Thursday Reads: Oy, the Headlines!
Posted: February 17, 2022 Filed under: 2022 Primaries, 2022 SOTU | Tags: RINO Hunting 33 Comments
Spring Lupine by Laurie Kersey
Good Day Sky Dancers!
BB is going to her doctor’s to get things sorted out so I’m doing the Thursday post this week instead of the Friday. She’ll return tomorrow and hopefully, with a good pain management plan!
The headlines today are the usual mish-mash of both-siderisms of the Biden Economy and Biden judicial and Fed appointments. The bottom line on those is basically Republicans lie and obstruct and the New York Times finds that responsible governing tactics somehow. The other set of headlines reminds me that everyone around Trump is basically a criminal and under some kind of investigation. There are two funny things in the headlines regarding the Trump response to losing his long-time accountants. (He trashed his defense) Then there’s the whacko Pillow Guy. The rest is still pretty depressing because Trump acolytes are running for offices at all levels with the crazy out on display.
So, here are some things to read and consider. At least, I’m spotting my first azaleas and magnolias of the season as I await next week’s State of the Union and the wail of the pundits.
Children with spring flowers by Henri Lebasque
Let’s start with the antics of the My Pillow guy that got him banned from Canada. This is from The Daily Beast as reported by Zachary Petrizzo. “The MyPillow Guy Is Seriously Planning to Drop Pillows From the Sky Over Canada. PREPARE THE TEENY TINY PARACHUTES!” This so reminds me of the WKRP Turkey Drop that I can’t stop laughing.
After his initial Tuesday shipment of MyPillow products was denied entry into Canada, Mike Lindell now has a backup plan to get free pillows to Canadian truckers: drop them from the sky via a helicopter. The pillow maven told The Daily Beast late Wednesday night that he intends to drop his pillows into Canada from a helicopter “with little parachutes” attached. “We need to get the MyPillows to the people!” he continued. The 2020 election dead-ender further made it a point to ensure The Daily Beast noted in this report that the pillows will have “little parachutes,” adding, “make sure you put that part in, or it could be dangerous.” Asked where exactly he intended to drop the pillows, he said, “I can not give the location out, and it is no joke! I just confirmed with them [the helicopter company], and yes, this is the plan. We have the helicopter confirmed, but we are moving the time up to 11 am.” The Daily Beast could not reach the Canada Border Services Agency for comment late Wednesday night.
Flowers by Gustav Klimt
I certainly hope those Brave Canadian mounties can rope him and put him in in the hoosgow with a saggy mattress and feather pillows.
Republicans are trying to tie inflation worries to President Biden while White House economist are pointing to price gouging due to monopoly/oligopoly status of many US Businesses. This is from The Washington Post: “White House economists push back against pressure to blame corporate power for inflation. Administration officials engage in ‘the war of the track changes’ as aides differ on corporate responsibility for high prices.”
The White House has faced substantial political head winds from the pressures caused by inflation, with the president’s economic approval rating declining amid the biggest price increases in roughly four decades.
As price hikes have hurt many Americans, large corporations are seeing their most profitable quarters in years, with corporate profits up by as much as 27 percent from 2019 to 2021, according to Dean Baker, a liberal economist. The share of corporate income going to profits rose from 24.1 percent to 26.7 percent from the fourth quarter of 2019 to the third quarter of last year.
To this point, Biden has mostly limited his remarks on corporate greed and inflation to specific sectors in which a few firms hold massive amounts of market power — stopping short of embracing either the rhetoric or the policy response called for by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). Biden said at the end of January: “This isn’t a new issue. It’s not been the reason we’ve have high inflation today. It’s not the only reason. But, over time, it has reduced competition; squeezed out small businesses and farmers, ranchers; and increased the price for consumers.”
Part of his hesitance reflects the trepidation among his economic team about whether inflation actually is tied to corporate consolidation. Officials at CEA believe that monopoly power is a major economic problem and support the White House’s broader antitrust agenda. But these economists do not believe consolidation explains the 7.5 percent surge in prices over the last year that has created the worst inflation in four decades.
The differences among the president’s advisers are also broadly described as collegial and a difference of degree, rather than the kind of internal warfare that characterized much of the Trump administration’s economic team. Some economists have praised the White House for resisting the political temptation to make a bigger deal out of monopoly’s role in inflation.
“I think they’ve tried to be honest about the economic situation, and I, for one, appreciate that,” Baker said. “They have to make a political call about whether that’s the right decision, but I think it’s best for them to be honest and I think they’ve done that.”
The 2022 primary season is upon us. Texas is already voting and wow, do they have some whackadoodles running. Trumpist are everywhere it seems at all levels. The definition of RINO has moved far beyond any normal Overton Windown concept. Trumpist Republicans have authoritarian, theocratic, and conspiracy-ridden, anti-factual takes on US governance. Be prepared for the race to the bottom.
This report from Politico was filed by David Siders.
Republicans are embarking on a primary season that is poised to reshape the GOP for a generation, and that journey begins in Texas.
In less than two weeks, the first primary election of 2022 will take place in the nation’s second-most populous state, and it’s a blockbuster: The state’s Republican governor, attorney general and agriculture commissioner all face spirited challenges, as do several GOP House incumbents.
From there, fractious primaries will unfold across the electoral map in the coming months, cementing a more populist orientation for the GOP and Donald Trump’s status as the party’s lodestar, or setting a more traditionally conservative course.
These aren’t simple match-ups between Trump and anti-Trump forces, or isolated intraparty feuds. Safely ensconced Republican officeholders are being bombarded by challengers from coast to coast, in many cases spurred on by Trump directly. Redistricting and retirements have further scrambled the established order in many places, opening up seats and drawing fields filled with combative candidates eager to move the party in a different direction. Combine that with high levels of energy — and anger — in the party base, and it’s a recipe to remake the party from the ground up.
“Primaries are always fucked up to some degree, but it’s different now,” said John Thomas, a Republican strategist who works on House campaigns across the country. “There’s more self-hate than there was before. Ten years ago, we’d argue about who was more pro-gun, who was more pro-life. Now, my clients are going RINO hunting, which is a level of disdain that was not there before in our party.”
Much of the churn is due to forces unleashed by Trump. The defeated president’s iron grip on the party and level of involvement in midterm primaries is unprecedented in modern history, and he continues to advance his lie that the 2020 election was stolen.
The Artist’s Garden at Giverny by Claude Monet ,1900
And with that we get this AP headline to discourage Democrats at all levels “‘The brand is so toxic’: Dems fear extinction in rural US” written by Steve Peoples about Pennsylvania.
The party’s brand is so toxic in the small towns 100 miles northeast of Pittsburgh that some liberals have removed bumper stickers and yard signs and refuse to acknowledge publicly their party affiliation. These Democrats are used to being outnumbered by the local Republican majority, but as their numbers continue to dwindle, those who remain are feeling increasingly isolated and unwelcome in their own communities.
“The hatred for Democrats is just unbelievable,” said Tim Holohan, an accountant based in rural McKean County who recently encouraged his daughter to get rid of a pro-Joe Biden bumper sticker. “I feel like we’re on the run.”
The climate across rural Pennsylvania is symptomatic of a larger political problem threatening the Democratic Party heading into the November elections. Beyond losing votes in virtually every election since 2008, Democrats have been effectively ostracized from the overwhelmingly white parts of rural America, leaving party leaders with few options to reverse a cultural trend that is redefining the political landscape.
The shifting climate helped Republicans limit Democratic inroads in 2020 — the GOP actually gained House seats despite Donald Trump’s presidential loss. A year later, surging rural support enabled Republicans to claim the Virginia governorship. A small but vocal group of Democratic officials now fears the same trends will undermine their atic candidates in Ohio, Wisconsin, Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, states that will help decide the Senate majority in November, and the White House two years after that.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Party continues to devote the vast majority of its energy, messaging and resources to voters in more populated urban and suburban areas.
In Pennsylvania, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a leading candidate in the Senate contest, insists his party can no longer afford to ignore rural voters. The former small-town mayor drove his black Dodge Ram pickup truck across five rural counties last weekend to face voters who almost never see statewide Democratic candidates.
Fetterman, wearing his signature hooded sweatshirt and gym shorts despite the freezing temperatures, described himself as a champion for “the forgotten, the marginalized and the left-behind places” as he addressed roughly 100 people inside a bingo hall in McKean County, a place Trump carried with 72% of the vote in 2020.
“These are the kind of places that matter just as much as any other place,” Fetterman said as the crowd cheered.
The Democratic Party’s struggle in rural America has been building for years. And it’s getting worse.
So, there are some stories from two swing states. Here’s one of the Texas candidates vying for the Governor primary win to run against Beto O’Rourke or another Democratic Primary winner. Try not to spit up in your mouth.
So, there are a lot of other headlines. Go find some and try not to be too depressed.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Tuesday Reads
Posted: February 15, 2022 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: Canada, Christina Yuna Lee, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, John Durham, Justin Trudeau, Marcy Wheeler, Mazars, Michael A. Sussmann, NATO, NYC Chinatown murder, Rodney Joffe, Trucker convoy, Trump Organization, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin 21 CommentsGood Morning!!
Francine van Hove, Plasirs du Matin, “Morning Pleasures,” French, 1942
There may be some movement in the Ukraine crisis. The AP reported this morning that some Russian troops are being pulled back and returned to their bases. Later the story was updated to report that Putin wants to negotiate: Putin: Russia ready to discuss confidence-building measures.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that Moscow is ready for talks with the U.S. and NATO on limits for missile deployments and military transparency.
Speaking after talks with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Putin said the U.S. and NATO rejected Moscow’s demand to keep Ukraine and other ex-Soviet nations out of NATO, halt weapons deployments near Russian borders and roll back alliance forces from Eastern Europe.
They agreed to discuss a range of security measures that Russia had previously proposed.
Putin said that Russia is ready to engage in talks on limits on the deployment of intermediate range missiles in Europe, transparency of drills and other confidence-building measures but emphasized the need for the West to heed Russia’s main demands.
The statement followed the Russian Defense Ministry’s announced a partial pullback of troops after military drills, adding to hopes that the Kremlin may not be planning to invade Ukraine imminently. The Russian military gave no details on where the troops were pulling back from, or how many.
From The Washington Post: Russia says some troops withdrawing from Ukraine’s border; NATO chief notes ‘cautious optimism’ but sees no de-escalation yet.
I’m sure you’ve heard about the legal filing by John Durham, the special counsel appointed by Bill Barr to investigate the Russia investigation, that implied some kind of sinister activity by the Clinton campaign in 2016. The right wing media has been going nuts over this, but it’s basically meaningless. Charlie Savage explains at The New York Times: Court Filing Started a Furor in Right-Wing Outlets, but Their Narrative Is Off Track.
When John H. Durham, the Trump-era special counsel investigating the inquiry into Russia’s 2016 election interference, filed a pretrial motion on Friday night, he slipped in a few extra sentences that set off a furor among right-wing outlets about purported spying on former President Donald J. Trump.
But the entire narrative appeared to be mostly wrong or old news — the latest example of the challenge created by a barrage of similar conspiracy theories from Mr. Trump and his allies.
Upon close inspection, these narratives are often based on a misleading presentation of the facts or outright misinformation. They also tend to involve dense and obscure issues, so dissecting them requires asking readers to expend significant mental energy and time — raising the question of whether news outlets should even cover such claims. Yet Trump allies portray the news media as engaged in a cover-up if they don’t.
The latest example began with the motion Mr. Durham filed in a case he has brought against Michael A. Sussmann, a cybersecurity lawyer with links to the Democratic Party. The prosecutor has accused Mr. Sussmann of lying during a September 2016 meeting with an F.B.I. official about Mr. Trump’s possible links to Russia.
The filing was ostensibly about potential conflicts of interest. But it also recounted a meeting at which Mr. Sussmann had presented other suspicions to the government. In February 2017, Mr. Sussmann told the C.I.A. about odd internet data suggesting that someone using a Russian-made smartphone may have been connecting to networks at Trump Tower and the White House, among other places.
Mr. Sussmann had obtained that information from a client, a technology executive named Rodney Joffe. Another paragraph in the court filing said that Mr. Joffe’s company, Neustar, had helped maintain internet-related servers for the White House, and that he and his associates “exploited this arrangement” by mining certain records to gather derogatory information about Mr. Trump.
Mary Cassatt, Breakfast in Bed, 1897
The right wingers are thrilled by this story, but it’s complete bullshit.
The conservative media also skewed what the filing said. For example, Mr. Durham’s filing never used the word “infiltrate.” And it never claimed that Mr. Joffe’s company was being paid by the Clinton campaign.
Most important, contrary to the reporting, the filing never said the White House data that came under scrutiny was from the Trump era. According to lawyers for David Dagon, a Georgia Institute of Technology data scientist who helped develop the Yota analysis, the data — so-called DNS logs, which are records of when computers or smartphones have prepared to communicate with servers over the internet — came from Barack Obama’s presidency.
“What Trump and some news outlets are saying is wrong,” said Jody Westby and Mark Rasch, both lawyers for Mr. Dagon. “The cybersecurity researchers were investigating malware in the White House, not spying on the Trump campaign, and to our knowledge all of the data they used was nonprivate DNS data from before Trump took office.”
In a statement, a spokesperson for Mr. Joffe said that “contrary to the allegations in this recent filing,” he was apolitical, did not work for any political party, and had lawful access under a contract to work with others to analyze DNS data — including from the White House — for the purpose of hunting for security breaches or threats.
Marcy Wheeler has been covering this story since the beginning. You can read what she has to say in these posts at her Emptywheel blog:
John Durham, Ask Not For Whom The Statute of Limitation Tolls…
John Durham Chose To Meet With John Ratcliffe Rather Than Witnesses Necessary To His Investigation.
This is a horrific story about a possible hate crime from The New York Times: Screams That ‘Went Quiet’: Prosecutors’ Account of Chinatown Killing.
Police officers who responded to a 911 call about a disturbance in a Lower Manhattan building on Sunday heard a woman screaming when they reached the sixth floor, but the door to the apartment where the screams had come from was locked.
Morning Coffee, by Harry Roseland
As police struggled with the door, at first they still heard her calls for help, but “then she went quiet,” a prosecutor, Dafna Yoran, said in a Manhattan Criminal Court hearing on Monday night. Another voice emerged, sounding like a woman and telling them, “‘We don’t need the police here — go away.’”
When a specialized police unit arrived and broke down the door, they found Christina Yuna Lee, 35, dead in her bathtub with more than 40 stab wounds. The second voice, Ms. Yoran said, was actually that of Assamad Nash, who had followed the victim into the building on Chrystie Street in Chinatown, forced his way into her home and stabbed her.
When officers broke into the apartment, the police found Mr. Nash hiding under a bed and the knife believed to be the murder weapon hidden behind a dresser, prosecutors said.
It’s not yet clear why Ms. Lee was targeted, but the Asian community in New York is terrified.
Mr. Nash, 25, whose last known address was a men’s homeless shelter in the Bowery, was arraigned on first-degree charges of murder, burglary and sexually motivated burglary. A judge ordered him held without bail, and prosecutors said he was facing a sentence of up to 25 years to life in prison if convicted.
Though the authorities have not determined that Ms. Lee was targeted because of her ethnicity, her killing stoked fears in the city’s Asian community, which was already on edge after a rise in attacks during the pandemic.
Her killing also fit a pattern that has become an unsettlingly common feature of the pandemic in New York City: a seemingly unprovoked attack in which the person charged is a homeless man. In many neighborhoods in Manhattan, residents have expressed growing concern about homeless people, some of whom seem to be struggling with mental illness, menacing and harassing passers-by.
Ms. Lee, who graduated from Rutgers University in 2008 with a bachelor’s degree in art history, worked as a creative producer for Splice, an online music platform based in New York City. The company said in a statement that it was heartbroken over her “senseless” death.
Read the rest at the NYT.
One more story on the trucker blockade story from The Washington Post: ‘Freedom Convoy,’ police face off near U.S.-Canada border crossings as Trudeau invokes Emergencies Act.
There’s a lot happening in the news today. What stories have you been following?
Monday Reads: Once again, I manage to avoid the Stupor Bowl
Posted: February 14, 2022 Filed under: just because | Tags: Black Lives Matter, Half Time, Puppy Bowl, Stupor Bowl 29 Comments
The Kingfisher, Vincent van Gogh. 1886
Good Day Sky Dancers!
We’re beginning to see signs of spring around here so that’s a good thing!! There are patches of green grass and bird arrivals. I also like spring so we get beyond the national Panem et circenses frenzy. It drags on longer than National Crass Consumerism Season. We’re deep into Carnival here and the parades are back on the streets of New Orleans. I always wonder why the greedy and rich always co-opt perfectly wonderful festivals celebrating the passage of the season and turn them into ordeals requiring mass credit card spending, ads, and tourists.
However, I did miss this sight which reminds me of me when I had to go to football games with my father and occasionally my mother. I loved the time with my Dad but it took me about two seconds to drag a book out to read through the rest of the game. The best part was the Cheese Frenchie, Onion Rings, and chocolate malted at King’s in downtown Lincoln prior to the the parking spot at the stadium and mass crowd chaos.
The only other thing I used to do at the University of Nebraska games was to stand up and cheer when the opposing team scored. We sat on the fifty-yard line in the 20th row right behind the marching band and close enough to throw stuff at the cheerleaders. I never indulged in any of that but I especially enjoyed singing Boomer Sooner. I knew all the words because that’s where I was born and my Dad went to Law School there. It was enough to irritate people but back then you just got dirty looks. Nebraska ruled college football at the time and their rival was always Oklahoma.
I also had the pleasure of reading through a Stupor Bowl in LA back in the day although my dad was a Ford Dealer and not part of the NFL players like Andrew Whitworth. Good for whoever Whitworth is because he’s got himself a nerdy, book-reading daughter!
Little Owl – Albrecht Dürer (1506)
The other parts of the Stupor Bowl–and I name this for the fans and not for the poor players who wind up severely brain damaged with CTE–are the ads, the halftime, and the Puppy Bowl. So, let’s just say that paying all that money to hype a product seems crazy but it must work. Hence, the costs of living in an oligopolistic monopoly-based failed market. The Puppy Bowl is damned cute. I missed it since I worked through the entire shindig but the country’s First Puppy stole that show! The best thing about this huge ad campaign was the game was dedicated to animal rights activist Betty White. Team Fluff won the game! (via Daily Beast)
In what may prove to be the most important sports-related story this Sunday, Team Fluff snatched victory out of the tiny jaws of defeat in Puppy Bowl XVIII. Following a fur-ocious three-hour battle, Fluff edged out Team Ruff with a final score of 73-69. The eighteenth iteration of the Puppy Bowl saw 118 adoptable puppies competing for the “Lombarky” Trophy by dragging chew toys around the miniature field. Representing more than 60 shelters and rescues in 33 states, this year’s lineup also featured a record number of puppies with special needs, including Benny, a goldendoodle with partial paralysis who used a set of rear support wheels to race around the field. Benny was also crowned the 2022 Puppy Bowl’s “Most Pupular” player. And, most importantly, “every Puppy Bowl ends with every single dog being adopted,” longtime referee Dan Schachner told the New York Post.
The Threatened Swan – Jan Asselijn (1650)
So, there are a few noteworthy things about the half-time show. And no, it’s not Snoop Dog’s toke prior to his appearance. That’s par for the course and perfectly legal in California.
Eminem–bless his bad 49-year-old ass–took the knee to remind everyone that black lives matter.
My youngest daughter–then a middle schooler–came with me to spend the holidays in NYC. The first thing she wanted to do was go see 8 Mile and so I splurged for the tremendously expensive tix and we headed to the movie theatre in the East Village. She had been playing the heck out of the CD on my laptop and was indulged by my then-boyfriend when we spent time with him in Harlem. He had very large speakers. This was 2002 so back in the good old days. I am familiar with him and rap in general. I was substitute teaching in a music class and let the kids play vinyl back in 1979. I got my first introduction to rap at Omaha Tech High School!
Well, good for Eminem! He may be middle aged, white, and rich but at least he still knows where he came from. Dr Dre set the whole thing up and was Eminem’s mentor. The genre has grown a lot since then.
On Sunday, Eminem knelt and held his head in his hand after performing “Lose Yourself,” his anthem about self-determination from the movie “8 Mile.”
Air – Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1566)
I haven’t seen it but I plan to because the royalty of early 21st-century rap performed and some bonus artists showed up. Plus, Mary Ann Blige …
Blige, whose 14th studio LP, “Good Morning Gorgeous,” arrived on Friday, sang two of her most beloved older anthems, “Family Affair” and “No More Drama,” reaching deep for some powerful high notes and ending the set flat on her back.
However, I agree with this headline in MSNBC: “NFL Super Bowl halftime show was a master class in gaslighting. The Dr. Dre-led performance was awesome — but it played into the NFL’s plan to distract from the league’s race and gender issues.” It’s written by Ja’han Jones. It seemed like awfully convenient timing to present black artists. There were also some “gender issues” present in the performances.
The mini-concert was an undeniable smash hit, featuring Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg performing their classics together, 50 Cent rapping upside-down like it was 2003, along with Mary J. Blige, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar and even Anderson .Paak on the drums.
Theirs was one in a number of acts that constituted what was arguably the Blackest night in NFL history, withgospel duo Mary Mary, country music star Mickey Guyton and R&B singer Jhené Aiko performing ahead of the kickoff.
And, most importantly to the NFL, there were virtually no references to the league’s sordid racial politics, exposed in recent years by its treatment of former San Francisco49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick and allegations of systemic racism from former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores. (The league denies such allegations.)
The only thing even approaching a critique was Eminem taking a knee in a purported act of solidarity with racial justice activists.
Watching it in real time, I wasn’t sure whether that was a form of protest or a performance miscue, and if you have to question whether a protest is a protest … it probably isn’t.
The league did seem to convey its racial ideology in another way some may not have realized, though. During Lamar’s performance of the protest song “Alright,” a lyric was conspicuously censored to remove a line critical of police who kill.
The line — “and we hate po-po, when they kill us dead in the street, fo’ sho’” — was scrubbed of any reference to the police at all.It seems the NFL won’t even tolerate criticism of police in an imagined-yet-realistic scenario of anti-Black violence.
So, about those gender issues which were mostly hidden by a stupid tweet by some right-wing troll, I had never heard about. Well, he’s all over Twitter so he got his share of 3 minutes of fame. So wtf is Sexual Anarchy? It sounds like a 70s metal band name. I’ve got dibs on it for my next band’s name!!!
Kirk’s tweet, which he did not care to explain any further, drew all kinds of responses from critics on the left, many of whom derided Kirk over his prudish tendencies.
“I’ve been trying to figure out what Charlie Kirk means by ‘sexual anarchy,'” tweeted attorney Ron Filipkowski. “I’m not exactly sure, but I think it’s probably better than whatever the opposite is.”
Peacock and Peacock Butterfly – Archibald Thorburn (1917)
Still, there was a lot of that Rapper vibe in the show which means a lot of women dancing provocatively with scant clothing. Dance has mostly always been that way but anyway, I’m not a dance critic but I do have issues with hyper-sexualizing black women for the pleasure of men. Historically, that never ends well.
So, I have to make a disclosure here. I worked the Gentilly Stage for Jazz Fest for many years as part of the front-of-the-house sound team. I have seen a lot of performers in my day on that stage and set up their kits, microphones, and instruments. My thrill was to mic Etta James. That’s closely followed by setting up the piano mics for Randy Newman then watching over his two small children side stage. I don’t want to turn this into a name game but let’s say I’ve happily helped a lot of talent of all flavors. The guy I really didn’t like was Elvis Costello but, oh well. However, I boycotted and refused to deal with 50 Cent and I was not the only one back in the day. I did not make a scene but I clearly let it be known I thought his treatment of women was appalling and I would not enable it. He showed up in “Da Club” last night with that same schtick.
After Snoop and Dre combined for “The Next Episode” and “California Love” to kick off the halftime show, the camera panned down to 50, upside down and flexing, just as he did to kick off the “In Da Club” music video 19 years ago. 50 Cent was soon joined by a slew of dancers to bounce to the rap classic, and he then threw the performance to Mary J. Blige, who sank into “Family Affair.”
Maybe, that’s where the sexual anarchy term came from, I don’t know. Like I said, I was working and not watching. I think displays of sexuality are fine. I’m cool with exuberant dancing. New Orleans represents all of that and more! All people are sexual beings. But,I still object to the objectification of women for the benefit of men. So, if I missed the cues on this I’ll go look but I’m not sure. I’m open to input.
So, of all the people to do a Super Bowl wrap-up, it shouldn’t be me but there it is. BTW, who won the game?
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Lazy Caturday Reads
Posted: February 12, 2022 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: Donald Trump, Fox News, Joe Biden, National Archives, Russia, Trucker protests, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin 20 CommentsGood Morning!!
Black cat sleeping by Harry Boardman
The news today is mostly focused on the situation in Ukraine. Here are the latest developments:
The Washington Post: U.S. orders most embassy staffers in Kyiv to leave Ukraine amid fears Russia will invade soon.
I’ll end with this story at CNN that provides details on the ongoing efforts of the National Archives to retrieve government documents that Trump took with him when he left the White House: Archives threatened to go to Congress and Justice Department to get Trump to turn over records.
Worried that a trove of White House records that had been brought to Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate contained classified material, a top official in the former President’s orbit warned his aides last fall: Do not touch those boxes.
Spotted Cat, woodcut by Seiho Takeuchi
The senior official in Trump’s inner circle did not want to risk exposing sensitive materials to aides who may have lacked the appropriate security clearances, according to a person familiar with the matter. The boxes, which were being stored at the time in Trump’s personal suite at his Florida club, had landed on the National Archives and Records Administration’s radar after officials there noticed that several items were missing from their catalog of Trump White House records.
In May 2021, the realization that important items from Trump’s time in office — including some of his correspondence with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un and infamous Sharpie-altered map of Hurricane Dorian — were not transferred to the Archives at the end of his presidency prompted NARA officials to contact Trump’s team.
Longtime Archives lawyer Gary Stern first reached out to a person from the White House counsel’s office who had been designated as the President Records Act point of contact about the record-keeping issue, hoping to locate the missing items and initiate their swift transfer back to NARA, said multiple sources familiar with the matter. The person had served as one of Trump’s impeachment defense attorneys months earlier and, as deputy counsel, was among the White House officials typically involved in ensuring records were properly preserved during the transfer of power and Trump’s departure from office.
Trump claimed that he returned the materials “easily and without conflict and on a very friendly basis,” but of course that was a lie. The Archives have been battling with Trump over the documents since last spring and he likely still has more materials that he hasn’t turned over.
One source familiar with the situation says the document turnover has “not been fully resolved” and says Trump is still in possession of documents the Archives wants. The Archives hinted at this in a statement earlier this week.
“Former President Trump’s representatives have informed NARA that they are continuing to search for additional Presidential records that belong to the National Archives,” the Archives said in a statement.
Mother cat sleeping with her two kittens, Lucy Dawson drawing, 1946
In a series of interviews with CNN, a half-dozen people familiar with the matter described a tense situation that took nearly eight months to resolve — beginning with NARA’s outreach in May and ending with its retrieval of the boxes from Mar-a-Lago last month.
In the end, it may have been a threat that ended the impasse. At one point, the Archives notified a member of Trump’s team that it planned to alert Congress and the Department of Justice of the matter if it wasn’t quickly resolved, according to a person familiar with the warning. According to a person familiar with the matter, the Archives have since asked the Justice Department to investigate. It is unclear whether the Justice Department has started an investigation.
The House Oversight Committee chairwoman, Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney of New York, has also vowed to initiate a probe of the records’ removal from Trump’s Palm Beach resort, which she called “deeply troubling” in a statement on Monday.
What are your thoughts on all this? What other stories are you following?
Friday Reads: Depths of Depravity
Posted: February 11, 2022 Filed under: just because | Tags: Trump's Shredder is a golden Shitter 13 Comments
Otto Dix, The Seven Deadly Sins, 1933
Good Day Sky Dancers!
I can only wonder what the January 6 Committee is unearthing. Today, I saw this in The New Republic. Just when I think I can’t learn anything more appalling about the Trump Family Crime Syndicate and its enablers something else unearthly floats to the top of the golden septic tank. This is a follow-up to BB’s excellent post yesterday. “January 6 Committee Recap: Concerns About Trump’s Records Can’t Be Flushed Away. Trump could be in legal trouble for potentially violating federal laws related to the handling of government records.” This analysis is written by
It was another big week in developments related to the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Rudy Giuliani, former President Donald Trump’s lawyer and a frequent main character of these updates, reportedly asked a Republican prosecutor in northern Michigan to turn over his county’s voting machines to the Trump team. According to The Washington Post, Giuliani and other members of Trump’s legal team asked Antrim County prosecutor James Rossiter for the machines after the county initially misreported its election results in favor of Joe Biden. Rossiter told Giuliani that voting machines could not simply be seized and delivered without probable cause, a term that Giuliani, himself a former prosecutor, should have been familiar with. (Giuliani failed to appear before the House select committee on January 6 in a required deposition this week.)
Meanwhile, the National Archives asked the Justice Department to investigate Trump’s handling of presidential records, the Post reported, amid revelations that some records had to be recovered from the former president’s residence in Mar-a-Lago and that Trump had torn up other records. Adding to the pile-on of news related to the former president’s records, The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman reported in her upcoming book that White House residence staff occasionally found toilets clogged with wads of paper—and that they believed Trump had flushed pieces of paper. (This may add some context to Trump’s claims during campaign rallies that toilets were no longer working properly.) These reports raise questions about whether Trump violated federal laws dictating how government records should be handled.
As to the substance of the records: CNN reported on Monday that records obtained by the select committee provide new details about a call between Trump and Representative Jim Jordan on the morning of the attack. The Times also reported on Thursday that the committee had discovered gaps in the official White House telephone logs from January 6 during the critical hours when Trump was making calls.
The committee on Wednesday subpoenaed yet another person in Trump’s orbit, former White House official Peter Navarro. In his memoir, Navarro claimed to have concocted a plan with former Trump adviser Steve Bannon to delay certification of the Electoral College results.
Wave (1916)
Maurice Denis
You may continue reading at the link. This is not the end of the piece even though I shared a lot with you. If you want proof that records were altered and destroyed look no further than this CNN headline: “White House records obtained so far by January 6 committee show no record of calls to and from Trump during riot.” And CNN please, it was a violent insurrection. It was not just a riot damn it!
The records the House select committee has obtained do not contain entries of phone calls between the President and lawmakers that have been widely reported in the press. Trump was known to make calls using personal cell phones, which could account for those.
Two of the sources, who have also reviewed the presidential diary from that day, say it contains scant information and no record of phone calls for several hours after Trump returned to the Oval Office after giving a speech to his supporters at the Ellipse until he emerged to address the nation in a video from the Rose Garden
The House select committee has received hundreds of White House records since Trump lost a legal fight at the Supreme Court to keep them secret. The committee had asked the National Archives for all call logs and telephone records for Trump and top aides as well as daily presidential diaries.
Empty Wheel reminds us that altering and deleting documents was par for the course in Trump’s White House and Justice Department.
And, Eric Boehler reminds us:
The media continue to normalize his criminality, in this case absconding from the White House with classified documents as he readies another presidential run. (And shredding other docs.) It’s the same D.C. press corps that crucified Hillary Clinton for years simply because journalists thought her email story might have a hint of criminality to it. It never did.
What Trump has done since he first arrived in Washington, D.C., in January 2017 was shred longstanding Beltway protocols; traditions that for decades and sometimes centuries were based on a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ on the proper way to behave and the ethical course that should be followed while running the government. The consummate bully and liar, Trump didn’t care about any of those rules and began obliterating them immediately. He flooded the zone with crass, outlandish and destructive behavior, which the press tried to keep pace with at first. Shattering Beltway protocols used to carry a penalty, which was handed out by the press.
Eventually, as the years passed, news outlets mostly gave up, especially with the day-to-day transgressions, adopting a Trump-being-Trump view of his chronic rule breaking. Beltway institutions, particularly within the federal government, embraced the same mealy-mouthed approach, which gave Trump the okay to trample norms. “He didn’t think the rules applied to him,” a former White House aide told CNN this week. And he was right.
Mikhail Vrubel, Flying Demon, 1899
He and his followers are the consummate bullies. Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney continues to refuse to be bullied. She wrote an OpEd in the notoriously right-wing WSJ Opinion section today.
Republicans used to advocate fidelity to the rule of law and the plain text of the Constitution. In 2020, Mr. Trump convinced many to abandon those principles. He falsely claimed that the election was stolen from him because of widespread fraud. While some degree of fraud occurs in every election, there was no evidence of fraud on a scale that could have changed this one. As the Select Committee will demonstrate in hearings later this year, no foreign power corrupted America’s voting machines, and no massive secret fraud changed the election outcome.
Almost all members of Congress know this—although many lack the courage to say it out loud. Mr. Trump knew it too, from his own campaign officials, from his own appointees at the Justice Department, and from the dozens of lawsuits he lost. Yet, Mr. Trump ignored the rulings of the courts and launched a massive campaign to mislead the public. Our hearings will show that these falsehoods provoked the violence on Jan. 6. Mr. Trump’s lawyers have begun to pay the price for spreading these lies. For example, Rudy Giuliani’s license to practice law has been suspended because he “communicated demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers and the public at large in his capacity as lawyer for former President Donald J. Trump, ” in the words of a New York appellate court.
The Jan. 6 investigation isn’t only about the inexcusable violence of that day: It is also about fidelity to the Constitution and the rule of law, and whether elected representatives believe in those things or not. One member of the House Freedom Caucus warned the White House in the days before Jan. 6 that the president’s plans would drive “a stake in the heart of the federal republic.” That was exactly right.
Those who do not wish the truth of Jan. 6 to come out have predictably resorted to attacking the process—claiming it is tainted and political. Our hearings will show this charge to be wrong. We are focused on facts, not rhetoric, and we will present those facts without exaggeration, no matter what criticism we face
There are so many things out there to arrest Trump for that it is amazing to me we see little movement towards the target by the DOJ. Every one is still turning their lonely eyes to Merrick Garland. Surely the request from the National Archives must be answered timely!
Normal public servants get sent to jail for this! Watch Glenn Kirschner’s #Justice Matters for more coverage including what he said on Joy Reid’s show last night.
I’ve just about had it with this! Now we have a group of right-wing truckers funded by the usual tea party billionaires out to wreck our recovering economy! This is not a form of public discourse! It’s insurrection and domestic terrorism. The DOJ/FBI needs to get more aggressive with these nutters too. I feel like we’re in some kind of Cold Civil War and not many of us are paying attention.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
Recent Comments