Frederick Carl Frieseke – On the Beach (Girl in Blue), 1913
Good Day Sky Dancers!
Well, we knew they’d let their freak flags fly even though they squeaked through the last elections, but wow, not only have they upped the freaks’ volume, the messages would make Goebbels proud. Florida is the new fascist state. Ron DeSantis needs to be educated in American history and the US Constitution, which is odd to say about someone who lands squarely in the over-educated Ivy League wastoid category. His initiatives would make Mussolini proud.
This is from Kathryn Joyce at Vanity Fair. ““THE FLORIDA OF TODAY IS THE AMERICA OF TOMORROW”: RON DESANTIS’S NEW COLLEGE TAKEOVER IS JUST THE BEGINNING OF THE RIGHT’S HIGHER ED CRUSADE. Republican politicians and right-wing activists are transforming one of the Sunshine State’s liberal arts schools into the “Hillsdale of the south,” a strategy that could be replicated across the country. One New College alum tells Vanity Fair, “I weep for our nation if DeSantis wins a presidential bid.”
It took New College president Patricia Okker three attempts to deliver her farewell remarks. She kept being interrupted during last week’s board meeting in Sarasota, Florida, including once by a member of the school’s board of trustees, making a motion to terminate her without cause. Okker had been addressing the dozens of students, faculty, and parents who’d come to defend her record—and the hundreds more outside who weren’t admitted—saying she was sorry to disappoint them, but she couldn’t represent the mandate New College was being given through this “hostile takeover.” And she refused to support the claims of right-wing critics that the school had been indoctrinating its students.
In the audience, supporters hugged one another and students left in tears. The trustees moved on, voting to replace Okker with interim president Richard Corcoran, Florida’s recently departed education commissioner who, in a 2021 speech at Michigan’s right-wing Hillsdale College, came close to calling for the collapse of the public school system through student attrition and said the political war “will be won in education.” The trustees replaced the board chair too, made plans to replace the general counsel, and instructed administrators to start preparing to dismantle the college’s diversity offices.
It was hard to imagine a starker change in leadership for New College, the small, nontraditional honors college of the Florida public university system, known for its lack of grades, individualized majors, and leftist student body, but which has also been eyed skeptically for years by Florida’s conservative-dominated legislature for its low enrollment and graduation rates. But that was exactly the transformation intended when Governor Ron DeSantis last month appointed six new trustees to the school’s 13-member board, in hopes they would remake New College into a right-leaning “classical college, more along the lines of a Hillsdale of the south,” as his education commissioner Manny Diaz put it.
After the Republican-controlled Board of Governors appointed a seventh trustee, the new majority represented a team uniquely qualified to carry out DeSantis’s scorched-earth, right-wing education wars. There was Manhattan Institute fellow and anti-critical race theory hype man Christopher Rufo, who has most recently turned his efforts to laying “siege” to diversity, equity, and inclusion programs; one of Hillsdale’s graduate school deans, Matthew Spalding, who also helped lead Donald Trump’s short-lived 1776 Commission; Charles Kesler of the right-wing Claremont Institute, which spent the Trump years retconning an intellectual platform for the MAGA movement; a senior editor at a religious right magazine; the Catholic author of a book accused of “fram[ing] LGBTQ+ identity as a mental illness”; and a private Christian school cofounder with a penchant for Covid disinformation.
After four years of punishing the people of Florida with actions largely meant to increase his personal power, Governor Ron DeSantis appears to be bringing his corrosive brand of politics to a presidential run. But DeSantis only looks like an even remotely reasonable or centrist candidate when viewed in a line-up between his gubernatorial predecessor Rick Scott and ex-U.S. catastrophe Donald Trump. That he sits comfortably between the two, accompanied by a host of extremists, should be cause for alarm, not suggestions that he is anything other than an authoritarian.
While the slogan “Make America Florida” gains traction on bumper stickers and pundits debate DeSantis’ electability, DeSantis continues to plunge ahead with culture wars in schools that sunder communities, gaslight Floridians about the environment, and implement anti-scientific policies across life-or-death situations. But there is still—even after three years of a badly mishandled pandemic—nothing to apologize for, nothing to be accountable for, and nothing to be transparent about, to anyone.
A Florida political system that has over the course of several Republican governors maximized voter suppression and gerrymandering has contributed to DeSantis’ unprecedented ability to centralize power in Florida and muffled most effective opposition. It is in this context of restricting voting rights, too, that disastrous policy decisions opposed by millions of Floridians have been portrayed as somehow not subpar, but superlative. In certain quarters, these policies are bally-hoo’d as a form of “freedom” and “liberty.”
Just like destructive Republican governors before him feathered the nest for DeSantis’s success by destroying safeguards and institutions—making it possible for DeSantis to become more predatory and authoritarian—Trump has set the table for DeSantis at the national level. Trump’s coalition of white nationalists, conspiracy theorists, disgruntled rightwing journalists, and evangelicals now becomes how DeSantis, who otherwise might be unelectable, can see a path to the White House.
With DeSantis’ explicit approval, the Republican-led Florida legislature has stamped out as much home rule as possible, continuing Scott’s legacy, and rendered cities and counties less able to govern effectively. This helps the special interests that fuel DeSantis’ campaigns, but does nothing for ordinary citizens.
DeSantis’ unchecked power in the state is reflected in his ability to bully that same legislature into a redistricting that removed traditionally Black voting blocs, despite the legislature preferring a more moderate plan. Thathe worked with national operatives to push this effort to completion hints at the networks DeSantis already has access to, even before formally announcing a run for president.
The Welcome, Scenes from Late Paradise (2006 – 2007) Eric Fischl
There’s much rejoicing in The Villages where greed is still good and vanilla is the only flavor of the month. Believe me when I say, I will never visit Florida again not that I like it much before. DeSantis still has declared war on Disney World and the legislature has enabled him. This is from CNN: “Florida House approves plan to give DeSantis new power over Disney.” They are even killing the one goose that lays golden eggs there.
Florida lawmakers voted Thursday to give Gov. Ron DeSantis new power over the state’s most iconic theme parks amid his ongoing feud with Disney.
Under a fast-tracked bill that could be headed to the Republican governor’s desk by the end of the week, the state would take over the Reedy Creek Improvement District, the 55-year-old government body that has effectively given Disney control over the land around its Orlando-area theme parks. The district’s existing board, made up of individuals with close ties to Disney, would be replaced by a five-member board hand-picked by DeSantis.
The state House, where Republicans hold a supermajority, passed the measure on an 82-31 vote. The GOP-led state Senate is expected to take up the bill within the next 36 hours. If the measure passes the chamber, it will go to DeSantis for final approval. He is expected to sign it.
“There’s a new sheriff in town, and that’s just the way it’s going to be,” DeSantis said at Wednesday news conference.
Democrats on Thursday warned that DeSantis could wield his board picks over Disney executives if he clashes again with the entertainment giant as he continues his crackdown on “wokeness.”
State Rep. Rita Harris pointed to Disney recently changing its Splash Mountain ride to remove references to racist themes, a move that sparked some conservative backlash. It will become Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, a ride celebrating Disney’s first Black princess.
“What if the governor didn’t like that?” Harris asked during debate. “Would the board then be able to push a company into changing their business model just so that they don’t misalign them? This is not the free markets.”
When a newly elected Florida legislator endorsed a bill allowing residents to carry a concealed firearm without a permit, he was both demonstrating his fealty to Ron DeSantis and helping to burnish the governor’s conservative credentials for a possible White House run in 2024.
State Senator Jay Collins’ support for the concealed-carry bill was key to DeSantis’ efforts to secure a suite of legislative victories this spring ahead of an anticipated announcement that he is seeking the Republican Party nomination, according to interviews with nearly a dozen lobbyists, lawmakers and strategists in Tallahassee.
Those efforts include installing hand-picked loyalists like Collins in the Republican-controlled state legislature who could then help ensure passage of proposals on guns, abortion and other Republican red-meat issues, they told Reuters, providing DeSantis with a strong record of conservative wins.
Former President Donald Trump, who is leading in national opinion polls nearly a year ahead of the first primary contests, has targeted DeSantis as a “RINO,” a Republican in name only.
Yet DeSantis, 44, remains wildly popular with voters in his state after winning re-election by the widest margin of any Florida governor in 40 years, giving him a solid platform from which to launch a presidential bid.
DeSantis has yet to make a final decision on a presidential run, those close to him told Reuters. But he is reaching out to potential staff and donors, raising money, and traveling around the country to raise his profile.
Former Vice President Mike Pence has been subpoenaed by the special counsel overseeing probes into former President Donald Trump, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.
Sources told ABC News that the subpoena from special counsel Jack Smith requests documents and testimony related to the failed attempt by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election, which culminated in the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The subpoena follows months of negotiations between federal prosecutors and Pence’s legal team.
Former national security adviser Robert O’Brien has been subpoenaed by special counsel Jack Smith in both his investigation into classified documents found at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and the probe related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election, according to a source familiar with the matter.
O’Brien has been asserting executive privilege in declining to provide some of the information that prosecutors are seeking from him, the source said.
CNN has reached out to O’Brien for comment.
O’Brien considered resigning from his post over Trump’s response to the violence on January 6, 2021, but ultimately decided to remain in the job, CNN previously reported. The National Security Council should have been involved in the handling of classified documents at end of the Trump presidency, and O’Brien may have knowledge of how those records ended up at Mar-a-Lago.
“Hunting Alligators, Pink Sea” (1926) by Frederick Carl Frieseke
Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland criticised House Republicans’ new subcommittee on the weaponisation of the government as a means to boost former president Donald Trump’s 2024 candidacy.
Mr Raskin made his opening remarks as a minority witness during the new House subcommittee’s inaugural hearing. Republican Senators Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin delivered their opening remarks accusing the government of suppressing their investigations into President Joe Biden’s family. Former Representative Tulsi Gabbard, who left the Democratic Party, also appeared as witness.
But Mr Raskin, who served as the lead impeachment manager of Mr Trump’s second impeachment trial, said the committee was about running interference for the former president.
“If these people break from the habit of lying, then lawlessness is defined by our culture,” he said in his opening remarks. “It’s all about restoring Donald Trump, the twice-impeached former president to the office he lost by 7 million votes in 2020 and tried to steal back in a political coup and violent insurrection against our constitutional order.”
Mr Raskin cited remarks from subcommittee Chairman Jim Jordan at a CPAC conference in Dallas before the midterm elections where Mr Jordan said that investigations were to “frame up the 2024 race when I hope and I think President Trump is going to run and we need to make sure that he wins.”
“Now of course, a serious bipartisan committee focused on weaponisation of the government would zero in quickly on the Trump administration itself, which brought weaponisation to frightening blue new levels across the board,” Mr Raskin said.
Doctor MacGibbon, our residential psychologist, will have to give us a small lecture on “projection”. It’s every where in this committee. This was the motley crew of witnesses for the Rethuglicans. It’s basically the krewe of crackpots.
Mr Raskin made his opening remarks as a minority witness during the new House subcommittee’s inaugural hearing. Republican Senators Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin delivered their opening remarks accusing the government of suppressing their investigations into President Joe Biden’s family. Former Representative Tulsi Gabbard, who left the Democratic Party, also appeared as witness
Anyway, I hate to think of what the next two years are going to bring us. It’s just got that the Democratic Party is as united as I’ve ever seen it. They also have strong leadership which is what we need to fight this crazy. My spring project will be building a little Banned Book Library in front of my porch and ensuring every student in my economics and finance classes knows the structural inequalities of wealth, wages, and access to property. Let them come for me.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Disorder in the House!!
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This is the week that the GOP crazies are really coming out of the woodwork. On Tuesday, we saw them heckle the President Biden during his State of the Union Address. Then yesterday the House Oversight Committee held an insane hearing on supposed Twitter persecution of Republicans. And today the subcommittee on the “weaponization of government” will meet for the first time. I can’t watch these GOP clown shows, but fortunately, Aaron Rupar does watch post video clips of them on Twitter.
On Tuesday night, millions of people tuned in to watch President Joe Biden deliver his State of the Union address to the nation.
But the best part of the night happened right after Biden’s speech was over, when most (but not all) networks weren’t airing his comments anymore and he made his way through the crowd. It was here, where the president could actually talk to all the dignitaries, members of Congress and other people in the room, that he was truly in his element.
After formally addressing the country for about an hour and 10 minutes, Biden spent another 20 minutes cracking jokes with Supreme Court justices, telling stories, taking countless selfies, talking to people’s kids on cell phones, listening to Democratic and Republican lawmakers’ requests for help, and offering comfort to people who needed it.
“Hey, big Jon!” Biden shouted at Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), hand outstretched, barely a minute after he’d stepped down from the dais. Immediately surrounded by about a dozen senators and House members eager to shake his hand, the president took the time to talk to all of them before drifting over to Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who solemnly stood nearby with some other high-ranking military leaders.
Motioning to his own shoulders, Biden jokingly called out to a four-star general in uniform, “Aren’t those stars heavy?”
When Supreme Court Justices Elena Kagan and John Roberts passed by, the president stopped them to apologize for making them listen to his speech.
“Sorry. Sorry you guys had to sit there,” he said, as Kagan looked briefly confused and started laughing. “I apologize.”
It was like watching a pinball bounce around the game board. Biden jumped from one group of people to the next, to the next, to the next, in absolutely no rush to leave and seemingly energized by every minute of being able to engage with real live people. And here he was back in the building he’d spent decades of his life working in ― a second home of sorts. Why ever leave?
Biden certainly seems energized. What a contrast to whiny old man Trump! I think Republicans should be worried about 2024.
The heckling Republicans also previewed their intention to re-run their 1996 playbook, where they tried to run away from unpopular proposals they’d voted for and accused Democrats of “Mediscare” tactics. It did not work then. https://t.co/m0pBLuLfXkpic.twitter.com/zbcEbHOy7G
One of the implicit promises of the Biden presidential campaign was to turn back the political clock to a more normal time, before Donald Trump made everything weird. COVID delayed that process, but I think we’re finally getting there, and last night’s State of the Union address was a demonstration of that. What I did not anticipate was how far back we would go.
Biden’s speech was right out of the ‘90s in a way that I think was very politically savvy for the president and his team, and it previews how they are likely to run a re-election campaign against Gov. Ron DeSantis, if he is the Republican nominee.
Here’s what was so ‘90s about Biden’s speech.
After Clinton stepped on a rake with his health care plan and lost both houses of Congress in the 1994 midterm elections, he got himself to an eight-point re-election victory 1996 by running on two key themes:
Republicans are right-wing lunatics who want to cut your Social Security and Medicare, and I will never let them do that.
Here’s a bunch of popular, small-bore ideas that I can work to implement on a bipartisan basis with those Republican lunatics.
Biden’s speech yesterday had a lot from column 1 and a lot from column 2. I’m going to save the bipartisanship talk for tomorrow’s newsletter. Today, let’s talk about entitlements, and Biden’s effective and Clintonesque sowing of fear, uncertainty and doubt about Republicans’ stewardship of popular benefit programs.
Biden noted that while many Republicans say they are officially committed to protecting Social Security and Medicare, there are some who have been talking about undermining the programs. Republicans booed and jeered that this was a lie — ensuring that the accusation would be at the center of today’s news coverage of the speech.
And today, as Biden has been out campaigning, he read from a brochure from last cycle’s NRSC chair, Florida Sen. Rick Scott, about Scott’s plan to sunset all government programs — including Social Security and Medicare — every five years.
Barro goes on to discuss Ron De Santis’s arguments against Social Security. Read it at the link.
Donald Trump is going on the attack against potential rivals for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination over Social Security and Medicare, seizing on the same GOP divisions over federal spending that President Biden is seeking to exploit.
Trump moved to wield the issue as a wedge in the primary, particularly against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, with a video message last month urging Republicans to use negotiations over raising the debt ceiling to cut spending but not “a single penny” from Social Security or Medicare. He also posted a short video clip of a younger DeSantis praising Paul D. Ryan, the former House budget chairman from Wisconsin who famously proposed replacing Medicare with giving seniors money for private health insurance.
The emphasis reflects potential vulnerability for Republican rivals who were elected to powerful posts in the pre-Trump tea party era, embracing austerity in the last showdown over raising the federal debt limit. As Trump’s campaign has signaled an interest in stoking debate over entitlements, Biden used his State of the Union address on Tuesday to similarly bait Republicans, producing a rowdy spectacle in which they booed his accusation that they want to cut Social Security and Medicare.
“President Trump has been clear where he stands on the issue,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement. “Others will have to decide which side they’re on. And others will have to answer to past positions they’ve taken.”
Not that anyone should trust Trump, but at least he recognizes this as a problem for Republicans. Read more examples of statements Republican presidential hopefuls have made against Social Security and Medicare at the WaPo link.
Republicans who have clearly opposed Social Security, Medicare, and other social programs were outraged that President Biden had the nerve to call them out. Hence the unprofessional heckling that Biden used to his advantage.
House Republicans are divided on whether the raucous heckling of President Biden during his State of the Union address on Tuesday night was inappropriate — or whether it helped them effectively communicate their position to the American public.
Many Republicans thought the uproar in response to Biden’s comment accusing Republicans of wanting to sunset Social Security and Medicare was justified, blaming the president for “instigating” a desired reaction that would put Republicans in a bad light. But some expressed doubts about the rowdiness that followed.
The claim about Social Security was the first to draw such an audible reaction from Republicans, who are fighting for spending cuts as a condition of raising the debt ceiling and seeking to sell those cuts to the American public.
“He started off, I thought, wonderfully. … But then you can’t stand up there and blatantly lie,” Rep. Lisa McClain (R-Mich.) said. “So as much as I wish we had had more decorum, OK, you are instigating that behavior. So it starts with the leader.”
Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) also put the blame on Biden.
“The president was trying to goad the members, and the members are passionate about it,” McCarthy said on Fox News Wednesday morning. “But the one thing that the president was saying was something that he knew was not true.”
Though Republicans have sought for decades to privatize Social Security and cut Medicare — and Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) released a proposal last year to sunset all federal programs after five years — McCarthy has repeatedly said that cuts to entitlement programs are “off the table” in debt ceiling talks, which he launched with Biden last week.
“I tell people I have the equivalent of a PhD in white trashology, and we saw real white trash on display,” Carville told MSNBC anchor Ari Melber.
Carville singled out far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), saying she “dresses like white trash” and should take fashion advice from serial liar Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.), in a video shared by Mediaite.
“The level of white trashdom in the Republican Party is staggering,” Carville added. “I mean, for somebody that has observed it for a long time like I have, I’ve never seen it manifest itself on a level that it’s manifesting itself.”
Ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, Carville slammed the GOP for fielding “very low-quality candidates” and suggested the reason:
“They have a lot of stupid people that vote in their primaries. They really do. I’m not really supposed to say that, but it’s obvious fact. And you know, when stupid people vote, you know who they nominate? Other stupid people.”
I have to wrap up this post, because I have a virtual doctor’s appointment soon. But here are some interesting reads on the wacky House hearing yesterday on how Twitter supposedly allowed the FBI to control their treatment of the Hunter Biden laptop story and the one coming up today about “weaponization of the government.”
I can’t understand how it happened, but I’m sick again with the same symptoms I had a few weeks ago. I’m coughing so much that my stomach muscles are sore. It hurts every time I cough. This started out with a sore throat that lasted three days, and then the coughing began. I’m also going through Kleenex at an unbelievable rate. I didn’t have a single cold for about two years during the pandemic, but now I keep catching things. I don’t know how either, because I stay home most of the time. The only explanation I have is that other people in my building are not taking as many precautions as before. Almost no one wears a mask anymore. Anyway, this may not be much of a post.
As everyone knows, the State of the Union address is tonight. It will begin at 9PM. I’m still worried about whether there will be adequate security for President Biden. Will anyone be checking to make sure none of the insane House members bring guns with them?
I'm curious as to how many loaded guns are going to be at the State of the Union. Stay safe, President Biden.
Christianity 'has devolved into a rabid tribe': Lauren Boebert bashed for praying for Biden's death@RawStoryhttps://t.co/k3o85sbs80
Speaking to a church audience, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) told the crowd to pray for Joe Biden: “May his days be few and another take his office.”
It isn’t the first time she’s made such a “prayer.” She’s been using the line “may his days be few” since 2022, when she spoke to the Charis Christian Center Family Camp Meeting in Colorado.
It once again caused an uproar among those on social media who saw the video.
“THIS is the self-proclaimed party of Jesus Christ,” tweeted political commentator Lindy Li. “This is the self-appointed party of Christianity SHAME ON YOU! This is why church pews are emptying at a ferocious rate. Why increasing numbers of Americans now say they are religiously unaffiliated. Christianity in America has devolved into a rabid tribe of Talibangelicals and gun-totin Y’all Qaeda fanatics.”
Othersnoted that her so-called “sermon” included her promoting her legislation to impeach the president and argued that bringing politics into church pews is yet another reason that churches should lose their tax-exempt status.
Another called it a federal crime to threaten the president, which Boebert has gotten away with in the past because she’s not asking activists to actively kill, but rather praying for death.
I just hope that Boebert and Marjory Taylor Greene and the rest of the crazies will be frisked on the way in.
State of the Union addresses are usually a pretty big deal – it’s a major opportunity for the president to set the tone for the year in front of the most important people in Washington. This year, the stakes for Joe Biden are even higher. The 2024 presidential election is already looming on the horizon, and while Biden has yet to officially launch a reelection campaign, he is expected to do so in the next few weeks.
Biden has been prepping for his speech for weeks and is expected to lay out an underlying theme of unity, angling for stable leadership over one drenched in partisan disarray. He is expected to speak at length about the achievements of the last two years, including the passage of the $1.2tn Bipartisan Infrastructure bill that was passed in 2021 and invests in repairing America’s roads and bridges, among other investments. He will also touch on recent good news around the economy, including a low unemployment rate and the decreasing inflation rate.
Republicans are already readying up their punches in response to tonight’s address as the party tries to make their own case to Americans that Democrats have failed while in power…..
It’s been less than a year since Joe Biden delivered his first State of the Union address on March 2 of last year, but a lot has changed over the last year. Top of mind for many Americans has been the economy, with inflation rising to decades-high level over the summer. Republicans gained a slim majority in the House during the midterm election. One thing has not changed: The war in Ukraine is still rattling on.
In last year’s 62-minute speech, Congress was largely unified in support of Ukraine, with the invasion having taken place just a week prior. Both Democrats and Republicans were wearing yellow and blue in solidarity with Ukraine, and some held small Ukrainian flags.
This year, First Lady Jill Biden has invited Ukraine’s ambassador to the US Oksana Markarova to be her guest to the address for the second year. Markarova received a standing ovation when she was introduced during Biden’s speech last year.
Biden is expected to ask for bipartisan support in sending more aid to Ukraine as the anniversary of the invasion approaches. Yesterday, NBC News reported that Biden is expected to travel to Poland later this month for the anniversary, though the trip has not been confirmed.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders is doing the GOP rebuttal to the speech.
She "lied and lied and lied until she was forced under oath to tell the truth. With that in mind, remember when she's speaking tomorrow, sadly she won't be under oath."
My take tonight on Sarah Huckabee Sanders giving the GOP response to SOTU tomorrow:https://t.co/mN46Ausg9p
SOTU rebuttals are often the kiss of death for the speaker’s career. Remember the ones by Bobby Jindal and Marco Rubio? I hope that holds true for Sanders. For old time’s sake you can check out these NYT articles:
There will be new faces and special guests (including Bono), comments on the U.S. military shooting down a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon and what's next in Ukraine.
Here's what to expect from President Joe Biden's State of the Union address. https://t.co/7Wk7DXyyD4
Look for new faces and fresh political dynamics as President Joe Biden delivers this year’s State of the Union address, coupled with attention to some old problems brought back into painful focus by recent events.
The president on Tuesday night will stand before a joint session of Congress for the first time since voters in the midterm elections handed control of the House to Republicans. Biden, like presidents past, will make the case that the nation is strong and that better days lie ahead. But he finds himself in choppy waters as he passes the halfway mark of his term.
After a series of legislative victories during the first two years of Biden’s term, Republicans are looking to undo some of his early wins. Recent mass shootings and a police killing in Memphis, Tennessee, have brought renewed focus to the issues of gun violence and excessive police force. And on the foreign policy front, Biden faces the formidable task of keeping a Western alliance — and the American electorate — united behind Ukraine in its effort to repel Russia’s ongoing invasion. He’s also dealing with fallout from the U.S. downing of a suspected Chinese spy balloon that floated across the U.S. last week. On top of all that, a special counsel is investigating how classified information from Biden’s days as vice president and senator ended up at his Delaware home and former office.
Read the AP’s suggestions of what to watch for in the speech at the link.
Tonight, when President Joe Biden delivers his second State of Union, a cancer survivor from North Charleston will be watching alongside the first lady as one of her special guests.https://t.co/JU1DodVTQI
An Austin woman who nearly died after being denied a medical intervention because of Texas’ abortion laws will be one of first lady Jill Biden’s guests at the State of the Union address tonight. More here from @matthewchoi2018 https://t.co/70udwtvuKO
More than a dozen families of Black victims killed or brutalized by police have been invited by Congressional Black Caucus members as guests to tonight's State of the Union address, according to @theGrio.https://t.co/GqEb8qjXzJ
Rock star Bono, the 26-year-old who disarmed a gunman in last month’s Monterey Park, California, shooting, and the family of Tyre Nichols will be among the featured guests sitting alongside first lady Jill Biden at Tuesday’s State of the Union address. https://t.co/2j3osCQgtQ
[I’m having a formatting problem that I can’t figure out–I can’t get double spacing to work.] I’m going to end with some stories to check out while we wait for the big speech tonight.
Krewe du Vieux, Krewe of Underwear, Theme: Burning Ban Bookmobile, 2023
Good Day Sky Dancers!
I’m running late today because I’m exhausted and caught up in something local that I’m not sure I should blog about. I’ve been on Twitter reading to see if anyone agrees with my take on a few subkrewes of Krewe du Vieux (KDV) and what some consider satire, the text BB sent me this morning wondering if guns would be brought to the SOTU address by President Biden, and the Twitter Hashtag about Civil War.
I always run pictures of the KDV parade because I have friends that march and plan all year for the parade. I like to see and support them. Also, they are usually spot-on with their political satire. Each subkrewe picks a topic within a broader theme, mainly dealing with local politics. You may remember when the Krewe du Jieux and Krewe du Mishigas got together with a beautiful float statue and tribute to Ruth Bader Ginsberg that I posted a few years ago before Covid-19 took down parades for a while.
Many of the subkrewes found perfect pitch satire. Others ventured into misogynoir and now act like any criticism just means we don’t get what they’re about. I will use one example, but it’s not the only one. We have a black woman elected Mayor, a black woman elected Sheriff, and a black woman currently serving as the acting police chief. Black women have served and are serving on the City Council. Our Mayors have always had difficulty governing this city for many reasons. Our current Mayor, LaToya Cantrell, has made errors in judgment. I disagree with many things she’s done. She’s a rich target for political satire. She’s under a recall petition sponsored primarily by a rich, white uptown millionaire who wants the city to be more white and gentrified. But if they recall her, what’s the plan?
This is me and fellow blogger Adrastanos (Peter) from First Draft. Krewe du Spank took on the extremist right-wing owner of the Rock in Bowl, who gave a Halloween costume award to a guy dressed as an insurrectionist with a where’s Nancy Shirt. They all have bowling shirts with the name Nancy on them. Peter’s channeling is inner “the Dude” here. They didn’t get outside the Overton Window on this one. KREWE OF SPANK, This Ain’t How We Bowl, 2023
So, the Krewe of Lewd and a number like to go a bit over the top with paper mache dicks. I’m used to this. The theme was Krewe du Vieux Beats Off, so I expected gratuitous cocks floats, and I got them. There was spanking the monkey, choking the chicken, and a jizz from a Shell gas pump sending up the Jazz Fest’s sell-out to Shell Oil. Not my cup of tea, but it wasn’t a targeted thing, and it undoubtedly wasn’t aimed at some while using sexist and misogynist tropes.
Francis the horse seemed to know exactly what she was doing. But on Friday morning, at the City Park stables, the newish Orleans Parish Sheriff was still getting used to sitting high in the saddle. Susan Hutson, who took office in May 2022, may have spent part of her youth in Texas, but that doesn’t make her a cowgirl.
Though, she said, she loves westerns.
The Sheriff hopes to ride a horse in the Zulu parade a month from now, ceremonially repping the department during the climax of Carnival. And she might ride in the feminist-inclined Muses parade too; a perfect match for the first female sheriff in Louisiana.
“From day one,” Hutson said, “my team was like, ‘You have to learn to ride a horse for Mardi Gras.”
L.E.W.D. Ho Down at the LEWD Ranch, 2023
So, somehow, that became this. And I still don’t know what the beef L.E.W.D had with the sheriff. Misogynoir. She’s hypersexualized. She’s turned into some kind of black barbie doll. I have no idea what discussions went on behind this, but I was appalled and have been writing about it ever since.
And now, for my next topic. Civil Fucking War if the DOJ or anyone indicts Trump for crimes? Are you serious? Remember when MSNBC unceremoniously dumped Tiffany Cross for saying this on her TV show back in September? So, can we say she just said it before Trump did?
It will likely get little to no attention today that the current front runner for the Republican presidential nomination just told his supporters to start arming themselves for a civil war to overthrow the government in the case he loses.
A group of 14 House Democrats are voicing fears that House Republicans’ reversal of security rules enacted after the January 6 attack could allow one of their Republican colleagues to threaten the life of President Joe Biden or other attendees in the House chamber during next week’s State of the Union speech.
Mr Biden is set to deliver his annual message to Congress on Tuesday, 7 February. It will be his second State of the Union speech to Congress and his first since Republicans took control of the House by winning a majority in last year’s midterm elections.
One of the first acts of the new GOP majority was to eliminate the magnetometers that then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ordered US Capitol Police to erect at each entrance to the House chamber in the wake of the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Although members have always technically been prohibited from wearing firearms in the chamber, some claimed to have had their weapons on their person during the attack.
In a letter to House and Senate leaders, the group of House Democrats said they were writing with “urgent concern for the safety and security of the President, other dignitaries, and guests” at next week’s joint session of Congress.
“The GOP House Majority’s new rules have made the safety and security of the House Chamber, the very seat of American Democracy, at risk to infiltration and violence with reckless changes to necessary preventative measures. As both of our chambers come together to hear a message from the President on the state of our Union, we are concerned for the safety and security of those present,” said the members, a group which includes Bennie Thompson, the Mississippi Democrat who formerly chaired the House January 6 select committee.
The members pointed to past attempts by members to secret firearms onto the House floor, other members declaring their intent to do the same, and a newly-elected GOP member sending inert grenades to colleagues as gifts as evidence that the House remains “vulnerable to multiple fronts of attacks both from inside and outside Congress”.
“Considering the ability of Members of Congress to carry firearms in the capitol complex outside the House Floor, removal of magnetometers from the entrances to the House Floor, and with record threats against the lives of Members of Congress, the security of the House complex is today precarious,” they said.
They added that they are “urgently” requesting information on what steps leadership is taking to secure the chamber before next week’s event, and said they are “amenable” to a “closed-door briefing” on the matter.
Because the State of the Union is designated as a National Security Special Event by the Department of Homeland Security, the US Secret Service — not the US Capitol Police — will be in charge of security for the Tuesday night joint session.
Krewe of Spermes, SCOTUS incites a Pussy Riot,2023
This brings me to this question. Have we ever figured out how may rogue Secret Service agents there are that will be there? I’ll let BB preview the speech tomorrow.
I need a nap already.
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As predicted, it got really cold here yesterday and overnight. It got down to -9 where I am, lower in other parts of Massachusetts and New England. My newly installed air heat pump worked very well. I had it set at 72, and it stayed very warm in my apartment. The temperature is back up to -1 now (feels like -16) and will continue rising into the teens today. Tomorrow we will be back up to warmer than normal temperatures in the 40s and 50s for the rest of the week. Pretty freaky. Of course, my parents, who grew up in North Dakota, wouldn’t have thought these temperatures were a big deal.
The really dramatic weather was at Mt. Washington in New Hampshire. It’s not that big a mountain, but it gets the “worst weather in the world.” They get hurricane-force winds up there all the time. Once in the 1930s, Mt. Washington recorded 231 mph winds! Last night it got to a wind chill of -109 degrees, the lowest ever recorded in the U.S.
-109° F wind chill now the lowest ever recorded in the U.S. at Mt. Washington observatory. pic.twitter.com/wzOpBrnFv6
— Kevin Lighty – WCIA 3 Chief Meteorologist (@KevinLighty) February 4, 2023
Parts of the Northeast woke up to the coldest morning in decades on Saturday, with temperatures 30 degrees or more below average and wind chills in the extremely dangerous category. Virtually the entirety of New England was included in wind chill warnings, while Mount Washington’s minus-109 degree wind chill set a record for the entire United States.
The National Weather Service office serving the Boston region described the cold as “a historic Arctic outbreak for the modern era,” and warned that “this is about as cold as it will ever get.”
In Boston, the morning low fell to minus-10 degrees at 5:15 a.m., the coldest reading observed in the city since Jan. 15, 1957, when Boston hit minus-12. The episode resembled the brutal Arctic blast on Valentine’s Day 2016, when Logan Airport dropped to minus-9 degrees.
Coupled with winds gusting near 40 mph, Boston witnessed its lowest wind chill ever recorded at minus-39 degrees. Records date back to 1944. Wind chill is an index that attempts to quantity the combined impact of cold and wind on the human body, since strong winds blow away one’s body heat.
By Robin Freedenfeld
The temperatures were so extreme in Maine that residents reported “frost quakes,” or cryoseisms. The earthquake-like tremors are caused by rapidly plummeting temperatures, which cause water trapped in cracks in the ground to expand.
The city of Portland, Maine, recorded its all-time lowest wind chill at minus-45 degrees. A weather balloon launched by the National Weather Service in Gray, Maine, reported the all-time lowest 850 millibar (an air pressure level corresponding to approximately 5,000 feet in altitude) temperature ever observed by that office at minus-35.5 degrees.
Farther north in Maine, Frenchville Airport in Aroostook County recorded a wind chill to minus-61 degrees, while Cadillac Mountain in Hancock County had a minus-62 degree wind chill. Even Bar Harbor, on the coast, logged a wind chill of minus-48. Greenville in Piscataquis County faced a wind chill of minus-58.
So that was interesting for those of us who are excited by extreme weather; now we go back to unseasonably warm daytime temperatures in the 40s and 50s. Freaky.
Yesterday, the right wing nuts on Twitter–including Congressional Republicans–were totally losing their minds over that Chinese balloon that was spotted over the U.S. The wingnuts demanded that the government shoot the thing down. Of course it’s flying way up in the atmosphere, beyond reach of any kind of weapon, plus it’s huge and would probably kill people if it came down, but whatever. It’s Biden’s fault. This moron is chairman of the House Oversight Committee.
House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-KY) casually suggested to Fox News on Friday that the suspected Chinese spy balloon floating over the United States could contain “bioweapons” from “Wuhan,” invoking the “lab leak theory” that’s been embraced by Republicans.
After a Chinese surveillance balloon was spotted over the northern U.S. this week, Republicans have lashed out at President Joe Biden over his perceived “weakness” in his administration’s policy towards China. Calling for the president to “shoot down” the craft, some in the GOP called the president “Beijing Biden” while claiming this is further proof that “Communist China” doesn’t “fear or respect” Biden.
By Bruce Bingham
While the Pentagon has balked over conservative demands to take down the balloon, noting that falling debris could injure or kill civilians, the Biden administration has postponed Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s upcoming trip to China. China, meanwhile, has insisted the suspected spycraft is really just a “civilian airship” that “deviated far from its planned course.”
Amid the Republican handwringing over the Chinese balloon, Comer appeared on Fox News’ The Faulkner Focus to react. And he immediately jumped into conspiratorial waters.
“I have concern this will be another example of the Biden administration’s weakness on the national scale,” he declared. “You look at what happened in Afghanistan. That hurt the reputation of America’s military strength. That hurt the reputation of our commander-in-chief. And now we have China clearly playing games with the United States.”
After saying the balloon “never should have been allowed” to cross over into the U.S., the Kentucky lawmaker then fear-mongered that the craft could be loaded down with weaponized viruses. “My concern is that the federal government doesn’t know what’s in that balloon,” he asserted. “Is that bioweapons in that balloon? Did that balloon take off from Wuhan?”
Beijing on Saturday offered a subdued rebuttal to Washington’s decision to delay a high-level visit after a suspected Chinese spy balloon was discovered hovering over the United States, derailing China’s recent efforts to repair its most important bilateral relationship.
Hours before U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was to take off, Washington postponed the trip, saying it “would not be appropriate” after the discovery of the airship floating around 60,000 feet above the central United States.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement Saturday that the presence of a Chinese airship in U.S. airspace was “completely an accident,” and was caused by westerly winds knocking the balloon off course. It reiterated claims that the balloon was for scientific research such as collecting weather data, and accused “some U.S. politicians and media” of taking advantage of the situation to discredit China, which “firmly opposes this.” [….]
Blinken had been expected to meet Chinese leader Xi Jinping on the trip, and while few expected concrete results, officials on both sides hoped it would start the process of capping tensions over issues such as Taiwan, U.S. sanctions targeting Chinese tech companies, human rights and China’s friendship with Russia. The trip would help pave the way for a potential visit to the United States by Xi when San Francisco hosts an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders’ meeting in November.
The balloon incident, on the eve of such a critical meeting, raises questions over whether it was an accident or a deliberate effort by Beijing to send a message to Washington. (The Pentagon said Thursday that the air vehicle is not currently considered a threat to people on the ground.) In either case, it is a setback for China’s leadership.
Long before the leak of a draft opinion reversing Roe v. Wade, some Supreme Court justices often used personal email accounts for sensitive transmissions instead of secure servers set up to guard such information, among other security lapses not made public in the court’s report on the investigation last month.
New details revealed to CNN by multiple sources familiar with the court’s operations offer an even more detailed picture of yearslong lax internal procedures that could have endangered security, led to the leak and hindered an investigation into the culprit.
Supreme Court employees also used printers that didn’t produce logs – or were able to print sensitive documents off-site without tracking – and “burn bags” meant to ensure the safe destruction of materials were left open and unattended in hallways.
“This has been going on for years,” one former employee said.
The problem with the justices’ use of emails persisted in part because some justices were slow to adopt to the technology and some court employees were nervous about confronting them to urge them to take precautions, one person said. Such behavior meant that justices weren’t setting an example to take security seriously.
The justices were “not masters of information security protocol,” one former court employee told CNN.
In a statement attached to the final report, the court called the leak a “grave assault” on the court’s legitimacy and the marshal of the court issued a road map to improve security.
More details at the CNN link.
We’re getting more information about what’s in that new tell-all book by Mark Pomerantz, a former prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office–one of the two who resigned in disgust when incoming DA Alvin Bragg decided not to prosecute Trump.
In February 2022, Mark Pomerantz was a lead attorney in the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation of former president Donald Trump and his business practices when he abruptly resigned. He cited frustration over what he saw as the office’s flagging commitment to the inquiry. Pomerantz, a renowned former prosecutor and defense lawyer, had been recruited in February 2021 by then-district attorney Cyrus Vance to assist in the long-running investigation. In his resignation letter, Pomerantz asserted that the new DA, Alvin Bragg, had “suspended indefinitely” the investigation and said that Pomerantz did not want “to become a passive participant in what I believe to be a grave failure of justice.”
Elena Berezina – Portrait of K.F. Venevtseva
Pomerantz has now expanded on his views in a book, “People vs. Donald Trump: An Inside Account.” However, in the time between Pomerantz’s resignation and the book’s publication, Bragg’s investigation of Trump has taken another turn. The district attorney’s office has impaneled a grand jury and begun hearing evidence in a sharp ramping up of its inquiry into, among other things, Trump’s role in payments to adult-film star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign. As the office pushes forward on work that could lead to criminal charges against Trump, Bragg has publicly raised concerns that Pomerantz’s book could jeopardize any subsequent prosecution.
It is in this climate that Pomerantz’s book lands next week. His intent is to reveal what happened within the district attorney’s office during his year there. As he frames the question: “Why had the investigation, which by all accounts had been gaining steam and seemed likely to lead to criminal charges against the former president, come to a sudden stop?”
His assessment of the inner workings of the Manhattan district attorney’s office is brutal. Pomerantz contends that no criminal case emerged against Trump because the DA’s team of career prosecutors was simply not up to the task. He paints an unflattering portrait of the career assistant district attorneys, particularly the many who disagreed with his own assessment of the potential criminal case. “They spoke about the need to follow the evidence,” Pomerantz writes, “but to my knowledge they had not actually looked at much of it.”
In his telling, the prosecutors come across as fainthearted, lacking “energy” and “enthusiasm,” and “relentlessly negative.” The team was faced with a possible first-of-its-kind prosecution of a former president, and, Pomerantz writes, the prosecutors were perhaps “a bit fearful about bringing charges against Trump,” given his well-known penchant for public retaliation. “They seemed to me,” Pomerantz observes, “to be exactly the kind of traditional, ‘let’s do things the way we have always done them’ prosecutors that kept the district attorney’s office from being resourceful and successful in white-collar cases.” Pomerantz reveals that Vance had “privately complained many times to me … about the slow-moving and ‘gun shy’ culture in the office.” Pomerantz believed the office needed a chief of staff, “a drill sergeant,” as he puts it, to “keep the team moving.” But out of the hundreds of assistant district attorneys, he argues, “there was no suitable candidate from within the office.”
Donald J. Trump grew his business, fortune and fame “through a pattern of criminal activity,” according to a new book by a veteran prosecutor, who reveals that the Manhattan district attorney’s office once considered charging the former president with racketeering, a law often used against the Mafia.
The prosecutor, Mark F. Pomerantz, resigned in protest early last year after the newly elected district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, decided not to seek an indictment of Mr. Trump at that time. By then, the inquiry was more narrowly focused on whether the former president had fraudulently inflated the value of his assets to secure loans.
But for months beforehand, Mr. Pomerantz had mapped out a wide-ranging possible case against the former president under the state racketeering law, according to the soon-to-be published book, “People vs. Donald Trump.” That broader approach was based on the theory that Mr. Trump had presided over a corrupt business empire for years, a previously unreported aspect of the long-running inquiry.
Girl with cat, by Merle Keller
Mr. Pomerantz and his colleagues cast a wide net, examining a host of Trump enterprises — including Trump University, his for-profit real estate education venture, and his family charitable foundation.
“He demanded absolute loyalty and would go after anyone who crossed him. He seemed always to stay one step ahead of the law,” Mr. Pomerantz, a prominent litigator who has prosecuted and defended organized crime cases, writes of Mr. Trump. “In my career as a lawyer, I had encountered only one other person who touched all of these bases: John Gotti, the head of the Gambino organized crime family.”
The book, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, is a chronicle of the complicated and circuitous investigation, which produced charges against Mr. Trump’s longtime chief financial officer and his family business, but has yet to yield formal accusations against the former president himself.
The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
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