Trump About To Get Rudy’d?
Carroll II, the second trial of Donald Trump for defaming E. Jean Carroll by lying about his sexual assault of her, got underway in Manhattan yesterday, and it’s shaping up to be a colossal financial threat to the former president.
Having lost in Carroll I, where a jury concluded he had raped Carroll, Trump is barred from contesting the fact of the rape in Carroll II. The only question is how big are her damages for his defamation.
Spiders from Mars, Phyllis Shafer (American, b.1958)
While jury verdicts are notoriously difficult to predict, this case has the potential to do to Trump what a DC federal jury did to Rudy Giuliani in the defamation case brought against him by Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. The Giuliani jury reached a verdict against him of $148 million, including punitive damages.
Like Giuliani, Trump has been defiant throughout the two Carroll trials, constantly repeating the defamatory statements with impunity, and persisting in attacking the plaintiff even while trial was underway.
Trump was in court Tuesday as jury selection got underway, but his social media operation launched what was clearly a pre-planned full-scale attack on Carroll, including repeating the defamation. (It was perhaps not a coincidence that a key Trump lawyer resigned the night before.)
Trump is risking a substantial punitive damages award by continuing to attack his accuser. It does appear to be a calculated risk, not merely shooting from the hip inadvisably. And that should only fuel the arguments Carroll can make to the jury about how severely it should punish Trump for his misconduct.
In opening statements, Carroll’s lawyers seized on the morning’s developments to urge the jury to make Trump pay until it hurt enough to get him to stop defaming Carroll:
CNBC on today’s fireworks: Judge snaps at Trump lawyer during E. Jean Carroll defamation trial: ‘I said sit down!’
A New York federal judge snapped at a lawyer for Donald Trump on Wednesday after she again asked for a delay in his sex assault defamation trial so that the former president could attend his mother-in-law’s funeral.
“I said sit down!” Judge Lewis Kaplan told Trump’s lawyer Alina Habba.
Habba replied, “I don’t like to be spoken [to] like that … I will not speak to you like that.”
Kaplan shot back, “It is denied. Sit down.”
The judge several times has rejected Habba’s request for a delay in the civil trial in U.S. District Court in Manhattan so that Trump can attend the funeral of Melania Trump’s mother, Amalija Knavs, in Florida on Thursday without missing attending the trial that day.
The tense exchange, which Trump was in court to see, came shortly before the writer E. Jean Carroll was called to the witness stand to testify on the trial’s second day.
Sunset Lake Koocanusa, Patrick Markle, contemporary Canadian artist
From Twitter, NBC’s Kyle Griffin provided quotes from Carroll’s testimony:
“I’m here because I was assaulted by Donald Trump and when I wrote about it, he said it never happened. He lied. And he shattered my reputation.” [….]
E. Jean Carroll on the stand: “I’m 80 years old, so I spent 50 years building a reputation as a magazine and magazine journalist, both in articles and an advice column … People appreciated my articles because I stuck to the truth and used the facts.”
“Previously I was known simply as a journalist, and now I’m known as a liar, a fraud, and a whack job.”
“He has continued to lie. He lied last month. He lied on Sunday. He lied yesterday.” [….]
“To have the president of the United States, one of the most powerful persons on earth, call me a liar for three days and say it 26 times — I counted them. It ended the world I had been living in and I lived in a new world.” [….]
E. Jean Carroll says ever since she came forward with her claim of Trump sexually assaulting her, messages from people haven’t stopped — sometimes receiving hundreds per day. Carroll says the common themes are: accusing her of being a liar, hurting actual victims, and saying she’s ugly.
Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney at Politico on another Trump court case: Appeals court won’t revisit Twitter’s fight against Trump probe warrant. But conservative D.C. Circuit judges joined an opinion exalting executive privilege.
A federal appeals court won’t reconsider a ruling that allowed special counsel Jack Smith to access private communications from Donald Trump’s Twitter account.
But even as the court declined to revisit the issue on Tuesday, the court’s conservative judges united to scold their liberal colleagues and the lower-court judge who initially decided the case. Those prior rulings, the conservatives said, amounted to a significant, unjustified erosion of executive privilege.
“Judicial disregard of executive privilege undermines the Presidency, not just the former President being investigated in this case,” the judges wrote in an opinion authored by Trump appointee Neomi Rao.
All four Republican-appointed judges on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals extolled the virtues and importance of the president’s right to confidential communications and advice, even though they concluded that the underlying dispute over Smith’s access to Trump’s private Twitter messages was moot.
Ucluelet Sundown, Nicholas Bott (Dutch-Canadian, 1941-2021
Last February, as part of Smith’s investigation of Trump’s bid to subvert the 2020 election, prosecutors obtained a voluminous trove of Trump’s Twitter data after secret court proceedings. A district judge ordered the company, now known as X, to turn over the data without informing Trump, and a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit later upheld that decision.
That precedent, the D.C. Circuit’s Republican-appointed judges worried Tuesday, could lead federal and state prosecutors to invade a sitting president’s privileged materials — without advance notification — by simply accessing the materials via a third party like a social media or phone company.
The four conservatives ultimately agreed with seven Democratic-appointed judges on the court that the earlier decision of the three-judge panel — which upheld a $350,000 contempt fine against Twitter — should not be revisited by the full bench of the appeals court. Indeed, despite the lengthy exposition on the merits of executive privilege, no D.C. Circuit judge even called for a vote on rehearing the case by the full bench.
We can’t forget Aileen Cannon and her consistent efforts to help Trump in the stolen documents case.
This is from Dennis Aftergut and Lawrence Tribe at Slate: Judge Aileen Cannon Is Quietly Sabotaging the Trump Classified Documents Case.
On Friday, District Judge Aileen Cannon issued a new order in the Donald Trump classified documents case adding to the mountain of evidence that she is firmly in the former president’s pocket. Trump appointed Cannon in 2020 and the Senate confirmed her appointment in the days after he lost the 2020 election. It’s deeply offensive to the rule of law for judges to bend the law to benefit those who put them on the bench. Sadly, Cannon does just that.
Cannon’s new ruling rejected special counsel Jack Smith’s entirely standard request that she order Trump to state whether he intends to rely on an “advice of counsel” defense ahead of the trial, currently scheduled for May 20. Advance notice of the defense helps expedite a trial because defendants asserting it need to provide additional discovery to prosecutors—raising the defense means that defendants must disclose all communications with their attorneys, as the defense waives the attorney–client privilege.
Judge Cannon’s brief order asserted that Smith’s motion was “not amenable to proper consideration at this juncture, prior to at least partial resolution of pretrial motions” and further discovery.
Sound innocuous? It’s anything but. Instead, it’s part of a pattern we’ve already seen of Cannon laying the groundwork for delaying Trump’s trial—until it’s too late for a jury to be empaneled and the case tried to verdict before the election.
That is, of course, just what Trump has been angling for.
Back in November, Cannon issued an order slow-walking all pretrial motions in the case. As Politico reported, she “has postponed key pretrial deadlines, and she has added further slack into the schedule simply by taking her time to resolve some fairly straightforward matters.”
René Magritte, The Echo, 1944
As Brian Greer, a former Central Intelligence Agency attorney, told Politico, Cannon’s decision not to expedite pretrial motions “could be seen as a stealth attempt to delay the ultimate trial date without actually announcing that yet.”
New York University law professor Andrew Weissmann, the mild-mannered and knowledgeable former deputy to special counsel Robert S. Mueller, put it with uncharacteristic bluntness: “Judge Cannon’s bias is showing over and over again.” On Twitter he declared her to be “in the bag for Trump.”
By continuing to maintain the trial date while rendering the date virtually impossible to keep, Cannon evidently hopes to maintain plausible deniability from charges like Greer’s or Weissmann’s. At the same time, her pretense that the trial will commence on schedule prevents any attempt by Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis to seek to advance into May the scheduling of her prosecution of Trump for attempting to interfere with Georgia’s 2020 election.
And this is from Igor Derysh at Salon: “Completely out of bounds” Trump filing would delay docs case. Expert says expect a “harsh” response.
Former President Donald Trump’s legal team in a series of new filings on Tuesday signaled that they plan to argue that the intelligence community and the investigation into classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago was “politically motivated and biased.”
The lawyers in a filing to Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon accused special counsel Jack Smith of withholding records from Trump and flouting “basic discovery obligations,” according to The Messenger.
Trump attorneys Chris Kise and Todd Blanche alleged that Smith’s team is “seeking to avert its eyes from exculpatory, discoverable evidence in the hands of the senior officials at the White House, DOJ, and FBI who provided guidance and assistance as this lawless mission proceeded, and the agencies that supported the flawed investigation from its inception such as NARA, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (‘ODNI’), and other politically-charged components of the Intelligence Community.”
The filing requested reams of additional materials from Smith’s team, arguing that the “prosecution team” is larger than the FBI and DOJ.
“The prosecution team includes the Intelligence Community agencies and components that participated in the investigation, such as during classification reviews and damage assessments,” Trump’s lawyers wrote. “This includes the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the agencies identified in…the Indictment as ‘equity’ holders of some of the documents at issue: the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Department, the National Security Agency, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, the Department of Energy, and the Statement [sic] Department.”
Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance told MSNBC that the filing furthers the “fantastical narrative that Trump is the victim” of a politicized federal branch.
Vance said that while it may be “warranted” for Smith’s team to go back and talk to all of the FBI and DOJ personnel involved in the case, the other parts are “just completely out of bounds.”
“They want the special counsel to go and work with the entire intelligence community to turn over everything in the intelligence community’s possession that touches on anything to do with this,” said Vance. “So I think the safe thing to say is that we should wait for Jack Smith’s response, which will undoubtedly be pretty harsh, given what the defense is requesting here.”
Vance added that the filing also gives Judge Cannon, who has repeatedly delayed proceedings in the case, the “opportunity to delay things even further.”
At what point will it be time for DOJ to appeal to the 11th Circuit?
What’s happening in the Supreme Court? I’ll be brief:
The Supreme Court is about the hear a very scary case. Joyce Vance from Civil Discourse last night: Tomorrow at the Supreme Court.
Tomorrow, Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear argument in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, a pair of cases we’ve discussed in the past that could let conservatives achieve a long-term goal: Disassembling what they call the nanny state and what I think of as executive branch agencies that conduct the nation’s business day in and day out. The goal is to undo 40 years of administrative jurisprudence (so much for precedent!) and end the federal government’s ability to establish and administer rules that balance differing interests and make life better for all of us. Administrative agencies use their expertise to balance different interests and implement procedures on matters like health and safety concerns or consumer financial protection. Because that involves costs and limitations on businesses that can prevent them from being as profitable as they would like to be, some folks oppose leaving these decisions in the hands of career public servants. You will be able to listen to the oral argument here.
Sunset on Mugnone river, 1884, Ulvi Liège (Italian, 1859 – 1938)
Loper Bright is an effort to end or at least severely limit the reach of Chevron deference, a longstanding doctrine that determines when the courts are supposed to defer to an executive branch agency’s interpretation of a law. In 1984, the Supreme Court ruled that courts should defer to administrative agencies’ interpretation of laws when the statutory text is silent or ambiguous. That permits experts and career professionals to decide how to implement vague laws. This case is about whether the courts should substitute their judgment for those of experts on issues involving science, medicine, environmental protection, and so forth.
Conservatives have long sought to prevent federal agencies, like the EPA but also others, from regulating businesses. This case involves a sympathetic-looking small business, overwhelmed by an agency regulatory decision, to make the case that courts should be making the call, not “bureaucrats”. The cornerstone of these cases is the implication that the nanny state is making life impossible for the little guy.
The conservative group Alliance Defending Freedom described Loper Bright like this: “A National Marine Fisheries Service regulation requires that herring fishing boats allow an additional person on board their small boats to serve as a monitor, tracking compliance with federal regulations. The fishermen must also pay the monitor’s salary of around $700 per day. Overall, the regulation reduces fishing profits by about 20%. Loper Bright Enterprises, a fishing company in New England, and other fisheries sued to challenge this federal government rule, arguing that NMFS lacked statutory authority to force them to pay for these monitors.” Of course, this narrative ignores the importance of monitoring. And the point of the litigation isn’t really to provide relief for small businesses. It’s all about shifting decision-making about the regulation of big business out of the hands of agencies and into the courts, where conservatives believe they get a better reception. This has been the work of decades—ever since the Chevron case was decided.
Read more at Civil Discourse.
Neil Gorsuch is in the spotlight for this case. Three pieces to check out:
CNN: Neil Gorsuch has a grudge against federal agencies. He holds their fate in his hands.
The Guardian: Gorsuch urged to recuse himself from supreme court case over ties to oil baron.
The New Republic: Billionaire Poised to See Return on Investment in Neil Gorsuch.
Another Scotus case could affect Jack Smith’s prosecution of Trump.
As the Supreme Court gears up to decide if Donald Trump’s claims of immunity from prosecution are legitimate, another case in front of the court threatens to upend special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of him, Politico reported.
Incredible Winter Evening, by Paul Evans, 2023
The case, Joseph W. Fischer v. United States, has raised the issue of whether the Department of Justice has been improperly using a law originally aimed at curbing financial crimes to prosecute Jan. 6 defendant Joseph Fischer. As Politico points out, if the Court rules in Fischer’s favor, it would undermine Smith’s use of the law against Trump, as well as other Jan. 6 defendants.
Two of the four counts in Smith’s indictment are for obstruction of an official proceeding and for conspiracy to do so. According to Politico, those crimes “are part of a relatively recent criminal statute governing financial disclosures known as the Sarbanes-Oxley (or “SOX”) Act, which was enacted following the Enron corporate accounting scandal, and which makes it a crime to obstruct an official proceeding of the U.S. government.”
So far, the Justice Department has used the law to charge over 300 Jan. 6 defendants, and more than 150 have been convicted.
Fischer, as well as other defendants, argues that the “obstruction of an official proceeding” part of the law was only meant to apply narrowly to financial crimes — not the broad definition as relied on by the government.
“The impact of Fischer on the Jan. 6 trial against Trump might not be known until after the Supreme Court wraps up its term in June, at which point it could knock out half of Smith’s counts against Trump. And it could also disrupt the convictions of many Jan. 6 defendants already serving time for their role in the insurrection,” Politico’s report stated.
Read the full report over at Politico.
That’s it for me today. What stories have you been following?
Mostly Monday Reads: Of Caucuses and Kings
Posted: January 15, 2024 Filed under: just because | Tags: 2, 2024, 3, 4, 6, and Inclusion, Black American Women Folk Artists, Courting White Iowa Crazies, diversity, Equity, Faith Ringgold, Iowa Caucuses, Jr., Malcah Zeldis, Martin Luther King, We Shall Overcome 6 Comments
Happy Martin Luther King Day, Sky Dancers!
Time to celebrate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion! It’s also time to remember our history so we can work together to form a more perfect union for every one of our citizens and citizens-to-be. The paintings today are the work of two African American Women Artists. Faith Ringgold, 93 years old, paints with various materials. She’s an intersectionalist artist who is most known for her narrative quilts. Malcah Zeldis, 92 years old, is known for art that reflects biblical, historical, and autobiographical themes. Zeldis has painted themes that present Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King and his life and legacy. Both of these artists should be celebrated for their contributions to art and the lives it represents. Thanks to JJ, who sent me down this rabbit hole! Please spend some time with the links to their stories and art.
Today is also the Iowa Republican Caucuses. I find it odd they chose this day but probably felt that a holiday might increase turn-out. However, Mother Nature had a different idea. NBC reports this. “Highlights: Trump and Haley nabbed big endorsements in freezing Iowa. “The candidates braved record-low temperatures as they made their final pitches.” The Polar Vortex making its way here and will give us temps all day tomorrow in the 20s. Hence, I will be spending the afternoon wrapping pipes. Everyone farther north has the brutal cold.
I agree with this from Lakota Man on his threads feed. I’m not sharing his photos. I want it all to be about the images of these fabulous artists!
Ron DeSantis has banned Black authored books and African-American history from Florida schools. And Nikki Haley still won’t attribute the Civil War to slavery. So, any kind of MLK related statement they make today will be totally and completely full of shit and more Republican hypocrisy.
Trump is counting on the crazy vote. This is from Mike Wendling for the BBC. “Iowa caucus: Trump counts on evangelicals to carry him to victory.”
The video is bombastic, even by Mr Trump’s standards. Just consider the title: God Made Trump.
“God looked down on his planned paradise and said, ‘I need a caretaker,'” a voiceover intones over a minimalist piano track. “So God gave us Trump.”
The former president, according to the narrator, is carrying out the will of God. He’s “a shepherd to mankind” who will “fight the Marxists” with “arms strong enough to wrestle the deep state”.
The video is based on So God Made a Farmer, a 1978 speech by American radio host Paul Harvey which extols the virtues of simple rural American life.
Independently produced by a group calling itself “Trump’s Online War Machine”, the clip started to pick up steam a week ago when Mr Trump shared it with millions of followers on his Truth Social account. It immediately enraged some religious leaders here in Iowa.
“He’s not the saviour,” said Michael Demastus, pastor of the Fort Des Moines Church of Christ in the state capital. “Our allegiance as evangelicals is to Jesus, not to the Republican Party or to Donald Trump.”
But despite Mr Demastus’ insistence that many voters agree with him – and that a surprise is in store on Monday – opinion polls show a different story, with Mr Trump poised for a runaway victory over his Republican rivals.
Evangelical support is crucial here in Iowa, with born-again Christians expected to make up around two-thirds of all Republican caucusgoers.
They are a diverse voting bloc – made up of various denominations and including more traditional churchgoers along with others who may not even regularly go to a church, yet still define themselves as evangelical.
American People Series #4: The Civil Rights Triangle, 1963 ©Faith Ringgold
I first met these folks in 1980 when the Nebraska Chair of the Democratic Party sent me to try to stop the Republican Party’s foray into theocracy. I went to the County convention to save the platform from folks trying to remove support from the ERA and decimate Reproductive Health. Pat Robertson’s political campaign had ignited them. They had to be bussed in because they simultaneously showed up like some kind of cult army. They all carried the list of who and how they should vote on colored cards. The women were versions of each other. Hand-made pioneer=looking dresses of little floral prints, long dull hair, bowed heads and herded like sheep by men. I watched them later in 1992, screaming and yelling about ‘multicultural influences’ in the school curriculum. They never gave up, and here we are. They are angry, violent, and hateful. They are everything I always was taught that biblical Jesus was not.
This is from Politico. “Trump consolidates evangelical vote in Iowa. Kari Lake swooped into Bob Vander Plaats’ church on Sunday, a show of force — if not an outright troll — ahead of the caucuses.” Trump suits them to a tee.
Just as the Sunday morning service started here at Soteria church, a top Donald Trump surrogate and Arizona firebrand, Kari Lake, walked in.
To any political observer, it appeared to be an obvious troll. In a metro area rich with churches, Soteria has hosted several Republican presidential candidates in the past year. But the Baptist church, with its 1,300-member congregation, also has a well known parishioner: the Iowa social conservative leader Bob Vander Plaats, who endorsed Ron DeSantis and angered Trump and his allies in doing so.
Lake said she woke up on Sunday and just wanted to go to church.
But it was also a flex. For all the attempts by DeSantis and his evangelical allies to court the conservative Christian vote, Trump not only remains dominant with the group, but is relying on it to fuel his massive lead in Iowa ahead of the caucuses on Monday. A critical faction of the GOP that once blocked his ascendance here in 2016, evangelicals are now a primary reason he is so far ahead.
“Of course I’m caucusing for President Trump,” said Judy Billings, a loyal member of the congregation, clutching her Bible as she entered the foyer. “I just love the guy. I think he’s a total hero, and he has my full support … I think he’s the only one that can win and lead our country.”
Some Republicans are saying the quiet part out loud now that Donald has made being openly racist cool again.
Malcah Zeldis, Martin Luther King, 1995
Elizabeth Spiers has a great Op-Ed up in the New York Times. “What Nikki Haley — and I — Learned at a Segregation Academy.”
After her failure to identify slavery as the cause of the Civil War generated a wave of criticism last month, Nikki Haley assured her potential constituents that she had Black friends, and that she understood the war’s origins. Growing up in South Carolina, she said, “literally in second and third grade, you learn about slavery.” Conveniently producing Black friends is, alas, not surprising, but claiming she learned that the Civil War was a battle over slavery in second and third grade is.
Governor Haley attended a segregation academy, a type of private school established in the years after the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education by white parents who did not want their children attending school with Black children.
By 1975, the number of private schools in South Carolina grew more than tenfold, enrolling as many as 90 percent of the white children in some majority Black counties. The Supreme Court eventually ruled that discrimination on the basis of race wasn’t legal at private schools, either, but even today, many segregation academies remain overwhelmingly white.
Ms. Haley graduated in 1989 from Orangeburg Preparatory School. Orangeburg was the product of a merger between Wade Hampton and Willington Academy, also segregation academies, the former of which was named after one of the largest slaveholding families in South Carolina. At one point, graduates of Hampton received Confederate flag lapel pins, which were meant to symbolize resistance against integration. The year Ms. Haley graduated, her high school yearbook featured at most a handful of Black students.
I believe they refer to this as passing. No wonder Haley identifies as white on the census and other forms. While Haley haunts Iowa, our Vice President speaks at an NAACP conference in South Carolina. She also did this virtual speech.
Another black woman defending the rule of law in our country has taken the podium today.
Slave Rape #3: Fight to Save Your Life, 1972 © 2021 Faith Ringgold
Meanwhile, back in Iowa, John McCormack of The Dispatch reports this. “Courting the Kook Vote in Iowa, Vivek Draws the Ire of Trump. Ramaswamy is fourth in the polls, but top-of-mind for the former president.” I admit I’m giggling over these sparring bullies.
Vivek Ramaswamy was just going through his implausible plan for firing 75 percent of the federal workforce—“the first four agencies we’re going to shut down outright are the FBI, the ATF, the CDC, and the U.S. Department of Education”—when he was interrupted by a man in the crowd.
“What about the CIA, sir?” asked an Iowan named Nathen Trausch. “That’s where all the pedophiles are.”
“Well, CIA is a major problem, but they shouldn’t even exist outside of the military,” Ramaswamy replied. He tried to turn the conversation back to his plan to slash the federal government before Trausch interrupted him again.
“Department of Defense has 5,000 pedophiles in it that in 2019 got arrested by Trump,” Trausch said.
“Well, you know, they deserve to actually be held accountable,” Ramaswamy replied. He later promised Trausch that he would arrest even more child sex-traffickers than Trump did.
It was par for the course for Ramaswamy, who in recent weeks has made an aggressive play for the kook vote. At the December 6 GOP presidential primary debate—the last he qualified for—Ramaswamy emphasized that he was the only candidate on stage who would say that “January 6 now does look like it was an inside job.” He spent the last week campaigning with Candace Owens, a media personality who has made headlines in recent months for her anti-Israel and antisemitic rhetoric, and former Iowa congressman Steve King, who was stripped of his committee assignments and defeated in a GOP primary following his comments questioning whether white supremacy should be considered “offensive.”
What does Ramaswamy have to show for it? The final Des Moines Register poll conducted by the highly respected J. Ann Selzer found Ramaswamy ticking up a few points since December, from 5 percent to 8 percent, while Donald Trump ticked down a few points, from 51 percent to 48 percent.
Malcha Zeldis (NY/Israel 1933-) Peaceable Kingdom
Vivek, however, evidently can’t pass as white. This is from The Independent. “Voter tells Vivek Ramaswamy’s wife that some Iowans don’t support him because ‘they think he’s Muslim’. The presidential hopeful’s religion and skin colour are still factors that prospective voters are considering, locals told Apoorva Ramaswamy.” I also wonder about the current hatred of immigrants among Republicans impacting the few bits of diversity we find in its presidential candidates.
Some voters in Iowa are still hesitant to throw their support behind Vivek Ramaswamy because they “think he is Muslim”, according to supporters of the presidential hopeful.
Mr Ramaswamy’s religion and skin colour are still factors that prospective voters are considering, locals told his wife Apoorva Ramaswamy at a recent campaign event.
According to polling by FiveThirtyEight, Mr Ramaswamy lags far behind his three Republican rivals on both a national and state level – commanding just 6.6 per cent of the vote in the latter survey – ahead of the Iowa caucuses on Monday.
At a campaign meet-and-greet on Thursday, Ms Ramaswamy asked supporter Theresa Fowler “what do people say” about why they were not supporting her husband.
“Well, the only one I have and I couldn’t even remember who said it to me, but they mentioned his dark skin and they think he’s Muslim,” Ms Fowler said.
“I kind of set them straight on that. I don’t know if they believe me or think I was covering for him, I don’t know.”
Ms Ramaswamy replied: “Not much we can do about that one.”
No, there’s not much you can do about that one. It’s why we need to up the Voting Rights Act, which is something Republicans abhor. Why be a part of that? Why put your children through that? Why teach your children to be like that?
Have a wonderful day! Those Caucuses have coverage tonight, but I’ll be doing something else. I can’t imagine listening to the press interview any Iowa Republicans these days. It makes my stomach churn just thinking about it. Anyway, I’m off to load up on some hot steel oats and take on those pipes and faucets.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
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