Finally Friday Reads: White-Washing our Lives

Posted: December 8, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: just because, open thread | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 13 Comments

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

We’re heading to the end of the year as measured by the Romans and their Sun God, who stole that calendar from the Greeks and other things from the Egyptians.  The Egyptians were more interested in the Dog Star since it appeared in the east each solar year when the Nile flooded than the sun. Julius Caesar replaced the slightly confusing Greek Lunar Calendar with the Egyptian one in 45 BC.  The Romans stole a lot from the Greeks, too.  A later Pope, Gregory XIII, tried to correct the bugs in that one. However, we still have leap years and months with varying numbers of days. That’s why they constantly have to tinker with it. They’re forcing it to be what they want.

None of this is particularly relevant to the many folks who still follow the lunar calendar for important days. It shows you just how much conquerors can usurp everything meaningful to you as they rewrite your celebrations, history, and culture.  I have a meeting next week where everyone is supposed to share their holiday traditions with pictures and stories before we go on the obligatory week off, which really is not the best time of year to have a forced week off.  I always get to be the one who says there are no holidays in this month for me. But you can ask me on January 14th next year.

I just try to stay out of the way of all the money-centric activities during the month and the frenetic business that wears everyone out and causes many to be depressed. If you are one of those folks who experience depression this time of year, you are not alone, and do not hesitate to seek help.  Also, please remind any of your friends and family who struggle this month that you stand by them and are willing to help them.

Fig. 2. Virginian Luxuries. Courtesy of the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center, Williamsburg, Va.

There is a genuine effort to white-wash history in this country. Texas is a mainstay in these activities. This is from the Texas Monthly. “The Texas Historical Commission Removed Books on Slavery From Plantation Gift Shops. An agency spokesperson claimed that the move had nothing to do with politics. Internal emails show otherwise. ” There are many plantations here in Louisiana and many focus on the treatment of slaves in their presentations of history. It’s not pretty and it shouldn’t be, because it wasn’t.

After visiting the Varner-Hogg plantation an hour south of Houston, amateur historian Michelle Haas was incensed by what she had seen. At an exhibit that details the farm’s use as a sugar plantation worked by at least 66 slaves in the early nineteenth century, she’d watched an informational video. To her mind, it focused too much on slavery at the site and not enough on the Hogg family, which had turned its former home into a museum celebrating Texas history. She’d also seen books in the visitor center gift shop written by Carol Anderson and Ibram X. Kendi, two Black academic historians who have been outspoken on the issue of systemic racism. Outraged, she emailed David Gravelle, a board member of the Texas Historical Commission, the agency that oversees historical sites at the direction of leaders appointed by Governor Greg Abbott. “What a s—show is this video,” Haas wrote on September 2, 2022. “Add to that the fact that the activist staff member doing the buying for the gift shop thinks Ibram X. Kendi and White Rage have a place at a historic site.”

Over the next eight months, Haas continued to email Gravelle, advocating for such books to be removed. In turn, Gravelle, a marketing executive based in Dallas, took up the cause internally at the Historical Commission, calling on agency staff to do away with the titles Haas didn’t think belonged at the gift shops. By November of this year, it appeared Haas’s demands were met. The Texas Historical Commission no longer sells White Rage by Anderson or Stamped From the Beginning by Kendi, or 23 other works to which Haas later objected, at two former slave plantations in Brazoria County, including Varner-Hogg. Among the literature no longer available for purchase is an autobiography of a slave girl, a book of Texas slave narratives, the celebrated novel Roots by Alex Haley, and the National Book Award–winning Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison.

The Texas Historical Commission did not provide Texas Monthly with a list of titles no longer for sale. Chris Florance, a spokesperson for the agency, said many books were removed from the historical sites as part of an effort that he said was launched in March to reduce inventory as the agency transitions to a new point-of-sale software system. Emails acquired by Texas Monthly through an open-records request reveal, however, that Gravelle was concerned about the way those books presented Texas history and about potential attention from state lawmakers over what books were available for purchase. The emails also show that he had raised those concerns in February, before the agency decided to change its software system.

Texas Attorney General, and all around corrupt crook is going after the Ob/Gyn who will hopefully, still perform a necessary abortion approved by a Judge just days ago.  This letter was sent to Three Hospitals where the Doctor would likely perform the surgery.  AG Paxton has done nothing to protect the children of Texas from death by guns, but that is his response to procedure necessary to keep this woman healthy and alive. It his not his or the state’s business.  This is from The Guardian. “Texas attorney general says he will sue doctor who gives abortion to Kate Cox. Ken Paxton issues threat after judge ruled this week that Cox, a pregnant woman with a lethal fetal diagnosis, can get an abortion.”

The Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, has threatened to prosecute any doctor who provides an abortion to Kate Cox, a woman with a non-viable pregnancy, advising hospitals to ignore a court order issued on Thursday allowing her to get the procedure.

The rightwing Paxton issued the warning to three Houston-area hospitals after a Texas judge ruled this week that Cox, a pregnant woman with a lethal fetal diagnosis, may obtain an abortion under the narrow medical exceptions offered by the state bans.

In a brazen dismissal of the court’s decision, Paxton wrote that the judge’s order “will not insulate hospitals, doctors or anyone else from civil and criminal liability.”

Paxton also wrote that the hospital where Cox obtains an abortion “may be liable for negligent credentialing the physician” who performs the procedure.

The Center for Reproductive Rights filed a lawsuit on behalf of Cox after she learned last week that her fetus has trisomy 18, a fatal chromosomal condition, as well as other health issues, including a spinal abnormality. Continuing the pregnancy could threaten Cox’s life and future fertility. The 31-year-old mother of two has already rushed to the emergency room four times with severe cramping and fluid loss, but doctors have told her that their hands are tied by the state laws.

On Thursday, the Travis county judge, Maya Guerra Gamble, issued a temporary restraining order to permit Cox’s doctor to perform the abortion.

“The idea that Ms Cox wants desperately to be a parent and this law might actually cause her to lose that ability is shocking and would be a genuine miscarriage of justice,” the judge said, following an emergency hearing on Thursday.

Late Thursday night, the state appealed the judge’s ruling, in a motion asking the Texas supreme court to immediately block Gamble’s order.

In Paxton’s letter to the hospitals involved in Cox’s case, the attorney general wrote that Gamble was “not medically qualified to make this determination”.

“He is trying to bulldoze the legal system to make sure Kate and pregnant women like her continue to suffer,” said Marc Hearron, the senior counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights, in a statement. “Fearmongering has been Ken Paxton’s main tactic in enforcing these abortion bans. Rather than respect the judiciary, he is misrepresenting the court’s order.”

Cox’s case marks the first time a pregnant person has asked a court for an emergency abortion since Roe v Wade was decided in 1973.

Anti-Semitism and Anti-Muslim speech is a topic of a debate over freedom of speech in this country. It has been especially focused on the speech of students and professors at Universities.  Michelle Goldberg provides this Op-Ed for the New York Times. “At a Hearing on Israel, University Presidents Walked Into a Trap.”

On Wednesday, a dear friend emailed me a viral clip from the House hearing on campus antisemitism in which three elite university presidents refuse to say, under questioning by Representative Elise Stefanik, a New York Republican, that calling for the genocide of Jews violates school policies on bullying and harassment. “My God, have you seen this?” wrote my friend, a staunch liberal. “I can’t believe I find myself agreeing with Elise Stefanik on anything, but I do here.”

If I’d seen only that excerpt from the hearing, which has now led to denunciations of the college leaders by the White House and the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, among many others, I might have felt the same way. All three presidents — Claudine Gay of Harvard, Sally Kornbluth of M.I.T. and Elizabeth Magill of the University of Pennsylvania — acquitted themselves poorly, appearing morally obtuse and coldly legalistic. It was a moment that seemed to confirm many people’s worst fears about the tolerance for Jew hatred in academia.

But while it might seem hard to believe that there’s any context that could make the responses of the college presidents OK, watching the whole hearing at least makes them more understandable. In the questioning before the now infamous exchange, you can see the trap Stefanik laid.

“You understand that the use of the term ‘intifada’ in the context of the Israeli-Arab conflict is indeed a call for violent armed resistance against the state of Israel, including violence against civilians and the genocide of Jews. Are you aware of that?” she asked Gay.

Gay responded that such language was “abhorrent.” Stefanik then badgered her to admit that students chanting about intifada were calling for genocide, and asked angrily whether that was against Harvard’s code of conduct. “Will admissions offers be rescinded or any disciplinary action be taken against students or applicants who say, ‘From the river to the sea’ or ‘intifada,’ advocating for the murder of Jews?” Gay repeated that such “hateful, reckless, offensive speech is personally abhorrent to me,” but said action would be taken only “when speech crosses into conduct.”

So later in the hearing, when Stefanik again started questioning Gay, Kornbluth and Magill about whether it was permissible for students to call for the genocide of the Jews, she was referring, it seemed clear, to common pro-Palestinian rhetoric and trying to get the university presidents to commit to disciplining those who use it. Doing so would be an egregious violation of free speech. After all, even if you’re disgusted by slogans like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” their meaning is contested in a way that, say, “Gas the Jews” is not. Finding themselves in a no-win situation, the university presidents resorted to bloodless bureaucratic contortions, and walked into a public relations disaster.

The anguished and furious reaction of many Jews to that viral clip is understandable. Jewish people of many different political persuasions have been stunned by the rank antisemitism and contempt for Israeli lives that has exploded across campuses, where Jewish students have been threatened and, in some cases, assaulted. This week, when I wrote that the backlash to anti-Israel protests threatens free speech, I received many emails from people who felt I was refusing to grapple with an evident crisis. “You are worried about an overreaction when there hasn’t yet been a sufficient reaction to the antisemitism terrifying Jewish students on campus,” said one.

But it seems to me that it is precisely when people are legitimately scared and outraged that we’re most vulnerable to a repressive response leading to harmful unintended consequences. That’s a lesson of Sept. 11, but also of much of the last decade, when the policing of speech in academia escalated in ways that are now coming back to bite the left.

Amid the uproar over the campus antisemitism hearing, many have claimed that if Stefanik were asking about attacks on any other ethnic group, there would have been no waffling. But Stefanik did ask about another group. Her first question to Gay was, “A Harvard student calling for the mass murder of African Americans is not protected free speech at Harvard, correct?” Gay started to respond, “Our commitment to free speech,” but Stefanik, perhaps realizing she wasn’t going to get the answer she wanted, cut her off and changed tack.

Yet clearly, at many universities, the defense of free speech has been inconsistent. Some elite schools now cloaking themselves in the mantle of the First Amendment to ward off charges of coddling antisemites have, in the past, privileged community sensitivity over unbridled expression. So when university administrators say, as Gay did, “We embrace a commitment to free expression, even of views that are objectionable, offensive, hateful,” many in the Jewish community see a galling double standard.

But as the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a libertarian-leaning civil liberties group, said in a statement about the hearings, “Double standards are frustrating, but we should address them by demanding free speech be protected consistently — not by expanding the calls for censorship.” Unfortunately, that is not what’s happening.

“The general point that there’s a hypocrisy around free speech and an imbalance around free speech on college campuses is right,” said Ryan Enos, a Harvard professor of government. But, he said, many of the people pointing this out “are not doing it to stand up for free speech; they’re just doing it because they want to shut down speech they disagree with.”

This is from ABC News.  “Hospitals in southern Gaza are at ‘breaking point,’ international organizations say.  The WHO said patients are being forced to be treated on the floor.”

Hospitals in central and southern Gaza are at a “breaking point” and struggling to care for the influx of patients amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, Doctors Without Borders and the World Health Organization say.

Two hospitals — Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza and Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza — are overwhelmed and are being forced to prioritize those with life-threatening conditions, according to Doctors Without Borders, or Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), which has staff working at both medical centers.

“We hear bombing around us, day and night,” Katrien Claeys, an MSF team leader in Gaza, said in a press release Monday. “In the last 48 hours, over 100 dead and over 400 injured people arrived at the emergency room of Al-Aqsa Hospital. Some patients were taken for surgery right away.”

The fog of war is perhaps the worst place to get actual information on atrocities be it the brutal rapes and murders of Israeli women at a Music Festival or the bombing of young and elderly at a hospital.

The fog of the NRA is also difficult to traverse. We have a lot of festivals and holidays surrounding light this year; Diwali, Channukah, the birth of the light of the world, etc.  But it’s sure difficult to shine the light on so many thing things these days even with global internet and news.

This is from NBC News.  “Man federally charged after firing shots outside New York synagogue, officials say. The suspect was identified as Mufid Al Khader, 28, officials said.”

A man arrested in connection with shots that were fired outside a synagogue in Albany, New York, on Thursday has been federally charged, officials said.

Mufid Fawaz Alkhader was arrested and charged with possession of a firearm by a prohibited person, FBI spokesperson Sarah Ruane told NBC News.

Alkhader, 28, was born in Iraq and is now a U.S. citizen. He recently lived in Schenectady, New York, according to the criminal complaint.

No one was injured in the incident, in which two shots were fired from a Kel-Tec KS7 12 gauge pump shotgun outside Temple Israel around 2 p.m., Albany Police Chief Eric Hawkins said. Police don’t know in what direction the shots were fired, he said.

“We were told by responding officers that he made a comment, ‘Free Palestine,’” Hawkins said at a news conference.

The shooter fled but was confronted by another person in a vehicle in a lot, Hawkins said.

“The suspect at that point made some statement to this person who was in the vehicle to the effect of he feels that he’s being victimized,” Hawkins said.

The suspect then dropped the shotgun, and officers arrived and arrested him, said Hawkins, who emphasized that Al Khader acted alone and that there is no further threat to the community. There was also no damage to the building.

Hawkins said his understanding is that the suspect made the “Free Palestine” comment around the time he was taken into custody.

This is from The Daily Beast. “Bystanders Stop Woman Torching Martin Luther King Jr.’s Atlanta Birth Home.”

Off-duty police officers and tourists on Thursday helped to stop a woman setting fire to the house where Martin Luther King Jr. was born in Atlanta after she doused the property in gasoline, authorities said.

The 26-year-old woman was confronted by a pair of visitors from Utah as she poured fuel on the porch of the house, Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum said. Two off-duty New York City Police Department officers who had been visiting the home then pursued the suspect and detained her until local law enforcement arrived, Schierbaum added.

“That action saved an important part of American history tonight,” the police chief said.

One of the tourists from Utah, Zach Kempf, said he initially thought the woman was watering shrubs in front of the house. Kempf told The New York Times he and the co-worker with whom he was visiting the home then asked the woman “what she was doing” as she tried to open the screen door, but “she didn’t respond.”

It was then that she allegedly emptied a five-gallon container on the porch and retrieved a lighter she’d left in the grass next to the porch. Kempf said he blocked the woman with his body as she attempted to get back onto the porch while holding the lighter.

He told the Times the woman had a “nervous energy” but “wasn’t aggressive” and eventually backed down, turning around and walking off down the street. Kempf said he called 911 and “yelled at the two guys down the street that she was trying to set the house on fire and to follow her.”

Kempf said the men—the off-duty NYPD cops—restrained the woman. He added that later, after local officers arrived at the scene, the suspect’s father and three sisters showed up after tracking her location from her phone. Her family described the woman as a veteran who was in mental distress, according to Kempf.

The Atlanta Police Department said the woman was arrested for attempted arson as well as interference with government property. In a statement, the King Center said an “individual attempted to set fire to this historic property” but was fortunately unsuccessful “thanks to the brave intervention of good samaritans and the quick response of law enforcement.”

“If the witnesses hadn’t been here and interrupted what she was doing, it could have been a matter of seconds before the house was engulfed in flames,” Atlanta Fire Department Battalion Chief Jerry DeBerry told reports.

From a poster dated c.1913. Force Feeding suffragettes during a hunger strike in the UK.

The arsonist was a black woman.  No one knows right now why she decided to torch the home of the civil rights leader. One of our next National Holidays will celebrate the birth of Martin Luther King, Jr. I’d like to draw your attention to the speech he gave on December 11, 1964 as a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.  “The quest for peace and justice” Perhaps in a season celebrating so much light and experiencing so much darkness Dr King’s words are enlightening.

Every man lives in two realms, the internal and the external. The internal is that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals, and religion. The external is that complex of devices, techniques, mechanisms, and instrumentalities by means of which we live. Our problem today is that we have allowed the internal to become lost in the external. We have allowed the means by which we live to outdistance the ends for which we live. So much of modern life can be summarized in that arresting dictum of the poet Thoreau1: “Improved means to an unimproved end”. This is the serious predicament, the deep and haunting problem confronting modern man. If we are to survive today, our moral and spiritual “lag” must be eliminated. Enlarged material powers spell enlarged peril if there is not proportionate growth of the soul. When the “without” of man’s nature subjugates the “within”, dark storm clouds begin to form in the world.

This problem of spiritual and moral lag, which constitutes modern man’s chief dilemma, expresses itself in three larger problems which grow out of man’s ethical infantilism. Each of these problems, while appearing to be separate and isolated, is inextricably bound to the other. I refer to racial injustice, poverty, and war.

These words do not get as much play on his birthday as many of his other speeches and writings, but I think it’s worth reading the details he provides on his three categories.

It is also important to realize that the more we bury past actions, the more likely we will tolerate their repeat. The struggle for peace and justice continues.

Let me add a quote from Abigail Adams.  “Don’t forget the Ladies.”  Also, love is love.  People know who they are better than you. Embrace the LGBTQ+ community and their rights.

If you celebrate light this month, be the light you seek at all times.  You have several calendars to choose from to keep track of your path.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

[Verse 1]
Strikes across the frontier and strikes for higher wage
Planet lurches to the right as ideologies engage
Suddenly it’s repression, moratorium on rights
What did they think the politics of panic would invite?
Person in the street shrugs—”Security comes first”

[Refrain]
But the trouble with normal is it always gets worse
The trouble with normal is it always gets worse

[Verse 2]
Callous men in business costume speak computerese
Play pinball with the third world trying to keep it on its knees
Their single crop starvation plans put sugar in your tea
And the local third world’s kept on reservations you don’t see
“It’ll all go back to normal if we put our nation first”

[Refrain]
But the trouble with normal is it always gets worse
The trouble with normal is it always gets worse

[Verse 3]
Fashionable fascism dominates the scene
When the ends don’t meet it’s easier to justify the means
Tenants get the dregs and the landlords get the cream
As the grinding devolution of the democratic dream
Brings us men in gas masks dancing while the shells burst

[Refrain]
But the trouble with normal is it always gets worse
The trouble with normal is it always gets worse
The trouble with normal is it always gets worse
The trouble with normal is it always gets worse

Thursday Reads: I read the News today, Oh Boy

Posted: December 7, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Republican politics, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

John Buss @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Is it just me, or do all news outlets have headlines that seem more appropriate for tabloids lately?  I’m old enough to remember the late Fanne Fox, the stripper known as “the Argentine Firecracker” who brought down Representative Wilbur Mills in the 70s.  I also remember toe-tapping Larry Craig and his adventure in the Minneapolis Airport back in 2007.  Remember Mark Foley and the Senate Page Scandal in 2005?  Oh, and then there was my Congressman Bill Jefferson and his refrigerated money from Nigeria in his refrigerator. These scandals were shocking in their days but are quaint compared to what we’ve got going on today.

Most of these folks would just not run for re-election and check themselves into some place to be rehabbed for alcohol abuse. None of them even have the slightest bit of shame today.   HBO is already making a George Santos movie.  At least The Hill is calling him a ‘disgraced politician.’

HBO is reportedly set to produce a movie about Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.), who was just expelled from Congress after a damning ethics report.

Deadline reported on Monday that the network has optioned the rights to author Mark Chiusano’s new book on the disgraced politician.

Chiusano’s book, “The Fabulist: The Lying, Hustling, Grifting, Stealing, and Very American Legend of George Santos,” was published last week.

Former “Veep” and “Succession” producer Frank Rich and Mike Makowsky, writer-producer of HBO award-winning film “Bad Education,” will executive produce the Santos’ film project with Chiusano serving as a consulting producer, per Deadline.

The unnamed film, now under development, will focus on the meteoric rise of Santos, who won his state’s 3rd Congressional District in last November’s midterm elections. Santos became a national name after damning reports that he invented much of his biography, followed by criminal charges of financial fraud.

John Buss @repeat1968

I guess I wasn’t surprised that Santos was supported by Republican Leadership and most of the caucus during the vote to expel him.  Holding power was even more important to them than being hypocritical in their positions on their GLBTQ+ policies and hatred of Drag Queens.  However, we have had record-setting censures coming out of there, including this one for Rep. James Bowman of New York.  This is reported by NBC News. “House censures Rep. Jamaal Bowman for pulling fire alarm. Bowman admitted to activating the alarm in September as Republican lawmakers sought to vote on a government funding measure, but said it was a mistake he made while in a rush to open a door.”

The House voted Thursday to censure Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., for pulling a fire alarm in a congressional building while the chamber was in session in September to consider a vote to fund the government.

The 214 to 191 vote was largely along party lines, with Democratic Reps. Chris Pappas of New Hampshire, Jahana Hays of Connecticut and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington joining all other Republicans in voting yes.

Democratic Reps. Glenn Ivey of Maryland, Susan Wild and Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, Deborah Ross of North Carolina and Republican Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland voted present.

Rep. Lisa McClain, R-Mich., on Tuesday introduced the privileged resolution to censure Bowman, giving the House two legislative days to act on it. The House voted down a Democratic motion Wednesday to kill McClain’s resolution in a party-line vote of 201 to 216.

Bowman admitted to pulling the alarm in the Cannon House Office Building in September as Republican lawmakers sought to vote on the spending measure. He said in a statement after the incident that he accidentally activated the alarm after he came across a door that was typically open for votes, but would not open that day.

Bowman pleaded guilty in October to one count of falsely pulling a fire alarm. Under a deferred prosecution agreement, he was ordered to pay a $1,000 fine and write an apology to the U.S. Capitol Police chief, after which prosecutors would dismiss the charge pending no further violations of the law.

Oh!  The Humanity!

The retiring, short-lived Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy has achieved this headline today from the L.A. Times. “Kevin McCarthy uses PAC to lavish cash on high-end resorts, private jets and fine dining.” His inspiration must be Associate Justice Uncle Tom Clarence.

Rambling above the rust-colored cliffs of the Palos Verdes Peninsula, the Terranea Resort is known for its ocean views, world-ranked spa and villas that can command $3,000 a night or more.

The property is less well known as a gathering spot for federal elected officials and the campaign donors they wine and dine.

But one politician was very familiar with the luxurious resort: former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. In 2 ½ years, the Bakersfield Republican’s election committees dropped nearly a quarter of a million dollars at Terranea, with most of the money coming from a thinly regulated leadership PAC, a Times investigation has found.

As he exits Congress two months after his historic ouster as speaker, political obituaries tout McCarthy’s skills as a prolific fundraiser on behalf of Republican candidates. Also setting him apart from other congressional leaders was his roughly decade-long pattern of using his Majority Committee PAC to spend lavishly on hotels, private jets and fine dining establishments, according to a Times analysis of campaign finance records on file with the Federal Election Commission.

From 2012 through last June, McCarthy’s PAC shelled out more than $1 million on hotels, private air travel and eateries, the FEC records show. That’s more than double the combined total spent by the leadership PACs of the seven other lawmakers who’ve held the top House and Senate positions for their parties during all or part of that period, according to the Times analysis..

Now we get a pantomime impeachment while we’re too broke supposedly to back up Ukraine’s defenses against Russia. This is rumored to be a way to take the heat off of Orange Caligula and his incredible number of indictments.  This accompanies the Hunter Biden saga run by Gymbo Jordan. This is from The Hill.  “House GOP releases Biden impeachment inquiry resolution ahead of planned vote.”

The House GOP released a resolution Thursday to formalize its months-long impeachment inquiry into President Biden, with a full House vote planned for next week.

The resolution authorizing the inquiry — released months after former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) declared an impeachment inquiry to be underway in September — comes as a trio of committee leaders overseeing the probes enter a more combative phase of their investigation as they try to wrangle witnesses and documents.

It says the panels are “directed to continue their ongoing investigations as part of the House of Representatives inquiry into whether sufficient grounds exist for the House of Representatives to exercise its Constitutional power to impeach Joseph Biden.”

A markup of the resolution is scheduled for Tuesday.

Republicans hope that formally authorizing the inquiry will put more legal weight behind the probe and their ability to compel evidence, particularly if any of those battles end up in court.

While responding to subpoenas and interview requests in November, the White House had argued that the House GOP’s impeachment inquiry was unconstitutional because it had not been formalized with a vote of the whole House.

House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) told reporters this week that while the GOP disagreed with that assessment, the White House letter helped push the House GOP to formalize the inquiry.

Just a reminder here.  Jim Jordan is still in contempt of Congress for ignoring a congressional subpoena while asking for one for Hunter Biden.

The threat from House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chair James Comer  (R-Ky.) and House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) comes as the legal counsel for the president’s son, Abbe Lowell, has said that Biden is willing to sit for a public hearing but not for the private questioning.

“Contrary to the assertions in your letter, there is no ‘choice’ for Mr. Biden to make; the subpoenas compel him to appear for a deposition on December 13. If Mr. Biden does not appear for his deposition on December 13, 2023, the Committees will initiate contempt of Congress proceedings,” Comer and Jordan wrote to Lowell on Wednesday.

The letter represents an escalation of the battle between the House GOP and Biden as Comer and Jordan speed into the final stages of a multi-pronged impeachment inquiry probe into President Biden, which they aim to formalize with a vote next week.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (Md.), the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, took a swipe at the House GOP threat by referencing Jordan’s refusal to comply with a subpoena from the Jan. 6 Select Committee in the last Democratic-controlled Congress — another panel that Raskin sat on.

“Hunter Biden will answer questions under oath in front of the world—but unless he testifies in secret so he can be misquoted, @RepJamesComer will hold him in contempt? What a joke. Jim Jordan blew off HIS subpoena. Comer doesn’t want the truth—and can’t handle it,” Raskin said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Here’s another totally normal thing, right?

Charles Pierce shreds Johnson at Esquire. Constitutional separation of Church and State, anyone?

There is absolutely nothing crazy about this. No, sir. Perfectly normal behavior for a leader in a secular democratic republic. Completely grounded in sanity, especially coming from the guy a couple of offices short of being the president of the United States. I feel confident in saying this. From Right Wing Watch:

Johnson began his remarks by claiming that weeks before he became House Speaker, God began preparing him to lead the nation through “a Red Sea moment.” Johnson said he didn’t know what that meant at the time, but assumed it meant that he was to serve as an Aaron to someone else’s Moses. But, it turned out, God intended for him to be that Moses. “The Lord impressed upon my heart a few weeks before this happened that something was going to occur,” Johnson said. “And the Lord very specifically told me in my prayers to prepare, but to wait.”

“I had this sense that we were going to come to a Red Sea moment in our Republican conference and in the county at large,” he continued. “[God] had been speaking to me about this, and the Lord told me very clearly to prepare and be ready.” Johnson said that once Rep. Kevin McCarthy was removed as Speaker of the House, God began to wake him up in the middle of the night “to speak to me, [telling me] to write things down; plans, procedures, and ideas on how we could pull the [Republican] conference together.”

“At the time, I assumed the Lord was going to choose a new Moses and thank you, Lord, you’re going to allow me to be Aaron to Moses,” Johnson declared. As one candidate after another stepped forward to run for Speaker but failed, Johnson said that “the Lord kept telling me to wait” but “then at the end, when it toward the end, the Lord said, ‘Now, step forward. Me? I’m supposed to be Aaron,” Johnson said. “No. The Lord said, ‘Step forward.’”

The Speaker of the House of Representatives believes he was in contact with the Eternal, who has taken what I consider an unhealthy interest in the doings of the Republican majority. I mean, what could the Almighty have against Kevin McCarthy? The Lord told Mike Johnson to be…Moses? Does that mean that the Republicans now will wander 40 years in the wilderness? (We can only hope.) Does that mean that, one day, Johnson will strike Matt Gaetz on the head and water will spring forth? What’s manna going for in the House cafeteria these days?

Mike needs to check himself into a mental hospital if he’s really hearing voices.  And resign.  If he really wants to be old-fashioned, he’d do that. But, back to Gymbo.

That’s some real overreach.  This is from CNN.  The thing that makes it even more outrageous is that these folks act like the country has cash to burn when they want to put on a performance for Dumpf. “House Judiciary Committee launches inquiry into Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.”

The Republican-led House Judiciary Committee has opened a congressional investigation into Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, a development that was first reported by CNN and comes the same day Trump is slated to surrender at the county jail after being charged for participating in schemes to meddle with Georgia’s 2020 election results.

The committee sent a letter to Willis on Thursday asking whether she communicated or coordinated with the Justice Department, who has indicted Trump twice on two separate cases, or used federal dollars to complete her investigation that culminated in the fourth indictment of Trump. The questions from Republicans about whether Willis used federal funding in her state-level investigation mirrors the same line of inquiry that Republicans used to probe Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who indicted Trump in New York earlier this year for falsifying business records to cover up an alleged hush money scheme.

In the letter to Willis, House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican, laid out why he believes his panel has jurisdiction over the state-level probe and accused Willis of being politically motivated, noting she set up a new campaign fundraising website days before the indictment came down and complained that she required mugshots for those charged – including Trump – which had not been the practice in his previous three indictments.

“You did not bring charges until two-and-a-half years later, at a time when the campaign for the Republican presidential nomination is in full swing,” Jordan wrote. “Moreover, you have requested that the trial in this matter begin on March 4, 2024, the day before Super Tuesday and eight days before the Georgia presidential primary.”

Jordan gave Willis a September 7 deadline to hand over any documents or communication related to their request.

The Fulton County DA’s office declined to comment. But Willis has previously denied that she coordinated with Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office and has consistently defended her investigation against accusations that it was politically motivated.

Here’s another reminder of Gymbo’s moral turpitude from The Guardian back in October.  “Ex-Ohio State wrestlers say Jim Jordan unfit for speakership for ignoring sexual abuse scandal.  Former athletes say Jordan, as assistant coach, ignored sexual abuse at university and ‘does not deserve to be House speaker’.”  Shouldn’t he resign and go into rehab?

Let’s not leave DeSantis off the crazy train list. This is from NBC. “At the GOP debate, Ron DeSantis calls Middle Eastern garb ‘man dresses’.”  What does it take to get rid of all this prejudice against Jewish and Muslim adherent? I really don’t want to go into the debate but the entire thing was a crazy train.

During the fourth Republican presidential primary debate on Wednesday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, citing his time serving in the Middle East, referred to the clothing worn by Al Qaeda as “man dresses.”

DeSantis was answering a question at the debate, hosted by NewsNation, about his past remarks that he’d authorize shooting drug smugglers coming across the southern border.

“When I was in Iraq, the Al Qaeda wasn’t wearing a uniform. You’d see anyone walking down the street, they all had man dresses on. You didn’t know if they had a bomb, an IED, attached or not,” DeSantis said.

It wasn’t the first time DeSantis has used the term “man dresses” in an apparent reference to a thobe. He has used the term on the stump, including in Iowa and South Carolina.

The Florida governor has come under fire in the past for his comments about Muslims.

Let me end with signs of sanity coming from the Judicial Branch.

This is written by Hugo Lowell for  The Guardian. “Georgia prosecutors predict jail sentences in Trump 2020 election case.”

Exclusive: Fulton county prosecutors say in emails their legal careers will continue long after defendants go to jail

Fulton county prosecutors have signaled they want prison sentences in the Georgia criminal case against Donald Trump and his top allies for allegedly violating the racketeering statute as part of efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, according to exchanges in private emails.

“We have a long road ahead,” the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, wrote in one email last month. “Long after these folks are in jail, we will still be practicing law.”

The previously unreported emails, between Willis and defense lawyers, open a window on to the endgame envisioned by prosecutors on her team – which could inform legal strategies ahead of a potential trial next year, such as approaches toward plea deal negotiations.

Prosecutors are not presently expected to offer plea agreements to Trump, his former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and his former election lawyer Rudy Giuliani, but left open the possibility of talks with other co-defendants, the Guardian previously reported.

This is from Daniella Silva at NBC News. “Texas judge grants pregnant woman’s request to get an abortion. A Dallas-area mother found out that her fetus has trisomy 18, a genetic condition that can cause stillbirth or death of a newborn. The court order allows her to end the pregnancy.” This hit home hard with me having lived through a high risk pregnancy along with my youngest daughter’s experience in October.  Can you imagine the added trauma of asking a judge for urgent healthcare?

A Texas judge on Thursday granted an emergency order allowing a pregnant woman whose fetus has a fatal diagnosis to get an abortion in the state.

Late last month, Kate Cox, a 31-year-old Dallas-area mother of two who is about 20 weeks pregnant, found out that her developing fetus has trisomy 18, a rare chromosomal disorder likely to cause stillbirth or the death of the baby shortly after it’s born.

Texas law prohibits almost all abortions with very limited exceptions. So on behalf of Cox, her husband and her doctor, lawyers with the Center for Reproductive Rights filed a request for a temporary restraining order that would block the state’s abortion bans in Cox’s case and enable her to terminate her pregnancy.

Joyce Vance had this insight in her SubStack Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance. “What Jack Smith Says  —  The Special Counsel files his 404(b) notice.”

Jack Smith has filed his 404(b) notice, advising the Court and Trump of other crimes and bad acts committed by Trump that he intends to offer as evidence when the D.C. election interference case goes to trial. The notice is nine pages long, you can read the whole thing here. It contains a tremendous amount of new information about the case Smith intends to make against Trump. This is the best window we’ve had in on his strategy since the four count indictment was unsealed in August.

Smith starts about by advising the court that he intends to provide it with “extensive advance notice” of the evidence he’s going to introduce at trial in pleadings, including exhibit and witness lists, pre-trial motions, and his trial brief (a detailed layout prosecutors file in advance of trial discussing their evidence and issues they believe might come up during the trial). This is good news for all of us—it means we’ll have access to much if not all of this information as well.

You’ll recall that in “The Week Ahead” we took a look at Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b), which required Smith to file this notice. This rule tells prosecutors they can’t offer evidence that a defendant committed bad acts or crimes beyond what’s charged in the indictment to try and show that the defendant has a propensity to commit crimes, that he’s a bad guy. But the rule permits prosecutors to use the evidence for other purposes. Jack Smith tells the court that all of the evidence he’s going to introduce at trial is “intrinsic to the charged crimes”—in other words, admissible without the need to resort to Rule 404(b) because it’s part of the conduct Trump is charged with in the indictment. But, hedging his bets, Smith advises the court that in the alternative, any evidence the court might deem “extrinsic” is still admissible under 404(b) to prove “motive, intent, preparation, knowledge, absence of mistake, and common plan.”

This is important. As much as getting the case to trial and getting a conviction matters in the first instance, making sure that conviction gets affirmed on appeal is paramount in the larger scheme of things. So prosecutors like to have multiple independent arguments to justify a ruling by the appellate court that what happened at trial was proper.

Smith sets that up here, and the judge, who has broad discretion to determine what evidence is admissible at trial, will put on the record whether she is admitting evidence as intrinsic, extrinsic under 404(b), or as Smith suggests, admissible as both. Good judges make a clear record for the court of appeals to consider, and Chutkan has shown she is very good at doing this, most recently as she ruled against Trump on his presidential immunity motion.

So, that’s enough for today.  My posts keep getting longer and longer!

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

 

 

Mostly Monday Reads: Election Daze Edition

Posted: December 4, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , , , | 4 Comments

Good afternoon, Sky Dancers!

The Iowa Caucuses are on January 15th.  The New Hampshire primaries are scheduled for January 23rd. Get ready for the cray-cray. Abortion Rights and Trump’s campaign are in the headlines today. As the Boys from South Park say, “I call shenanigans!”

 The election in Kentucky has brought a young woman to the front of the abortion debate. This is a Washington Postarticle about her and how she will join the national conversation on a civil right that is very personal and essential for her. “‘Everybody’s daughter’: The rape victim behind Kentucky’s viral abortion ad. Hadley Duvall helped Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear win reelection — and she’s ready to campaign again in 2024.” The feature article was written by Caroline Kitchener.

One month before the governor thanked her for his victory, Hadley Duvall had already won.

Standing in the middle of a football field in mid-October, she looked out at the students of her small Christian university, stunned to be the one wearing the rhinestone tiara. Her classmates could have chosen to honor the student body president ora leading member of the local Bible study. Instead, they’d picked Hadley, the face of a viral ad about abortion and sexual abuse that had begun airing a month earlier, and would soon help Democrats hold the governor’s mansion in one of the most conservative states in the country.

“They don’t hate me,” Duvall,21, recalled thinking as she accepted a bouquet of red roses from her college president. “They made me homecoming queen.”

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear’s reelection campaign learned aboutDuvall because of a Facebook post about her experience she had written on June 25, 2022, the day after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The ruling triggered a near-total abortion ban in Kentucky, one of 12 states with a recently enactedban that makes no exceptions for rape or incest. Days after she heard from Beshear’s team, Duvall was sitting in the dining room of a wealthy Beshear supporter she didn’t know, staring into a video camera. She aimed her words directly atthe Republican candidate for governor, who for months had thrown his full support behind the current version of Kentucky’s law before conceding late in the campaign that he was open toadditional exceptions.

“This is to you, Daniel Cameron,” Duvall said in the ad, her blue eyes narrowed in anger.

“To tell a 12-year-old girl she must have the baby of her stepfather who raped her is unthinkable. I’m speaking out because women and girls need to have options. Daniel Cameron would give us none.”

She tells the story of the abuse in detail.  So, I have to issue another Content Warning today.  It’s about the details of a 12-year-old girl being repeatedly raped by her stepfather.

Republican Campaign Strategist Liz Mair wrote this Op-Ed in today’s New York Times. Mair has a list of clients that are basically in the deplorable basket.  “Republicans Are Finding Out That ‘Pro-Life’ Means a Lot of Things to a Lot of People.”

Well, D’oh.  Again, we see the Republican obsession with late-term “abortions,” which are usually the result of something gone horribly wrong, incredibly rare, and the OB/GYN profession considered to be deliveries with bad outcomes.  Again, they’re not even considered abortions after the point of fetal viability, where babies will be saved if possible.  The overwhelming majority are wanted pregnancies and devasting to the women and families involved.

Many conservatives may call themselves pro-life, but in practice, that may be a more aspirational statement than an accurate reflection of hard policy views. Perhaps by figuring out what it now means to be pro-life — and recognizing that pro-life policy is easiest to sell only when it amounts to a ban on abortions later in pregnancy — Republicans can come up with a new approach to the politics of the issue.

Before Roe was overturned, the term “pro-life” covered a lot of ground — which was useful over decades in galvanizing a broad coalition willing to use abortion as a political cudgel. As Republicans are finding out today, “pro-life” means many things to many people.

Reading how these people think about something so complex and personal is not anything I like to do, but it’s necessary.  There are a lot of states trying to get abortion rights on their ballots, and Republicans are pulling shenanigans to try to keep the initiatives away from voters.  We have to hear what the deplorable are doing so we can fight them at the ballot box. I put a Rolling Stone article up about South Dakota yesterday.  Today, I feature this PBS News Hour report from last August.  Given what I read about South Dakota, I can’t help but believe that deplorables in states like Ohio haven’t shared their tactics.

Across the country, Republican officials and activists who oppose abortion access have worked to make it harder to pass citizen-led ballot measures and added roadblocks to the process of getting abortion directly on the ballot  These attempts to stop voters from weighing in directly on abortion aren’t new, but advocates say the current anti-ballot-measure efforts are taking on a renewed pace and ferocity. As voters even in conservative states have chosen to back abortion rights, GOP legislators and officials have been willing to fundamentally change the rules of democracy.

“We’ve been seeing an acceleration of these attacks on ballot measure processes more every year for the past several years,” said Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project, which works to pass progressive ballot measures. “And the success that abortion rights advocates have had at the ballot box in 2022 is putting fuel on that already burning fire of red state legislatures wanting to exclude their voters from direct democracy.”

Comer engaging with his constituents. John Buss, @repeat1968

These types of initiatives are definitely part of a democratic republic that Republicans would prefer to disappear in a Trump autocracy.  So, how is the Republican plan to overthrow a constitutional democracy going? Well, look at the Trump Campaign.   This is from Politico. “Trump’s revenge? GOP braces for daily blasts from ‘orange Jesus.’ His reascension, as nominee or the eventual winner, threatens to spark the same clashes with the Hill GOP that took a heavy toll on the party.”

Congressional Republicans are steeling themselves for a return to daily life with Donald Trump — which means constant, uncomfortable questions about his erratic policy whims and political attacks.

With Trump far ahead of the GOP primary pack and leading President Joe Biden in some polls, Republicans are getting a preview of future shellshock akin to their experiences in 2016 and his presidency. It’s likely to continue for the next 11 months. And perhaps four more years after that.

Trump’s recent call to replace the Affordable Care Act is triggering a particularly unwelcome sense of deja vu within the GOP. Even as many Senate Republicans steered away from Trump over the past couple years, now they’re increasingly resigned to another general election that could inundate them with the former president’s often fact-averse and hyperbolic statements.

But Hill Republicans are girding to treat Trump the third-time nominee the same way they did Trump the neophyte candidate and then president. They’re distancing themselves and downplaying his remarks, which touch on policy stresses like his urge to end Obamacare and political grievances like his vow to come down “hard” on MSNBC for its unfavorable coverage.

“He is almost a stream of consciousness,” said Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), one of only three Senate Republicans who will remain in office after voting to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial — the other four have either already left or plan to next year. It’s “analogous to when every day he would tweet,” Cassidy added, “and 99 percent of the time it never came to anything.”

The article continues to highlight how many Trump critics are leaving their office voluntarily this year rather than face Trump and his army of congressional deplorables.  This New York Times article outlines his radical ideas for this election cycle.  The byline includes Maggie Haberman, FYI.  “Why a Second Trump Presidency May Be More Radical Than His First. Donald Trump has long exhibited authoritarian impulses, but his policy operation is now more sophisticated, and the buffers to check him are weaker.”

Mr. Trump’s violent and authoritarian rhetoric on the 2024 campaign trail has attracted growing alarm and comparisons to historical fascist dictators and contemporary populist strongmen. In recent weeks, he has dehumanized his adversaries as “vermin” who must be “rooted out,” declared that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” encouraged the shooting of shoplifters and suggested that the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, deserved to be executed for treason.

As he runs for president again facing four criminal prosecutions, Mr. Trump may seem more angry, desperate and dangerous to American-style democracy than in his first term. But the throughline that emerges is far more long-running: He has glorified political violence and spoken admiringly of autocrats for decades.

As a presidential candidate in July 2016, he praised the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein as having been “so good” at killing terrorists. Months after being inaugurated, he told the strongman leader of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, that his brutal campaign of thousands of extrajudicial killings in the name of fighting drugs was “an unbelievable job.” And throughout his four years in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump blew through boundaries and violated democratic norms.

What would be different in a second Trump administration is not so much his character as his surroundings. Forces that somewhat contained his autocratic tendencies in his first term — staff members who saw their job as sometimes restraining him, a few congressional Republicans episodically willing to criticize or oppose him, a partisan balance on the Supreme Court that occasionally ruled against him — would all be weaker.

As a result, Mr. Trump’s and his advisers’ more extreme policy plans and ideas for a second term would have a greater prospect of becoming reality.

This article written by Philip Bump in the Washington Post also addresses Trump’s campaign style. “How Donald Trump uses dishonesty.”  He might as well say the quiet part out loud.

Trump spent years trying to get people to buy gold-plated condominiums, apartments gilded with veneers of luxury and class. He spent years trying to get lots of people to buy lots of things, really, with allegations of fraud lingering around him and his company for much of that time. But he was never more successful in parlaying dishonesty into investment than since he embraced a career in national politics in 2015.

His approach that year was groundbreaking for a deceptively simple reason. Republican voters, frustrated by Barack Obama’s election and reelection, had increasingly embraced misinformation about national political issues. The Republican establishment, including elected officials, didn’t know how to deal with this. At first, they tried to co-opt the energy, reframing their desired policy preferences in the vernacular common with the tea party or fringe-right media outlets. But there was still a gap between what those outlets and right-wing commentators were endorsing and what established politicians would say.

Trump closed the gap. He said the things about immigrants that were common on the fringe-right, despite being exaggerated or false. He said the things about the left that those commentators, uncoupled from the party, were claiming on Fox News and in blogs. There was a backlash, including from the GOP establishment, that helped increase the audience for his claims. Republicans — especially the hard-right Republicans who were more likely to vote in primaries — heard him and viewed him not as a dishonest, opportunistic demagogue but as a solitary truth-telling pariah. That everyone in a position to know pointed out that Trump was wrong or lying reinforced his political branding: He was the guy challenging the elite hegemony. “Birds aren’t real,” but for an older generation.

This has been Trump’s sales approach ever since. You can see it in the rhetoric he deployed over the weekend at campaign events in Iowa, reiterating false, debunked claims about election fraud and attempting to reframe President Biden as a threat to democracy. But those are the endpoints of his approach, not the mechanism itself.

Consider this bit of rhetoric Trump offered in support of the idea that it is Biden, not him, who undermines America’s systems and history.

“You know that they’ve labeled parents at school board meetings as domestic terrorists. I mean, can you believe it?” he said in Cedar Rapids. “But they have. You know, when I first heard that — they have actually gone after parents viciously and violently, and when I first heard it, I thought people were just making it up. They haven’t made it up. You’ve seen that.”

They did make it up. This idea that the Biden administration had called parents “domestic terrorists” has been debunked repeatedly. But — because it’s so compelling a reason to despise Biden and because the debunkings don’t permeate right-wing media — the idea has become embedded in anti-Biden lore. He’s right about one thing, though: His supporters have seen that claim, on Fox News and in right-wing commentary for years. It’s false, but they’ve seen it, and here’s Trump glomming onto the idea so that he can put it to higher use: disparaging Biden and his administration as the threat to democracy.

That’s how it works, over and over. He gets buy-in on a familiar claim and then pivots it to his advantage, either by depicting himself in opposition to shared enemies or by leveraging the credibility he earns to make other false statements. Right after this riff, for example, he started talking about how his opponents purportedly cheat in elections. Graham Kates of CBS News reports that “Trump seeks “urgent review” of gag order ruling in New York civil fraud case.”  Not even a court can shut this idiot up while he destroys others’ lives.

Former President Donald Trump intends to appeal a ruling that upheld a gag order in his civil fraud trial in New York, with his attorneys saying Monday that they plan to ask the state’s highest court to review the decision.

New York Judge Arthur Engoron issued the order barring Trump from commenting publicly about his staff after the former president published a social media post disparaging Engoron’s clerk on Oct. 3, the second day of the trial. The order was later expanded to apply to attorneys in the case.

The judge found that Trump and his campaign violated the gag order twice, and Trump paid $15,000 in fines, before the appeals court temporarily stayed the order on Nov. 16. That hiatus lasted two weeks, while a panel of judges in the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court considered, and then rejected, Trump’s request to have the gag order lifted.

Trump is now seeking an “urgent review” by New York’s highest court, called the Court of Appeals, his attorneys said in a filing. Trump has accused Engoron and the clerk, Allison Greenfield, of bias in his filings.

“Without expedited review, [the defendants] will continue to suffer irreparable injury daily, as they are silenced on matters implicating the appearance of bias and impropriety on the bench during a trial of immense stakes,” Trump attorney Clifford Robert wrote. “Petitioners’ counsel have no means of preserving evidence of or arguments regarding such bias and impropriety at this time, since the Gag Orders also prohibit in-court statements.”

I’m unsure how to endure all this since we must deal with it head-on. I suppose ranting here, going to my local to drink a glass of wine and rant, plus just plain ranting to the dog and cats, will suffice for now. I’m not quite too old to also rant at my elected officials, even though there’s not much they do about anything.

We will also get this mess that Republicans have cooked up to get us to ignore Orange Caligula’s rants. Here’s more of those Crazy Train Republicans as reported by Newsweek. “Joe Biden Impeachment Looks More Likely After Walmart Confrontations: Comer.  Who had Walmart Confrontations on their Election Bingo cards?  Anyone?

Representative James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, said on Sunday that an impeachment of President Joe Biden looks more likely after House Republicans heard from their constituents at Walmart over the Thanksgiving holiday.

The GOP has been investigating Biden over allegations that he intervened and benefited from his son Hunter Biden‘s business dealings with China and Ukraine while he was vice president under former President Barack Obama, including accusations of taking bribes. The allegations have been denied by the White House and Hunter Biden’s lawyers, with Democrats criticizing the GOP’s impeachment inquiries for failing to find any meaningful evidence against the president.

Once the impeachment inquiry is complete, the Judiciary Committee will decide on whether to draw up any draft impeachment articles against Biden to be voted on by the House. Comer has said that a vote could take place by early 2024.

Better let MGT do it, or she will come after you with a machete and whack of little Jim. You remember what she did to Boerbert.

We have a few more weeks before we can actually see voter sentiment instead of reading misleading polls.  Hang in here with us!

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

You’ve got covert action
Prejudice to extremes
You’ve got primitive cunning
And high tech means
You’ve got eyes everywhere
But people see through you

 
You’ve got good manipulators
Got your store of dupes
You’ve got the idiot clamour
Of your lobby groups
You like to play on fears
But people see through you

 
You’ve got instant communication
Instant data tabulation
You got the forces of occupation
But you don’t get capitulation

 
‘Cause people see through you
People see through you
People see through you
People see through you

By Bruce Cockburn

Sunday Reads: The Republican Attack on democracy and the Constitution

Posted: December 3, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Republicans against democracy | Tags: , , , , , , | 12 Comments

Happy Sunday, Sky Dancers!

The Krampus parade rolled last night in my hood. I have a long list of those I’d like them to put in their baskets and carry off. Most of them will show up in this post of infamy today. I can’t even remember when I did a Sunday post, but here it is!

Enjoy the Krampus pix and think about which of my neighborhood Krampus I should send off to the Beltway. The guy with the red eyes is headed for Mar-a-Lago. The Former Guy’s speeches are getting truly horrifying and more demented than ever.

This is from the Washington Post. “Trump attempts to spin anti-democracy, authoritarian criticism against Biden. The former president declared his 2024 campaign as a ‘righteous crusade’ against ‘tyrants and villains.'” He gave his speech in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. His projection is prominent. If he blames someone else for doing it, it’s because he’s done it multiple times already.

Republican polling leader Donald Trump moved to deflect from criminal charges that he tried to overturn the 2020 election and from his own pledges to take revenge on his opponents if he returns to the White House, seeking to parry warnings that he presents a danger to democracy.

His speech on Saturdaywas an effort to turn the tables on rising alarms from Democrats and some Republicans that Trump’s return to power would imperil free elections and civil liberties. As candidates ramp up appearances in Iowa ahead of the caucuses on Jan. 15, the former president, who refused to accept his 2020 election loss and inspired his supporters to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power, responded by comparing President Biden to a fascist tyrant, and the campaign distributed signs reading ‘BIDEN ATTACKS DEMOCRACY.’

“Biden and his radical left allies like to pose as defenders of democracy,” Trump told a raucous crowd of a couple thousand supporters here. “But Joe Biden is not the defender of American democracy. Joe Biden is the destroyer of American democracy. … This campaign is a righteous crusade to liberate our republic from Biden and the criminals and the Biden administration.”

The speech showed that Biden’s framing of the 2024 election as democracy versus authoritarianism is resonating with voters, according to Jennifer Mercieca, a historian of American political rhetoric at Texas A&M University. Trump’s strategy to “accuse the accuser” could confuse voters about the real threat and help reassure his own supporters, she said.

“Trump’s Iowa speech continues his use of fascist rhetoric: it’s us versus them, he tells his supporters, and ‘they’ are enemies who cheat,” she said. “Authoritarians have a lot of rhetorical tricks for explaining away anti-democratic actions as actually ‘democratic.’”

The Daily Beast has this headline for the event. This is even more bizarre than his claim that the Democratic Party is coming for your dishwashers. He must be the only person that doesn’t know that dishwashers save energy and water. This is by Mark Alfred. He filed it under the category of ‘unhinged.’ “Trump (Accidentally) Has a Rare Moment of Truth at Iowa Rally. But it was fleeting, and then he was quickly back on his usual BS.”

Former President Donald Trump accidentally admitted what his critics have long accused him of at an Iowa rally on Saturday night, telling the crowd: “We’ve been waging an all-out war on American democracy.”

But just as quickly as he made the shocking remark, he corrected himself to say his “opponents” are the ones guilty of attacks on democracy.

Trump, throughout the rally, argued that he was on a “righteous crusade” in support of democracy while his team handed out “BIDEN ATTACKS DEMOCRACY” signs to rally-goers.

Trump, of course, faces dozens of charges for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results and seize another term despite having lost the election, and on the eve of the rally, a federal judge ruled that he cannot rely on presidential immunity to shield him from prosecution.

He appeared as unhinged as ever during his speech in Cedar Rapids: Mocking the late Senator and veteran John McCain, vowing for the eighth year in a row to repeal Obamacare, and warning that the left is coming to take away voters’ dishwashers.

“Obamacare is a disaster and I say we’re going to do something about it,” Trump said—a promise he has made since 2015 and has yet to carry out.

“I saved Obamacare when we got John McCain’s negative vote, you know he voted against it. He said ‘uhhhhhh thumbs downnn.’ That was an amazing night,” Trump continued, making a crude impression of McCain, who was battling brain cancer at the time.

Biden has already sought to seize on Trump’s renewed vow to gut the landmark health-care law. “To those who want to repeal this lifesaving law, let me be clear: I won’t let it happen on my watch,” Biden said on Friday.

The Affordable Health Care Act is one of the most popular laws to come out of Congress in years. Good Luck with that endeavor, Orange Caligula! Here’s another way that Republicans are killing women and democracy at the same time. “The Dirty Tricks the GOP Is Using to Keep Abortion Off the Ballot in 2024. Republicans are getting killed on reproductive rights, and they’re taking desperate measures to prevent their constituents from having a say next year.” This is from The Rolling Stone.

TIFFANY CAMPBELL USED to describe herself as a “hardcore, church-going Republican.” That changed back in 2006, when she was still running an in-home daycare in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and learned she was pregnant with twins. The prognosis was dire: one twin’s heart was pumping blood for both of them and, without intervention, neither would survive. She has a healthy 16-year-old son today because she was able to obtain an abortion. After that experience, she threw herself into politics; today she is working full-time for the campaign to restore pre-Dobbs abortion protections in South Dakota.

If the South Dakota measure makes it to the ballot, it has a good shot at passing. Since the Supreme Court struck down Roe in June of 2022, the reproductive rights movement has gone seven for seven at the ballot box, defeating efforts to restrict abortion in states like Kansas, Kentucky, and Montana, and enshrining protections in swing states like Michigan and Ohio. It’s hardly a wonder why Republicans are emptying their bag of dirty tricks to make sure it doesn’t work: inventing astronomical “costs,” conspiring with anti-abortion groups to change the ballot language, and fighting to ban petition collectors from public spaces, among other strategies.

In South Dakota, anti-abortion activists, with assists from GOP officials, have tried out a variety of  tactics in recent months. Activists have been harassed, videotaped and repeatedly called the police on petition collectors, while local officials have sought to pass ordinances banning them from collecting signatures in public places. Most recently, the attorney general warned in a letter that he was in possession of “video and photographic evidence” that could allow opponents to challenge the signatures that have been collected so far.

“The organized opposition is more aggressive than I’ve encountered in any of these fights in the past,” says Adam Weiland, who has worked on various ballot measures in the state for years. “It’s the first time I’ve ever encountered people who don’t even want you to get on the ballot and let the voters vote. That’s the whole focus of their campaign.”

Liz Cheney continues to take on the Republican Party while promoting her new book. This is from Politico. “Liz Cheney would rather see Democrats win in 2024. She warned of the “threat” from within her own party.”

Former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney would rather cede power to Democrats than see members of her own party win in 2024, she said, calling a Republican majority a “threat,” and warning of an existential crisis leading up to next year’s election.

“I believe very strongly in those principles and ideals that have defined the Republican Party, but the Republican Party of today has made a choice and they haven’t chosen the Constitution, and so I do think it presents a threat if the Republicans are in the majority in January 2025,” the Wyoming Republican said during an interview with CBS, when asked whether she would prefer a Democratic majority in 2025.

The Independent reports this on the Georgia “fake electors” case. Kenneth Cheesebro is cooperating.

The state-level criminal investigation into the 2020 election “fake electors” plot in Nevada has secured the cooperation of a key witness — Kenneth Chesebro, the lawyer who orchestrated the scheme to overturn Joe Biden’s win in the state.

Both CNN and The Washington Post report that Mr Chesebro has agreed to meet with investigators in the state in a bid to avoid prosecution there.

He pleaded guilty to charges relating to the plot in Georgia and as part of that plea deal has agreed to cooperate with the prosecution in the sprawling racketeering case against former president Donald Trump and 14 other co-defendants.

Mr Chesebro also agreed to cooperate with any relevant cases in the future both inside and outside the state.

The fake elector plot was to put forward slates of alternate pro-Trump Electoral College voters in multiple states — Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and New Mexico — with Mr Chesebro spelling out in a series of memos what they should do to return Mr Trump to the White House and snatch the election from Mr Biden.

Mr Chesebro acknowledged in one of the memos that the strategy was “controversial” and even a conservative Supreme Court would likely reject it.

In Nevada, six Republicans signed false Electoral College votes in December 2020 for then-president Trump despite the state going for Mr Biden.

Several of the fake electors are still active in politics for the Republican Party causing internal tensions between those still loyal to Mr Trump, and those who believe there need to be repercussions for the attempt to subvert democracy.

You never need to look farther than Texas to see how absofuckinglutely crazy Republicans are these days. This is from the Texas Tribune.” Texas GOP executive committee rejects proposed ban on associating with Nazi sympathizers and Holocaust deniers. Some members of the committee said such a ban, proposed two months after a prominent conservative activist was caught meeting with a famous white supremacist, might be a “slippery slope” or too vague.”

Two months after a prominent conservative activist and fundraiser was caught hosting white supremacist Nick Fuentes, leaders of the Republican Party of Texas have voted against barring the party from associating with known Nazi sympathizers and Holocaust deniers.

In a 32-29 vote on Saturday, members of the Texas GOP’s executive committee stripped a pro-Israel resolution of a clause that would have included the ban.In a separate move that stunned some members, roughly half of the board also tried to prevent a record of their vote from being kept.

In rejecting the proposed ban, the executive committee’s majority delivered a serious blow to a faction of members that has called for the party to confront its ties to groups that have recently employed or associated with outspoken white supremacists and extremists.

In October, The Texas Tribune published photos of Fuentes, an avowed admirer of Adolf Hitler who has called for a “holy war” against Jews, entering and leaving the offices of Pale Horse Strategies, a consulting firm for far-right candidates and movements.

Pale Horse Strategies is owned by Jonathan Stickland, a former state representative and at the time the leader of a political action committee, Defend Texas Liberty, that two West Texas oil billionaires have used to fund right-wing movements, candidates and politicians in the state — including Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Matt Rinaldi, chairman of the Texas GOP, was also seen entering the Pale Horse offices while Fuentes was inside for nearly 7 hours. He denied participating, however, saying he was visiting with someone else at the time and didn’t know Fuentes was there.

Defend Texas Liberty has not publicly commented on the scandal, save for a two-sentence statement condemning those who’ve tried to connect the PAC to Fuentes’ “incendiary” views. Nor has the group clarified Stickland’s current role at Defend Texas Liberty, which quietly updated its website in October to reflect that he is no longer its president. Tim Dunn, one of the two West Texas oil billionaires who primarily fund Defend Texas Liberty, confirmed the meeting between Fuentes and Stickland and called it a “serious blunder,” according to a statement from Patrick.

Well, a column about Republican nutballs wouldn’t be complete without Lady Lindsey, who has gone entirely off the leash since John McCain passed.

This is by Cobin Bolies, reporting for The Daily Beast. They watch the Republicans on Sunday Shows, so we don’t have to. “Lindsey Graham Dodges on Palestinian Civilian Deaths: ‘What’s Too Many?'” Just WTF does Trump have on this man? It must be career-ending.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Sunday seemed to dismiss thousands of dead Palestinians as merely collateral damage in Israel’s war against Hamas, asserting that the Israeli government can do whatever it needs to win.

Appearing on CNN’s State of the Union, Graham was asked about the restarted fighting following the temporary ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Graham urged the U.S. to put more pressure on Iran, a supporter of Hamas, before launching into a tirade against Vice President Kamala Harris’ declaration that too many Palestinian civilians have been killed.

“Here’s the big question: Vice President Harris has said, ‘Israel has a right to defend themselves. How you do it matters.’ The secretary of defense said it would be a strategic failure for Israel to have killed too many Palestinians,” Graham said. “I don’t want any Palestinian to die, but how do you do this? Vice President Harris, tell Israel how to destroy Hamas in a way not to hurt innocent Palestinians and I’ll pass it along.”

Graham said that Hamas allegedly embedding among civilian life in Gaza has dampened Israel’s ability to protect innocent lives. “The reason so many Palestinians are dying, I think, is because Hamas wants them to die,” Graham said. “If you have ideas about lessening civilian casualties, let me know, I’ll tell Israel. But the idea of Hamas still standing when this is over would be the ultimate strategic failure.”

CNN anchor Dana Bash further pressed Graham, asking him if he agreed with Harris and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin that too many Palestinians have died. The indignant senator demurred.

I’ve always been fiercely against Home Schooling, which is another Republican pet project. This story will trigger the heck out of you, so tread gently. It’s from the Washington Post. “What homeschooling hides: A boy tortured and starved by his stepmom. Roman Lopez was 11 when he went missing. His years of torment were concealed by homeschooling.”

NHis family had searched, taping hand-drawn “missing” posters to telephone poles and driving the streets calling out the 11-year-old’s name. So had many of his neighbors, their flashlights sweeping over the sidewalks as the winter darkness settled on the Sierra Nevada foothills. The police were searching, too, and now they had returned to the place where Roman had gone missing earlier that day: his family’s rented home in Placerville, Calif. Roman’s stepmother, Lindsay Piper, hesitated when officers showed up at her door the night of Jan. 11, 2020, asking to comb the house again. But she had told them that Roman liked to hide in odd places — even the clothes dryer — and agreed to let them in.

Brock Garvin, Roman’s 15-year-old stepbrother, was sitting in the dimly lit basement when police came downstairs shortly after 10:30 p.m. He ignored them, he said later, watching “Supernatural” on television as three officers began inspecting the black-and-yellow Home Depot storage bins stacked along the back wall.

Brock had no idea what had happened to Roman. But he did know something the police did not: Much of what his mother had said to them that day was a lie.

When she reported Roman’s disappearance, Piper told the police she was home schooling the eight kids in her household. This was technically true. It was also a ruse.

Most schools have teachers, principals, guidance counselors — professionals trained to recognize the unexplained bruises or erratic behaviors that may point to an abusive parent. Home education was an easy way to avoid the scrutiny of such people. That was the case for Piper, whose children were learning less from her about math and history than they were about violence, cruelty and neglect.

There’s something deeply wrong with us when one party in a two-party system is more interested in billionaires and power than the humanity and needs of their constituents. Like Liz says, Vote them out.

What is on your reading and blogging list today?

Padded with power, here they come
International loan sharks backed by the guns
Of market-hungry military profiteers
Whose word is a swamp and whose brow is smeared
With the blood of the poor
Who rob life of its quality
Who render rage a necessity
By turning countries into labour camps
Modern slavers in drag as champions of freedom
Sinister, cynical instrument
Who makes the gun into a sacrament —
The only response to the deification
Of tyranny by so-called “developed” nations’
Idolatry of ideology
North, south, east, west
Kill the best and buy the rest
It’s just spend a buck to make a buck
You don’t really give a flying fuck
About the people in misery
IMF dirty MF
Takes away everything it can get
Always making certain that there’s one thing left
Keep them on the hook with insupportable debt
See the paid-off local bottom feeders
Passing themselves off as leaders
Kiss the ladies, shake hands with the fellows
Open for business like a cheap bordello
And they call it democracy
And they call it democracy
And they call it democracy
And they call it democracy
See the loaded eyes of the children too
Trying to make the best of it the way kids do
One day you’re going to rise from your habitual feast
To find yourself staring down the throat of the beast
They call the revolution
IMF dirty MF
Takes away everything it can get
Always making certain that there’s one thing left
Keep them on the hook with insupportable debt
And they call it democracy
And they call it democracy
And they call it democracy
And they call it democracy

by Bruce Cockburn

Finally Friday Reads: Hyper News Day Edition

Posted: December 1, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Breaking News, Feminists, House of Representatives, Human Rights, Israel-Hamas war, January 6 | Tags: , , , , , , | 14 Comments

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Remember when Fridays were always slow?  Well, “Quoth the Raven nevermore.”  I may have to resort to listing links. I’d like to start with the New York Times Obituary of Former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who honorably served as the first woman on the Supreme Court. “Sandra Day O’Connor, First Woman on the Supreme Court, Is Dead at 93. During a crucial period in American law — when abortion, affirmative action, sex discrimination and voting rights were on the docket — she was the most powerful woman in the country.”  Her appointment was probably the only good thing Ronald Reagan did during his 8 years of damaging the U.S. economy, among many other things. She struggled with dementia in her final years.

Very little could happen without Justice O’Connor’s support when it came to the polarizing issues on the court’s docket, and the law regarding affirmative action, abortion, voting rights, religion, federalism, sex discrimination and other hot-button subjects was basically what Sandra Day O’Connor thought it should be.

That the middle ground she looked for tended to be the public’s preferred place as well was no coincidence, given the close attention Justice O’Connor paid to current events and the public mood. “Rare indeed is the legal victory — in court or legislature — that is not a careful byproduct of an emerging social consensus,” she wrote in “The Majesty of the Law: Reflections of a Supreme Court Justice,” a collection of her essays published in 2003.

When President Ronald Reagan named her to the Supreme Court in 1981 to fulfill a campaign promise to appoint the first female justice, she was a judge on a midlevel appeals court in Arizona, where she had long been active in Republican politics, though she had friends in both parties. Fifty-one years old at the time of her nomination, she served for 24 years, retiring in January 2006 to care for her ailing husband. As the court moved to the right during that period, her moderate conservatism made her look in the end like a relative liberal.

“Liberal” was undoubtedly not her self-image, but as the court’s rightward shift accelerated after her retirement — her successor, Samuel A. Alito Jr., was notably more conservative — she lamented publicly that some of her majority opinions were being “dismantled.”

There’s some terrific news coming out of the courts reviewing Trump’s involvement in the January 6th insurrection riots. This is from the Washington Post. “Trump not immune from being sued for Jan. 6 riot, judges rule.”  The Trumps will be so broke by the time all these civil suits come in.  Plus, E Jean is about to get more money also. This link goes to a Newsweek article indicating she’s probably got the basis of yet another lawsuit.

Donald Trump can be held civilly liable for the actions of the mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, an appeals court ruled Friday in a long-awaited decision that could clear the way for lawsuits seeking financial damages from the former president.

The unanimous decision by a federal appeals court in Washington is expected to be appealed and also offers insight into how the court could view Trump’s argument that presidential immunity also protects him from being charged criminally for his efforts to stay in power after the 2020 election.

“When a first-term President opts to seek a second term, his campaign to win re-election is not an official presidential act,” Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan wrote for the three-judge panel. “The Office of the Presidency as an institution is agnostic about who will occupy it next.”

Two U.S. Capitol police officers and about a dozen Democratic lawmakers sued Trump in 2021, saying he potentially instigated violence on Jan. 6 by telling supporters the election was stolen and urging them to march to the Capitol and “fight like hell.”

“More than two years later, it is unnerving to hear the same fabrications and dangerous rhetoric that put my life as well as the lives of my fellow officers in danger on January 6, 2021,” James Blassingame, one of the police plaintiffs, said in a statement. “I hope our case will assist with helping put our democracy back on the right track; making it crystal clear that no person, regardless of title or position of stature, is above the rule of law.”

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung called the decision “limited, narrow, and procedural,” adding that “the facts fully show that on January 6 President Trump was acting on behalf of the American people, carrying out his duties as President of the United States.”

How can Steven Cheung say these things with a straight face?

So, 100 Republican Congress critters joined all but one Democratic Senators to expel George Santos from Congress.  This is breaking news from NBC News. “House votes to expel indicted Rep. George Santos from Congress. The New York Republican is now just the third lawmaker since the Civil War to be expelled from the House of Representatives.”

The House voted overwhelmingly to expel indicted Rep. George Santos on Friday, pulling the curtain down on a tempestuous term in office that was marred by revelations that he’d fabricated parts of his resume, a scathing House ethics investigation and a 23-count federal indictment charging him with crimes such as wire fraud and money laundering.

The vote was 311-114, with two voting present. Santos had already put his winter jacket on, left the chamber and sped through the speaker’s lobby before the vote total was announced.

“It’s over,” Santos said before heading to his vehicle outside the Capitol.

“They just set a new, dangerous precedent for themselves,” he added, noting that he’s the first House member in modern history to be expelled before a federal conviction.

Santos, R-N.Y., had survived two previous attempts to expel him this year — one in May and the other a month ago.

But he began losing significant support just before Thanksgiving after the bipartisan House Ethics Committee issued a damning 56-page report detailing allegations that he had deceived his donors, filed false campaign statements and used campaign money to fund his lavish lifestyle.

Among the things he spent campaign funds on were rent, luxury designer goods, personal trips to Las Vegas and the Hamptons, cosmetic treatments, including Botox, and a subscription to the adult-content site OnlyFans, the report said.

Earlier this week, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said his leadership team wouldn’t whip the vote one way or the other, instead allowing members to “vote their conscience.” But moments before the vote, he, Majority Leader Steve Scalise, Majority Whip Tom Emmer and GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, one by one, announced their opposition to removing the freshman fabulist.

Johnson had previously signaled he would oppose expulsion, saying: “I personally have real reservations about things. I’m concerned about a precedent that may be set.”

 

Georgie Porgie just sounds like the nicest guy. This is from HuffPost. “George Santos Accused Of Stealing House Member’s Personal Credit Card Info. GOP Rep. Max Miller of Ohio made the allegation not long before Santos was expelled from Congress.”

Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio) accused his now-former GOP colleague George Santos of stealing his and his mother’s personal credit card information to make illegal contributions to his campaign — the latest shocking allegation leveled against the indicted ex-New York House member who was expelled from Congress Friday.

“Late yesterday on the floor, I alluded to a personal impact of Rep. Santos’ conduct,” Miller wrote in a letter to colleagues Friday morning. “Earlier this year, I learned that the Santos campaign had charged my personal credit card — and the personal credit card of my mother — for contribution amounts that exceeded FEC limits. Neither my mother nor I approved these charges nor were aware of them. We have spent tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees in the resulting follow-up.”

The letter also alleges that Miller has seen a list of 400 people whom Santos tried to scam through his campaign. “I believe some other members of this conference might have had the same experience,” he added.

Miller’s note to colleagues follows remarks he made on the House floor Thursday directed at Santos: “You, sir, are a crook,” Miller said to him.

If he only would start saying that about Trump now.

As long as we inkled the dread, Sleazy Steve, here’s a headline about him. This is from Politico. “Steve Scalise reveals what’s really happened since McCarthy’s fall. The House Majority Leader illuminates what happened behind closed doors after Kevin McCarthy’s ousting as well as what to expect next on impeachment; why he will vote against expelling George Santos; and how Speaker Mike Johnson is trying to use immigration to tame hardliners when it comes to the spending showdown with Joe Biden.”  This link goes to a 32 miute interview with David Duke without the baggage.

I heard this on MSNBC last night and immediately thought that a lot of Israeli anger should be aimed at BiBi. It sounds just like Dubya ignoring warnings about what turned in 9-11 giving him the opportunity entangle us in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is from the New York Times.  “Israel Knew Hamas’s Attack Plan More Than a Year Ago. A blueprint reviewed by The Times laid out the attack in detail. Israeli officials dismissed it as aspirational and ignored specific warnings.”

Israeli officials obtained Hamas’s battle plan for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack more than a year before it happened, documents, emails and interviews show. But Israeli military and intelligence officials dismissed the plan as aspirational, considering it too difficult for Hamas to carry out.

The approximately 40-page document, which the Israeli authorities code-named “Jericho Wall,” outlined, point by point, exactly the kind of devastating invasion that led to the deaths of about 1,200 people.

The translated document, which was reviewed by The New York Times, did not set a date for the attack, but described a methodical assault designed to overwhelm the fortifications around the Gaza Strip, take over Israeli cities and storm key military bases, including a division headquarters.

Hamas followed the blueprint with shocking precision. The document called for a barrage of rockets at the outset of the attack, drones to knock out the security cameras and automated machine guns along the border, and gunmen to pour into Israel en masse in paragliders, on motorcycles and on foot — all of which happened on Oct. 7.

The plan also included details about the location and size of Israeli military forces, communication hubs and other sensitive information, raising questions about how Hamas gathered its intelligence and whether there were leaks inside the Israeli security establishment.

The document circulated widely among Israeli military and intelligence leaders, but experts determined that an attack of that scale and ambition was beyond Hamas’s capabilities, according to documents and officials. It is unclear whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or other top political leaders saw the document, as well.

Former Congresswoman Liz Cheney’s book is getting lots of attention.  She will be interviewed by Rachel Maddow on Monday.  Excerpts are popping everywhere.  This is from CBS News. “Liz Cheney tells “CBS News Sunday Morning” that the U.S. is “sleepwalking into a dictatorship”.” 

JOHN DICKERSON: You say, Donald Trump, if he is re-elected, it will be the end of the Republic. What do you mean?

REP. LIZ CHENEY:  He’s told us what he will do. It’s very easy to see the steps that he will take. … People who say, “Well, if he’s elected, it’s not that dangerous because we have all of these checks and balances,” don’t fully understand the extent to which the Republicans in Congress today have been co-opted. … One of the things that we see happening today is a sort of a sleepwalking into dictatorship in the United States.

CHENEY: If you look

at what Donald Trump is trying to do, he can’t do it by himself. He has to have collaborators. And the story of Mike Johnson is a story of, of a collaborator and of someone who knew then – and knows now – that what he’s doing and saying is wrong, but he’s willing to do it in an effort to please Donald Trump. And that’s what makes it dangerous.

DICKERSON: The Speaker of the House is a collaborator to overthrow the last election?

CHENEY: Absolutely.

@repeat1968

She pulls no punches. Just one more and I will let you get on with your day. And, btw, Happy Birthday to BostonBoomer who is still in the hospital but much better!  She’s will be going to rehab once she gets out of Covid Isolation.

Check out the byline from this article from Slate. “The World’s Feminists Need to Show Up for Israeli Victims. Solidarity for victims of sexual assault should trump other politics. BY DAHLIA LITHWICK, MIMI ROCAH, TAMARA SEPPER, JENNIFER TAUB, JOYCE WHITE VANCE, AND JULIE ZEBRAK

Of all of the horrors coming out of the Israel-Hamas conflict, among the most horrible are the barbaric murders, rapes, sexual assaults, and kidnappings of women and young girls in Israel during the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas. And yet, deepening this distressing event, there has been a disheartening silence about, or worse, denial of these evils; reticence from the voices here at home in the U.S. who have, in the recent past, embraced other women who needed their support. Israeli and Jewish women find themselves isolated. For the past three decades, women have stood up for other women. When our sisters’ bodies and dignity were targeted and violated, women and allies of all ages and backgrounds organized, supported, and spoke out. Except somehow, not this time.

Since Oct. 7, there has been overwhelming evidence that Israeli women and young girls were not “just” slaughtered, but raped, assaulted, tortured, and kidnapped. This is not overstating things—from our work as prosecutors, lawyers, and feminists, we understand what it takes to build a solid criminal case for sexual assault. Here, there is voluminous evidence, more than what is typically available. While many victims cannot speak for themselves—they are either dead or being held hostage—survivor accounts and videos made by the perpetrators themselves speak for them.

Early on, Hamas circulated a video with the searing image of 19-year-old Naama Levy being dragged by her hair into the back of a truck by a group of men. Her pants were bloody. Slowly, the horror dawned upon us as we watched that she had been the victim of violent sexual assault.

A survivor recounted sexual violence she witnessed while hiding at the Nova rave. She said, “The terrorists, people from Gaza, raped girls. And after they raped them, they killed them, murdered them with knives, or the opposite, killed—and after they raped, they—they did that. They laughed.”

There is a huge list of these atrocities.  Please read the article but it is triggering so tread carefully.

I hope you have a peaceful and lovely weekend.  I love you all!!

What’s on your reading and bloggingl list today?

Happy Birthday BB!

This Warren Zevon song is one of my favorites.  This is an acoustic version done by Jackson Browne.

 

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