The Fall is a time for Western Imperialism to play out the pantomime where we pretend that Western Europeans discovered and improved what was already there. Then, through disease and gunpowder, the “Great Nations” of Europe forced the indigenous peoples into the religion made up to ensure they would see their slave status as a good deal and enculturing them with the same. If you ever read the contemporary accounts of the Nicene Council, you’ll find it was the original attempt at defining a doctrine of what was acceptable and what was not. Many historical documents of the day are hidden from most of our history classes. I found it at University while doing an independent course on Romano Britain. As a lifelong student of history and getting to what really happened on all levels, you’ll eventually become jaded.
The stories told by conquerors become the lies we live.
I always found the whitewashing of the pilgrims and Columbus as deep cultural insults to the indigenous here, but we are not the only non-Europe places where they’ve moved on and managed to fuck up a good thing. I’ve often imagined what a different place the United Kingdom would be if the armies of Claudius had stayed on the mainland. Remember, we also celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, which is basically that same damned Roman culture that wiped on indigenous practices in Ireland. Snakes were a fascinating metaphor for savages, don’t you think?
I gradually started seeing these holidays as a way to escape work. You know I refuse to go along with the Crassmas season. Since I had a mother who showed me the truth of the California Colonial System, the Little Big Horn, and the Trail of Tears, it was always difficult for me to handle the Thanksgiving and Columbus Day Fairy Tales after I’d read all those history books with the genuine references to first-hand documents.
You may have noticed that I have been openly hostile to Columbus over the years. I didn’t realize how much I ignored Thanksgiving until I went to my Oldest Daughter’s school for my first Kindergarten parent-teacher meeting and was told my daughter was wonderful except the teacher found it curious she had no idea about the whole Pilgrim story. It really was because the entire family went to an Estes Park Cabin with no TVs, played board games, ate whatever Dad cooked, and wandered the National Park looking for wild animals because Mother would pay us for whatever we spottted. I just chose over the years to ignore the whitewashing of what we did to Indigenous Americans.
I remember my Iowa Grade school was the place where I had learned that Washington never told a lie. That Abe was honest. I just wanted my kids to go to school and learn actual history. This is what I see MAGA fighting for. Lies we tell our children to avoid making us all feel bad about our collective American history. But here we are with a boatload of the children of European conquerors wanting to get rid of the facts of history, I can see why that’s the case.
So, it’s not surprising when people start to see oppressed in this country as ungrateful and problem makers and the immigrants coming from places that still actively live the results of European Colonial rule as uncivilized because they’d like to have a say in the way their country develops. Hence, even democratic movements become menacing because it threatens the part of our brains that succumbed to the epic hero tales of the conquerors. Most do not buy the stories of the glory days because growing up on a reservation is not a romantic situation bestowed by a benevolent Big White Daddy. Growing up without the same access to education, health care, and wealth opportunities is a hang-over from Slavery Days. Also, if you do manage to do well, you get the Tulsa Massacre treatment, or the men in your family get lynched. The Great Nations of Europe have not done any favors for anyone. This includes The British Empire, which “managed” both Jordan and Palestine back in the day after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. There was no trouble between indigenous Jews, Christians, and Muslims when they decided to move a group of Europeans into Palestine and call it Israel.
Historical context. Britain conquered Palestine from the Ottoman Empire during 1917-18. Following the Great War, British rule in Palestine was administered under a League of Nations ‘Mandate‘ until 1948. Unlike other colonies, this Mandate aimed to lead the native population to self-government and independence.British support for a ‘Jewish national home’ in Palestine originated in the Balfour Declaration of 1917 which promised to protect the civic and religious rights of Palestinians, but not their political rights. Fearing displacement in their own country, Palestinians resisted British policy through non-violent diplomatic means, such as boycott and civil disobedience, and in 1936, by force of arms. Palestinians sought to stem mass Jewish immigration to the region, which peaked as a result of persecution in Germany and Poland. The Palestinian leadership organised under the ‘Arab Higher Committee’ launched a General Strike in 1936, which escalated toward revolt. By September 1936, two divisions of the British Army were deployed to restore order.
For decades, Britain sought, and even tried to force a compromise between Arabs, who feared displacement, and Jews, who wanted a safe haven from persecution. Britain also sought to protect its economic and political interests in this vital part of the Middle East. Communications Intelligence (COMINT) provided by GCHQ between 1944 and 1948 was to provide one of the main sources of intelligence for the British government and help shape Britain’s policy in the region.
British support for a ‘Jewish national home’ in Palestine originated in the Balfour Declaration of 1917 which promised to protect the civic and religious rights of Palestinians, but not their political rights. Fearing displacement in their own country, Palestinians resisted British policy through non-violent diplomatic means, such as boycott and civil disobedience, and in 1936, by force of arms. Palestinians sought to stem mass Jewish immigration to the region, which peaked as a result of persecution in Germany and Poland. The Palestinian leadership organised under the ‘Arab Higher Committee’ launched a General Strike in 1936, which escalated toward revolt. By September 1936, two divisions of the British Army were deployed to restore order.
What was called Transjordan was eventually turned over to become the country Jordan in 1923; it became an emirate. And, yes, there were and still are Christians who have been there since they were under the Ottoman Empire and British “management. ” Jordan got different treatment. So, the entire setup was bound to have issues. Randy Newmann calls it the “Great Nations of Europe coming through.” So, this was a country set up by Europeans with European settlers. Not a great prescription for success. When anti-Jewish sentiment created the horrible situation in Germany, the diaspora logically moved to where they felt they were safer. Repeat this later when the USSR–soon to return to Russia–allowed their Jewish population to emigrate.
Today’s news shows colonial rule’s impact on the modern world. Identifiers outside the old Roman set-up norms are still an issue for both the occupied and the children of settlers. It doesn’t have to be a winner/loser model yet, that persists. And yes, I’m down a rabbit hole. You are not Anti-Semitic to see the power differential here. The powerful do not care about ordinary people and children who are just trying to live their lives. Ordinary people become their victims.
Israel exists. People live there. It’s not going anywhere. Everyone deserves to live a life free of war. However, the forces in charge in power do not favor a two-state solution. Bibi allows settlements on the West Bank despite the promise to leave it alone. I know firsthand someone who has seen the IDF bulldoze the home of an elderly Palestinian couple with them inside. I also know the person who was filming this was threatened with disappearance. We should be able to agree that there are harmful agents on both sides. There are primarily innocents on both sides. The events of October 7th were shocking, horrifying, and evil. But, as my mother taught me, two wrongs do not make a right. The death and destruction in Gaza is not an example of the punishment meeting the crime. I hope our President can continue intervening to find a better path for everyone, but the powers that be do not represent the ordinary people. There’s never been a majority of voters on either side that supported these powers.
I cannot believe that we’ve returned to classifying groups of human beings as vermin to be exterminated is wrong. People of goodwill must speak out. I cannot help but love this Pope. He is a man of all peoples. This is from last March, but it bears posting. “Vatican Rejects ‘Doctrine of Discovery,’ Used to Justify Colonial Conquest and Land Theft. One Native American group hopes the historic move “is more than mere words, but rather is the beginning of a full acknowledgment of the history of oppression and a full accounting of the legacies of colonialism.” This is a Big Fucking Deal, and it essentially went unnoticed in the commercial media.
In a historic shift long sought by Indigenous-led activists, the Holy See on Thursday formally repudiated the doctrine of discovery, a dubious legal theory born from a series of 15th-century papal decrees used by colonizers including the United States to legally justify the genocidal conquest of non-Christian peoples and their land.
In a joint statement, the Vatican’s departments of culture and education declared that “the church acknowledges that these papal bulls did not adequately reflectthe equal dignity and rights of Indigenous peoples” and “therefore repudiates those concepts that fail to recognize the inherent human rights of Indigenous peoples, including what has become known as the legal and political ‘doctrine of discovery.'”
“The church is also aware that the contents of these documents were manipulated for political purposes by competing colonial powers in order to justify immoral acts against Indigenous peoples that were carried out, at times, without opposition from ecclesiastical authorities,” the statement added. “It is only just to recognize these errors, acknowledge the terrible effects of the assimilation policies and the pain experienced by Indigenous peoples, and ask for pardon.”
Indigenous leaders—who for decades demanded the Vatican rescind the discovery doctrine—welcomed the move, while expressing hope that it brings real change.
“On the surface it sounds good, it looks good… but there has to be a fundamental change in attitudes, behavior, laws, and policies from that statement,” Ernie Daniels, the former chief of Long Plain First Nation in Manitoba, Canada, toldCBC Thursday.
“There’s still a mentality out there—they want to assimilate, decimate, terminate, eradicate Indigenous people,” added Daniels, who was part of a delegation that met with Pope Francis last year in Rome and Canada.
The images of hostages and prisoners being reunited with their families are almost too hopeful to absorb. Even as Israeli authorities explicitly try to suppress Palestinian “expressions of joy” at the return of their prisoners, the fact that they were released, and that some Israeli hostages are now safe and reunited, signals some small promise. But even if the wildest hope is realised – a lasting ceasefire – what has already unfolded over the past 52 days will be hard to forget.
There is a short video, posted on social media a few weeks ago, that I cannot get out of my head. In the clip, a man in Gaza is holding two plastic bags that carry the body parts of a child, presumably his. There are other details. The look on the man’s face. The way those around him avoid eye contact once they realise what he is carrying. I see these details often now, sudden and unbidden. The emotional and psychological impact of the war on those outside Gaza – no matter how intense – is a sort of privilege, happening, as it is, only on our screens. But there is something lasting about these images. Others I know are haunted too, by different visions. By the doctor who came across her husband’s body while treating bombing victims. By the father stroking and rocking a dust-covered baby on his chest one last time.
In the course of everyday life and in my social media feeds, I see people who say they feel they are going mad. That there are things they will never unsee. That they can’t sleep, that their interactions with the children in their lives have become tinged with a sort of queasy guilt.The feeling seems to be not just grief, but bewilderment at the fact that it has all carried on for so long. But they keep watching. To stop looking is to admit that you are helpless. It means you have resigned yourself to the fact that there is nothing you can do, and that you will eventually succumb to that enemy of justice – a fatigue that seems already to be setting in.
Are there any narratives out there convincing you that so many people should die?
Part of that inability to reach for convincing narratives about why so many innocent people must die is that events escalated so quickly. There was no time to set the pace of the attacks on Gaza, prepare justifications and hope that eventually, when it was all over, time and short attention spans would cover up the toll. Gaza has been a uniquely, inconveniently, intense conflict. “Experts say that the pace of death during Israel’s campaign has few precedents in this century,” the New York Times says. A military expert commented it was like nothing he’d seen in his career. The area is so densely populated that the toll of civilians is too high, and evidence for having undermined Hamas’s capabilities, the only possible justification for the casualties, is too low.
Humans can be taught to accept an awful lot that does not make sense, but there is a limit to what people can be plausibly told is not possible. Much of consent in politics is secured by popular agreement that there are things that are simply above the average citizen’s pay grade, and even beyond government control. Not being able to persuade “the only democracy in the Middle East” of something that seems plainly obvious, that the horrific events of 7 October cannot be erased by even more horror, is not one of them. The lesson is brutal and short: human rights are not universal and international law is arbitrarily applied.
So, this is good news. This is from The New York Times. “Israel and Hamas Agree to Extend Truce, Qatar Says.”
Israel and Hamas agreed on Monday to extend their fragile truce for two more days, an act of continued cooperation that could allow for additional aid to flow into Gaza and the release of more hostages, prisoners and detainees than initially expected.
The extension comes as a four-day truce, which had been set to expire on Tuesday, has proved largely successful at the stated goal of bringing people home. Israeli officials signaled that a fourth exchange of hostages and prisoners, the final round of the initial agreement, would go forward Monday.
Despite chilly weather, dozens of families flocked to the beaches of southern Gaza over the weekend. Children splashed around in the water and played in the sand while fishermen cast their nets into the sea — a fleeting return to normality after weeks of fighting.
Gazans were mindful that the calm would most likely not last. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has vowed to press on with the war after the truce expires. But there were signs on Monday that Israel and Hamas might agree to extend the pause in fighting.
“We are holding out hope that they would extend the truce,” Ms. Nseir said.
The Republican Right continues to enable our own terrorists. Three Palestinian University Students were the target of a possible hate-crime-related shooting in Vermont. The suspect has been arrested and indicted today. It’s pretty much just what you’d expect. “Man pleads not guilty in Vt. shooting of college students wearing keffiyahs”. This is from the Washington Post, and I love the by-line for obvious reasons. This was jointly reported by Maham Javaid and Michelle Boorstein.
Jason Eaton, 48, made the plea in a brief, televised appearance in Chittenden County Superior Court. A court affidavit quoted a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent who went to Eaton’s Burlington apartment Sunday as saying Eaton “made a statement to the effect of: ‘I’ve been waiting for you.’”
The three victims — Hisham Awartani, Kinnan Abdalhamid and Tahseen Ahmed — were in the Vermont capital to visit Awartani’s grandmother for the Thanksgiving holiday. The men, all in their 20s, were takinga walk before dinner Saturday when they were shot, according to court documents. They told police that they were speaking a mixture of Arabic and English and that two of the three wore kaffiyehs — headdresses worn across the Arab world, including a black-and-white version that has come to be associated with Palestinians.
During a meeting with New York-based law enforcement Monday morning, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said the FBI and ATF were investigating the “tragic” shooting of the three men, including whether it was a hate crime. Two of the victims are U.S. citizens; the third is a legal resident, police said.
“As always, but especially right now, the Justice Department is remaining vigilant in the face of the potential threats of hate-fueled violence and terrorism,” Garland said. “All of us have also seen a sharp increase in the volume and frequency of threats against Jewish, Muslim, and Arab communities across our country since October 7th.”
He said that there is understandable fear in communities across the country.
Some things stand out to me in this Forbes article that briefly describes The Daily Beast‘s interview with the shooter’s mother and uncle.
The gun Eaton used in Saturday’s shooting was acquired legally a few months ago, Murad said.
Eaton, 48, reportedly had “a lot of struggles in his life,” his mother, Mary Reed, told the Daily Beast Monday, adding that she was “shocked by the whole thing.”
Reed told the Daily Beast that her son had struggled with mental health issues including depression but was in “such a good mood” and “totally normal” when she saw him on Thanksgiving.
Eaton did not mention the war in the Middle East at Thanksgiving, Reed told the Daily Beast, but she noted that her son was “a very religious person” who often reads the Bible and “like all of us, thinks the world is a mess.”
Leaders from the Jewish Federations of North America acknowledged there is widespread fear among Jewish families. Sarah Eisenman, chief community and Jewish life officer for the organization, said she empathizes with Jewish Americans who are changing their normal routines or hiding markers of their Jewish heritage to avoid being targeted.
“I do think they are rightfully fearful,” Eisenman said. “I think it’s a scary environment right now and we should all be outraged at what we are seeing.”
CNN recently asked Arabs, Muslims and Jews in America how they are facing the new reality of increased hate-motivated attacks against their communities. Nearly 800 people responded from across the country.
Some Jewish Americans told CNN they are now hiding their kippahs, refusing to wear their Star of David necklaces and changing long-held traditions for religious holidays.
Some practicing Jews have said they are even afraid to visit one of the most sacred places in their faith — the synagogue — out of fear ofbeing killed, attacked or harassed because of their religion. These are their stories.
Meanwhile, the white male overseer class carries on unless they are jailed for the crimes they commit.
In other news, Derek Chauvin, the police officer who murdered George Floyd in Minneapolis and most responsible for creating “Black Lives Matter”, was stabbed in prison last week. This is from Sky News. “Derek Chauvin: Former police officer convicted of murdering George Floyd stabbed in prison. The 47-year-old was attacked by a fellow inmate in prison in Arizona on Friday, according to a law enforcement official familiar with the incident.”
Derek Chauvin was attacked by another inmate while in prison in Arizona, according to a law enforcement official familiar with the incident.
The US Bureau of Prisons confirmed an inmate had been assaulted at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Tucson at around 12.30pm local time on Friday.
In a statement, the agency said prison staff performed “life-saving measures”, before the inmate, who it did not name, was taken to a hospital for further treatment and evaluation.
The FBI said it was aware of an assault at the prison – though it also did not name anyone involved.
He was also sentenced to a concurrent 21-year sentence for violating Mr Floyd’s civil rights.
Tools of institutions with roots in colonial power frequently enjoy their overseer status because, under other circumstances, they would have no raison d’etre. These are the people who fall prey to the likes of Donald J. Trump, a sideshow huckster and fraud.
Donald Trump urged a New York appeals court to continue to pause the gag order against him in his civil fraud trial, saying that threats to the judge and his law clerk do not “justify” limiting the former president’s constitutional right to defend himself.
Lawyers for the New York attorney general’s office and the court last week urged the appeals court to put the gag order back in place following “serious and credible” threats that have inundated Judge Arthur Engoron’s chambers since the trial began in October.
Trump’s attorneys wrote in a filing Monday that the former president has never threatened the judge or his principal law clerk and they can’t be held responsible for actions taken by others. They argued that Trump’s First Amendment right to criticize and call out his perception of bias by the judge and his law clerk without retribution is “essential” to maintaining public confidence in the trial.
“At base, the disturbing behavior engaged in by anonymous, third-party actors towards the judge and Principal Law Clerk publicly presiding over an extremely polarizing and high-profile trial merits appropriate security measures,” Trump’s attorneys wrote. “However, it does not justify the wholesale abrogation of Petitioners’ First Amendment rights in a proceeding of immense stakes to Petitioners, which has been compromised by the introduction of partisan bias on the bench.”
Monday’s filing was the first since hundreds of harassing messages against Engoron and a law clerk were made public last week. Engoron’s clerk has received 20-30 calls per day to her personal cell phone and 30-50 messages daily on social media platforms and two personal email addresses, according to court papers.
This is from Business Insider and the thoughts of NYU Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat. “Historian says Trump has been ‘re-educating’ his followers to embrace violence and that Matt Gaetz is now doing the same.”
The forces of the right in Chile first spent years working to “discredit democracy and build an appetite for authoritarian rule,” according to Ben-Ghiat, who teaches at New York University. It’s the same kind of campaign she accused Trump of leading himself since he announced his first run for the presidency, setting the stage for the January 6 insurrection with years of aggressive rhetoric.
Trump “has been re-educating Americans since 2015,” Ben-Ghiat said, “using his rallies, using his events, to see violence differently; to see violence in a positive light.” He’s a “superb propagandist,” she said, and in his appeals to the baser emotions — of resentment and vengeance — he’s helped his followers come to view “violence as necessary and patriotic.”
“That’s why he went to Waco,” she said, referring to where Trump rallied his followers in March. Waco is where dozens of cult members died in a confrontation with the FBI under President Bill Clinton. It has ever since been a rallying cry for anti-government extremists. “That’s why he went the gun store,” she continued (the former president said he wanted to buy a Glock handgun but ultimately, according to his campaign, did not). “His campaign is a radicalization vehicle.”
Some certainly took the president’s comments on January 6, 2021, as a license to storm the US Capitol and try to prevent the peaceful transfer of power, having already lost at the ballot box and in the courts. Prosecutors also accuse Trump of encouraging violence against anyone involved in the federal case over his efforts to stay in power, intimidating not just court staff but prospective jurors.
Violence, Ben-Ghiat argued, has indeed been normalized in MAGA politics. And it’s not just Trump anymore. That’s a troubling sign, she said, pointing to a rise in anti-democratic thinking.
“You have extremism that becomes mainstream,” she said. “We’re seeing that in our country. You have violence seen as the only way to change history and move things forward.”
I highlighted that last point because it sums up what I feel as I watch TV and read the news these days. Violence is the path to power for these people who want things their way. It occurs at all levels, and we must vote against it and not let them desensitize us.
Thanks to those of you who bear with me when I just have to rant about what’s going on. Welcome to the Rabbit Hole.
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Meteorological Autumn has begun, even though most of the country is still experiencing hot weather. Here in New England, it looks like we will have summer weather for at least the first half of September. It has been in the high 80’s lately, and later this week it will hit 92 for a couple of days. Of course it’s still comfortable here in my cozy apartment with my heat pump keeping things cool.
I was thinking this morning that I’m an orphan now. My Mom and Dad are both gone, along with all of their siblings. I’m in the older generation now. How does time go by so quickly? I can really tell that I’m old now. People my age (75) are dying every day. I come from long-lived stock on both sides, so I probably have a few years left, but you never know. I just hope I don’t live to see fascism take over the U.S.
— Adolescence – Identity versus identity confusion
— Young adulthood – Intimacy versus isolation
— Middle age – Generativity versus stagnation
— Older adulthood – Integrity versus despair
I guess I’m finally moving into the 8th stage; but I still care a lot about what happens to the next generation, so I’m still partly in stage 7, generativity–when you care more about giving to the next generation than satisfying yourself.
When I was in grad school, my mentor, Richard, (who is gone now, too, sadly) used to teach that Erikson’s states are flexible. You can go back and repair the damage that happened in an earlier stage and you can be in more than one stage at a time. Because people live longer than in Erikson’s day, it can take longer to get into that last stage, where you are supposed to look back on your life and come to terms with all you have experienced, good and bad.
I do find myself looking back at times, reevaluating things that happened to me and reaching acceptance. I believe that I did repair damage from the past over the 40+ years since I’ve been sober, and I’ve learned to accept my life as it is most of the time.
Now back to the present moment, where we are up in the air as to whether our country will be a democracy or a dictatorship ruled over by an insane idiot. Today is a slow news day, but here is some news:
The Capitol’s attending physician, Brian Monahan, said in a new letter that Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell did not suffer a stroke or seizure – and is not suffering from Parkinson’s disease – after the 81-year-old Kentuckian was evaluated by a group of neurologists following two recent health scares in front of TV cameras.
Vincen Van Gogh, The Garden of St. Paul’s Hospital Leaf Fall
The new letter, released by McConnell’s office Tuesday, comes after he froze in front of cameras for the second time in as many months, raising questions about whether the GOP leader could continue to hold his powerful position atop the Senate GOP Conference. After he froze last week in Covington, Kentucky, McConnell was evaluated by four neurologists, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Monahan said in the Tuesday letter that he consulted with McConnell’s neurologists and conducted several evaluations, including brain MRI imaging and a test that measures electrical imaging in the brain.
“There is no evidence that you have a seizure disorder or that you experienced a stroke, TIA or movement disorder such as Parkinson’s disease,” the letter said.
So what did happen, then? No one knows.
It’s still unclear exactly why McConnell froze up for roughly 30 seconds each time.
The Republican leader’s office had attributed the two frozen moments to “lightheadedness,” and Monahan had indicated in a previous letter that it’s “not uncommon” for victims of concussion to feel lightheaded. McConnell suffered a concussion and broken ribs after falling at a Washington hotel and hitting his head in March, sidelining him from the Senate for nearly six weeks.
I still say he should retire. He’s 81, for heaven’s sake!
The media keeps telling us that Republicans are going to force a government shutdown. Politico claims to know what Democrats are going to do about it: How Democrats are bracing for a ‘MAGA shutdown.’
There’s still a month to go, but Capitol Hill is girding for an appropriations breakdown — and Democrats are already strategizing over how to make Republicans pay for what some have already started calling a “MAGA shutdown.”
Their challenge: Maximizing the GOP political pain while avoiding blame themselves. After all, it has been a full 10 years since the government has shut down with a Democrat in the White House. And this time, the president needs to win reelection in 14 months.
The Birch Wood, Gustav Klimt
“This is really going to be driven by the House,” Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) told reporters in the Capitol on Friday. “They’re the ones that are going to bring [a shutdown] upon the country.”
To be sure, top House Democrats are still hoping to avoid a shutdown, and the party’s rank-and-file stands ready to approve a bipartisan deal — preferably a clean stopgap with some amount of Ukraine and disaster aid attached, likely sent over from the Senate.
But the key funding decisions lie with Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his capricious Republican conference, and putting a deal along those lines up for a vote could prove disastrous to McCarthy’s standing as leader.
With members of the hard-right Freedom Caucus escalating their threats, Democratic leaders want their members to stay unified around a message decrying GOP hostage-taking and accusing Republicans of reneging on a bipartisan deal on spending caps reached in May.
A solid Democratic front, the thinking goes, will squeeze Republicans from districts won by President Joe Biden and force McCarthy to the negotiating table. Absent that pressure, “I don’t think there’s a lot of hope that Kevin McCarthy for once will actually stand up to the far right,” said Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.).
The House comes back next week, so I guess we’ll learn more about their idiotic plans then.
First lady Jill Biden tested positive for Covid-19 on Monday and is experiencing “mild symptoms,” the White House said. President Joe Biden has tested negative.
The diagnosis has upended the first lady’s plans to begin teaching the fall semester at Northern Virginia Community College on Tuesday. She is working with the school to “ensure her classes are covered by a substitute,” Vanessa Valdivia, the first lady’s spokesperson, said.
Dr. Biden, 72, who remains at the family’s home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, typically teaches on Tuesday and Thursdays.
Biden will be “monitored by the White House medical team” after her diagnosis and follow the team’s advice about when to return the White House, Valdivia said. In addition to starting school on Tuesday, Biden was supposed to speak in the evening in Fort Belvoir, Virginia, at a send-off dinner for the US team competing in the Invictus Games in Düsseldorf, Germany next week, but now she will not participate, Valdivia said.
An administration official told CNN Monday that there are no changes to White House Covid protocols or to the president’s schedule at this time.
I just hope the president doesn’t come down with it.
Claude Monet, Autumn on the Seine at Argenteuil, 1873
George Conway diagnosed the underlying problem that’s causing Republicans to undermine military readiness and attack law enforcement.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) continues to block military promotions to force the reversal of a Pentagon policy granting leave and travel expenses for military personnel stationed in states where they cannot obtain an abortion, but the conservative Conway told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” the political stunt was emblematic of the GOP’s attitude toward the U.S. government at large.
“They hate the United States military because it’s a part of the United States government,” Conway said. “This is basically, the Republicans have become anti-American, anti-government, anti-the United States. That’s their shtick now. That’s why they’re attacking the State Department, FBI, prosecutors, and they attack the institutions that normally Republicans were very, very supportive of — now, it’s just this nihilistic attack on American institutions.”
Conservative attorney George Conway said Donald Trump should be locked away for good if he’s found guilty in the two federal cases currently pending against him.
Conway shared a tweet from former federal prosecutor Elizabeth de la Vega, who wrote that Trump should be given a prison sentence “equal to or greater than” the sentences handed down in other key Jan. 6 cases if convicted in Washington.
That would make 18 years a starting point ― but Conway said the 77-year-old former president’s potential prison time could be much longer than that if he’s convicted in the classified documents case.
“It’s beyond question he should spend the rest of his natural life in prison,” Conway wrote on X, the site formerly known as Twitter….
Conway has called the Florida case against Trump “airtight,” and said “he should and he will” go to jail over it “because the obstruction case is just so strong.”
Elon Musk has threatened to sue the Anti-Defamation League after accusing the civil rights group that campaigns against antisemitism and bigotry of trying to “kill” his X social media platform.
The owner of X, formerly known as Twitter, said the ADL was trying to shut down his company by “falsely accusing it and me of being antisemitic”.
In a series of posts on X, Musk said advertising sales for the business were down 60% and “based on what we’ve heard from advertisers, ADL seems to be responsible for most of our revenue loss”.
The world’s richest man also indicated that he would sue the group for defamation, posting on X that “it looks like we have no choice but to file a defamation lawsuit against the Anti-Defamation League … oh the irony!”
In his posts on Tuesday, Musk added that to be “super clear” he was in favour of free speech “but against antisemitism of any kind”.
Yeah, right. If Musk sues, the ADL will be able to get discovery of all the anti-Semites and Nazis Musk let back on Twitter, so he’s unlikely to do it, but you never know. The guy is really stupid, as far as I can tell.
Because Twitter is no longer a publicly traded company with a public stock price there’s no straightforward way to assess its current value. But most market analysts estimate the company is now worth no more than a third of the $44 billion Musk paid for it a year ago. To be fair, Musk clearly overpaid for the company. He paid a premium over the company’s current stock price and even that price was probably inflated. But there’s no question Musk’s erratic and destructive reign has dramatically damaged the company, torching its public reputation and leading to a catastrophic decline in ad revenues which Musk and independent press reports have pegged at between 50% and 60%.
Gustave Courbet, Forest in Autumn, 1841
But Musk has found a new scapegoat: the Jews. Or rather, the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish community’s largest and oldest organization dedicated to fighting not only anti-Semitism but all forms of racial and religious bigotry and other forms of discrimination. But I suspect the “rather” or the distinction in general might be lost on Musk’s 155 million Twitter followers. Over the past several days Musk has gone on a tear claiming that the catastrophic decline in his company’s value since he purchased it is mostly or entirely the fault of the ADL and churning up Twitter debates that at least big time anti-Semitic accounts think is clearly boosting their cause.
As is often the case, Musk’s attacks have evolved out of tag teaming with notorious anti-Semitic accounts on the platform. It kicked off on Friday when Musk responded to a tweet by Keith Woods, an Irish white nationalist and self-described “raging anti-Semite.”
“ADL has tried very hard to strangle X/Twitter,” Musk told Woods.
From here, Musk went on to gin up support for the #BanTheADL hashtag while alternately claiming that he should ban the group but might not, before rolling into claims that the ADL was responsible for tens of billions of dollars of Twitter losses. This all culminated with Musk announcing he was being forced to sue the ADL “to clear our platform’s name on the matter of anti-Semitism.”
Discussing the defamation suit, Musk claimed the ADL could “potentially be on the hook for destroying half the value of the company, so roughly $22 billion.” Later he said that “giving them the maximum benefit of the doubt,” the ADL might only be responsible for $4 billion in damages.
Read the rest at TPM.
So that’s today’s news as I see it. Please share your thoughts and any other stories that interest you.
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Today is the day that Elon Musk said he would remove the blue checkmarks from “legacy” verified accounts on Twitter unless the users paid $8 per month. For businesses and government entities, the cost is much higher. The blue checks identify notable people who provide most of the engagement on the social media site. But so far today, the blue checks are still in place. Over the past few days, news organizations and the White House have said they will not pay, and a number of celebrities have also declined to pay. It doesn’t look like Musk will get much income from this stupid policy.
The New York Times, Los Angeles Times,the Washington Post, BuzzFeed, POLITICO, and Vox all scoffed at the notion on Thursday that they would pay Twitter for the feature, which has been free since it was introduced years ago but will soon be phased out.
CNN said it has no intention of paying for Twitter’s subscription service for its accounts but would make a few exceptions for some key staff.
“As of right now, we do not plan to pay for Twitter Blue subscriptions for either our brand or individual accounts, except for a small number of select teams who need this verification as an essential part of newsgathering and reporting,” said Athan Stephanopoulos, CNN’s chief digital officer, in a staff memo Friday.
Twitter announced last week that it will begin “removing legacy verified checkmarks” starting April 1. Musk has aimed to charge organizations that want to retain a checkmark adjacent to their account name $1,000 a month, plus an additional $50 a month for each affiliated account.
Historically, a blue checkmark placed next to the name of an account has indicated that the social media company has confirmed the identity of the person or business operating it. The feature has been helpful to Twitter’s entire community, giving the public an easy way of distinguishing between authentic and inauthentic users.
But Musk, who has sought to change Twitter’s business model and make it less reliant on advertisers — many of which have fled the company since he took over last year — wants to charge for the coveted check.
Musk earlier this year launched Twitter Blue, a subscription service that costs $8 a month. The main benefit? A blue checkmark.
The White House will not pay to have its staff’s official Twitter profiles continue to be verified, according to guidance issued to staffers via an email obtained by Axios….
Official White House staffers rely on their verified accounts to inform the public on behalf of the administration. Verification, combined with the designated Twitter profiles, helped to ensure the public could trust those messages….
“It is our understanding that Twitter Blue does not provide person-level verification as a service. Thus, a blue check mark will now simply serve as a verification that the account is a paid user,” White House director of digital strategy Rob Flaherty told staffers in an email sent Friday afternoon.
The guidance, which was sent internally to White House staffers, doesn’t necessarily apply to government agencies, but a source familiar with White House plans said it may send guidance to some agencies and departments in the future.
This thread by a former Twitter employee provides a great deal of information about the past policies on Twitter verification and why making people who provide most of the content on the site pay for the privilege is really stupid.
1) As someone who was (briefly) in charge of the Twitter Media team – the group tasked with getting high profile people onto Twitter, and verification – AND as one of the few ever to voluntarily give up the blue check, I want to try to articulate how risky this policy change is. https://t.co/ABYu2kJIWa
3) We verified those people so that any user could know they were interacting with a real account; part of the fun of twitter is the real time dialogue with thought leaders (that then flows to others in the replies who get to share their thoughts and ideas).
Beginning April 1, Twitter will start removing “legacy verified checkmarks” from the profiles of celebrities, journalists, civil servants and other public figures. Twitter is making the move in an attempt to force more users to pay for “verified” check marks, as part of its agenda to monetize a service that was previously handled by the company for free.
But so far, the plan isn’t going well. As CNN reports, many media organizations, including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, BuzzFeed, POLITICO and Vox, are already saying they have no plans to dish out money for Twitter Blue, the fee-based service that includes those blue check marks. The White House will also not be paying staffers for verified accounts, according to Axios. And Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James promises that he “ain’t paying.”
This was an entirely predictable case of Twitter CEO Elon Musk playing himself. Why would media outlets — or anyone else — rush to pay for verified badges when he’s systematically destroyed their meaning? [….]
Williard, by Emma Hesse
Musk believed he could turn verified badges into a key source of new revenue for making Twitter profitable, a goal that’s surely growing more difficult as advertisers have fled Twitter en masse after Musk took over the company last year. But now key demographics that he would’ve hoped to have secured for paying for the service — journalists, famous celebrities, and government workers — might be checking out altogether. And that’s because Musk unraveled the purpose of the very thing he wanted to make money off.
As I’ve explained before, Musk fundamentally misunderstood or disregarded the true value of verified badges to most people who had them. Their original purpose was for Twitter to confirm that public figures were who they actually said they were in order to combat impersonation and misinformation. It was the key feature of what made Twitter a reliable source of news: verified accounts helped separate trustworthy statements and reporting from rumors and false claims.
But Musk decided that the reason verified badges were important was not because they verified identity, but because of the way they signaled social clout — and that he could cash in on this by trying to get a bigger network of people to pay for them. So now under his paid verification service, users’ identities are not confirmed, but blue checks can be distributed to anyone willing to open up their wallet. In other words, he’s hollowed out their meaning but kept the trappings intact.
Yesterday, an interesting court case involving Twitter was decided. The case demonstrates how Twitter has been used to promote disinformation.
Douglass Mackey, a supporter of former president Donald Trump who used Twitter to disseminate false information to redirect would-be voters of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, was convicted Friday on a charge of conspiracy against rights, the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn announced.
A federal jury issued the verdict after a week-long trial in New York. Mackey, 33, faces 10 years in prison.
“Today’s verdict proves that the defendant’s fraudulent actions crossed a line into criminality and flatly rejects his cynical attempt to use the constitutional right of free speech as a shield for his scheme to subvert the ballot box and suppress the vote,” Breon Peace, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement.
By Belinda Del Pesco
In the months leading up to the 2016 presidential election, prosecutors said Mackey used a Twitter alias with about 58,000 followers — @Ricky_Vaughn99, reportedly derived from actor Charlie Sheen’s character Ricky Vaughn in the 1989 film “Major League” — to circulate messages on Twitter that encouraged Clinton’s supporters to “vote” via text message or social media, methods that were not valid.
“For example, on November 1, 2016, in or around the same time that Mackey was sending tweets suggesting the importance of limiting ‘black turnout,’ the defendant tweeted an image depicting an African American woman standing in front of an ‘African Americans for Hillary’ sign,” the U.S. attorney’s office said.
The deceptive ad stated: “Avoid the Line. Vote from Home,” “Text ‘Hillary’ to 59925” and “Vote for Hillary and be a part of history.” It also included fine print at the bottom that mimicked a real ad, stating: “Must be 18 or older to vote. One vote per person. Must be a legal citizen of the United States. Voting by text not available in Guam, Puerto Rico, Alaska or Hawaii. Paid for by Hillary For President 2016.”
Prosecutors said Mackey also used his Ricky Vaughn persona to tweet a similar deceptive ad in Spanish, which included a copy of Clinton’s campaign logo and her campaign’s oft-used “ImWithHer” hashtag.
Leading up to Election Day, at least 4,900 unique telephone numbers texted “Hillary” or something similar to the 59925 text number, the U.S. attorney’s office said. At the time, Mackey’s fake Twitter profile was rated the 107th most influential with respect to that year’s election, according to an analysis done by the MIT Media Lab, the U.S. attorney’s office said.
Read more at the WaPo.
We are all waiting with bated breath to find out what will happen on Tuesday when Trump is expected to voluntarily surrender and face charges recommended by the grand jury convened by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Trump has been using his social media platform Truth Social to threaten both the DA and the Judge in the case. I hope the judge will issue a gag order to shut him up. So far Trump’s followers haven’t shown signs of organizing as they did for January 6, but New York is preparing for possible violence. Here’s the latest:
One year ago this week, the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation into Donald J. Trump appeared to be dead in the water.
The two leaders of the investigation had recently resigned after the new district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, decided not to charge Mr. Trump at that point. Amid a fierce backlash to his decision — and a brutal start to his tenure — Mr. Bragg insisted that the investigation was not over. But a disbelieving media questioned why, if the effort was still moving forward, there were few signs of it.
“Unless y’all are great poker players,” Mr. Bragg told The New York Times in an early April 2022 interview, “you don’t know what we’re doing.”
What they were doing, new interviews show, was going back to square one, poring over the reams of evidence that had already been collected by his predecessor.
For a time, their efforts were haphazard as they examined a wide range of Mr. Trump’s business practices, including whether he had lied about his net worth, which was the focus of the investigation when Mr. Bragg had declined to seek an indictment. But by July, Mr. Bragg had decided to assign several additional prosecutors to pursue one particular strand that struck him as promising: a hush-money payment made on Mr. Trump’s behalf to a porn star during the final days of the 2016 presidential campaign.
On Thursday, Mr. Trump was indicted on that strand. He is expected to surrender to the authorities in Manhattan on Tuesday and face arraignment on more than two dozen charges, which will be unveiled at that time.
Read how it happened at the NYT link. It’s a long, interesting read.
Former President Donald Trump is facing multiple charges of falsifying business records, including at least one felony offense, in the indictment handed down by a Manhattan grand jury, two people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press on Friday.
He will be formally arrested and arraigned Tuesday in his hush money case, setting the scene for the historic, shocking moment when a former president is forced to stand before a judge to hear the criminal charges against him.
The indictment remained sealed and the specific charges were not immediately known, but details were confirmed by people who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss information that isn’t yet public….
When Trump turns himself in, he’ll be booked mostly like anyone else facing charges, mug shot, fingerprinting and all. But he isn’t expected to be put in handcuffs; he’ll have Secret Service protection and will almost certainly be released that same day….
In the meantime, Trump’s legal team prepared his defense while the prosecutor’s office defended the grand jury investigation that propelled the matter toward trial. Congressional Republicans, as well as Trump himself, contend the whole matter is politically motivated.
“We urge you to refrain from these inflammatory accusations, withdraw your demand for information, and let the criminal justice process proceed without unlawful political interference,” Leslie Dubeck, general counsel in the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, wrote in a letter sent Friday to three Republican House committee chairs that was obtained by The Associated Press.
New York City is making plans for security and to deal with any possible violence next week.
Since Trump’s March 18 post claiming his arrest was imminent, authorities have ratcheted up security, deploying additional police officers, lining the streets around the courthouse with barricades and dispatching bomb-sniffing dogs. They’ve had to respond to bomb and death threats, a suspicious powder scare and a pro-Trump protester who was arrested Tuesday after witnesses say she pulled a knife on passersby.
Since no former president had ever been charged with a crime, there’s no rulebook for booking the defendant. He will be fingerprinted and have a mug shot taken, and investigators will complete arrest paperwork and check to see if he has any outstanding criminal charges or warrants, according to a person familiar who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive security operations.
Included in a litany of profane, typo-laden emails sent to Bragg on the heels of Trump’s Thursday indictment were overtly racist and anti-Semitic insults and threats on the DA’s life.
“Hay George Soros a** hole puppet If you want President Trump come and get me to,” read one email. “Remember we are everywhere and we have guns.” [….]
People apparently unhappy about Bragg’s still-sealed indictment against Trump targeted multiple email addresses associated with Bragg’s website. The correspondence was shared exclusively with the Daily News by a senior adviser to Bragg, who asked to remain anonymous.
“How do we a a [n—-r] like you removed feom office?” read another email.
On a section of Bragg’s campaign website, where people can sign up to receive updates about Bragg’s work, scores of people entered fake names using racial epithets targeting the DA. The majority included despicable language like “bl*** trash [f—-r]” and “Aids Infested…” [….]
The largely anonymous onslaught comes as Trump’s incendiary rhetoric directed at Bragg, widely condemned as both violent and racist, escalates to a fever pitch following his indictment. Bragg is Manhattan’s first Black district attorney.
Minutes after news broke of former President Donald Trump’s indictment, a comment on the pro-Trump internet forum Patriots.win, also known as TheDonald, skyrocketed to the top of the message board.
“****ACCELERATE,” the comment, written by a user named TheSpeakerfortheDead, reads in its entirety.
Below that user, others quickly piled on, saying the grand jury that indicted Trump is “guilty of treason” and that their personal information should be made public.
The word “accelerate” is a reference to the far-right term accelerationism, the idea that the state must be abolished, usually violently, and replaced with a new one.
While there is little evidence of similar planning for real-world unrest just yet, extremism researchers are keeping a close eye on the varied calls for everything from targeted attacks on the district attorney who brought the case to a new civil war.
“Accelerationism is a concept on the far right that’s defined by a cynicism and disbelief in the legitimacy of the democratic process or in functions of government,” said Jared Holt, a researcher at the extremism studies nonprofit Institute for Strategic Dialogue. “Subscribers to it suggest as a solution a series of actions that are often violent, and meant to compromise or hasten what they believe to be unavoidable collapse of that system.”
Holt said the term was used earlier in the decade to describe white supremacist extremist groups like Atomwaffen, who frequently agitate for and commit acts of violence. Some users on pro-Trump forums have begun to embrace the nomenclature as more and more radical and violent rhetoric has seeded into their space.
“The hope is that by advocating for the destruction of those systems or for the destabilizing of society — whether it’s through mass violence or purposeful misinformation — by playing a role in the collapse that they would also cement a position for themselves when they’re rebuilding it in their own image,” Holt he said.
Former President Donald Trump can’t seem to stop talking about his indictment. But once he’s arraigned, it’s “extremely likely” that he’ll have to, a former senior staffer with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office told Insider.
His freedom to rant on Truth Social and say what he wants about his case at rallies will likely change once he surrenders and appears in a Manhattan courthouse, according to Duncan Levin, who is also a former federal prosecutor with the Department of Justice.
Manhattan’s Acting Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, who is expected to arraign Trump on Tuesday, is likely to put conditions on his release, and that’s “most likely” when the judge will issue a gag order, restricting Trump from discussing the case, Levin said. If Trump violates it by speaking about the litigation outside the courtroom, he could face consequences.
Punishment for criminal contempt, under New York law, is a fine not exceeding $1,000, jail for up to 30 days or both.
“I think it’s not only a possibility, but it’s extremely likely that there will be a gag order in the case,” said Levin, known for representing clients including Harvey Weinstein and Anna Sorokin. “Gag orders are very common in criminal cases, particularly in cases where there is an enormous amount of pretrial publicity like this one.”
Irina Kalentieva – Gustave Francois Lasellaz French 1848-1910
A bit more:
If there’s a gag order, Levin said Trump will be “very limited” in what he’s able to say, even if there may be proxies who speak for him. The court has the ability to set the rules for his conduct while he’s most likely to be out on bail, pending proceedings.
“This is a criminal case now, so the rules have changed, and the rules are no longer in his purview to make,” Levin said. “He is a criminal defendant and, you know, we see hundreds of thousands of criminal defendants across the country every day who have a lot of rights stripped away from them and he is now one of them. These proceedings are going to change his life.”
Former Indiana Attorney General Jeff Modisett said he also expected that a judge could narrowly craft a gag order that could survive an appeal. He added that Trump’s status as a presidential candidate certainly complicates the First Amendment questions that are always present when such an order is considered.
“I could see where in a case like this based upon statements like that a judge could … issue a gag order,” Modisett said after an Insider reporter read to him the former president’s attack on Merchan. “Given Donald Trump’s history in litigation there is likely to be an appeal, but a carefully defined, narrowly restricted gag order would be upheld by the courts on appeal.”
So that’s what’s happening today as I see it. What do you think? What other stories are you following?
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Last Tuesday, Trump hosted a dinner at Mar-a-Lago with Kanye West and and Nicholas Fuentes. West has been spouting virulent antisemitism recently, and Fuentes is a white supremacist, holocaust denier, and Hitler admirer. Trump was reportedly quite taken with Fuentes, and during the dinner said, “I like this guy. He gets me.” Public outrage built over the holiday weekend. At first Republicans were hesitant to criticize Trump for this, but yesterday some of them actually spoke out against his behavior.
Former vice president Mike Pence and numerous Republican lawmakers on Monday criticized Donald Trump for dining with the white nationalist Nick Fuentes and the rapper Ye, both of whom have a history of antisemitic remarks, marking a rare break with Trump in the upper echelons of the GOP.
Pence was most clear in his condemnation, saying in an interview with NewsNation, “President Trump was wrong to give a white nationalist, an antisemite and a Holocaust denier a seat at the table. I think he should apologize for it, and he should denounce those individuals and their hateful rhetoric without qualification.”
He joined several Republican senators who also directly criticized the former president in statements disavowing the dinner with Fuentes and Ye. Pence’s comments were also one of the clearest instances of the former vice president trying to set himself apart from Trump, whom he served for four years, amid the expectation that Pence will challenge Trump for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024.
Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and former New Jersey governor Chris Christie — each rumored to be eyeing a presidential run — were quicker to criticize Trump.
Christie tweeted on Saturday: “This is just awful, unacceptable conduct from anyone, but most particularly from a former President and current candidate.”
“Well, I hope, someday, we won’t have to be responding to what former President Trump has said or done,” Hutchinson said in an interview Sunday on CNN. “In this instance, it’s important to respond. … I don’t think it’s a good idea for a leader that is setting an example for the country or the party to meet with an avowed racist or antisemite.” [….]
“President Trump hosting racist antisemites for dinner encourages other racist antisemites,” Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) tweeted. “These attitudes are immoral and should not be entertained. This is not the Republican Party.”
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) said Trump should have “certainly” known who he is dining with, telling reporters Monday, “I totally think it’s ridiculous to be sitting down with somebody who espouses such views.” [….]
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said in a statement that she condemns “antisemitism and white supremacy” and that “the president should never have had a meal or even a meeting with Nick Fuentes.”
The public critiques of Trump were notable after years in which many Republicans remained silent as he courted extremists. Still, many stopped short of a full denouncement.
Mitt Romney delivered the harshest rebuke. From Charlie Sykes’ Morning Shots at The Bulwark:
“There is no bottom to the degree to which he’s willing to degrade himself, and the country for that matter. Having dinner with those people was disgusting,” Romney said.
“I voted to remove him from office twice… I don’t think he should be president of the United states. I don’t think he should be the nominee of our party in 2024. And I certainly don’t want him hanging over our party like a gargoyle.”
“It was ridiculous,” Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa said.
“I just think that was a really bad idea,” Sen. John Thune, R-S.D, the second-ranking Republican leader, said. “He shouldn’t have done it.”
While some lawmakers were reluctant to single out Trump by name, and many paired their statements with attacks on Democrats and reassurances they didn’t consider Trump racist, they almost all made clear he’d crossed a line. Importantly, they did what Trump would not — condemn and disavow the hate his dinner guests preached.
“There’s no room in the Republican Party for white supremacy and antisemitism,” Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., a close Trump ally, said. “It’s wrong. I think Republicans should all condemn white supremacy and antisemitism.” [….]
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. called Fuentes an “ass clown” and told CNN he hoped Trump would condemn the “evil” and “disgusting” figure. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas told NBC News he was a “racist clown.”
And even some top supporters were, at minimum, willing to concede it wasn’t the best look. “There’s a lot of other people, I would think that he could have met with to help the country be stronger and go more in the right direction,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala. said.
For much of Donald J. Trump’s presidency, Jewish Republicans rationalized away the bigoted fringe of Mr. Trump’s coalition, arguing that the unsavory supporters in his midst and the antisemitic tropes he deployed paled in comparison with the staunchly pro-Israel policies of his administration.
Trump, Nick Fuentes, and Kanye West
But last week, Mr. Trump dined at his Palm Beach palace, Mar-a-Lago, with the performer Kanye West, who had already been denounced for making antisemitic statements, and with Nick Fuentes, an outspoken antisemite and Holocaust denier, granting the antisemitic fringe a place of honor at his table. Now, even some of Mr. Trump’s staunchest supporters say they can no longer ignore the abetting of bigotry by the nominal leader of the Republican Party.
“I am a child of survivors. I have become very frightened for my people,” Morton Klein, head of the right-wing Zionist Organization of America, said on Monday, referring to his parents’ survival of the Holocaust. “Donald Trump is not an antisemite. He loves Israel. He loves Jews. But he mainstreams, he legitimizes Jew hatred and Jew haters. And this scares me.”
Not all Republican leaders have spoken out, but Jewish Republicans are slowly peeling away from a former president who, for years, insisted he had no ties to the bigoted far right, but refused to repudiate it. Jewish figures and organizations that have stood by Mr. Trump, from Mr. Klein’s group to the pro-Trump commentator Ben Shapiro to Mr. Trump’s own former ambassador to Israel and onetime bankruptcy lawyer, David M. Friedman, have all spoken out since the dinner.
For Jews, the concern extends far beyond a single meal at Mar-a-Lago, though that dinner has become a touchstone, especially for Jewish Republicans.
“We have a long history in this country of separating the moral character of the man in the White House from his conduct in office, but with Trump, it’s gone beyond any of the reasonably acceptable and justifiable norms,” Jay Lefkowitz, a former adviser to President George W. Bush and a supporter of many of Mr. Trump’s policies, said on Monday.
For American Jewry, the debate since the dinner has brought into focus what may be the most discomfiting moment in U.S. history in a half-century or more.
“The normalization of antisemitism is here,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League.
Jews are thriving in America, and even with the violent resurgence of antisemitism in the Trump era, I’ve rarely felt personally threatened, perhaps a function of my privilege. Over the last week, though, I’m reminded that well-off Jews in other times and places have also imagined that they’d moved beyond existential danger, and been wrong.
At this point, there is no excuse for being shocked by anything that Donald Trump does, yet I confess to being astonished that the former president dined last week with one of the country’s most influential white supremacists, a smirking little fascist named Nick Fuentes. There’s nothing new about antisemites in Trump’s circle, but they usually try to maintain some plausible deniability, ranting about globalists and George Soros rather than the Jews. Fuentes, by contrast, is overt. “Jews have too much power in our society,” he recently wrote on his Telegram channel. “Christians should have all the power, everyone else very little.”
Fuentes was brought to Trump’s lair by Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, who was evidently serious when he threatened to go “death con 3” on the Jews last month. (The relationship with West is a bit of a coup for Fuentes, who, openly wishing for conflict between Jews and Black people, has been willing to sublimate his anti-Black racism in the service of his antisemitism.) According to Axios, at one point during the dinner Trump turned to Ye and said of Fuentes: “I really like this guy. He gets me.”
Since then, Trump has claimed he didn’t know who Fuentes was. I find this unlikely. In September, I wrote a piece about a Trump-endorsed congressional candidate named Joe Kent that mentions Fuentes in the first paragraph. Trump scrawled a note of congratulations on the print version and mailed it to Kent, who sent the image out on his email list. But even if Trump’s ignorance was sincere, he still didn’t denounce Fuentes after learning his identity.
Most Republicans, in turn, spent days declining to criticize Trump, though former Vice President Mike Pence and several senators finally spoke out on Monday. There is a good argument that politicians and journalists should avoid responding to every one of the ex-president’s provocations. In this case, however, the reluctance to rebuke Trump erodes the already-shaky taboo against antisemitism in Republican politics.
Elon Musk
Goldberg goes on to note that “other narcissistic celebrities are now joining him in reveling in reactionary transgression.”
Ye is launching a vanity presidential campaign run by the far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, who recently wrote on Telegram, “We’re done putting Jewish interests first.” After buying Twitter, Elon Musk enthusiastically welcomed both Trump and Ye back to the platform, and has been tiptoing up to the edge of antisemitism himself. On Sunday, he tweeted that Alexander Vindman, the Jewish retired Army officer who testified about Trump’s attempt to extort Ukraine’s president, is both “puppet & puppeteer,” echoing an old antisemitic trope about Jews pulling the strings behind world events. On Monday, Musk tweeted an image of the alt-right symbol Pepe the Frog.
And now Musk owns Twitter, which has become a kind of public square that is important to people, causes, and even government agencies around the world. I knew nothing about Musk until recently, when he began making noises about buying Twitter. Now it’s clear to me that he is a full-blown malignant narcissist, very similar to Trump. He appears to be on a path to turning Twitter into an unmoderated hell scape like 4chan and 8chan, where Qanon and other crazy conspiracy theories festered. Recently Musk announced that he will reinstate all of the account that were previously banned by Twitter moderators. According to NPR,
In the days after the Capitol insurrection, Twitter banned 70,000 QAnon-linked accounts for spreading the conspiracy theory. Some belonged to influencers with large followings, including high-profile Trump supporters Sidney Powell and Michael Flynn, who had also spread false claims of election fraud and had tried to get the election results overturned.
Many more accounts have been banned since then. Even more concerning, despite his claims that protecting children is important to him, Musk’s layoffs and firings have made Twitter more dangerous for children.
Following widespread layoffs and resignations, just one staff member remains on a key team dedicated to removing child sexual abuse content from Twitter, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, who both requested to remain anonymous. https://t.co/6B7w54x011
REMOVING CHILD EXPLOITATION is “priority #1”, Twitter’s new owner and CEO Elon Musk declared last week. But, at the same time, following widespread layoffs and resignations, just one staff member remains on a key team dedicated to removing child sexual abuse content from the site, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, who both requested to remain anonymous.
It’s unclear how many people were on the team before Musk’s takeover. On LinkedIn, WIRED identified four Singapore-based employees who specialize in child safety who said publicly they left Twitter in November.
The importance of in-house child safety experts cannot be understated, researchers say. Based in Twitter’s Asian headquarters in Singapore, the team enforces the company’s ban on child sex abuse material (CSAM) in the Asia Pacific region. Right now, that team has just one full-time employee. The Asia Pacific region is home to around 4.3 billion people, about 60 percent of the world’s population.
The team in Singapore is responsible for some of the platform’s busiest markets, including Japan. Twitter has 59 million users in Japan, second only to the number of users in the United States, according to data aggregator Statista. Yet the Singapore office has also been impacted by widespread layoffs and resignations following Musk’s takeover of the business. In the past month, Twitter laid off half its workforce and then emailed remaining staff asking them to choose between committing to work “long hours at high intensity” or accepting a severance package of three months’ pay.
The impact of layoffs and resignations on Twitter’s ability to tackle CSAM is “very worrying,” says Carolina Christofoletti, a CSAM researcher at the University of São Paulo in Brazil. “It’s delusional to think that there will be no impact on the platform if people who were working on child safety inside of Twitter can be laid off or allowed to resign,” she says. Twitter did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
The Twitter in-house child safety team is vitally important to outside organizations who work to protect vulnerable children, because the metadata and analysis are only available inside Twitter.
Whether you love or hate Twitter, that is frightening. We’ve spent the past 7 years dealing with one narcissistic psychopath who could still run for president again. Now there’s another one in charge of the most important platform for communication with journalists, government leaders, historians, researchers, and more. Why do we do this to ourselves? That’s a topic for another day.
What do you think? What stories are you following today?
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This weekend, I’ll be waking up to one of my favorite days of the year: a government-sanctioned 25-hour Sunday. Forget birthdays, forget my anniversary; heck, forget the magic of Christmas. On Sunday, I’ll get to do a bit of time traveling as most of the United States transitions out of daylight saving time back into glorious, glorious standard time.
I may be a standard-time stan, but I’m no monster. I feel for the die-hard fans of DST. With the push of a button, or the turn of a dial, most Americans will be cleaving an hour of brightness out of their afternoons, at a time of year when days are already fast-dimming. Leaving work to a dusky sky is a bummer; a pre-dinner stroll cut short by darkness can really be the pits.
But if we all put aside our differences for just a moment, we can celebrate the fact that this weekend, nearly all Americans—regardless of where they sit on the DST love-hate spectrum—will be blessed with a 25-hour day, and that freaking rocks. If we must live in a dumb world where the dumb clocks shift twice a dumb year, let’s at least come together on the objective greatness of falling back.
I don’t want to minimize the nuisance of the time shift. Toggling back and forth twice a year is an absolute pain, and many Americans cheered when the Senate unanimously passed a proposal earlier this year to move the entire U.S. to permanent daylight saving time. But Katy Milkman, a behavioral scientist at the University of Pennsylvania and the host of the podcast Choiceology—who, by the way, loathes the end of DST—told me we can all reframe the autumn clock change “as a windfall.” Sunday will contain a freebie hour to do whatever we like. Rafael Pelayo, a sleep specialist at Stanford, will be spending his at the farmers’ market; Ken Carter, a psychologist and self-described morning person at Emory University, told me he might chill with an extra cup of coffee and his cats. I’m planning to split my minutes between a nap and Paper Girls (the graphic novel, not the show).
I will probably walk Temple a little longer that morning and then enjoy some tea and breadmaking.
I got a pretty good laugh as some friendly remaining Twitter employer or algorithm has fact-checked the Chief Twit.
Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists.
Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America.
This is from Newsweek. “Every Advertiser to Pull Out of Twitter Since Musk’s Takeover—Full List”. Many businesses don’t want to be associated with a site that lets NAZIs, Racists, and nasty-talking idiots run amok, according to those asking those businesses. For some reason, everyone but Musk gets it.
Since Elon Musk‘s takeover of Twitter last week, at least six major companies have stopped advertising on the platform over concerns about how the billionaire will affect content moderation policies on the app.
During the rocky process of acquiring the platform, marked by U-turns, controversies, and lawsuits, Musk pledged to make Twitter a champion of free speech. This promise led many right-wingers to see Musk’s takeover as a victory for conservatives over political correctness, though the Tesla CEO is yet to implement any changes to the way the platform moderates content.
But where right-wingers saw potential, many companies appear to have spotted a risk of damage to their business, especially after a sudden surge of slurs and hateful comments were reported on the platform immediately following Musk’s takeover.
This could be a problem for Musk’s Twitter: before his takeover, the company reported making 90 percent of its revenue from advertisers. Now that Twitter is set to charge its blue-tick users $8 per month to keep their verified badge, it’s unclear whether this could make up for lost revenues from advertising.
Marsh Landscape with Farmhouses at Utenwarf, Emile Nolde,
General Mills, Audi and Pfizer join growing list of companies pausing advertising on Twitter amid fears the platform won’t be a ‘safe place for brands’ after Musk’s $44B takeover
Audi and Cheerios-maker General Mills confirmed an ad pause on Thursday
Pfizer and Oreos-maker Mondelez also reportedly halted Twitter spending
Brands are watching nervously to see how Twitter evolves under Elon Musk
Musk insists that it will be safe for brands and not a ‘free-for-all hellscape’
General Motors previously announced a pause in its Twitter ad spending
Carmakers are especially worried about fair treatment from Tesla CEO Musk
Elon Musk is beginning mass layoffs at Twitter, sharply reducing the company’s workforce of 7,500 and kicking off his wholesale overhaul of the company.
An email went out to the company’s employees late Thursday notifying employees of plans to cut jobs, informing them that by 9 a.m. Pacific time Friday, workers would receive an email with the subject line: “Your Role at Twitter.”
Those keeping their jobs would be notified on their company email. Those losing them would be told via their personal email.
Former President Trump’s inner circle is discussing announcing the launch of a 2024 presidential campaign on Nov. 14 — with the official announcement possibly followed by a multi-day series of political events, according to three sources familiar with the sensitive discussions.
Why it matters: Trump and his top advisers have been signaling for weeks that a 2024 announcement is imminent. But those discussions have reached the point that allies are blocking off days in their calendars for the week after the midterms — and preparing to travel.
What we’re hearing: With polls pointing toward a good night for Republicans on Tuesday, Trump plans to surf the GOP’s expected post-midterm euphoria to build momentum for his own effort to retake the White House.
Look for Trump to take credit for Republican victories across the board —including those he propelled with his endorsements, and even those he had nothing to do with.
Between the lines: Trump has long planned to announce shortly after midterms — and even toyed with announcing before Nov. 8 — in an effort to get ahead of potential rivals for the GOP’s 2024 nomination, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
In recent weeks, Trump has been inching closer and closer to saying he is running, relishing the applause as he hints to his rally crowds that he’s doing it.
At his Thursday rally in Sioux City, Iowa, Trump said: “In order to make our country successful and safe and glorious, I will very, very, very probably do it again … Get ready that’s all I’m telling you — very soon. Get ready.”
A Trump spokesman declined to comment. The discussions are still fluid and could change depending on Tuesday’s results, especially if the Senate still hangs in the balance and the Georgia race between Herschel Walker and Raphael Warnock goes to a run-off.
Reality check: It’s Trump. So anything could happen — or not. He’s conflicted on the timing and nothing is ever certain. But people who have been close to him for many years are lacing up for the next race.
Emil Nolde, Meer mit zwei qualmenden Dampfern [Sea With Two Smoldering Steamboats], 1930,
Now federal investigators are planning for a burst of post-election activity in Trump-related investigations. That includes the prospect of indictments of Trump’s associates – moves that could be made more complicated if Trump declares a run for the presidency.
“They can crank up charges on almost anybody if they wanted to,” said one defense attorney working on January 6-related matters, who added defense lawyers have “have no idea” who ultimately will be charged.
“This is the scary thing,” the attorney said.
Trump and his associates also face legal exposure in Georgia, where Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election in the Peach State and expects to wrap her probe by the end of the year.
Indicting an active candidate for the White House would surely spark a political firestorm. And while no decision has been made about whether a special counsel might be needed in the future, DOJ officials have debated whether doing so could insulate the Justice Department from accusations that Joe Biden’s administration is targeting his chief political rival, people familiar with the matter tell CNN.
Special counsels, of course, are hardly immune from political attacks. Both former special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation and special counsel John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the FBI’s Russia probe came under withering criticism from their opponents.
It was not clear whether he was in custody, but officials said the threat had been “mitigated.”
“He no longer poses a threat to the community at this time,” James E. Dennehy, the special agent in charge of the F.B.I.’s Newark office, said during a morning conference call with state and federal law enforcement officials and more than 500 Jewish leaders.
Mr. Dennehy said investigators believed that the man, who is from New Jersey, was acting alone, but they are continuing to pursue leads about people he might have been in contact with. The man was not publicly identified, and officials offered no additional information about whether he had been charged with a crime.
He was located Thursday night, officials said, and questioned for a “few hours.”
“He expressed radical, extremist views and ideology, as well as an extreme amount of hate against the Jewish community,” Mr. Dennehy said.
Hakeem Jeffries may follow Nancy Pelosi as Speaker. This is from Politico: “How a secret meeting put Hakeem Jeffries on track to replace Pelosi. Behind the scenes, House Democrats battle to anoint their next generation of leaders.”
The race to succeed Speaker Nancy Pelosi as the leader of House Democrats may have been clinched at a meeting in the Capitol on Sept. 1.
That’s when House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn of South Carolina and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York slipped back to Washington to connect in Clyburn’s office during the summer congressional recess at Jeffries’ request.
Jeffries, the fifth-ranking House Democrat who aspires to be the first-ranking House Democrat in the next Congress, was picking up heightened chatter from colleagues about California Rep. Adam Schiff’s outreach expressing his own interest in the top caucus job.
The 52-year-old Jeffries was concerned enough that he offered to fly to South Carolina to seek the counsel of the 82-year-old Clyburn. The younger lawmaker wanted to gently make sure his elder in the Congressional Black Caucus knew of Schiff’s quiet campaign — and to even more gently warn Clyburn about the risk of splitting votes between them and opening a path for the ambitious Californian.
Jeffries need not have been alarmed.
“There’s nothing I would ever do to impede the progress of our up-and-coming young Democrats and I see him as an up-and-coming young Democrat,” Clyburn said in an interview about Jeffries. “He knows that, I didn’t have to tell him that — but I did.”
Asked if he would be willing to serve in an emeritus role in the leadership, Clyburn said he is “willing to do anything the caucus thinks is to their benefit,” noting that Jeffries has “referred to me as a mentor.”
Something extraordinary just happened: In the space of just this week, a president and an ex-president warned that the opposition poses an existential threat to our political way of life. Joe Biden declared that “MAGA Republicans” have placed democracy “under threat.” Barack Obama warned that if GOP election deniers win in Arizona, “democracy may not survive.”
Yet the ongoing MAGA threat to U.S. democracy, including from Donald Trump himself, isn’t harming Republicanchances of winning the House and very plausibly the Senate. Some think Democratic warnings are backfiring: Former Obama strategist David Axelrod suggested vulnerable Democrats don’t want the unpopular Biden to elevate himself in the election’s home stretch.
Why hasn’t the threat to democracy extracted a heavier price from Republicans? Is it true that vulnerable Democrats don’t want Biden to prominently address the topic? If so, should he have stood down, since Democrats themselves think protecting democracy above all requires keeping MAGA Republicans out of power? Could a more forceful case have made this a bigger voting issue?
I raised these questions with a number of senior Democratic strategists and pollsters working on tough House and Senate races. The answers that emerged are complicated, nuanced — and ultimately vexing.
First, it’s critical to note that messages about the threat to democracy mean different things to different voter groups, which means they help Democrats in some ways but not in others.
Democratic pollster Celinda Lake has found this mixed picture in extensive work withfocus groups. Elevating threats to democracy, political violence and the events of Jan. 6, 2021, Lake tells me, “helps mobilize the Democratic base,” and, importantly, this kicked in at a key moment, when anger over the demise of abortion rights was “receding” in late summer.
Thisis not a small matter. Threats-to-democracy talkalso galvanizes volunteers, who are critical amid soaring polarization and races decided on the margins, says Ezra Levin, co-founder of the progressive group Indivisible.
I think it’s because many Republicans see their ability to be public assholes and not be held to account for it as their idea of democracy. Correct me if I am wrong. Anyway, I’m going to have a nice quiet day, with the only goal being to relax and not let things get to me.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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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.
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
This is the original set-up, and this is a link to the UK government.
What was called Transjordan was eventually turned over to become the country Jordan in 1923; it became an emirate. And, yes, there were and still are Christians who have been there since they were under the Ottoman Empire and British “management. ” Jordan got different treatment. So, the entire setup was bound to have issues. Randy Newmann calls it the “Great Nations of Europe coming through.” So, this was a country set up by Europeans with European settlers. Not a great prescription for success. When anti-Jewish sentiment created the horrible situation in Germany, the diaspora logically moved to where they felt they were safer. Repeat this later when the USSR–soon to return to Russia–allowed their Jewish population to emigrate.
This is from The Guardian. 
Are there any narratives out there convincing you that so many people should die?
So, this is good news. This is from 
The Republican Right continues to enable our own terrorists. Three Palestinian University Students were the target of a possible hate-crime-related shooting in Vermont. The suspect has been arrested and indicted today. It’s pretty much just what you’d expect. 
Hate Crimes have been ramped up since the beginning of the conflict. This is from CNN. “The Israel-Hamas war is driving a surge in US hate crimes. 
Meanwhile, the Instigator-in-Chief of Hate Crimes remains loose, running his mouth amok. Today, CNN has reported this. 
This is from 
Last Tuesday, Trump
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