Finally Friday Reads: Ain’t that some Shit?
Posted: November 14, 2025 Filed under: #We are so Fucked, Psychopaths in charge, racism in MAGA, Rape Culture | Tags: corruption, culture of misogyny, Epstein Files, Life'll Kill Ya, Orange Caligula 14 Comments
With Trump/Epstein back in the news, here’s a snippet from a cartoon I drew a few days ago. ” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Some of my friends have been blaming the craziness I’ve been feeling lately on the huge Mercury Retrograde that started on the 9th. It’s really unnerving to read the unbelievably scattered graft and madness coming out of Orange Caligula’s regime, which seems like peak madness, too. I’ve spent the last two days trying to talk people down, as well as crying over a friend whose essential surgery just got cancelled because his insurance company refused to pay for it. Then, there are all the Epstein headlines. I’m glad to get glimpses of justice, but it’s also tough to deal with all the stories of abuse and indifference that always come from the way men treat women and children like junk in their toy box.
This story in HuffPo absolutely tore my heart to pieces this morning. It’s reported by Ron Dicker. This may trigger you, so please take this trigger warning seriously. “Epstein Email About Giving Girlfriend To Trump Enrages Model’ Groped’ By Him. The former Sports Illustrated model said Epstein, whom she dated in the early 1990s, “delivered” her to Trump.”
A newly released email in which Jeffrey Epstein bragged about giving a girlfriend to Donald Trump angered a former model who dated Epstein and claimed he once “delivered” her to the future president to be “groped” by him.
The note showed how “deeply misogynistic” the two men were, Stacey Williams told CNN on Thursday. (Watch the video below.)
Williams, who was featured in several Sports Illustrated swimsuit issues in the ’90s, appeared on “Erin Burnett Outfront” after numerous emails involving the late sexual predator Epstein were shared this week. Congress is poised to vote on the release of files unviewed by the public, but Trump has continued to push back at what he now calls a “hoax.”
Burnett brought up Epstein’s correspondence in which he wrote about a Norwegian businesswoman and heiress: “my 20 year old girlfriend in 1993, , that after two years i gave to donald.”
“It screams about, you know, the mindset of these men,” Williams said. “You know, the same two men who did what they did to me when Jeffrey Epstein walked me into Donald Trump’s office to be groped by him. Clearly, we are these objects, these trophies, and it’s deeply misogynistic. It’s horrifying.”
Burnett also mentioned Williams’ previous account claiming Trump molested her as Epstein watched at Trump Tower, and how their smiling at each other revealed the pair’s “weird and twisted game.”
Williams added, “I clearly was delivered there for the groping.” She said that she had a reputation for standing up to inappropriate men, so “when I froze and didn’t respond, you know, I think Jeffrey got very upset about it. He expected a fight.”
Trump was the only male friend Epstein consistently talked about, according to Williams. “It’s just so maddening to me that Donald Trump ran on, you know, cleaning up the swamp,” she continued, “and all this time and energy is being spent on covering up information about the biggest swamp monster who’s ever existed.”
Even the Queen of the Fox News Bleached Blondes, a mother of teenagers, couldn’t show kindness, awareness, and sympathy to victims of Trump and Epstein’s Ephebophilia, which is the preference for mid-to-late adolescents. This is from Mother Jones as reported by Julianne McShane. “Megyn Kelly Suddenly Finds Pedophilia Very Hard to Define. When a 16-year-old accused Russell Brand of rape, Kelly begged conservatives to condemn him. Now she’s splitting hairs about men “into the barely legal type.”
Megyn Kelly is known for offering absurd takes that nobody asked for.
There was her insistence that Santa Claus is white, for example, and her claim that wearing blackface used to not be so bad (that one got her fired from NBC News). Wednesday, on her eponymous SiriusXM show, Kelly picked another hill to die on: She implied, in conversation with NewsNation host Batya Ungar-Sargon, that it wasn’t quite fair to call Jeffrey Epstein a pedophile because he was “into the barely legal type” of minors—which Kelly appallingly defines as “like, 15-year-olds”—who look like they could be legal adults. Epstein was charged with sex trafficking of minors and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of minors, and the Department of Justice said he abused and exploited dozens of underage girls, some as young as 14.
But Kelly said she nonetheless questioned how to characterize Epstein because, she claims, she knows “somebody very, very close to this case who is in a position to know virtually everything,” and “this person has told me from the start, years and years ago, that Jeffrey Epstein, in this person’s view, was not a pedophile.”
Kelly continued: “This is this person’s view, who was there for a lot of this, but that he was into the barely legal type. Like, he liked 15-year-old girls. And I realize this is disgusting. I’m definitely not trying to make an excuse for this. I’m just giving you facts, that he wasn’t into, like, 8-year-olds. But he liked the very young teen types that could pass for even younger than they were, but would look legal to a passerby.”
Kelly said the characterization from her unnamed source—that Epstein was “not a pedophile”—”is what I believed…until we heard from [Attorney General] Pam Bondi that they had tens of thousands of videos of alleged…child sexual abuse material on his computer that for the first time, I thought, ‘Oh, no, he was an actual pedophile.’ I mean, only a pedophile gets off on young children abuse videos. [Bondi has] never clarified it, I don’t know whether it’s true. I have to be honest, I don’t really trust Pam Bondi’s word on the Epstein matters anymore.”
“Or anything else,” added Ungar-Sargon.
“Yeah,” Kelly replied, “so I don’t know what’s true about him, but we have yet to see anybody come forward and say, ‘I was eight, I was under 10, I was under 14, when I first came within his purview.’ You can say that’s a distinction without a difference.”
“No, it’s not,” Ungar-Sargon says.
“I think there is a difference,” Kelly continues, “there’s a difference between a 15-year-old and a 5-year-old, you know?”
In fact, we don’t know.
Gaslighting is a Fox News feature. It’s also a hallmark of MAGA surreality.
Heather Cox Richardson writes about this on her Substack, Letters from an American.
We are watching the ideology of the far-right MAGAs smash against reality, with President Donald J. Trump and his cronies madly trying to convince voters to believe in their false world rather than the real one.
That spin has been hard at work in the past few days over the economy. Trump is clearly worried that the Supreme Court is going to find that much of his tariff war is unconstitutional, as the direction of the justices’ questioning in its November 5 hearing suggested. On Monday he claimed that the U.S. would have to pay back “in excess of $2 Trillion Dollars” if the Supreme Court ruled the tariffs unconstitutional, and that “would be a National Security catastrophe.” He blamed “Anarchists and Thugs” for putting the U.S. into a “terrible situation” by challenging his tariffs. Hours later, he increased the number to $3 Trillion—the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget says the number was actually about $195 billion.
Yesterday, White House officials suggested they would never be able to release October’s jobs report or inflation numbers, blaming the Democrats. They did, however, claim that prices are “beginning to drop,” citing DoorDash, the delivery platform, as their source.
The administration has justified its violence against undocumented immigrants by insisting those they round up are violent criminals, “the worst of the worst.” That claim is increasingly exposed as a lie, and Americans are pushing back.
Melissa Sanchez, Jodi S. Cohen, T. Christian Miller, Sebastian Rotella, and Mariam Elba of ProPublica reported on the September 30 raid on an apartment complex in Chicago in which federal agents stormed the complex in a helicopter and military-style vehicles, broke into apartments, and marched individuals outside, claiming they were Tren de Aragua gang members and filming them for a video the administration circulated that portrayed them as criminals.
Government agents arrested 37 people in the raid but ultimately claimed that only two of them were gang members. The journalists spoke to one and found he had no criminal record. Federal prosecutors have not filed criminal charges against anyone arrested in the raid. Instead, the journalists observed in immigration court that government lawyers never mentioned criminal charges or gang membership. Judges simply ordered them deported or let them leave voluntarily, which would enable them to apply to return to the U.S., a sign they are not actually seen as a threat to the country.
On Tuesday, Isabela Dias of Mother Jones reported on the administration’s targeting of individuals who, until now, were protected under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. President Barack Obama established DACA for those brought to the U.S. as children until Congress could pass legislation to give those “Dreamers” a path to legal residence. Thanks to the program, Dreamers by the hundreds of thousands gave the U.S. government their personal information in exchange for a promise they would not be deported. But Congress never acted, and now, in its quest to reach 3,000 deportations a day, the administration is targeting the DACA recipients, whose adherence to the rules the government established makes them easy to find and target.
Yesterday, Robert Tait of The Guardian noted that Human Rights Watch and Cristosal, a group that monitors human rights in Latin American, report that the Veneuzelans the Trump administration sent to the infamous CECOT terrorist prison in El Salvador endured systematic torture, including beatings and sexual violence. Only 3% of those the U.S. rendered to El Salvador had been convicted of a violent crime in the U.S.
As immigration advocate Aaron Reichlin-Melnick wrote: “We paid El Salvador to torture, abuse, and rape completely innocent Venezuelans so that [Secretary of State] Marco Rubio, [White House deputy chief of staff] Stephen Miller, and Donald Trump could claim they were tough on immigrants.”
The cruelty of Orange Caligula and his psychopathic sidekicks knows no bounds. This is from the source of authentic investigative journalism, ProPublica. “Firm Tied to Kristi Noem Secretly Got Money From $220 Million DHS Ad Contracts, The company is run by the husband of Noem’s chief DHS spokesperson and has personal and business ties to Noem and her aides. DHS invoked the “emergency” at the border to skirt competitive bidding rules for the taxpayer-funded campaign.”
On Oct. 2, the second day of the government shutdown, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem arrived at Mount Rushmore to shoot a television ad. Sitting on horseback in chaps and a cowboy hat, Noem addressed the camera with a stern message for immigrants: “Break our laws, we’ll punish you.”
Noem has hailed the more than $200 million, taxpayer-funded ad campaign as a crucial tool to stem illegal immigration. Her agency invoked the “national emergency” at the border as it awarded contracts for the campaign, bypassing the normal competitive bidding process designed to prevent waste and corruption.
The Department of Homeland Security has kept at least one beneficiary of the nine-figure ad deal a secret, records and interviews show: a Republican consulting firm with long-standing personal and business ties to Noem and her senior aides at DHS. The company running the Mount Rushmore shoot, called the Strategy Group, does not appear on public documents about the contract. The main recipient listed on the contracts is a mysterious Delaware company, which was created days before the deal was finalized.
No firm has closer ties to Noem’s political operation than the Strategy Group. It played a central role in her 2022 South Dakota gubernatorial campaign. Corey Lewandowski, her top adviser at DHS, has worked extensively with the firm. And the company’s CEO is married to Noem’s chief spokesperson at DHS, Tricia McLaughlin.
The Strategy Group’s ad work is the first known example of money flowing from Noem’s agency to businesses controlled by her allies and friends.
Government contracting experts said the depth of the ties between DHS leadership and the Strategy Group suggested major potential violations of ethics rules.
“It’s corrupt, is the word,” said Charles Tiefer, a leading authority on federal contract law and former member of the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said that the Strategy Group’s role should prompt investigations by both the DHS inspector general and the House Oversight Committee.
“Hiding your friends as subcontractors is like playing hide the salami with the taxpayer,” Tiefer added.
Federal regulations forbid conflicts of interest in contracting and require that the process be conducted “with complete impartiality and with preferential treatment for none.”
“It’s worthy of an investigation to ferret out how these decisions were made, and whether they were made legally and without bias,” said Scott Amey, a contracting expert and general counsel at the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight.
The revelations come as the amount of money at Noem’s disposal has skyrocketed. The so-called Big Beautiful Bill granted DHS more than $150 billion, and Noem has given herself an unusual degree of control over how that money is spent. This summer, she began requiring that she personally approve any payment over $100,000.
Asked about the Strategy Group’s work for DHS, McLaughlin, the agency spokesperson, said in an interview, “We don’t have visibility into why they were chosen.”
As in everything recent, we’ve seen this administration chant, once again, it’s the Democrats’ fault. This is from the New York Times. “Trump Administration Live Updates: President Wants Federal Inquiry Into Epstein’s Ties to Prominent Democrats.” You’d think this approach would’ve grown old and stale already.
President Trump announced on Friday that he wanted the Justice Department to investigate high-profile Democrats — including former President Bill Clinton, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and the venture capitalist and megadonor Reid Hoffman — who he alleged had ties to the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
In a social media post, Mr. Trump blasted Democrats for “using the Epstein Hoax” to distract from the recent government shutdown, and said that federal law enforcement would order investigations into members of their party, who he insinuated were involved in Mr. Epstein’s sex-trafficking of girls.
“This is another Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, with all arrows pointing to the Democrats,” Mr. Trump wrote. “Records show that these men, and many others, spent large portions of their life with Epstein, and on his “Island.” Stay tuned!!!”
Mr. Trump said that he would be asking Attorney General Pam Bondi, “and the Department of Justice, together with our great patriots at the FBI,” to conduct the investigation into the “involvement and relationship” between Mr. Epstein and the Democrats.
Mr. Trump also wrote that it would also include “J.P. Morgan, Chase, and many other people and institutions.”
The Justice Department did not immediately return a request for comment.
If you want to punish your eyes by reading all the released Epstein items, COURIER has a link to the entire, searchable dump provided by the U.S. House Oversight Committee. Paul Krugman’s SubStack post today turns its eyes to the Heritage Foundation. It’s an interesting read. “The Decline and Fall of the Heritage Foundation. Its descent into conspiracy-mongering and blatant bigotry was utterly predictable.”
There’s deep turmoil at the Heritage Foundation, the right-wing “think tank” that calls itself “America’s most influential policy organization,” and is responsible for Project 2025. I’ll explain the scare quotes in a minute.
As many readers know, Tucker Carlson recently invited Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist who espouses antisemitic conspiracy theories, onto his podcast. This was shocking but not surprising: It has been obvious for a long time that virulent antisemitism was a growing force within the American right, especially among young people. Last month Politico reported on the contents of private chats between a number of Young Republican leaders that include declarations that “I love Hitler,” jokes about gas chambers, and more.
So should it come as a surprise that Kevin Roberts, Heritage’s president, put out a video defending Carlson and attributing the uproar to “the globalist class,” a turn of phrase routinely used to attack Jews?
It was clearly a surprise to Roberts that his defense of Carlson provoked a widespread backlash. And displaying the complete refusal to accept responsibility we’ve come to expect from leading conservatives, Roberts now claims that he was just reading a script written by an aide, saying “I didn’t know much about this Fuentes guy.” He explained his ignorance by saying “I actually don’t have time to consume a lot of news. I consume a lot of sports.”
Yeah, right.
Why did Roberts weigh in on the Carlson-Fuentes controversy? He obviously felt he needed to express support for the right of conservatives to be conspiracy-theory antisemites — despite the fact that Heritage itself has an antisemitism task force. Unsurprisingly, many of the task force members have now resigned.
Media reporting on this story has been excellent and revealing. However, I believe that much of the commentary misjudges the true nature of Heritage, portraying it as a genuine think tank that picked the wrong leader or was corrupted by MAGA.
Because the truth is that Heritage has always been a fraud. It has always been a propaganda mill cosplaying as a research institution – a scam that worked for a long time. Heritage’s problem now is that its original scam was designed for a different era — a Reaganesque era in which plutocrats could discreetly leverage bigotry and intolerance to elect Republicans, who then delivered deregulation and tax cuts. Heritage was an integral cog within this scheme, giving superficial respectability to policies that were in fact deeply regressive and discriminatory, and overwhelmingly to the benefit of the moneyed class.
And, just think about this one for a bit.
Further proof of corruption, grift, and just plain autocratic bullshit can be found at these links.
- Brian Slodysko / Associated Press: Top Fannie Mae officials ousted after sounding alarm on sharing confidential housing data
- ProPublica: FBI Director Kash Patel Waived Polygraph Security Screening for Dan Bongino, Two Other Senior Staff
- NBC News: GOP senators distance themselves from provision allowing them to sue over phone record searches
- The Harvard Crimson: Harvard Faculty Disturbed by Revelations of Summers’ ‘Cozy Friendship’ With Epstein
There are so many of these things posted as a memeorandum today that I can’t possibly fit them all into one short post. We are seriously and truely fucked if we do not get all these criminals out of government and other pubic institutions.
What’s on your reading, action, and blogging list today?
Mostly Monday Reads: Coping with Crazy
Posted: January 27, 2025 Filed under: Colombia, Democratic Backsliding, kleptocracy | Tags: @johnbuss.bsky.social John Buss, culture of misogyny, deadly racism, Democratic Backsliding, kakistocracy, Mediocre Trump, mediocre white man, Pete Hegseth weirdo sexual assaulter, White Christian Nationalism/Fascism 8 Comments
“It just comes naturally, “John (repeat1968) Buss
@johnbuss.bsky.social
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Well, one of the most unqualified, mediocre white men ever started a full-scale attack on our troops and their morale as the American Defense Secretary. He’s lowering troop morale. My Daddy didn’t tell me many stories about his time bombing NAZIs while based in Ipswich, England. His favorite story was that the crew was on a mission one day, and the mission commander was Jimmy Stewart. Can you imagine hearing that voice issuing orders from your radio? My High School Russian History teacher was taken prisoner during the Battle of the Bulge. He wrote a memoir and it’s sitting in the National Archives. The one thing that really defines the Boomer generation is the war and the stories of our family members, who were all involved in one way or another. My Grandfather was in charge of War Bonds at the Kansas City Fed. My other Grandfather worked for the Railroad, where troops and supplies were vital. One of my uncles was in the Navy, and the other was in Army Intelligence. They all had stories about that time. There were all kinds of people doing all kinds of things to save the American Way and its democracy.
If you ever find your way to New Orleans, I highly recommend the National World War 2 Museum. When the daughters and I took Dad there, it was very new. Dad was given hero treatment. They only had their European theatre displays up, but there are more now. Their big feature was the Higgins boats that stormed the beaches during D-Day that were made in New Orleans. Never in a million years would I expect some of the most honored war heroes to be erased from the textbooks of the military, the USAF’s military curriculum. This is from WSAF Channel 12 in Montgomery, Alabama. A historic city for many reasons, but a lot of it comes from essential changes that improved the status of black Americans. You undoubtedly know their story. “Defense secretary orders immediate reversal of USAF’s removal of Tuskegee Airmen from the curriculum,”
Newly-confirmed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth confirmed Sunday in a social media post that the U.S. Air Force will continue teaching about the famed Tuskegee Airmen.
In a statement posted Sunday afternoon, Sen. Katie Britt said she has “no doubt” Hegseth will “correct and get to the bottom of the malicious compliance we’ve seen in recent days.”
Senator Katie Boyd Britt immediately sent this out to what’s left of Twitter.
“Little Big Man” Walt Handelsman, https://www.nola.com/opinions/walt_handelsman/
Newsweek has more details here.
The Air Force says it has reinstated training material on the Tuskegee Airmen and Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) after a brief delay to revise it in line with the Trump administration’s rollback of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Sunday, Hegseth clarified that any attempt to cut the Tuskegee Airmen training material had been “immediately reversed.”
The decision resolves a controversy that emerged as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth began his first day at the Pentagon.
After announcing this intervention, the country’s worst mediocre white christianist nationalist man in an office he’s got no busy holding making completely insulting and inappropriate decisions. This happens when people are hired based on skin color, religion, and favoritism from the boss. We get the rule of mediocre white men and their misplaced confidence that makes the rest of us do the work so the entire outfit doesn’t go down the shitter.
Trump is also announcing big changes for the military comprised of volunteers who may soon be volunteering their asses straight back to being civilians at all this moral-lowering hate. It wasn’t enough that he summarily ousted the first woman Coast Guard Chief on his first full day in the office. This is what CNN has in its big story today. “Trump expected to sign executive orders to reshape the military, including banning transgender troops.” This is the man who called people in the military “suckers” and “losers.” Let’s just call all this for what it is. It is racist. It is misogynistic. It defines every person by their sex and not by their gender identity or sexual preferences. In short, it demeans every human being who is not a white male christianist and strips them of their Constitutional rights..
President Donald Trump on Monday is expected to sign four executive orders that would reshape the military, including banning transgender service members from serving in the US armed forces, gutting the military’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs, and reinstating with back pay service members who were discharged for refusing to get vaccinated from Covid-19, two White House officials told CNN.
The orders, which were first reported by the New York Post, come as Trump’s nominee to lead the Pentagon, Pete Hegseth, was sworn in as secretary of defense on Saturday. Hegseth has long stated he planned to implement major cultural changes to the military, including ending DEI practices and removing “woke” service members.
Moments after his arrival at the Pentagon on Monday, Hegseth told reporters that there are “more executive orders coming.”
This is a purge and a crusade. We need to know more to protect ourselves, our loved ones, and our country.
That same FARTUS, the mediocre white man-in-chief, had a hissy fit at Colombia over the weekend. The BBC reports today.“Colombia yields on US deportation flights to avert trade war. Today’s lesson is not to surrender in advance. All those coffee-drinking Americans would not like the result more than Colombians. You have no idea how reliant we are on Colombia for goods. And to top it off, he couldn’t even spell the country’s name correctly in his Social Media Barf zone. You can read about that at the BBC link.
A looming trade war between the US and Colombia appears to have been averted after the Colombian government agreed to allow US military flights carrying deported migrants to land in the Andean country.
The spat erupted on Sunday when President Gustavo Petro barred two military planes carrying Colombians deported from the US from landing.
The Trump administration responded by threatening to slap punitive tariffs on Colombian exports to the US.
President Petro at first said Colombia would retaliate by imposing tariffs on US goods, but the White House later announced that Colombia had agreed to accept migrants – including those arriving on US military aircraft – “without limitation or delay”.
The White House hailed the agreement with Colombia as a victory for Trump’s hard-line approach, after the country’s two leaders had exchanged threats on social media on Sunday.
“Today’s events make clear to the world that America is respected again,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote in a statement.
She added that the tariffs and sanctions which the Trump administration had threatened to impose on Colombia, should it not comply, would be “held in reserve, and not signed, unless Colombia fails to honour this agreement”.
She also said that President Donald Trump “expects all other nations of the world to fully co-operate in accepting deportation of their citizens illegally present in the United States”.
- Trump’s threat to Colombia sends a message
- Follow live: Nearly 1,000 arrests in a day as Trump’s promise of mass deportations ramps up
- What the president has done since taking power
A cornerstone of Trump’s immigration policy is removing unlawful migrants from the US, with the promise of “mass deportations”.
It seems even the legacy media of the UK are weasel-wording his insanity. A “spat”? Look at those words as what we are talking about: human beings being herded around like cattle.
How do we cope with all of this? According to sociologist Jennifer Walter we must understand what is happening in this country and what to do about it. It is all about overwhelming our feelings, responses, and lives.
As a sociologist, I need to tell you:𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗹𝗺 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗴𝗼𝗮𝗹.1/ The flood of 200+ executive orders in Trump’s first days exemplifies Naomi Klein’s “shock doctrine” — using chaos and crisis to push through radical changes while people are too disoriented to effectively resist. This isn’t just politics as usual — it’s a strategic exploitation of cognitive limits.2/ Media theorist McLuhan predicted this: When humans face information overload, they become passive and disengaged. The rapid-fire executive orders create a cognitive bottleneck, making it nearly impossible for citizens and media to thoroughly analyze any single policy.3/ Agenda-setting theory explains the strategy: When multiple major policies compete for attention simultaneously, it fragments public discourse.Traditional media can’t keep up with the pace, leading to superficial coverage. The result? Weakened democratic oversight and reduced public engagement.What now?1/ Set boundaries: Pick 2-3 key issues you deeply care about and focus your attention there. You can’t track everything — that’s by design. Impact comes from sustained focus, not scattered awareness.2/ Use aggregators & experts: Find trusted analysts who do the heavy lifting of synthesis. Look for those explaining patterns, not just events.3/ Remember: Feeling overwhelmed is the point. When you recognize this, you regain some power. Take breaks. Process. This is a marathon.4/ Practice going slow: Wait 48 hrs before reacting to new policies. The urgent clouds the important. Initial reporting often misses context.5/ Build community: Share the cognitive load. Different people track different issues. Network intelligence beats individual overload.Remember: They want you scattered. Your focus is resistance.
You may read many sources to get you to focus on how they will continue to manipulate you if you let them. This one actually comes from the period of the first adventure of FARTUS (Felon, Adjudicated Rapist, and Traitor of the US) in 2018. “The Authoritarian Regime Survival Guide” is posted on Verfassungblog. It’s written by Martin Mycielski, who studies Democratic Backsldiing
1. They will come to power with a campaign based on fear, scaremongering and distorting the truth. Nevertheless, their victory will be achieved through a democratic electoral process. But beware, as this will be their argument every time you question the legitimacy of their actions. They will claim a mandate from the People to change the system.
Remember – gaining power through a democratic system does not give them permission to cross legal boundaries and undermine said democracy.
2. They will divide and rule. Their strength lies in unity, in one voice and one ideology, and so should yours. They will call their supporters Patriots, the only “true Americans”. You will be labelled as traitors, enemies of the state, unpatriotic, the corrupt elite, the old regime trying to regain power. Their supporters will be the “People”, the “sovereign” who chose their leaders.
Don’t let them divide you – remember you’re one People, one Nation, with one common good.
You may read a lot more at that link. So, the most recent rabbit hole I went down deals with learning more about Global Backsliding. I thought I’d share some reads for you. The first comes from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Understanding and Responding to Global Democratic Backsliding. As the world faces a democratic recession, many of the most common explanations fall short. But looking more closely at antidemocratic leaders’ motivations and methods reveals valuable insights about different types of backsliding and how international actors should respond.” The paper is written by by Thomas Carothers and Benjamin Press. This is its summary page.
Over the past two decades, democratic backsliding has become a defining trend in global politics. However, despite the extensive attention paid to the phenomenon, there is surprisingly little consensus about what is driving it. The most common explanations offered by analysts—ranging from the role of Russia and China and disruptive technologies to the rise of populism, the spread of political polarization, and democracies’ failure to deliver—fall short when tested across a wide range of cases.
A more persuasive account of backsliding focuses on the central role of leader-driven antidemocratic political projects and the variety of mechanisms and motivations they entail. This paper identifies and analyzes three distinct types of backsliding efforts: grievance-fueled illiberalism, opportunistic authoritarianism, and entrenched-interest revanchism. In cases of grievance-fueled illiberalism, a political figure mobilizes a grievance, claims that the grievance is being perpetuated by the existing political system, and argues that it is necessary to dismantle democratic norms and institutions to redress the underlying wrongs. Opportunistic authoritarians, by contrast, come to power via conventional political appeals but later turn against democracy for the sake of personal political survival. In still other backsliding cases, entrenched interest groups—generally the military—that were displaced by a democratic transition use undemocratic means to reassert their claims to power. Although motivations and methods differ across backsliding efforts, a key commonality among them is their relentless focus on undermining countervailing governmental and nongovernmental institutions that are designed to keep them in check.
As international democracy supporters continue to refine their strategies of responding to democratic backsliding, they must better differentiate between facilitating factors and core drivers. Such an approach will point to the need for a stronger focus on the nature of leader-driven antidemocratic projects, identifying ways to create significant disincentives for backsliding leaders, and bolstering crucial countervailing institutions. Moreover, they should deepen their differentiation of strategies to take account of the diverse motivations and methods among the three main patterns of backsliding. Only in this way will they build the needed analytic and practical capacity to meet the formidable challenge that democratic backsliding presents.
The concept that grabbed me was the type of backsliding and the first type, grievance-fueled illiberalism, which sounds pretty spot on for what we are enduring and fighting against now. You’ll notice our new technologies are helping these movements spread. It helps to see where else this has happened. I have no doubt FARTUS, and his close relationship with Erdogan are that of student and mentor.
Some backsliding leaders employ a grievance-centered strategy: they mobilize a widely held sense of frustration to justify dismantling the existing set of democratic norms and institutions, which they blame for having created the conditions that gave rise to the grievance. The grievances they embrace are diverse—ranging well beyond core economic conditions to include racial, religious, and ethnic marginalization and public frustration over corruption, crime, or general governance fecklessness.
A grievance-fueled illiberal drive typically begins with a political figure articulating and politicizing a grievance. In some cases, this grievance is widely and openly shared, especially in cases where corruption or misgovernance has disillusioned many with the existing political system and inspires a search for political alternatives. In Hungary, for example, Orbán and his Fidesz party came to power in 2010 by appealing to the widely held frustration among Hungarians with the previous Socialist government and its perceived mishandling of the economy and its inability to address the devastation of the 2007–2008 global financial crisis. Similarly, in Brazil, Bolsonaro exploited widespread citizen outrage at the Brazilian political class for its pervasive corruption, which had been put on vivid display during the mid-2010s by a series of prominent scandals and investigations.
In other cases, entrepreneurial illiberal political actors articulate grievances that have festered below the political surface for some time. Advancing such grievances may, at first, seem taboo. But as they tap into that grievance, they normalize it and thus reframe what is politically possible. In Turkey, for example, Erdoğan found electoral success in the early 2000s by making appeals to conservative religious values, in a break from long-standing norms of the staunchly secular Turkish Republic. As he appealed to the latent sense among many Turkish citizens that religion had been unduly displaced from public life, he normalized increasingly explicit calls to revisit the principles underlying liberal democracy, including strict separation of religion and public life, respect for religious minority groups, and an equal playing field for opposition. Similarly, in India under the BJP, Modi has articulated a novel vision of Hindu nationalism and directly confronted the country’s liberal founding ideas by arguing that a single religious group should hold a special place in sociopolitical life. And in the United States, Trump appealed to racial and social class grievances that had long simmered below the surface of the country’s politics, normalizing discriminatory speech and stoking anti-minority sentiments as well as anti-elite anger. In still other cases, political leaders politicize frustrations that had not previously been salient. In the Philippines, for example, Duterte played up the threat of drug use and trafficking, which until his campaign had not registered among voters’ major concerns.35
The next phase of the grievance-fueled illiberal drive entails linking the grievance with democratic norms and institutions. In many cases where the grievance is explicitly directed at the governing class—as in Brazil or Hungary—this process is relatively straightforward. But in others, some political maneuvering and artfulness are required to make this link. In India, for example, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a Hindu nationalist organization, and the BJP, its political wing, spent years arguing that the country’s Hindu majority was being unfairly oppressed by the country’s long-standing liberal, secular political order and that correcting this wrong would require a wholesale reform of norms and institutions. And in the Philippines, Duterte argued during his campaign that drug use was enabled by political elites who didn’t do enough to punish them. He ran on a campaign of rooting out corruption and circumventing democratic norms and institutions that would stop him from solving the problem—namely by killing criminals.
If and when such drives yield an electoral victory, the government then sets about confronting the norms and institutions that have putatively perpetuated the grievance.
You may read more at the link if you want to. I’m beginning to feel like I’m assigning homework, which is not my intent. I think, though, we must embrace the concept that this was the plan all along, and there were a lot of organizations and people enabling our slide. My hope is that through knowing these things, we can deal better with what is going on around us. I still believe that knowledge is power.
So, it’s finally thawed out here. Temple and I can take our usual walks. There’s a lot of mess to clean up because most of the plants will need a good few whacks with my machete. I really hope that you are doing every self-care trick that you know and that you can discover new, more powerful ones.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Finally Friday Reads: October Surprises and Weenie Roasts!
Posted: October 25, 2024 Filed under: 2024 Elections, 2024 presidential Campaign, Abusive Relationships | Tags: culture of misogyny, Jive Turkey Elon Musk, Kamala double standards, Misogynoir, misogyny, Musk, putin, Russia, The Generals, Trump loves Hitler, Tucker Carlson bottom 8 Comments
“Of course.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
The new theme in the media these days is how to do a political outreach to misunderstood young men. I’m not exactly sure why they think young men–and, of course, they tend to favor the vanilla flavor–are so disenfranchised and depressed about facing competition in markets for jobs, houses, and social relationships. The media is obsessed with the outreach campaign to get these downward-facing dudes to get out and vote for the guy who was handed everything. Perhaps they need a lesson that women have had it with toxic masculinity. But, everything in the DonOld world is wrong-side up. I feel like I’m just watching endless reruns of men with Daddy issues.
It’s been a relief not to experience Tucker Carlson and his continual cosplay to be less of a bottom broadcasted all over the media. I was horrified by his latest performance, which I saw far too many times on TV news last night. Today, it’s got print media. This is from The Guardian. “Tucker Carlson is fantasizing about Daddy Donald Trump spanking teenage girls. The former Fox host once said he hated the ex-president. Now his display of serious daddy issues is striking a terrifying chord.” The story is written by Arwa Mahdawi. I will say it was more comically horrifying in video format.
Welcome to another normal day in Magaland. The sun is shining, the leaves are falling, and the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson is fantasizing about “daddy” Donald Trump spanking teenage girls.
This fresh hell comes via Duluth, Georgia, where Carlson was warming up a Trump rally on Wednesday night. Which is notable in itself because Carlson hasn’t always been a big fan of the former president. Last year a bunch of Carlson’s private text messages were made public as part of the $1.6bn defamation lawsuit filed against Fox News by Dominion Voting Systems and they made his real feelings about Trump very clear.
“We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights,” Carlson texted an undisclosed recipient on 4 January 2021. “I truly can’t wait.” He added: “I hate him passionately.”
Rather than ignoring Trump, as he was once so excited to do, however, Carlson – who was booted from Fox News last year – seems to have become a confidant of the ex-president and is now making disturbing speeches on his behalf. During the rally Carlson, who has three adult daughters, compared the US under Trump to a naughty girl being disciplined by her father. “If you allow your hormone-addled 15-year-old daughter to slam the door and give you the finger, you’re going to get more of it,” Carlson said. “There has to be a point at which Dad comes home.” At this point the crowd erupted into raucous cheers.
Believe me, as someone who has taught middle school and high school kids as well as young college freshmen, there’s a lot more worrying to be done about hormone-addled boys than girls just slamming the door on their uncool parents. I also have two daughters, and I was relieved they were girls when they were born. I’m sure I can get some witnesses here. The Carlson rant, along with its response, shows this sick side of America’s misogyny,
“Dad comes home and he’s pissed,” Carlson continues. “He’s not vengeful, he loves his children. Disobedient as they may be, he loves them … And when Dad gets home, you know what he says? You’ve been a bad girl. You’ve been a bad little girl and you’re getting a vigorous spanking right now. And no, it’s not going to hurt me more than it hurts you. No, it’s not. I’m not going to lie. It’s going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts me. And you earned this. You’re getting a vigorous spanking because you’ve been a bad girl, and it has to be this way.”
Clearly this struck a chord with the crowd. Later, when Trump came on stage, they screamed “Daddy’s home” and “Daddy Don”. Sigmund Freud almost rose from his grave.
James Singer, a Harris campaign spokesman, declared the speech “fucking weird”. And for a lot of people, it certainly was. But for Trump’s cult-like supporters, Carlson’s spanking fantasy encapsulates everything they love about the presidential candidate: the paternalism, the toxic masculinity, the lust for violence and thirst for revenge.
Meanwhile, Daddy Don’s former employees continue to open up about how truly awful he would be if he got back in. General Kelly’s interview has created quite a stir, and other staff members are joining the chorus to out the fascist. Praising Hitler should be an automatic disqualification for anyone seeking office in this country. As I say always and forever, my Daddy, who was the sweetest man I’ve ever known, bombed NAZIs. My Dad enlisted. He was neither a sucker nor a loser and would talk about his service all the time in his golden years. I remain forever proud to be his daughter.
This is from NBC News. “13 former Trump administration officials sign open letter backing up John Kelly’s criticism of Trump. Kelly told the New York Times that Trump meets the definition of a fascist and also said he observed the former president on multiple occasions praising Adolf Hitler.”
Thirteen former Trump White House officials signed an open letter backing up former Trump chief of staff John Kelly, who told the New York Times that Trump fits the definition of a fascist.
“We applaud General Kelly for highlighting in stark details the danger of a second Trump term. Like General Kelly, we did not take the decision to come forward lightly,” the letter said. “We are all lifelong Republicans who served our country. However, there are moments in history where it becomes necessary to put country over party. This is one of those moments.”
Politico was first to report on the letter.
The letter, released by the Harris campaign, is signed by former officials including former press secretary Stephanie Grisham, former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security Miles Taylor, and Olivia Troye, former national security adviser to Mike Pence. All three former Trump administration officials have become high-profile critics of his after his presidency ended.
Troye and Grisham spoke at the Democratic National Convention this year. Troye was also one of the signatories of a letter in August from over 200 Republican officials backing Vice President Kamala Harris for president.
In his interview with the Times, released Tuesday, Kelly also said he observed Trump on multiple occasions praising Adolf Hitler. His comments came on the same day the Atlantic reported that Trump said he wished he had generals like Hitler.
In their letter, the former Trump officials said Kelly’s claims were “disturbing and shocking.” They added that “because we know Trump and have worked for and alongside him, we were sadly not surprised by what General Kelly had to say. This is who Donald Trump is.”
He continually has shown us who he is when he insults service members and our fallen soldiers, when he talks gleefully about pussy grabby, when he shows preferences for ruthless dictators over our democratic allies who have repeatedly stood beside us in our fight for freedom, and when he is so addled he speaks gibberish. An ABC Poll shows that “Half of Americans see Donald Trump as a fascist: POLL. Nearly two-thirds also say Trump often departs from the truth, the poll found.” Why do we still have to deal with him? He should be in jail already!
Half the country sees former President Donald Trump as a fascist, amplifying concerns raised in recent days by Vice President Kamala Harris and past members of Trump’s own administration. Far fewer in a new ABC News/Ipsos poll level the same charge against Harris.
Nearly two-thirds also say Trump often departs from the truth, again more than say so about Harris. But Harris gets more criticism than Trump for pandering for votes by promoting policies she doesn’t intend to carry out — underscoring challenges for both candidates as the fur flies in their increasingly heated presidential race.
Responding to one of the more incendiary salvos, 49% of registered voters in the national survey say Trump is a fascist, defined as “a political extremist who seeks to act as a dictator, disregards individual rights and threatens or uses force against their opponents.” Fewer than half as many, 22%, see Harris as a fascist by this definition.
Harris on Wednesday said Trump is a fascist, a week after agreeing with an interviewer that his campaign is “about fascism.” A former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a former chief of staff to Trump and a former defense secretary in his administration have been quoted recently also as describing Trump as a fascist, and the White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Wednesday that President Joe Biden thinks so, too. Trump, for his part, repeatedly has called Harris a fascist, as well as a Marxist and a communist.
I completely agree with Eugene Robinson on this. Here’s his Op-Ed at the Washington Post. “The double standard for Harris and Trump has reached a breaking point. One candidate can rant about gibberish while the other has to be perfect.”
Something is wrong with this split-screen picture. On one side, former president Donald Trump rants about mass deportations and claims to have stopped “wars with France,” after being described by his longest-serving White House chief of staff as a literal fascist. On the other side, commentators debate whether Vice President Kamala Harris performed well enough at a CNN town hall to “close the deal.”
Seriously? Much of a double standard here?
Somehow, it is apparently baked into this campaign that Trump is allowed to talk and act like a complete lunatic while Harris has to be perfect in every way. I don’t know the answer to the chicken-or-egg question — whether media coverage is leading public perception or vice versa — but the disparate treatment is glaring.
…
Let’s review: First, Harris was criticized for not doing enough interviews — so she did multiple interviews, including with nontraditional media. She was criticized for not doing hostile interviews — so she went toe to toe with Bret Baier of Fox News. She was criticized as being comfortable only at scripted rallies — so she did unscripted events, such as the town hall on Wednesday. Along the way, she wiped the floor with Trump during their one televised debate.
Trump, meanwhile, stands before his MAGA crowds and spews nonstop lies, ominous threats, impossible promises and utter gibberish. His rhetoric is dismissed, or looked past, without first being interrogated.
Imagine if Harris were promising to end the war in Gaza on her first day in office but wouldn’t say how. Imagine if she were proposing a tariffs-based economic plan that economists say would destabilize the world economy and cost the average family $4,000 a year in higher prices. Imagine if she were promising a “bloody” campaign to uproot and deport millions of undocumented migrants who are gainfully employed and paying taxes. And imagine if Harris were vowing to use the military to go after her political opponents, as Trump repeatedly pledges
Meanwhile, these headlines are just plain fucking disturbing. First, there’s this one from David Folkenflik, writing for NPR. “‘Washington Post’ won’t endorse in White House race for the first time since the 1980s.”
Even though the presidential race between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris remains neck and neck, The Washington Post editorial page has decided not to make a presidential endorsement
That came over this news yesterday about the LA Times. This is from The Wrap. “2 More LA Times Editorial Writers Quit Over ‘Chickens–t’ Owner’s Block of Kamala Harris Endorsement | Exclusive. Karin Klein and Pulitzer Prize-winner Robert Greene follow editorial editor Mariel Garza, who resigned Wednesday.” It’s obvious that rich, old men own these papers and prefer tax cuts over anything else. I just hope every woman of voting age takes the amount of rage that I have to the voting booth, drags every one of her friends with her, and pulls the lever for Kamala and Tim.
The Los Angeles Times has lost two more longtime editorial writers, the latest in a growing exodus to protest owner Patrick Soon-Shiong’s interference with the paper’s planned endorsement of Kamala Harris, TheWrap can exclusively report.
On Thursday, editorial writer Karin Klein, and Pulitzer Prize-winner Robert Greene both quit; their exits come just one day after Editorial Editor Mariel Garza, who resigned in protest on Wednesday.
Greene has not yet spoken publicly about his exit, but in a statement posted to a private forum that was subsequently shared with TheWrap, Klein laid her reasons for quitting.
Channeling Harris’ campaign slogan “we’re not going back,” Klein called Soon-Shiong a “chickens—” who threw the editorial team “under the bus,” and argued, essentially, that the decision to stop the endorsement was itself an endorsement of sorts for Harris’ opponent, Donald Trump.
Soon-Shiong, Klein wrote, has as owner the “right to interfere with editorials; that is the one place where he can ethically do so.” But, by shooting down this particular editorial, she said he had actually created one of his own. “A wordless one, a make-believe-invisible one that unfairly implies that [Harris] has grievous faults that somehow put her on a level with Donald Trump.”
In fact, she argued, the timing itself can only be seen as a direct attack on the Democratic candidate “that hits just at the time when she cannot afford hits.”
Klein also specifically called out Soon-Shiong’s dissembling statement Wednesday night that attempted to blame the editorial board itself for the debacle, while at the same time effectively confirming he had indeed blocked the endorsement.
On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, Soon-Shiong wrote that “the editorial board was provided the opportunity to draft a factual analysis of all the positive and negative policies by each candidate during their tenures at the White House, and how these policies affected the nation.”
This is from the Commonwealth Times of Virginia. “Black women, Kamala Harris face a double standard.”It is written by Julianna Brown.
Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is known for her prominence in politics, not only as the country’s first Black female vice president, but also for her service as a California senator. Despite her years of experience, she still faces judgment based on aspects of her identity that do not correspond to her career.
Kamala identifies deeply with her Black heritage as half-Jamaican and still faces crude comments on her ethnicity.
“I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black. So, I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?” said former President Donald Trump at the National Association of Black Journalists convention on July 31.
This comment essentially associates being Black as a title that she chose to elicit attraction, rather than the race she was born as. Trump further makes it seem as if Harris has no choice but to choose between two deeply rooted parts of herself because of her mixed background.
It is common knowledge that there is diversity within the Black community, so it is perfectly normal for Harris to be considered Black despite having Indian heritage.
What is odd is that her identity has become so much of an obsession that people have even investigated her birth certificate for proof of her Black background, and in some cases non-Black people have even accused Jamaican people of not being Black at all.
Black people should not have to prove their culture to be accepted by people who have no knowledge of the community. The truth is, if Harris were not in a position of power, her ethnicity would not be questioned to this degree.
Since some feel threatened by her status, her identity is completely picked apart to distract from her great accomplishments as both a politician and prosecutor.
Something that really sets the vice president apart is her lively personality. Rather than keeping a serious demeanor 24/7, Harris is often seen smiling or laughing. This may seem like an innocent expression of positivity, but she has received a number of judgments for her bubbly manner.
For example, a video in which she is happily dancing was regarded by many as “inappropriate” for someone of her title. Trump is a convicted felon running for president, yet it is Harris dancing to music she enjoys that is deemed unprofessional?
Yep — that sounds about right. Since Trump’s white identity does not hold him to the same standards, his inappropriate behavior is permissible in most instances. Harris, however, can never slip up because she represents so much more.
The double standard towards Black women is one that has been around for ages, and is why Harris can not make so much as one mistake without causing uproar.
I’m going to cover one more thing that should have the entire country on edge, and that is how cozy Musk is now with Trump and how they both are so cozy with Russia’s Vladamir Putin. Musk’s companies get billions of dollars from the U.S. government, and his contracts in dealing with Space are strategic. Both these guys have been communicating with the Russian dictator recently. This is from the AP. “Here’s a look at Musk’s contact with Putin and why it matters.” This analysis is provided by David Kleeper and Lisa Mascaro.
Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of major government contractor SpaceX and a key ally of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, has been in regular contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin for the last two years, The Wall Street Journal reported.
A person familiar with the situation, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter, confirmed to The Associated Press that Musk and Putin have had contact through calls. The person didn’t provide additional details about the frequency of the calls, when they occurred or their content.
Musk, the world’s richest man who also owns Tesla and the social platform X, has emerged as a leading voice on the American right. He’s poured millions of dollars into Trump’s presidential bid and turned the platform once known as Twitter into a site popular with Trump supporters, as well as conspiracy theorists, extremists and Russian propagandists.
Musk’s contacts with Putin raise national security questions, given his companies’ work for the government, and highlight concerns about Russian influence in American politics.
Here’s what to know:
Musk and Putin have spoken repeatedly about personal matters as well as business and geopolitics, The Journal reported Thursday, citing multiple current and former officials in the U.S., Europe and Russia.
During one talk, Putin asked Musk not to activate his Starlink satellite system over Taiwan as a favor for Chinese President Xi Jinping, whose ties to Putin have grown closer, the Journal reported. Putin and Xi have met more than 40 times since 2013.
Russia has denied the conversations took place. In 2022, Musk said he’d only spoken to Putin once, in a call 18 months earlier focused on space.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington said Friday that it was “not aware of the specifics” of any requests made by Putin on China’s behalf.
There was no immediate response to messages left with X and Tesla seeking Musk’s comment.
What the talks mean for national security
Musk’s relationship with Putin raises national security questions given the billions of dollars in government contracts awarded to SpaceX, a critical partner to NASA and government satellite programs.
Trump also has vowed to give Musk a role in his administration if he wins next month.
The head of any large defense contractor would face similar questions if they held private talks with one of America’s greatest adversaries, said Bradley Bowman, a former West Point professor and Senate national security adviser who now serves as senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based defense think tank.
Bowman said the timing of the calls as reported by The Journal and Musk’s changing views on Ukraine was a “disturbing coincidence.”
“The policy of the U.S. government is to try to isolate Vladimir Putin, and Elon Musk is directly undercutting that,” Bowman said. “What is Putin doing with Musk? He’s trying to reduce his international isolation and impact American foreign policy.”
The request from Putin on Starlink as a favor to China is also likely to get attention, given U.S. support for Taiwan and concerns about the growing partnership between the Kremlin and Beijing.
Today, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson on Friday called for an investigation into a Wall Street Journal report that SpaceX founder and Donald Trump ally Elon Musk and Russian President Vladimir Putin have been in “regular contact” since late 2022.
The report, which said the SpaceX founder has discussed “personal topics, business and geopolitical tensions” with the Russian leader, raises national security concerns as SpaceX’s relationships with NASA and the US military may have granted Musk access to sensitive government information and US intelligence.
“I don’t know that that story is true. I think it should be investigated,” Nelson told Semafor’s Burgess Everett. “If the story is true that there have been multiple conversations between Elon Musk and the president of Russia, then I think that would be concerning, particularly for NASA, for the Department of Defense, for some of the intelligence agencies.”
Musk, whose Tesla operates Gigafactory Shanghai, has developed a close relationship with China’s top leaders. His remarks about China have been friendly, and he has suggested Taiwan cede some control to Beijing by becoming a special administrative region.
Moscow has growing ties to other American adversaries. The U.S. has accused Russia of sending ballistic missiles to Iran and said North Korea sent troops to Russia, possibly for combat in Ukraine.
On Ukraine, Musk’s views have shifted since he initially supported Kyiv following Russia’s invasion in 2022 and provided it with his Starlink system for communications.
Musk then refused to allow Ukraine in 2023 to use Starlink for a surprise attack on Russian soldiers in Crimea.
He also floated a proposal in 2022 to end the war that would have required Ukraine to drop its plans for NATO membership and given Russia permanent control of Crimea, which it seized in 2014. The plan infuriated Ukrainian leaders.
All I can say is, WTF is wrong with all these people who cannot see what a danger both Musk and Trump are to this country? Again, my hair is on fire. Call everyone you know and send them to the Polls for Kamala and Tim before we no longer have a democracy and a judicial system. As for me, I’m still standing at the moment, although extremely anxious. I hope y’all are hanging in there.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Finally Friday Reads: A Woman’s Day
Posted: January 20, 2023 Filed under: just because | Tags: #FucktRump, culture of misogyny, E. Jean Carroll, Hillary Clinton, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern 20 Comments
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, 1915, Women on a Street
Good Day Sky Dancers!
Misogyny is the word for the day. Two of the headlines deal with the egregious actions of Trump. Then, hold his beer because New Zealand lost an outstanding prime minister because she got tired of the same treatment the woman-hating press and right-wingers give women leaders here. There is some really good news today from a U.S. court.
This is from the New York Times. “Judge Orders Trump and Lawyer to Pay Nearly $1 Million for Bogus Suit. In a scathing ruling, the judge said the suit against Hillary Clinton and dozens of the former president’s perceived political enemies was “brought in bad faith for an improper purpose.” It’s not a large sum of money, but it paints him as a loser and bringer of frivolous lawsuits. I do have to mention the bylines as Michael S. Schmidt and Maggie Haberman.
In a scathing ruling, a federal judge in Florida on Thursday ordered Donald J. Trump and one of his lawyers together to pay nearly a million dollars in sanctions for filing a frivolous lawsuit against nearly three dozen of Mr. Trump’s perceived political enemies, including Hillary Clinton and the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey.
The ruling was a significant rebuke of Mr. Trump, who has rarely faced such consequences in his long history of using the courts as a weapon against business rivals and partners, as well as former employees and reporters.
And it was the latest setback for Mr. Trump as he faces a broad range of legal problems and criminal investigations. His lawyers are increasingly under scrutiny themselves for their actions in those cases, as well as divided in the advice they are offering him.
“This case should never have been brought,” U.S. District Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks wrote in a 46-page ruling. “Its inadequacy as a legal claim was evident from the start. No reasonable lawyer would have filed it. Intended for a political purpose, none of the counts of the amended complaint stated a cognizable legal claim.”
While Mr. Trump has often blamed his lawyers for his problems, the judge, in his ruling on Thursday, addressed Mr. Trump’s history of using the courts as a cudgel, going back decades in his business career.
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Tightrope Walk (1908-10)
Dan Mangan of CNBC also reports the story. This is the first news day in some time where I honestly say it put a smile on my face.
Trump’s suit, which sought $70 million in damages, accused Clinton and 30 other defendants of conspiring to “weave a false narrative” during the 2016 election that Trump and his campaign were colluding with Russia in their efforts to win the race.
Middlebrooks in his order Thursday noted that “Mr. Trump is a prolific and sophisticated litigant who is repeatedly using the courts to seek revenge on political adversaries.”
“He is the mastermind of strategic abuse of the judicial process, and he cannot be seen as a litigant blindly following the advice of a lawyer,” Middlebrooks wrote.
“He knew full well the impact of his actions … As such, I find that sanctions should be imposed upon Mr. Trump and his lead counsel, Ms. Habba.”
Under the order, the Republican Trump and Habba, are jointly and severally liable for the total amount of sanctions the judge imposed to cover the defendants’ legal fees and costs : $937,989.39. That amount is about $120,000 less than what the defendants jointly requested for sanctions.
Clinton was awarded $171,631 in sanctions to be paid by Trump and Habba, with most of that money earmarked for Clinton’s attorneys’ fee.That was the second largest amount awarded in Middlebrooks’ order, which gave the Democratic National Committee, its former chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, and a related corporation $179,685.
“The amount of fees awarded in this case, while reasonable, is substantial,” Middlebrooks noted.
The judge in November had sanctioned Habba and other Trump lawyers $50,000 in favor of another defendant in the lawsuit, Charles Dolan.
He called the legal pleadings filed in the case by Habba “abusive litigation tactics,” and said the original lawsuit and a later, 186-page amended complaint “were drafted to advance political narrative; not to address legal harm caused by any Defendant.”
“The Amended Complaint is a hodgepodge of disconnected, often immaterial events, followed by an implausible conclusion,” Middlebrooks wrote.
“This is a deliberate attempt to harass; to tell a story without regard to facts.”
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Five Women on the Street, 1913
If you want to know how Trump’s mental acuity is doing these days, read this transcript of his Deposition in the E. Jean Carroll case released by Judge Kaplan. The weirdest moment was when Trump mistook a picture of Carroll for his former wife, Marla Maples. This is from MSNBC and Steve Benen. “Deposition transcript adds to Trump’s troubles in Carroll case. Why does it matter that Donald Trump confused a woman who has accused him of rape with one of his ex-wives? Because it might undermine his defense.”
It was about a week ago when the public first saw a partial transcript of Donald Trump’s deposition in E. Jean Carroll’s defamation case. As we discussed soon after, it was not good news for the Republican: The former president not only lashed out at his accuser as a “nut job” and someone who’s “mentally sick,” he also falsely suggested that Carroll was on record enjoying sexual assault.
“She actually indicated that she loved it. OK?” Trump said in the deposition, mischaracterizing comments Carroll made on CNN four years ago. “In fact, I think she said it was sexy, didn’t she? She said it was very sexy to be raped.”
The plaintiff’s attorney asked, “So, sir, I just want to confirm: It’s your testimony that E. Jean Carroll said that she loved being sexually assaulted by you?” Trump responded, “Well, based on her interview with Anderson Cooper, I believe that’s what took place.”
As NBC News reported, the rest of the deposition is now also coming into focus in striking ways.
Former President Donald Trump confused E. Jean Carroll, the writer who has accused him of rape, with ex-wife Marla Maples in a photo he was shown during a deposition, newly unsealed court documents show. An excerpt of the October deposition released by U.S. District Court for Southern New York on Wednesday includes an exchange in which Trump was asked by Carroll’s lawyer about a black-and-white photograph that showed a small group of people, including Trump and Carroll.
Describing the image showing him and his accuser, Trump said, “That’s Marla, yeah. That’s my wife,” referring to the second of his three spouses. At that point, the Republican’s lawyer intervened, correcting her client’s mistake.
“No, that’s Carroll,” lawyer Alina Habba said, according to the newly released transcript.
At face value, this might seem like an embarrassing blunder in which the former president confused one of his former wives with a woman who accused him of attacking her. But there’s more to it than that: As NBC News’ report added, “Trump’s comments under oath threaten to undercut his repeated denials of Carroll’s allegations, claiming she’s ‘not my type.’”
Portrait of Emy, 1919. Karl Schmidt-Rottluff
New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Arden announced her plans to step down yesterday. She was widely hailed as an effective and empathetic leader. Among her accomplishments was the impressive handling of the Covid-19 outbreak in the country, which was considered one of the most effective in the world. This is from NPR.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Thursday announced her intent to step down in a shock move that rocked the country’s political landscape.
Speaking to her party’s annual caucus in the seaside town of Napier, 42-year-old Ardern said “it’s time” for her to move on and that she “no longer had enough in the tank” for her premiership. She also called for a general election on Oct. 14.
“I’m leaving, because with such a privileged role comes responsibility,” Ardern told her audience. “The responsibility to know when you are the right person to lead and also when you are not. I know what this job takes. And I know that I no longer have enough in the tank to do it justice. It’s that simple.”
Ardern became the world’s youngest female leader in 2017 at the age of 37. Her last day in the office will be Feb. 7.
“This is not something we were expecting today,” said Geoffrey Miller, a geopolitical analyst with the Wellington-based nonprofit Democracy Project. “It was something that commentators had thought of and have been asking since the end of last year … and she quite convincingly said she was going to stay, and that she wasn’t going anywhere.”
The last six years have been busy for Ardern, managing disasters and tragedies that propelled her to global superstardom, Miller said. From the COVID-19 pandemic and a volcanic eruption to the terrorist attacks on two mosques in Christchurch, he said Ardern has become much more well known than any New Zealand prime minister in the past.
“In many ways, she was the anti-Trump figure,” Miller said. “They both came into office in 2017 … but she went off to the United Nations and she decried isolationism, brandishing an image of being an internationalist or being a globalist.”
New Zealand’s relationship with China was probably her biggest foreign policy sticking point, Miller said, with Ardern always having to walk a line between souring relations with China and the fact that Beijing is Wellington’s largest trading partner.
“But she had to try and find a way forward,” Miller said. “And I think her consensus approach helped with this, but at the same time, she wasn’t immune to these bigger geopolitical trends.”
Four Ages in Life, 1920, Edvard Munch
This is from Monica Hesse, writing for the Washington Post. “Jacinda Ardern didn’t make working motherhood look easy. She made it look real. Five years ago, she became the second world leader to give birth while in office. Now the New Zealand prime minister plans to step down.”
A few weeks ago, while I watched Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.) win admiration for caring for his infant on the House floor, I started to think about the last time I’d seen an elected official engage in such a public display of parenting. It was New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, scraping herself together after a six-week maternity leave to simultaneously raise a human and run a country.
I don’t remember Ardern winning universal admiration for this balancing act. What I remember mostly was the debate that raged over her breastfeeding choices. Since baby Neve was still nursing when Ardern was expected at a Pacific islands summit, the prime minister had arranged to take a separate flight from other government officials, shortening her trip to avoid a prolonged absence from her newborn. The extra travel arrangements cost thousands of dollars in fuel. Was this a good use of taxpayer money? Should Ardern have taken a longer maternity leave or avoided pregnancy altogether?
“If I didn’t go, I imagine there would have been equal criticism,” she told the New Zealand Herald at the time, explaining the careful analysis that had gone into her decision. “Damned if I did and damned if I didn’t.”
So one lesson from Jacinda Ardern’s term was that mothers can’t win and that even in the highest levels of governing, a father who rearranges his work schedule for his kids is seen as dedicated and a mother who does the same is seen as disorganized. But if you prefer the optimistic take, the other lesson was that if citizens are willing to accept flexibility in how their leaders get the job done then they can have a leader like Jacinda Ardern.
They can have a leader who, after stepping into her role at the age of 37, went on to create one of the most diverse cabinets in the world: 40 percent women, 25 percent Maori, 15 percent LGBTQ — a group that, Arden said proudly, reflected “the New Zealand that elected them.”
They can have a leader who, less than a week after 50 New Zealanders were shot to death in a Christchurch mosque, helmed a nationwide ban of assault-style weapons without fuss or consternation: “Our history changed forever,” she said simply. “Now, our laws will too.”
The Mother leading two Children, 1901, Pablo Piccaso
Ardern cited burnout as her primary reason for resignation. There was a surging right-wing movement in the nation and among the press that some of my friends felt was hell-bent on doing her in. This is from the BBC. “Why Jacinda Ardern’s star waned in New Zealand.”
She has been the subject of often-vile abuse by the anti-vax movement and other populist-inspired right-wing protest groups in New Zealand.
It was evident in her resignation remarks on Thursday that the pressure had had an impact and caused her to doubt whether she could lead her party into the election scheduled for October.
“This summer, I had hoped to find a way to prepare not just for another year but another term because that is what this year requires; I have not been able to do that,” she said.
Now, for yet another insult to American Women. This is from Bloomberg. It’s written by Nancy Cook. “GOP Quietly Plots What’s Next on Abortion in Nod to 2022 Failures. ”
Republicans still haven’t solved the quandary of how to talk to voters about abortion, still stinging from their midterm losses and with the White House at stake in less than two years.
Conversations with a dozen GOP candidates, former White House aides, activists and lobbyists show the issue continues to bedevil the party even after Roe v. Wade was overturned. Conservatives who celebrated that ruling are weighing what is politically possible to restrict access to abortion without repelling key voters like suburban women, independents and young people.
The GOP ceded this ground in the 2022 midterms to Democrats, whose own furious base was galvanized following the Supreme Court’s decision last summer to end 50 years of constitutionally protected abortion rights.
On the campaign trail, some Republicans avoided the topic entirely while some endorsed total bans, with no exceptions. The reality that hit them was that a majority of Americans believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to a Pew Research Center analysis.
So with the 2024 race already on, Republicans’ strategy is to paint Democrats as the true extremists, try to put them on the defensive and avoid their own schisms from spilling out in public.
The GOP ceded this ground in the 2022 midterms to Democrats, whose own furious base was galvanized following the Supreme Court’s decision last summer to end 50 years of constitutionally protected abortion rights.
On the campaign trail, some Republicans avoided the topic entirely while some endorsed total bans, with no exceptions. The reality that hit them was that a majority of Americans believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to a Pew Research Center analysis.
So with the 2024 race already on, Republicans’ strategy is to paint Democrats as the true extremists, try to put them on the defensive and avoid their own schisms from spilling out in public.
“When you run from abortion and don’t talk about it, you forfeit the issue to the other side,” Marc Short, chief of staff to former Vice President Mike Pence, said in an interview. “We have a responsibility, as a party, to explain our position and do it in a winsome way that is not judgmental.”
Winsome? WTAF?
Well, that’s it for me today! I hope you have a great weekend!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Thursday Reads: Irrational Hatred and the Exhaustion it Creates
Posted: February 4, 2016 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: "hatred, CDS, culture of misogyny, exhaustion, haters, Hillary Clinton, Media bias, prejudice, Sexism 57 Comments
Good Afternoon!!
I’ve been struggling all morning over writing this post. I knew that if Hillary ran for president again we would face unprecedented sexism and misogyny from the media and from many people who claim to be Democrats. But I never imagined it would be this bad. It was bad in 2008, but in 2016 the CDS is magnified beyond belief.
Since I was a child I have had a difficult time understanding why people hate those who are different from themselves. It was around 1956 when I noticed the prejudice that black people have to deal with. I just couldn’t make sense of it. I was 8 years old.
Later I followed the Civil Rights Movement closely and again I was mystified by the hatred of Americans for their fellow Americans. I could empathize and feel rage at the injustice perpetrated against African Americans, but of course I couldn’t really comprehend what it felt like to be the targets of so much ugly, vicious hatred.
As someone who has dreamed her whole life that women might finally achieve equality, and who believes that electing a woman president would go a long way toward making that dream a reality, I am beginning to truly understand how it feels to be hated and reviled by the culture I live in. It is exhausting.
It requires superhuman strength and courage just to get up every day and keep trusting my inner voice no matter what other people say and do, and internally trying to counter the ugly attacks on the first woman to have a real chance to win the Democratic nomination and perhaps to become the first woman President of the United States.
The only thing that gives me the strength to keep believing is the the example set by Hillary Clinton. I don’t know how she does it, but I think she has the courage and the competence to keep fighting for us all the way to the White House.
Last night in the CNN Democratic Town Hall, I saw a woman who is comfortable with herself, who believes in her ability to pull this off, and who has truly found her voice as a candidate. I have never seen a better performance by Hillary Clinton in any debate or forum. She was magnificent.
But don’t expect the media to report that. They’re busy praising Bernie Sanders, the man who answered every question by returning to his boring stump speech far outshone the woman who following him (why does Bernie always get to go first, by the way?) according to the largely white male Washington press corps.
You know what? I don’t care. Hillary is speaking to the voters and I think enough of them will hear what she is saying.
Last night Bernie got mostly softball questions from Anderson Cooper and the audience. Hillary got mostly tough questions, and she rose to the occasion. She never whined or complained. She was humble and she listened carefully to what she was asked.
Bernie on the other hand did his usual nodding and waving–he doesn’t seem to listen to the questions at all. He makes up his mind what the question is while the person asking it is still talking. Hillary doesn’t do that. She actually cares about the person who is talking to her. It’s amazing that so many people can keep right on hating her even after they watch her be so open, so willing to listen, to learn, to get better as a person and a candidate. But that’s what hate is about–hence the cliche “blind hatred.”
Just for today I’m going to leave aside the many media arguments for why Hillary Clinton just isn’t good enough and why she can never be good enough in their minds. There’s another debate tonight, and I need to psych myself up; because I am determined to watch it no matter how exhausting it is to see the irrational hatred my candidate has to face.
#ImWithHer
First, a couple of positive moments from last night:
From a mostly negative article by Eric Bradner at CNN, a wonderful quote from Hillary Clinton after she was asked for the umpteenth time why younger voters like Bernie Sanders so much and why they are rejecting her (although I see so many young women and men on line and on TV who do like her):
“I’m impressed with them, and I’m going to do everything I can to reach out and explain why good ideas on paper are important, but you’ve got to be able to translate that into action,” Clinton said.
“Here’s what I want young people to know: They don’t have to be for me. I’m going to be for them,” she added.
Could Bernie Sanders have been that humble and non-defensive? Not from what I’ve seen so far.
From Maxwell Tani at Business Insider, here’s another sincere and humble moment from Hillary last night.
Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton delivered a deeply personal answer to a question about how she stays self-confident while being conscious of her ego and staying humble.
Responding to a question from a rabbi at a CNN town-hall event, Clinton seemed to allude to damaging past public scandals, saying she kept a parable from the Bible in mind during tough situations.
“It’s not anything I’ve ever talked about this much publicly. Everybody knows that I’ve lived a very public life for the last 25 years. So I’ve had to be in public dealing with some very difficult issues,” Clinton said.
She continued: “I read that parable and there was a line in it that became just a lifeline for me. It basically is, ‘Practice the discipline of gratitude.’ Be grateful for your limitations, know that you have to reach out to have more people be with you to support you advise you. Listen to your critics, answer the questions, but at the end, be grateful.”
I thought that was straight from the heart. But it will be minimized and then brushed aside by the haters.
In Michael Moore’s Casual Chauvinism, Michael Tomasky writes about the endorsement of Bernie Sanders by the liberal icon. In a letter, Moore lists a series of historical “firsts” in the history of presidential campaigns. The first Catholic, JFK. The first president from the deep South, Carter. The first divorced man, Ronald Reagan, and so on up till the first black president, Obama.
But Moore never mentions women at all. He doesn’t think the first woman president would be important. No. He’s thrilled by the idea of the first socialist president–ignoring the fact that Sanders would also be the first Jewish president if elected. Sanders clearly agrees with him.
Tomasky:
Here’s what’s weird and gobsmacking about this endorsement. In a letter that is almost entirely about historical firsts—it goes on to discuss how “they” used to say we’d never have gay marriage and other changes—Moore doesn’t even take one sentence to acknowledge that Clinton’s elevation to the presidency would represent an important first.
I mean, picture yourself sitting down to write that. You’re a person of the left. You are writing specifically about the first Catholic president, the first black president, the first this, the first that. You want people to believe that if those things could happen, then a “democratic socialist” could win too. Fine, if that’s your view, that’s your view.
But it’s also the case the other candidate winning would make history in a way that is at least as historically important from a politically left point of view—I would say more so, but okay, that’s a subjective judgment—and it’s not even worth a sentence? I wouldn’t expect Moore to back Clinton or even say anything particularly nice about her. But he can’t even acknowledge to female readers that this great progressive sees that having a woman president would be on its own terms a salutary thing?
I obviously have no idea whether Moore contemplated such a sentence and rejected it or it just never occurred to him. Either way, it tells us something. To a lot of men, even men of the left, the woman-president thing just isn’t important.
Please read this magnificent essay by Melissa McEwan at Blue Nation Review: I Am a Hillary Clinton Supporter Who Has Not Always Been One.
I am a Hillary Clinton supporter who has not always been one. She was not my first choice in 2008.
But it was during that campaign I started documenting, as part of my coverage of US politics in a feminist space, the instances of misogyny being used against her by both the right and the left, amassing a “Hillary Sexism Watch” that contained more than 100 entries by the time she withdrew from the primary. And it was hardly a comprehensive record.
I have spent an enormous amount of time with Hillary Clinton, although I have never spoken to her. I have read transcripts of her speeches, her policy proposals, her State Department emails. I have watched countless hours of interviews, debates, addresses, testimony before Congress. I have scrolled though thousands of wire photos, spoken to people who have worked with and for her, read her autobiography, listened to her fans and her critics.
And what I have discovered is a person whom I like very much.
Not a perfect person. Not even a perfect candidate. I am not distressed by people who have legitimate criticisms of Hillary Clinton and some of the policies she has advocated; I share those criticisms.
Is any person or candidate perfect?
What is distressing to me is that I see little evidence of that person in the public narratives about Hillary Clinton. Not everyone has the time nor the desire to deep-dive into documents the way that I have. If I hadn’t had a professional reason to do so, I may not have done it myself.
I may have—and did, before I was obliged otherwise—relied on what I learned about Hillary Clinton from the media.
Which, as it turns out, is deeply corrupted by pervasive misogyny.
The subtle misogyny of double-standards that mean she can’t win (even when she does), and the overt misogyny of turning her into a monster, a gross caricature of a ruthlessly ambitious villain who will stop at nothing in her voracious quest for ever more power.
Please go read the rest. I only wish I could quote the whole thing.
Emily Crockett at Vox: This awful Morning Joe clip shows how not to talk about Hillary Clinton.
MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Wednesday featured a tone-deaf discussion of Hillary Clinton’s tone, which you can watch in full here.
“She shouts,” journalist Bob Woodward said of Clinton. “There is something unrelaxed about the way she is communicating, and I think that just jumps off the television screen.”
That kicked off an eight-minute, slow-motion train wreck of a conversation that used Clinton’s alleged problems with volume to support arguments about how voters find her untrustworthy — and even to suggest that Clinton doesn’t know or trust herself as a person.
“I’m sorry to dwell on the tone issue,” Woodward said later, “but there is something here where Hillary Clinton suggests that she’s almost not comfortable with herself, and, you know, self-acceptance is something that you communicate on television.”
Host Joe Scarborough compared Clinton unfavorably to 1980s conservative icons Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, both of whom were apparently self-confident enough to keep the noise down.
“Has nobody told her that the microphone works?” Scarborough said. “Because she always keeps it up here.” The “genius” of Reagan, Scarborough said while dropping into a deep baritone for emphasis, is that Reagan “kept it down low.”
The panel also included Cokie Roberts talking about how people think Hillary Clinton is untrustworthy and dishonest. Gee I wonder where they got that idea, Cokie?
I’m running out of space already. I’ll put some more links in the comment thread. We’ll have a live blog tonight for the MSNBC Democratic Debate.
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
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