If there ever was a day to step away from the news, this is it. There was a headline in Raw Story yesterday by Alternet’s Maya Boddie that explains the panic-inducing headlines I’m seeing today. “‘People are scared’: Trump ‘leaning heavily’ on this tactic to complete his first priority.” The talk of having the military turned on our citizens and concentration camps for people deemed illegal has my stomach churning, frankly. Do we have to carry our birth certificates around with us until FARTUS determines a different manner of identifying citizens other than through birthright citizenship as outlined in our Constitution? When do those of us who actively write about him and his policies and protest his actions get the ticket to those same camps? What happens to the GLBTQ+ community? And why do I sound like I’m teaching a history class on Germany in the 1930s?
Throughout Donald Trump’s campaign for reelection, he made his plan to carry out the largest deportation operation in American history.
Three sources familiar with the president-elect’s plans recently spoke with Rolling Stone senior political reporter Aswan Suesaeng about the MAGA administration’s strategy to implement the operation.
Per Suesaeng’s report, Trump “and several of his key lieutenants are aware that their desired, larger-scale crackdowns — which could involve a new network of militarized ‘camps‘ — will take significant time to execute.”
Therefore, “In the meantime, Trump and his incoming anti-immigration crew have plans to fill the gaps in part by leaning heavily into generating relentless propaganda and (as one Trump transition official puts it) ‘media spectacle’ that many of them hope will cause undocumented immigrants to flee the country and persuade migrants not to come to America,” Suesaeng reports.
“People are really scared,” immigration attorney Katie Kersh told the publication. Having run legal clinics for Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio last year, Kersh added, “I think a lot of the Haitians are concerned that their rights will be violated. We are right now trying to make sure that people understand their rights, and allay their fears that they’ll be on a plane back to Haiti on Jan. 21, which is not how the law works.”
Suesaeng reports, “According to the three sources, there have been recent internal discussions within Trump’s government-in-waiting, including with the president-elect himself, not only about launching high-profile, big-city raids at the very beginning of the second term — but about how to inject those raids into the media ecosystem and social-media bloodstream as aggressively as possible.”
This, the politics reporter adds, would involve “tipping off friendly media, such as Fox News, to generate news footage of the actions; sending along the administration’s own camera crews; coordinating with, and pumping out video, photos, and announcements to top influencers on popular social media sites; having billionaire Trump backer Elon Musk wield his X platform (formerly Twitter) to whip up a MAGAfied propaganda loop highlighting these law-enforcement operations; and, of course, letting Trump boast garrulously on TV and online about these operations.”
This is from Politico. “‘I Think Things Are Going to Be Bad, Really Bad’: The US Military Debates Possible Deployment on US Soil Under Trump. Trump has said he wants to use active-duty U.S. troops to quell protests and round up immigrants. Will the military comply?” The last time this happened was when Poppy Bush sent the military to LA during the protests and riots after the Rodney King beatings.
According to nearly a dozen retired officers and current military lawyers, as well as scholars who teach at West Point and Annapolis, an intense if quiet debate is underway inside the U.S. military community about what orders it would be obliged to obey if President-elect Donald Trump decides to follow through on his previous warnings that he might deploy troops against what he deems domestic threats, including political enemies, dissenters and immigrants.
On Nov. 18, two weeks after the election, Trump confirmed he plans to declare a national emergency and use the military for the mass deportations of illegal immigrants.
One fear is that domestic deployment of active-duty troops could lead to bloodshed given that the regular military is mainly trained to shoot at and kill foreign enemies. The only way to prevent that is establishing clear “rules of engagement” for domestic deployments that outline how much force troops can use — especially considering constitutional restraints protecting U.S. citizens and residents — against what kinds of people in what kinds of situations. And establishing those new rules would require a lot more training, in the view of many in the military community.
“Everything I hear is that our training is in the shitter,” says retired Army Lt. Gen. Marvin Covault, who commanded the 7th Infantry Division in 1992 in what was called “Joint Task Force LA.” “I’m not sure we have the kind of discipline now, and at every leader level, that we had 32 years ago. That concerns me about the people you’re going to put on the ground.”
In an interview, Covault said he was careful to avoid lethal force in Los Angeles by emphasizing to his soldiers they were now “deployed in the civilian world.” He ordered gun chambers to remain empty except in self-defense, banned all automatic weapons and required bayonets to remain on soldiers’ belts.
But Covault added that he set those rules at his own discretion. Even then Covault said he faced some recalcitrance, especially from U.S. Marine battalions under his command that sought to keep M16 machine guns on their armored personnel carriers. In one reported case a Marine unit, asked by L.A. police for “cover,” misunderstood the police term for “standing by” and fired some 200 rounds at a house occupied by a family. Fortunately, no one was injured.
“If we get fast and loose with rules of engagement or if we get into operations without a stated mission and intent, we’re going to be headline news, and it’s not going to be good,” Covault said in the interview.
The military patrols in front of my house after Hurricane Katrina: Hummers, guns, and soldiers
I remember when I first got back to New Orleans after Katrina and was met by an up-armored Humvee with a gun turret and a few guys popping their rifles at me. I smiled, lifted my coffee cup to them, and my dogs wagged their tale, but, wow, I was glad that acting Lt. General Russel L. Honoré had yelled, “Weapons down! Weapons down, damn it!” at the NOPD and the surrounding National Guards. I’m not sure I’d wish that experience on anyone. However, what I witnessed as the National Guard stayed and started coming to our locals and accompanied the police to crime scenes was that they kept the police in line. What FARTUS is suggesting seems to go against the Constitution.
Ever so often, the media drags out some political has-been and gets their opinion.The Guardian has this to say about what Newt Gingrich says about the deportation efforts. Remember, Chamber of Commerce Republicans love them some cheap and plentiful labor. “Trump’s deportation vows only for ‘rabid’ Republicans and will fail, says Newt Gingrich. Former US House speaker says documented people, Dreamers, mothers and children must not be deported‘They enrich our lives’: Newt Gingrich on immigrants and Trump’s mass deportation plan
Newt Gingrich, the former US House speaker and presidential hopeful, said a section of his own Republican party was “rabid” over immigration and predicted Donald Trump’s suggestion that he could deport documented people as well as millions of undocumented people will not come to pass.
“I’d be very surprised if you see any significant effort to change the game for people who are here legally,” Gingrich said, weeks before Trump’s return to the White House. “I just think there’s a very small faction of the party that’s rabid about this.”
He also warned that public support for mass deportations would “collapse” if stories began to come out “about mothers or babies or children being deported”.
The president-elect may not welcome Gingrich’s intervention. After all, Trump won last year’s election promising mass deportations involving the armed forces and detention camps. He has chosen ultra-hardliners including Tom Homan and Stephen Miller and has suggested his administration will attempt to remove children and documented people, telling NBC: “I don’t want to be breaking up families, so the only way you don’t break up the family is you keep them together and you have to send them all back.”
Also at issue is the fate of millions of so-called Dreamers, undocumented people who were children when they were brought to the US, and Trump’s vow to remove birthright citizenship, a right protected by the 14th amendment but which Trump says he will strike down by executive order.
Amid widespread predictions of chaos and protest, Gingrich said he was “passionately in favor of trying to help find a path to create legality for the Dreamers”, a position that may put him less at odds with Trump, given Trump’s suggestion he might accept a deal on the matter.
Gingrich continued: “It’s nonsense to say somebody who came here when they were two, only speaks English, graduated as a high school valedictorian and is currently a nurse or a doctor should be deported. We’re going to deport them and they don’t speak the language of whatever country their parents came from, and they’ve earned the right to be Americans?
“ … I think [the Trump administration has to] to realize that there are gradations here that we’re dealing with, and try to think through, how do you both meet the long-term identity and national security interests of the country and meet the human concerns. And I think it’s a real challenge.”
There’s already some discussion about the HB-1 VISAs supported by Trump’s buddy, the equally vile Elon Musk, who, by Trump’s standards, should be in line to be deported, Bannon has picked a fight with him over the issue, and it’s as bugfuck ugly as the two of them are physically. This is from The New Republic. “Bannon’s Rage at Musk Suddenly Goes Nuclear as MAGA Meltdown Worsens. As the war between Steve Bannon and Elon Musk intensifies, a leading Never Trump writer explains what all this says about the horrors that Trump-MAGA have in store for us—and how Dems can fight back.”
Over the weekend, Steve Bannon’s fury at Elon Musk truly went off the rails. Bannon, who has been feuding with Musk over immigration, vowed that he will run Musk out of the MAGA movement by Inauguration Day, suggesting this battle will continue once Donald Trump is in office. This battle exposes major divisions in the MAGA movement—yet Democrats aren’t really trying to exploit them. Why not? We talked to Mona Charen, a columnist at The Bulwark, who has a good new piece arguing that Democrats need to find their footing as a loyal opposition. She explains what the feud says about Trump, the MAGA movement, and the rise of global authoritarianism and fascism—and how Democrats can rise to the moment. Listen to this episode here. A transcript is here.
Sargent: Steve Bannon gave this interview to an Italian newspaper in which he said, “I will have Elon Musk run out of here by Inauguration Day. He will not have a pass to the White House…. He is a truly evil guy, a very bad guy.” Bannon even says it’s his personal vendetta to take this guy down. Before we get into the guts of this dispute, what do you think of this, Mona?
Charen: It’s interesting because I published a piece that you were kind enough to mention last week where I was asking: Where are the Democrats who are calling upon Trump and others in the Republican Party to denounce Musk for his open promotion of basically reactionary movements in Europe, even fascist movements and other crimes and misdemeanors? And they’ve been oddly quiescent. Then, of all people, Steve Bannon comes out and he’s going out at it hammer and tongs. He’s accusing him of also racism, which I didn’t see coming. I don’t know, did you imagine that you were going to see Steve Bannon decrying the white South Africans and their influence on the MAGA movement? That was interesting too.
Sargent: Just to clarify for listeners, that is something else that Bannon said in this interview. He decried the white South Africans, [saying] they’re real racists.Why are we letting the worst racists in human history, or something like that,dictate policy in the United States? Let’s talk a little bit about the real root of the feud between Musk and Bannon. Musk wants more high-skilled visas for tech workers, and Bannon, along with Stephen Miller, oppose this. They see big tech as part of a globalist plot to replace American workers, etc.
I do not know how so many privileged old white men can be so outraged about everything. All this is going on as Pete Hegseth’s hearings happen tomorrow. This is from the falling apart at the seams Washington Post. “Pete Hegseth, Trump’s Pentagon pick, faces tough confirmation test. The controversial former Fox News host has been accused of sexual assault and faces a grueling confirmation hearing on the path to becoming the next secretary of defense.”
President-elect Donald Trump’s controversial nominee for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, will appear for questioning Tuesday on Capitol Hill, in a public confirmationhearing that Democrats will use to interrogate his limited management experience, allegations of illicit and inappropriate conduct, and a long history of public commentary deriding women, minorities and people with opposing political views.
Hegseth, a former Fox News host, who has called for a “full counterattack” to retake America’s military from “radical leftists” and Democrats, will be the first of Trump’s unconventional cabinet picks to submit to formal scrutiny before a bipartisan panel of senators.
Hegseth’s path to winningthe job depends in large part on how he weathers the blistering questions he will face this week, with little hope of securing any Democratic votes andas several moderate Republicans have expressed concerns about his appointment.
As the secretary of defense, one of the senior-most positions in Trump’s incoming cabinet, Hegseth, a 44-year-old National Guard veteran who served tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, would oversee more than 3 million military and civilian personnel around the world, the vast U.S. nuclear arsenal, and an annual budget of more than $800 billion.
This is Rebecca Traister’s take on the New York Magazine’s Intelligencer. ” Pete Hegseth Is a Test Inside the Senate’s torturous debates over Donald Trump’s worst Cabinet nominee.”
Pete Hegseth is, by every measure, an abysmal nominee to run the American military. The Army National Guard veteran and former Fox News commentator has no experience managing enormous, complex organizations like the Pentagon and would, as secretary of Defense, be in charge of an $850 billion budget and 3 million active-duty and civilian personnel. His spotty professional record includes having been asked to step down from two nonprofit veterans’ groups whose budgets he reportedly ran into the ground. Questions about his personal behavior abound: He has been accused of rape (he reached a civil settlement with his accuser in 2017) and has a reported habit of excessive drinking, including while on the job and to the point of incapacitation in public. He has defended waterboarding and torture, advocated on behalf of alleged war criminals, and as recently as November he declared, “I’m straight up just saying that we should not have women in combat roles.” Even Republicans haven’t been able to find much good to say about him. “If it were a secret ballot,” one moderate senator told me, “I don’t think he’d be confirmed.”
But the battle for his confirmation will not be secret; it will be glaringly public, with televised hearings of the Senate Armed Services Committee scheduled for Tuesday. It is the first serious test of Donald Trump’s newly invigorated strongman model of governance and of whether he can continue to bend the Republican Party to his will even as Hegseth breaks procedural precedents, including skirting a vetting process designed to protect national security. It is also a window into the influence that Trump’s heavy, Elon Musk, is exerting across Washington by threatening to bankroll primary challenges of anyone who defies Trump. And Hegseth’s nomination is a measure of just how strenuously Democrats are planning to fight back, at a moment when they are powerless to stop the Republicans in Congress and are second-guessing past resistance efforts that have been retrospectively cast as failures. Trump has singled out Hegseth as the figure he cares most about pushing through, his next administration’s big opening number, showcasing what he hopes will be his own party’s submission to his whims and the Democrats’ humiliating impotence in the face of his authority.
The Armed Services Committee is not one that has historically been the venue for explosive partisan warfare. “The thing to understand about it,” said one staffer, “is that it’s designed to have hearings about defense policy, draft the defense bill every year, and is sort of bipartisan.” But Hegseth is all but certain to cleave the group into partisan camps. His nomination has put an uncomfortable spotlight on Republican senators who might be persuaded to vote against his nomination, especially on Iowa’s Joni Ernst, a staunch Republican who is respected by her Democratic colleagues for her commitment to the committee’s work.
Is this the man you want commanding armed troops on your neighborhood streets if Trump gets his way? Trump has started backtracking on ending the Ukraine Invasion by Russia by giving a lot of it away to Putin. This is from The New Republic. It’s reported by Hafiz Rashid. “Team Trump Suddenly Backtracks on Key Campaign Promise. Donald Trump’s Ukraine envoy made a damning confession on the likelihood of the war ending.”
Donald Trump is backtracking on his big campaign promise to end the Ukraine war in 24 hours, according to his special envoy to Ukraine.
On Sunday, Keith Kellogg told Fox News that the Russia-Ukraine war would come to a “solvable solution in the near term.”
“You know, I would like to set a goal on a personal level and professional level. I would say, let’s set it at 100 days and move it all the way back and figure a way we can do this in the near term to make sure that the solution is solid, it’s sustainable, and that this war ends,” Kellogg said.
A “near term” timeline is a marked difference from Trump’s bravado on the campaign trail, where he repeatedly bragged that he could end the war in a day or even sooner. Trump himself seems to realize this, telling Time magazine last month that “the Middle East is an easier problem to handle than what’s happening with Russia and Ukraine.” Vladimir Putin has also thrown cold water on Trump’s promises, ignoring the president-elect’s “warnings.”
In just 7 days, the clown car returns. We’ve seen a slight shuffle in some of the folks we’ve received news from. Jennifer Ruben announced she’s left WAPO and will be writing at The Contrarian at Substack with Norm Eisen.
Corporate and billionaire owners of major media outlets have betrayed their audiences’ loyalty and sabotaged journalism’s sacred mission — defending, protecting and advancing democracy. The Washington Post’s billionaire owner and enlisted management are among the offenders. They have undercut the values central to The Post’s mission and that of all journalism: integrity, courage, and independence. I cannot justify remaining at The Post. Jeff Bezos and his fellow billionaires accommodate and enable the most acute threat to American democracy—Donald Trump—at a time when a vibrant free press is more essential than ever to our democracy’s survival and capacity to thrive.
I therefore have resigned from The Post, effective today. In doing so, I join a throng of veteran journalists so distressed over The Post’s management they felt compelled to resign.
The decay and compromised principles of corporate and billionaire-owned media underscore the urgent need for alternatives. Americans are eager for innovative and independent journalism that offers lively, unflinching coverage free from cant, conflicts of interest and moral equivocation.
Also, Rachel Maddow returns to her timeslot 5 times a week for FARTUS’ first 100 days, as reported by CNN.
The MSNBC prime time star is expanding her on-air presence for the first 100 days of President-elect Donald Trump’s administration, the network announced Monday, injecting what may be a much-needed ratings boost into the progressive outlet’s lineup.
Maddow’s show, MSNBC’s highest rated program, has only aired once a week since 2022 when she stepped away to focus on other projects, including films, books and podcasts. Her temporary return to the anchor desk weeknights at 9 p.m. ET will see Alex Wagner, who currently anchors the timeslot Tuesday through Friday, deployed on special assignment to cover the impact of the president-elect’s policies.
So, there’s a lot more out there, and you may share it in the comments section. We may have to try to pull your comments out of the pending bin, so be patient.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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“His nose is already growing!” John (repeat1968) Buss
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Today is the anniversary of the shameful January 6th treason and violence. It may seem quiet today, but the worst is yet to come. Not only is our new FARTUS (Felon, Adjudicated Rapist, and Traitor of the United States with total credit given to JJ) about to take the oath of office, but all these other traitors are about to be granted Presidential Pardons. My only solace is that I may eat King Cake now because today is also 12th night, the official start of the Mardi Gras Season.
These are degenerate times. That has a specific meaning in Buddhism. Lama Yeshe describes it like this. “It has five characteristics: short life spans, scarce means of subsistence, mental afflictions, strong wrong views, and weak sentient beings.” That’s a good enough explanation for me when thinking about what’s been going on lately.
I will rely on the columnists I read today because they make sense. Our media legacy has failed us. First up is Amanda Marcotte writing for Salon. I wrote something along these lines on Friday, but Amanda has thought more deeply. “Toxic masculinity links the New Orleans attacker and the Las Vegas bomber. Whether MAGA or ISIS, troubled men are getting sucked in by hateful online propaganda.”
Like so many men facing personal troubles, Jabbar didn’t get the help he needed. Instead, he turned to radicalizing voices online, which led him to believe that he needed to double down on toxic masculinity. It’s a story we hear over and over, from so-called incels who commit mass shootings to Donald Trump fans who attack government buildings to terrorists imbibing ISIS propaganda. Rather than taking responsibility for their personal failures and striving to do better, men of all stripes turn to the internet where they’re greeted by a sea of influencers, ready to tell them that it’s other people — women, people of different races or religions, the “woke mob” — that is to blame. In some cases, as happened here, they go far enough down the rabbit hole that they talk themselves into violence.
Thankfully, no one but the bomber was badly hurt in the Las Vegas suicide bombing that happened the same night as the Bourbon St. attack, but the parallels between Jabbar and Matthew Livelsberger aren’t hard to spot. Like Jabbar, Livelsberger was a troubled man who picked a highly symbolic location, blowing up a Cybertruck in front of a Trump hotel. Both men had checkered romantic histories, and Livelsberger appears to have told multiple people he feared he suffered from PTSD. Like Jabbar, Livelsberger seems to have acted on a belief that he was going out like a hero, standing up for his far-right ideology and using his death to call on fellow MAGA believers to commit acts of terrorism.
“Try peaceful means first, but be prepared to fight to get the Dems out of the fed government and military by any means necessary,” he wrote in his final manifesto. He declared the U.S. is “terminally ill and headed toward collapse,” complained that people don’t believe “[m]asculinity is good and men must be leaders” and made tired Twitter jokes calling Vice President Kamala Harris a “DEI candidate” and President Joe Biden “Weekend at Bernie’s.” He concluded, “Rally around the Trump, Musk, Kennedy, and ride this wave to the highest hegemony for all Americans!”
Livelsberger defensively insisted the bombing “was not a terrorist attack.” This sentiment is belied not just by the violence of the act itself and his calls for MAGA men to use violence because “a hard reset must occur for our country.”
It’s the 12th night, which means the members of Skull and Bones Krewes get up early to remind us of our mortality.
When Cis men fall apart, they can’t just go silently into the night, get help, or do something productive. They have to injure or kill innocents while killing themselves. They destroy more than their own lives. They have to leave some formal Mansplaining document that lets us know why it’s all our fault. These are generally misogynistic, at the very least. Most of them spew more bullshit and bile than the waste from slaughterhouses.
John Pavlovitz wrote this on December 12th in his Substack, The Beautiful Mess. “America Chose the Monster.”
To have cast a vote for him with all that we have seen is to declare war on decency, on equality, on any semblance of forthrightness or goodness. It is to double-down on the bigotry which was dismissed as hyperbole during his campaign but which has already been ratified hundredfold as he assembles his Cabinet picks and broadcasts his agenda.
To witness his absolute disregard for the Constitution, his violent allergic reaction to facts, his complete lack of empathy and to not condemn it all becomes an indictment of one’s own heart. It becomes an act of aggression against humanity.
The are truths that are self-evident in the light of these days:
A viable healthcare alternative is not coming.
Taxes for the middle class are not coming down.
Project 2025 is going to be implemented.
Mexico is still not paying for the wall.
Immigrants are going to being persecuted.
Protections for those with special needs are evaporating.
The poor are getting thrown to the lions.
Public schools are being thrown under the bus.
The elderly are being left to fend for themselves.
The environment is being willfully set on fire.
The economy is going to be compromised.
The whole system is being intentionally blown-up.
The rule of Law in our Government is being trod upon.
Aside from the smallest percentage of the wealthiest in this nation, no one is going to be healthier, safer, or more financially secure.
This is a nonpartisan tragedy.
We all do impulsive things when we are terrified, when it’s dark and we’re convinced there’s a monster under the bed. But eventually the light comes on and we have reality at our disposal and we get to choose to see things as they are. I can’t fathom those presently determined to stay in the dark, to pretend they’re not seeing what they’re seeing—when what they’re seeing is a danger to them too.
It’s morning here in America, friends. The brilliant light of day is illuminating every dark corner and exposing every unsavory decision from the night before.
For a myriad of reasons, America chose the monster. It chose the hatred, the fear, the nihilism, the separation. The question of why is too sprawling and nebulous to answer.
And with the coming of this Monster comes more monsters. Former Capitol Police Officer Michael Fanone reminds us about the kind of people that will be put back on the street when the mass pardon of traitors begins. This is from HuffPo. “Cowards, Liars And Jan. 6: Former Officer Michael Fanone Speaks Out As Trump’s Return Looms.
“I don’t believe we live in a democracy anymore,” says Michael Fanone, who was nearly killed by Trump supporters four years ago.”
“There’s no doubt in my mind that he got away with inciting an insurrection as well as defrauding the American people and attempting to subvert democracy,” Fanone told HuffPost during a phone interview just ahead of the fourth anniversary of the Capitol riot.
“I don’t believe we live in a democracy anymore,” Fanone said. “I believe democracy in this country is dead, and it died when the Supreme Court granted the president of the United States immunity for official acts and then failed to define what the fuck official acts are.”
The Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. United States in July found that as long as something could be shaded as an “official” act, prosecution was off the table.
The ruling obliterated key parts of the criminal indictment brought against Trump in the Jan. 6 case by then-special counsel Jack Smith. And Trump’s victory in November means he’ll likely never face federal charges.
Shortly after the presidential election, Smith dismissed the case without prejudice ― meaning it could theoretically come back to life one day ― but Fanone’s faith in the justice system is already shattered. He called Attorney General Merrick Garland an “absolute coward.”
“Listen, people say I’m naive or I don’t know how these things work, but I was a cop for 20 years. Not only was I a cop, I was a cop in Washington, D.C. Our prosecutors were federal prosecutors. I worked with the [Department of Justice] every single day for 20 years. I know exactly how that institution and organization works. The decision not to pursue an investigation into Trump was all political,” Fanone said. “The investigation should have been launched on Jan. 7, 2021.”
Fanone was Trump-friendly before the J6 Insurrection and voted for him in 2016.
Senator John Thune from South Dakota is the new bad guy in charge of the Senate. We’re already getting some idea of how bad it’s going to be since he appears to be whipping the caucus for the gross number of idiots Trump wants in his cabinet. This is from The Hill. “Thune says it’s unclear whether all Trump Cabinet picks will be confirmed.” Some of the most worrying of them have to deal with National Security.
John Thune on Trump possibly pardoning J6 insurrectionists who assaulted police officers: "That's ultimately gonna be a decision that President Trump is gonna have to make. What I'm focused on is the future."
Thune joined NBC News’s “Meet the Press” for an interview that aired Sunday, as he took the lead of the upper chamber at the start of the 119th Congress.
“What I’ve promised them is a fair process,” Thune said of Trump’s picks. “And so, these nominees are going to go through a committee where they’re going to have to answer questions. There will be some hard questions posed.”
Thune highlighted the desire to provide Trump with the Cabinet he wants but noted that the Senate has a role to “advise and consent,” particularly regarding his national security choices.
“We have a lot of our senators who take that role very seriously,” he said. “And so, we will make sure that these nominees have a process, a fair process, in which they have an opportunity to make their cases not only to the members of the committee and ultimately to the full Senate but also to the American people.”
Thune wouldn’t confirm whether he would vote for or against any of Trump’s nominees, including some particularly controversial choices like Kash Patel to lead the FBI, former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii) for director of national intelligence and Pete Hegseth for Department of Defense.
Thune said he’s met with some of Trump’s nominees, and there are “some” that he has been “really, really impressed” by.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune has privately told President-elect Donald Trump that he believes Pete Hegseth will have the votes to be confirmed as Secretary of Defense, according to three sources.
When asked for comment, a spokesman for Thune would only tell CBS News, “Two things we don’t discuss publicly: Whip counts and private conversations with the president.”
“I think these are nominees who are new enough, they’ve been going around and conducting their meetings, which I think, frankly, have gone very well, but they still have to make their case in front of the committee. And, you know, we don’t know all the information about some of these nominees.”
Hegseth’s confirmation hearing is scheduled for Jan. 14, according to Senate Armed Services Chairman Roger Wicker.
Just so you know, future FBI Director Kash Patel is still making the rounds in the Senate Building. “Kash Patel Believes the FBI Planned Jan. 6th. His embrace of this wild conspiracy theory should disqualify him from leading the bureau.” This is from The Bulwark.
“WHAT WAS THE FBI DOING PLANNING January 6th for a year?”
Kash Patel, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as FBI director, asked that question during a November 25, 2022 episode of his Kash’s Corner podcast for the Epoch Times. It was no slip of the tongue. As the title of that episode suggested—“What Did the FBI Know Before Jan. 6?”—Patel spent considerable time trying to cast the FBI as a villain responsible for January 6th. Patel noted that FBI Director Christopher Wray had “testified that the FBI never instigated or helped the January 6th protesters commit crimes.” But citing a report that the FBI had confidential human sources in the crowd, Patel asserted: “Okay, well, that was in planning for at least a year.”
Our review of Patel’s public appearances over the past four years reveals that he has repeatedly insinuated or argued that the FBI used its confidential human sources or employees to instigate the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol and entrap Trump’s supporters. Patel has claimed (as in the podcast episode above) that what he calls the “FBI’s Confidential Human Source Corruption Coverup Network” was somehow involved with January 6th. That is not only an insult to the memory of that day; it should be disqualifying for him to helm the bureau.
During the September 30, 2022 episode of Kash’s Corner, for instance, Patel said: “The question that has to be answered is, when did the FBI put those guys in, and where? And did those confidential human sources engage people who are not going to conduct criminal activity and convince them to do so?” Patel claimed that “is the definition of entrapment, which is illegal, and you can’t charge someone who’s been entrapped.” And he wondered who “was running this confidential human source network” and reporting it to FBI Director Chris Wray.
Patel added he would “venture a guess” that “once we see the documentation from January 6th, you will see the FBI’s confidential human source corruption coverup network on blast.” And he accused the FBI of inserting these human sources “into these matters.” Patel asked rhetorically: “Why? Why would you say January 6th? Because they wanted a political target, a political prosecution, not one based on law and fact.”
The man who could lead Trump’s FBI has failed to substantiate these wild accusations, which are contradicted by other evidence and by common sense. Regardless, he has frequently advanced this conspiracy theory, using his background as a former federal prosecutor and public defender—key credentials used to buttress his nomination—to provide it with a veneer of credibility.
An extensive amount of documentation is provided in the article. It’s not a fun read.
ProPublica has published another astounding piece of journalism. This is long and shocking. It gets to the heart of Trump’s rabid base. Again, this is the heart of Toxic Masculinity. “The Militia and the MoleOutraged by the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, a wilderness survival trainer spent years undercover climbing the ranks of right-wing militias. He didn’t tell police or the FBI. He didn’t tell family or friends. The one person he told was a ProPublica reporter.”
So I pored over his files, tens of thousands of them. They included dozens of hours of conversations he secretly recorded and years of private militia chatlogs and videos. I was able to authenticate those through other sources, in and out of the movement. I also talked to dozens of people, from Williams’ friends to other members of his militias. I dug into his tumultuous past and discovered records online he hadn’t pointed me to that supported his account.
The files give a unique window, at once expansive and intimate, into one of the most consequential and volatile social movements of our time. Williams penetrated a new generation of paramilitary leaders, which included doctors, career cops and government attorneys. Sometimes they were frightening, sometimes bumbling, always heavily armed. It was a world where a man would propose assassinating politicians, only to spark a debate about logistics.
Federal prosecutors have convicted more than 1,000 people for their role in Jan. 6. Key militia captains were sent to prison for a decade or more. But that did not quash the allure that militias hold for a broad swath of Americans.
Now President-elect Donald Trump has promised to pardon Jan. 6 rioters when he returns to the White House. Experts warn that such a move could trigger a renaissance for militant extremists, sending them an unprecedented message of protection and support — and making it all the more urgent to understand them.
(Unless otherwise noted, none of the militia members mentioned in this story responded to requests for comment.)
Williams is part of a larger cold war, radical vs. radical, that’s stayed mostly in the shadows. A left-wing activist told me he personally knows about 30 people who’ve gone undercover in militias or white supremacist groups. They did not coordinate with law enforcement, instead taking the surveillance of one of the most intractable features of American politics into their own hands.
Skeptical of authorities, militias have sought to reshape the country through armed action. Williams sought to do it through betrayals and lies, which sat with him uneasily. “I couldn’t have been as successful at this if I wasn’t one of them in some respects,” he once told me. “I couldn’t have done it so long unless they recognized something in me.”
The last thing I want to post about is the Washington Post. The newspaper is hemorrhaging reporters, and Pulitzer Prize-Winning Political Cartoonist Ann Telnaes quit because Bezos axed her submission. The raw sketch is featured on the right. It’s also begun layoffs. This happens when greedy Tech Bros take over things they know nothing about. This is from Oliver Darcy’s Status. “Paper Cuts. The Washington Post is expected to lay off dozens of staffers this week, Status has learned.”
Layoffs are expected to rock The Washington Post this week, according to people familiar with the matter.
The layoffs are slated to hit the Jeff Bezos-owned and Will Lewis-led newspaper’s business division, I’m told. One person familiar with the matter said that the cuts will be deep, impacting many dozens of employees.
The layoffs will surely deplete morale further inside the beleaguered newspaper, which has suffered a talent exodus over the last several weeks. As I reported earlier, star reporter Josh Dawsey will exit The Post for a job at The Wall Street Journal. His departure comes on the heels of other top staffers fleeing, including Matea Gold, Ashley Parker, Michael Scherer, Charles Lane, Tyler Pager, and Amanda Katz.
A spokesperson for The Post didn’t have an immediate comment. But The Post has been in poor financial shape in recent years, a fact that management has not hidden from employees. Those financial problems were exacerbated when Bezos blocked The Post’s planned endorsement of Kamala Harris ahead of the November election, a move that led to more than 250,000 readers canceling their subscriptions.
I’ve been a bit on the gratuitous Buddhism-sharing thing today, which I try not to overdo, but this quote from Chamtral Rinpoche hit me hard last night.
The biggest threat to our world are not human beings per se. The biggest threat is each individual person’s level of greed. One extremely greedy person can harm our world more than a million people who practice contentment.
Drinking salt water will never quench your thirst. The more you drink, the thirstier you will become. Likewise, greed will never bring you satisfaction, as it will cause an endless pursuit of material wealth to the detriment of our world and all of the beings who inhabit it.
Always remember that the greedier you are, the more you and others will suffer, and the poorer you will become inside. But the more contentment that you have, the more you and others will benefit, and the richer you will become inside.
We will have to cultivate inner peace to get through all of this. I’ve already cut down on my TV News viewing. I have a mature meditation practice (since the 1970s), so I have that. Of course, the furbabies and the Zoom calls from the Granddaughters put a smile on my face. I’m just trying to stay in the moment. I hope you can find a way to cope with this all. I’ve been listening to a lot of modern classic piano. This piece by Lambert comes from an album called “Sweet Apocalypse.” It’s beautiful and relaxing, and the name is appropriate for the times; it was recorded in 2017 during this first stint of anguish.
Talk to me about how you’re coping with this blast of kleptocracy, kakistocracy, and idiocracy?
What’s on your reading and blogging list?
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“So I’m guessing reducing everyone’s electric bill by half isn’t gonna happen either..” John Buss, @johnbuss.bsky.social
Good Day, Sky Dancing!
I wanted to start this morning with something very normal, American, and positive. Today, President Biden will designate a National Monument in Maine for the late great Secretary of Labor under FDR Francis Perkins. She was the first woman to serve as a Secretary in a President’s Cabinet. She inspired me since she played a major role in economic and labor policy during the Great Depression. She was appointed in 1933 and served 12 years. She should be known as the Mother of Social Security. Her role in implementing and determining policy during the New Deal programs cannot be underestimated. She has touched the lives of all of us even though she left office in 1945.
The Hill has an article up today about her tenure and the memorial today.
During Perkins’s tenure, the Labor Department oversaw Immigration and Naturalization Services, a role she used to aggressively lobby to admit larger numbers of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi-occupied Europe.
Perkins was considered a stalwart ally of labor unions during her tenure, which included her counseling Roosevelt against breaking a 1934 waterfront strike that shut down much of the West Coast. She also refused to deport Australian-born longshoremen’s union head Harry Bridges for his membership in the Communist Party, which led the House Un-American Activities Committee to introduce an unsuccessful impeachment resolution against her.
Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, arrives for a special meeting, September 16, 1938 Image: Library of Congress ID hec.25045
She claimed to have been radicalized after she witnessed the notorious Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York in 1911, in which 146 garment workers were burned or leaped to their deaths after they were locked inside for the workday.
The national monument will comprise the nearly 60 acres that were once Perkins’s family’s homestead in Newcastle, which her family has owned for nearly three centuries.
The designation comes after Biden earlier in March signed an executive order calling on the Interior Department to identify sites with significance in women’s history in America.
You may read the Biden announcement at this link to the White House. I found this journal article written about her by Harris Chaiklin, Ph.D. at VCU Libraries Social Welfare History Project. “Perkins, Frances, Change Agent in: Eras in Social Welfare History, Great Depression, People, Recollections. Frances Perkins: She Boldly Went Where No Woman Had Gone Before.” A wealthy daughter of a wealthy Boston family, she had the type of education that generally sent a woman to ‘spinsterhood.’ Her upbringing prepared her for her role, shaping some of the most strategic and important policies of the time. Fannie Perkins persisted. She eventually landed in Greenwich Village, where she became a mediator. Her friends included Sinclair Lewis and Robert Moses.
A transforming event occurred while she was having tea with a wealthy friend who lived in Washington Square. Word came that the Triangle Shirtwaist factory was on fire. They rushed to it. The horror they saw there helped forge in Frances a lifelong commitment to worker’s safety and rights. That she was with a wealthy friend is significant. Though not wealthy she knew this life style and associated with wealthy people. Good friends from this group provided a place for her to live at key points in her career when her earnings were not enough to meet her needs.
After the fire there was increasing activity in campaigning for worker’s rights and safety while the social work job continued. Once a social worker who lived in the settlement house with Frances asked for help in getting a teenage boy out of jail because he was supporting his family. Frances went to the Charity Organization Society which after a long investigation deemed him “unworthy.” A friend suggested she try the Tammany Hall in the client’s district. The problem was helped within 24 hours. Her lobbying activities also put her in contact with other machine politicians. She met and struck up a close relationship with Al Smith. Working together they succeeded in getting a bill passed that limited women to a 54 hour work week. It was a compromise and liberals attacked her for giving up too much to get it passed. She knew that without the compromise there would have been no bill and not even the limited protection this bill offered. The lessons in becoming a skilled politician were piling up. In the past she had looked down on politicians but now concluded, “…that venal politicians can sometimes be more useful than upstanding reformers (Downey, 2009,p. 39).” Understanding and accepting the value of working within the political order was one of the secrets of her success.
Her experiences in these activities taught her another valuable lesson. A politician told her that men trusted women who were motherly and not seductive sirens. Downey says, “She began to see her gender, a liability in many ways, could actually be an asset. To accentuate this opportunity to gain influence she began to dress and comport herself in a way that reminded men of their mothers, rather than doing what women usually like to do which is making themselves more physically attractive to men (Downey, 2009, p. 45). At this time she was 33 years old. Up to then the papers had characterized her as “perky” “pretty” “dimpled.” They now began to label her as “Mother Perkins” a name she disliked only a little less than being called “Ma Perkins.” Such was the price for shaping herself into a highly effective politician. In these activities Frances was aware of her limitations as a woman and avoided places where women did not usually go. She did her lobbying in hallways and not bars. This too became a lifelong skill. When people were brought together to work out differences she stayed in the background. Others often got credit for her greatest accomplishments. Who today identifies her as the moving force behind achieving Social Security?
Well, me. I know what it took to get that kind of great change written into law and policy. You may read more at the link.
And, unfortunately, we have the antithesis to her and the people she worked with and for today. This is from Mark Jacob’s writing on his blog Stop the Presses. “Here’s what we WON’T do when Trump takes over. We won’t shut up and give up – we’ll stand up and power up.” This is necessary since we have learned yet another big Media outlet has caved to President-Eject Incontinentia Buttocks. The brilliant suggestions continue past this bit.
As democracy defenders, we’re facing hard times when authoritarian Donald Trump takes office Jan. 20. But what will we do about it? For now, I’m focusing on what we won’t do:
We won’t shut up.
We won’t retreat from the news.
We won’t lose our ability to be outraged.
We won’t be duped by a fake “crisis” that serves as a pretext to send the military against American citizens and turn our country into a police state.
We won’t sit on our couch and watch protests on TV when we should be out protesting in front of the TV cameras.
We won’t tolerate abuse of women simply because the person who won the last presidential election is a sexual predator.
We won’t get exhausted. Instead, we’ll pace ourselves, find ways to relax and enjoy life, and be ready to go at the crucial moments.
We won’t accept the notion that “all politicians lie.” More politicians lie when the news media and public accept lying and thus make it advantageous to lie.
We won’t forget to be kind.
We won’t expect the New York Times, the Washington Post and the TV networks to wake up and seriously confront the threat of fascism when they didn’t do it before the election.
We won’t forget that Trump won by just 1.5 percentage points — not a mandate, and certainly not a statement that most Americans want to surrender their rights to him.
The little tomboy girl I was who wanted to do everything boys do and do it better is still in me. Not backing down. Nope. Not gonna do it. Wouldn’t be prudent at this juncture. This is from Lisa Needham at Public Notice. ABC was never a station we watched much as my Dad was a big fan of Huntley-Brinkley. Also, George Stephanopoulos has never been on my list to receive any news or advice. This disappoints me but doesn’t surprise me at all. “ABC bends the knee. Corporate media is surrendering already.” That’s exactly what a stumbling despot wants on his way to power. He wants control of the media. Wouldn’t want the truth sneaking out while you’ve got that propaganda thing going.
Since the election, plenty of the richest among us have rushed to curry favor with Donald Trump by showering him with cash.
Meta’s Mark Zuckerburg is giving Trump $1 million for his inauguration, as is OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and Amazon, which will also stream the ceremony on Prime. But perhaps even more galling is ABC’s move to settle an absurd defamation lawsuit brought by Trump over George Stephanopoulos’s completely defensible on-air statement that Trump had been found liable for rape.
ABC will donate $15 million to Trump’s presidential library — a thing that has not yet been built and currently exists only as a website maintained by the National Archives. The network also agreed to pay $1 million toward Trump’s lawyer fees, continuing Trump’s streak of never paying for his own legal bills. And ABC and Stephanopoulos pledged to make a statement saying they “regret” the remarks.
It’s a bad omen for mainstream media coverage of Trump 2.0 and speaks to the importance of independent outlets that won’t be so easily intimidated.
Trump’s lawsuit rested on the incredibly flimsy argument that it defamed him to say he was found liable for the rape of E. Jean Carroll when he was actually found liable for forced digital penetration. But Stephanopoulos’s comments were consistent with how the presiding judge described the case.
So, since I seem to be going all economist on you these days, let me just say that I love Paul Krugman’s substack. I’m glad he left the New York Times, even though he really didn’t state a reason other than it was time. Here’s today’s offering at Krugman Wonks Out. “Crypto is for Criming. It’s not digital gold — it’s digital Benjamins.” You can write me down as a crypto hater. I will never know how this Ponzi scheme took root, but then I can’t explain the appeal of President-Eject Incontinentia Buttocks to me either. I have decided that some folks just want to be lied to if it feeds their raging ID and be told lies and sold a bill of goods just to think they may have something going for themselves and take a breather from their anger and resentment.
‘The tech bros who helped put Trump back in power expect many favors in return; one of the more interesting is their demand that the government intervene to guarantee crypto players the right to a checking account, stopping the “debanking” they claim has hit many of their friends.
The hypocrisy here is thick enough to cut with a knife. If you go back to the 2008 white paper by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto that gave rise to Bitcoin, its main argument was that we needed to replace checking accounts with blockchain-based payments because you can’t trust banks; crypto promoters also tend to preach libertarianism, touting crypto as a way to escape government tyranny. Now we have crypto boosters demanding that the evil government force the evil banks to let them have conventional checking accounts.
What’s going on here? Elon Musk, Marc Andreesen and others claim that there’s a deep state conspiracy to undermine crypto, because of course they do. But the real reason banks don’t want to be financially connected to crypto is that they believe, with good reason, that to the extent that cryptocurrencies are used for anything besides speculation, much of that activity is criminal — and they don’t want to be accused of acting as accessories.
You may take the Good Doctor’s Monetary Theory lecture at the link. I can’t believe Milton Friedman would have anything positive to say about this development at all. He wrote the book on money and was awarded a Nobel Prize in Economics. And I also am having a huge hissy over the potential targeting of the FDIC. I worked in banking. I’ve worked for the Fed. This is my bailiwick. My daughter, the finance guru, didn’t fall for crypto, so I must have done something right. Don’t fall for this, either! This is from Reuters. “Trump’s floated idea to shutter FDIC would be political heavy lift, say analysts.” Fannie Perkins would really be in the fray on this one. How could they forget the Great Recession? It started with financial overreach in the banking industry too. CEOs and their marketing execs are more interested in becoming bigger than running an effective business.
U.S. bank stocks were unfazed on Friday after a report that President-elect Donald Trump’s team had floated the idea of shrinking or eliminating a top banking regulator, with analysts saying such a plan would not win the necessary political backing.
In recent interviews with bank regulator candidates, Trump advisers have asked whether the incoming president could abolish the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (FDIC) and move its deposit insurance function into the Treasury Department, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.
Officials from the newly founded Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has been tasked with finding major government savings, participated in the interviews, the WSJ said.
However, while the current system comprising three federal and multiple state bank regulators is complex, a major restructure would struggle to garner the political support needed to get through Congress, which is also expected to be tied up on tax reform and crypto legislation next year, analysts and academics said.
“It would require congressional action and despite the Republican party majority in both the Senate and the House, it would require support from the Democrats which remains very unlikely,” ING sector strategist Marine Leleux wrote in a note.
Bank stocks were little changed on Friday.
The Trump transition team has been interviewing candidates for financial agency roles, including the bank regulators, in recent days, said two people with direct knowledge of the matter. DOGE officials have been involved in some of those interviews, one said
I cannot see Senator Elizabeth Warren being quiet about any of this. However, the ink of the press is focused on the man with the most responsibility for this mess. Senator Mitch McConnell is objecting a lot now that he’s an ineffective backbencher. Look, he doesn’t like Polio! He wants the vaccine still! Look, he’s got something to say about how wonderful the Bush years were because we tried and failed to bomb “American Exceptionalism” into the Middle East, but it’s good policy!. But just because we know better doesn’t mean Legacy Media does. This is from MSNBC and Steve Benen, which means I assume Rachel saw this, too. “Why Mitch McConnell’s latest clashes with Trump matter. Despite his recent partisan history, Mitch McConnell has thrown a lot of brushback pitches in Donald Trump’s direction lately.” WTAF?
It was hard not to wonder how Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a polio survivor, would respond to the news. As it turned out, we didn’t have to wait too long to find out.
In a statement to NBC News, the Kentucky Republican — who’ll soon step down from his GOP leadership post — didn’t mention Kennedy by name, but the longtime senator said anyone seeking a confirmation vote must be specific about their intentions related to the polio vaccine.
“Anyone seeking the Senate’s consent to serve in the incoming Administration would do well to steer clear of even the appearance of association with such efforts,” McConnell wrote. He added that “efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed — they’re dangerous.”
It was a notable brushback pitch from a key GOP official, but it was also part of a recent pattern: McConnell has thrown a lot of these pitches at Trump and his team lately.
In an interview with the Financial Times, published last week, McConnell warned about the dangers of isolationism, which he seemed to tie directly to his party’s incoming president. “We’re in a very, very dangerous world right now, reminiscent of before World War II,” the senator said, adding, “Even the slogan is the same. ‘America First’ — that was what they said in the ’30s.”
McConnell has a newly published essay in Foreign Affairs magazine, warning against the “right-wing flirtation with isolation and decline.” Referencing a signature phrase from Trump, the Kentucky Republican added, “America will not be made great again by those who simply want to manage its decline.”
The senator’s written piece echoed a speech he delivered earlier this month, rejecting his party’s isolationist wing.
In Congress last month, Matt Gaetz’s bid to become the next attorney general collapsed in the face of opposition from GOP senators. While there was no official tally on the scope of the Republican opposition to the former Florida congressman, The New York Times reported that McConnell was among those staunchly opposed to his prospective nomination.
When political observers take stock on Capitol Hill, looking for Republicans who might be a thorn in the president-elect’s side, they tend to focus on members such as Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski and Maine’s Susan Collins. But what if McConnell — who’s expected to retire at the end of his term, and who doesn’t appear to have anything to lose by standing up to Trump — unexpectedly joins the faction of Trump skeptics?
To be sure, it’d be a mistake to get one’s hopes up.
These folks are the heirs of Edward R. Murrow? Seriously? Let me just leave you with a quote from the guy that covered the NAZIs running rampant over Europe and didn’t mince words. Extra points if you know this was his sign-off!
Good Night and Good Luck!
“Surely we shall pay for using this most powerful instrument of communications to insulate the citizenry from the hard and demanding realities that must be faced if we are to survive”
Edward R. Murrow
So here I am at the keyboard, your nerdy friend. We don’t have the same number of folks reading us that we used to back in the day when we were one of the top 25 Political Blogs. But we’re here, and we’re still fearless. It is actually nice to see the country’s public intellectuals doing the Old School Blog thing these days on Substack. Throw them some bling if you can! I started out on Fire Dog Lake way back in the day. I know BB was at The Daily Kos until the anti-Hillary stuff flared. We’re here because we don’t like one-sided stories. We like to find the facts.
We’ve had terrible technical trouble with WordPress since they seem to have turned something that can’t figure out how to let people comment. Half the time, I can’t even comment on my posts here. I have to dive behind the front page to the dashboard. But, you know what … there’s a lot of stuff here from many people, and it’s still in the files. It’s been very close to 20 years now, too. I’m unsure how to get it to any place safer now. So, we’re here. We won’t shut up. We’re a Refuge.
I have one more thing to share with you. It’s important. Please read it. This is the Methodist church I want to remember. It’s also a story I’m familiar with. Our neighbors from south of our border were here helping us clean up after Katrina when everyone else wasn’t. I still want a taco truck on every corner, and we’re a lot closer to that down here in New Orleans than we used to be. It just occurred to me that I likely wrote a lesson plan for my high school students when I was in my 20s, and my heart was an open book. I actually taught civics then. Can you believe it? This story is important.
In a world full of Kari Lakes, be a Francis Perkins. In a world full of George Stephanopoulos, be an Edward Murrow.
My church kept ICE from deporting our neighbor Jose. The Bible told us so.President-elect Donald Trump has plans to end a policy that generally restricts ICE from arresting undocumented people at or near so-called sensitive locations. http://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnb…
“And just like that, America is respecting on the world stage once again.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I’m going down a very dank, dark rabbit hole today because one of the things that concern me the most are the ongoing threats that President Eject Incontinentia Buttocks against people who make him feel bad about himself or correct his story weaving for the sake of reporting reality. We keep seeing the lists and hearing direct attacks on what he considers “enemies.” This ranges from politicians of past and present to members of the press. It is the true sign of a despot, and one of the major things the U.S. Constitution and our form of government were designed to toss in history’s trash heap. The other is the feudal tradition of bending or taking the knee. That is why public servants take an oath to uphold and protect the Constitution and not to a cult of personality.
It is evident during this transition period that these feudal and dictatorial aspirations are a serious part of the vetting of Cabinet officers and the oncoming attempt to prosecute and persecute outspoken critics of the tremendous number of unfit, immoral cretins, loyal to an insane and craven political figure. King George was the Mad King we had to dethrone to gain independence. What do we do with a Mad Politician chosen by the Electoral College and many voters who live in states with more livestock than people? He’s an obvious threat to democracy, but he managed to Pied Piper, a bunch of rubes.
An interview this weekend shows how obsessed he is with ensuring his warped reality rules the day and the country.
Let me share a few headlines that are giving me some severe heartburn. This is from CNN and is reported byAaron Pellish. “Trump lays out sweeping early acts on deportation and January 6 pardons, says Cheney and others ‘should go to jail.’”
President-elect Donald Trump in a television interview that aired Sunday previewed a sweeping agenda for his first days in office, outlining how his administration will prioritize deporting migrants with criminal records, vowing to pursue pardons for January 6 defendants on his first day, and raising the possibility that former Rep. Liz Cheney and other political opponents could face jail time.
Trump said he would not seek “retribution” against President Joe Biden and against his political enemies, but he repeatedly left room for his appointees to decide whether to go after specific people. He suggested members of Congress who led the investigations into his conduct during the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol should be put in jail and that he’ll look on his first day at issuing pardons to supporters involved in the riot.
“These people have been there, how long is it? Three or four years? You know, by the way, they’ve been in there for years, and they’re in a filthy, disgusting place that shouldn’t even be allowed to be open,” he said. Nearly 1,200 people either have pleaded guilty or were found guilty at trial for crimes connected to the January 6 attack, according to the Justice Department. More than 645 defendants were ordered to serve some jail time.
Trump said he would not direct his Justice Department to investigate members of Congress and Biden administration officials who led the investigations into his role in January 6, but continued to suggest his DOJ would be justified in deciding to launch investigations without his input.
When asked about the possibility of investigating special counsel Jack Smith, who brought the two since-dropped federal cases against him, Trump said he wants his pick for attorney general, Pam Bondi, to “do what she wants to do.”
“She’s very experienced. I want her to do what she wants to do. I’m not going to instruct her to do it,” he said.
Trump was more direct when speaking about the members of Congress who led the January 6 committee, telling Welker that the co-chairs of the committee — Republican Cheney, who has since left Congress, and Democrat Bennie Thompson — should “go to jail.”
“Cheney was behind it. So is Bennie Thompson and everybody on that committee,” he said. “For what they did, honestly, they should go to jail.”
Trump also suggested that committee members might do well to receive preemptive pardons from Biden to protect themselves from criminal prosecution. CNN reported last week that Biden White House aides, administration officials and prominent defense attorneys in Washington were discussing potential preemptive pardons or legal aid for people who might be targeted by Trump.
“Biden can give them a pardon if he wants to,” Trump said. “And maybe he should.”
In a statement later Sunday, Cheney said, “Donald Trump’s suggestion that members of Congress who later investigated his illegal and unconstitutional actions should be jailed is a continuation of his assault on the rule of law and the foundations of our republic.”
Republican former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who served on the committee, told CNN’s Manu Raju on Sunday he’s “not worried” about the Trump administration investigating him or his fellow committee members.
The Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause protects lawmakers from certain law enforcement actions targeted at their legislative duties.
CNN has reached out to Thompson for comment.
The problem is mostly with “political enemies.” However, it does go deeper than that. This is from Phillip Bump’s column today at the Washington Post.”Trump sees the investigators, not the rioters, as the Jan. 6 criminals. It’s not just that he seeks to avoid accountability. It’s that he hopes to invert it.” So, the criminals arrested by law officers, prosecuted in courts, and found guilty in the process by a duly appointed Judge or Jury are the law breakers here? How horrifying is that?
History will tell the story of the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in direct terms. President Donald Trump, increasingly desperate to block Joe Biden’s inauguration to replace him, summoned his supporters to Washington for a “wild” protest. Tens of thousands came, including members of violent, fringe-right groups.
As legislators convened to formalize Biden’s victory, angry throngs of Trump supporters pushed toward the building, some engaging in violent altercations with law enforcement in an effort to stop Congress from counting electoral votes. Hundreds were injured, including more than 100 police officers.
Congress tried to hold Trump accountable for his role in the riot twice, first by impeaching him — enough Republican senators sided with Trump to prevent conviction — and then by launching a high-profile investigation of his broad effort to retain power. Meanwhile, the justice system went to work arresting and imprisoning those who had engaged in the riot. Special counsel Jack Smith brought federal charges against Trump.
Pressed whether he’d direct Bondi or Kash Patel, his pick to lead the FBI, to send them to jail, Trump said, “No, not at all,” before adding, “I think they’ll have to look at that.”
Asked whether he plans to follow up on his frequent campaign promise to investigate Biden — whom he repeatedly labeled as “corrupt” and a “criminal” on the campaign trail — Trump said he doesn’t want to “go back into the past.”
“I’m really looking to make our country successful. I’m not looking to go back into the past,” he said, adding, “Retribution will be through success.”
When asked about previously saying he would direct his Justice Department to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Biden, Trump said he would not do that but left the door open for top DOJ officials to make their own determinations.
“No, I’m not doing that unless I find something that I think is reasonable,” he said. “But that’s not going to be my decision. That’s going to be Pam Bondi’s decision, and, to a different extent, Kash Patel, assuming they’re both there, and I think they’re both going to get approved.” Trump has tapped Patel to lead the FBI, despite the current director, Trump appointee Christopher Wray, still having several years left in his 10-year term.
Throughout the interview, Trump at times struck a more temperate tone toward his political opponents and appeared to prioritize uniting the country over exacting vengeance. He said he plans to make unity a central theme of his inauguration address and expressed confidence that his administration will achieve a level of success that will bring the country together.
But Trump invoked similar calls for unity at various points throughout his campaign — including in the wake of the first assassination attempt against him — before often reverting to bitter, divisive rhetoric and personal attacks. During the NBC interview, Trump again refused to concede that he lost the 2020 presidential election.
President Eject Incontinentia Buttocks rejects reality for a version that suits his malignant narcissism and purposes. The New Republic’s Greg Sargent interviews Brian Beutler about this on his PodCast. “Transcript: Trump’s Private Rage at “Traitors” Reveals Dark 2025 Plans. An interview with Brian Beutler, author of the “Off Message” Substack, who explains how Democrats can and must do more to alert the public to the dangers of a second Trump term.” Dangers, indeed.
The New York Timesreports that Donald Trump is telling advisers that his biggest regret from his first term was that he appointed “traitors.” Not traitors to the country, of course; traitors to him. As a result, his transition team is grilling prospective officials to gauge their loyalty to Trump; that is, loyalty to the person. Is there some way for Democrats to explain how absurd and dangerous all this is in a manner that gets through to the public? We’re talking about this today with Brian Beutler, author of the excellent Substack Off Message, who’s been arguing that Dems need to get more aggressive with their communications about all this right now before Trump takes office. Thanks for coming back on, Brian.
Brian Beutler: It’s always good to be with you.
Sargent: The New York Times reports that he’s privately telling advisors that his biggest first-term regret was appointing traitors. Importantly, traitors are those who came to see Trump accurately as a threat to the system: Chief of Staff John Kelly, Defense Secretaries Jim Madison, Mark Esper, and even Attorney General William Barr, who was relentlessly loyal up to the very last minute. That’s his regret, appointing people who describe the threat he poses accurately. Brian, in some sense, this isn’t a surprise, but it’s rarely reported quite this clearly. Your thoughts?
Beutler: It’s inauspicious. And it probably portends some conflict between him and the Senate insofar as the people that he’s vetting are going to be appointed to positions that require Senate confirmation. That’s because, as I understand, the loyalty test as reported in the article is not just, Do you support Donald Trump? Do you support the MAGA movement? Do you support its policy goals?—it’s really, Do you believe Donald Trump won or lost the 2020 election? If they acknowledge the truth that he lost, they’re out, they’re not going to get the nomination.
And similarly, with questions like, Do you think January 6 was good or bad? Do you think it was something that Donald Trump is responsible for? Are these patriots or are they insurrectionists?, if you answer that the wrong way, you’re not getting the job. And insofar as anyone who answers the way Trump wants them to answer has to go before the Senate. Well, it’s going to raise questions for both Democrats and Republicans in different ways.
Democrats are going to have to decide whether those are red lines for them that they won’t cross. If Trump finds somebody who’s qualified as in their resume is good, that they’re credentialed to do the job he’s appointed them to, but they’re also supportive of the Big Lie or they think that the insurrection was OK, will Democrats look past that to say, Well, at least you’ll know how to do the job that you’re being appointed to do? I would like Democrats to say there will be zero Democratic votes for any nominees who take that loyalty test. And if they do that, then it will fall to Republicans.
Are 50 out of 53 Republican senators willing to take that vote? An ancillary benefit of Democrats drawing a hard line here is that’ll be really tough for them because there are still at least a handful of Senate Republicans who don’t support the Big Lie, who won’t repeat it, and who think the people who peddle it are real threats to democracy. Then we’ll find out whether they just decided, You know what, Trump won, so it’s revisionist history all the way down now.
Sargent: His use of the term traitors in his conversations with his advisors, which shows that he’s still seething with anger about those who refuse to go along with his rewritten history: This is one of the keys to understanding what he really intends with current picks like Pete Hegseth as defense secretary, Kash Patel as FBI director, and Pam Bondi as attorney general. It won’t be that hard for all Democrats to oppose Pete Hegseth and Kash Patel, but I’m not sure all Democrats will oppose Pam Bondi.
We do have precedent for politicizing the FBI. I remember all of this very well, as well as the entire setup with AG John Mitchell. I had thought laws were put into place to prevent this from happening again. I also was aware that many Republicans at the time thought those laws went too far. Aaron Rupar and Thor Bensure, writing for Public Notice, share this headline. “The J. Edgar Hoover precedent for weaponizing the FBI. “Yes, we could have a repeat of that,” Frank Figliuzzi tells us.”
After serving in the FBI for more than two decades, in 2011 Frank Figliuzzi became the assistant director of the FBI’s counterintelligence division, where he worked alongside FBI Director Robert Mueller. Suffice it to say he saw a lot in his career.
So it should be taken seriously that Figliuzzi, now an MSNBC senior national security and intelligence analyst, describes Trump’s picks to run what are sometimes referred to as the power ministries — among them the DOJ (including the FBI) and the defense department — as a “hijacking of the entire national security structure.”
“My chief concern is this single characteristic that seems to run through these nominees — blind allegiance to Donald Trump,” Figliuzzi told us.
We recently connected with Figliuzzi to get his insight on Trump’s picks and what they signal about how the federal government will operate over the next four years. He warned that “we could be heading toward tremendous abuses of power, with the FBI going after Trump’s political enemies.” And he noted that a previous FBI director provided the president-elect and his choice to run the bureau, Kash Patel, with a blueprint.
Benson interviewed Figluzzi. It went like this.
Thor Benson
As someone who’s focused on national security and has a background there, what are your top concerns with Trump’s choices for national security roles?
Frank Figliuzzi
Sadly, we’ll have to rank order them.
It’s not just that many of Trump’s nominees are remarkably unqualified for the jobs, and they are — from the DNI pick with Tulsi Gabbard to the DHS with Kristi Noem to Hegseth at DOD and now Kash Patel. But the lack of competence is not my chief concern anymore.
My chief concern is this single characteristic that seems to run through these nominees — blind allegiance to Donald Trump. Yes, there are national security issues with someone like Gabbard or Hegseth — I say national security with Hegseth, particularly, because similar to the concerns about Matt Gaetz, we don’t know what we don’t know. Is there more coming with Hegseth? Is it extortion and blackmail?
He’s already written a check to a woman in California. What else do we not know about? According to the latest reporting, he appears to have an alcohol problem. He’s had to physically be carried out of events he attended because he was drunk. That’s not good with someone who’s running things at the Pentagon. Are there more women and incidents out there? According to the New Yorker, he also yells “kill all the Muslims” when he gets drunk.
Out of all of the nominees, Kash Patel lacks the capacity to have his own independent thoughts and ideology. His record is replete with nothing but kissing Trump’s ass. That’s it. You don’t have to take my word for it. Look at his public statements about persecuting the “deep state,” prosecutors, the media, for christ’s sake. Combine that with Pam Bondi’s almost identical comments, and we’ve now got a Trump hijacking of the entire national security structure.
Thor Benson
So where does that take us?
Frank Figliuzzi
Well, we could be heading toward tremendous abuses of power, with the FBI going after Trump’s political enemies.
So, my hair is on fire again, although it never really goes out, to be honest. There are warning signs all over the place, and only a small segment of the American populace appears to be aware of all of this. You can read Figliuzzi’s discussion of Nixon’s tricks at the link. The other headline grabber today is how a set of unelected and affirmed idiot billionaires will be going after our Social Security. This is from Truth Out. “DOGE Heads Musk and Ramaswamy Signal Social Security Cuts Are Coming. Trump vowed to “not cut one penny” from Social Security, but his other statements and actions suggest that he plans to.” Chris Walker has the lede and the story.
On Sunday, president-elect Donald Trump sought to assuage concerns that he will make cuts to Social Security and other safety net programs after Republicans signaled last week that Social Security could be targeted by Trump’s “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) initiative, managed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.
Asked by host Kristen Welker on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program whether the DOGE initiative would include cuts to Social Security, Trump said “no,” other than perhaps cuts related to allegations of “abuse” or “fraud” associated with the program.
“We’re not touching Social Security, other than — we might make it more efficient,” Trump said about the national insurance program that helps retirees, disabled people, widowers and children of deceased parents. “But the people are going to get what they get.”
“We’re not raising ages or any of that stuff,” he added.
Trump’s comments echo talking points from his “Agenda 47” platform during his presidential campaign, which stated that he would “not cut one penny from Medicare or Social Security.” However, he and his allies have repeatedly suggested that cuts to both programs are possible.
Musk and Ramaswamy have made it evident that cuts to Social Security will be considered. After the two met with Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill last week about the DOGE initiative, House Majority Leader Rep. Steve Scalise (R-Louisiana) said they had expressed sentiments that contradicted Trump’s comments on Sunday.
“Nothing is sacrosanct. Nothing. They’re going to put everything on the table,” Scalise told reporters after the meeting, with Fox Business elaborating that cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid would be discussed.
In September, when the idea of DOGE was first being discussed, vice president-elect J.D. Vance also indicated that there could be cuts to Social Security. A DOGE-type commission is “going to look much different in, say, the Department of Defense versus Social Security,” Vance said during a podcast interview, insinuating that cuts were going to be considered for the latter agency.
In March, Trump himself said that cuts to the program were a possibility.
“There is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements — in terms of cutting — and in terms of also the theft and the bad management of entitlements,” Trump said in a statement starkly different from his comments over the past weekend.
Perhaps most importantly, Trump attempted to make drastic cuts to Social Security and other programs in his first term as president. In one of his later proposed budgets (which didn’t go on to pass in the then-Democratic-controlled Congress), the president-elect sought to cut Social Security by $25 billion — despite promising in the 2016 presidential campaign that he wouldn’t make any cuts to the agency, just as he promised this last election cycle.
Nothing is Sacred in Trumplandia except Trump and his money. You can read more about the proposed cuts at these links.
Lara Trump is stepping down as co-chair of the Republican National Committee, a role she has held since March, as some of Donald Trump’s allies continue to push for her to replace Florida Sen. Marco Rubio on Capitol Hill.
In announcing her resignation on X, Lara Trump, who is the president-elect’s daughter-in-law, said “the job I came to do is now complete,” touting the RNC’s fundraising records, election integrity efforts and voter turnout.
She’s expressed openness to replacing Rubio, the president-elect’s pick to be secretary of State, in the Senate, telling The Associated Press it’s a role she “would seriously consider.”
“If I’m being completely transparent, I don’t know exactly what that would look like,” she told the AP in an article published Sunday. “And I certainly want to get all of the information possible if that is something that’s real for me. But yeah, I would 100% consider it.”
Among those supporting her as a potential Rubio replacement is billionaire Elon Musk, a close ally of the incoming president, and his mother, Maye Musk.
When did all these tacky people get a say in stuff like this? The Trump Boys will be in charge of the Merch and Grift Wing of the White House while the Kushners milk what they can from the State Department and foreign nations. We are definitely headed to a Nepocracy. Just watch out for that Douche Commission headed by First Lady Elonia and DIE hire Vivek.
What’s on your reading and blogging list?
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We live in a Thugocracy these days. I have a series of headlines that should not be normal headlines for any news items applying to the United States of America. This includes a federal judge giving a rich white guy a pass on a career of selling out his country to the Russians for incredible sums of money. People that smoke and sell small bags of weed have done more time for that crime than Paul Manafort will for the absolute malice with which he treated the elections and the people of our country. Of course, he’s white, he’s rich, and he just bilked us out of money and freedom. It wasn’t like he lifted a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter from a convenience store to feed himself. If he were caught doing that while black he likely would’ve been shot dead.
In an otherwise blameless life, he worked to keep arms flowing to the Angolan generalissimo Jonas Savimbi, a monstrous leader bankrolled by the apartheid government in South Africa. While Manafort helped portray his client as an anti-communist “freedom fighter,” Savimbi’s army planted millions of land mines in peasant fields, resulting in 15,000 amputees.
In an otherwise blameless life, Manafort was kicked out of the lobbying firm he co-founded, accused of inflating his expenses and cutting his partners out of deal
In an otherwise blameless life, he spent a decade as the chief political adviser to a clique of former gangsters in Ukraine. This clique hoped to capture control of the state so that it could enrich itself with government contracts and privatization agreements. This was a group closely allied with the Kremlin, and Manafort masterminded its rise to power—thereby enabling Ukraine’s slide into Vladimir Putin’s orbit.
In an otherwise blameless life, Manafort came to adopt the lifestyle and corrupt practices of his Ukrainian clients as his own.
In an otherwise blameless life, he produced a public-relations campaign to convince Washington that Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was acting within his democratic rights and duties when he imprisoned his most compelling rival for power.
In an otherwise blameless life, he stood mute as Yanukovych’s police killed 130 protesters in the Maidan.
In an otherwise blameless life, he found himself nearly $20 million in debt to a Russian oligarch. Instead of honestly accounting for the money, he simply stopped responding to the oligarch’s messages.
In an otherwise blameless life, he tried to use his perch atop the Trump campaign to help salvage his sorry financial situation. He installed one of his protégés as the head of the pro-Trump super PAC Rebuilding America. His friend allegedly funneled $125,000 from the super PAC to pay off one of Manafort’s nagging debts.
There’s more on this list at the link. And there are more “this isn’t normal” headlines in every paper. Let’s sample a few.
The list includes 10 journalists, seven of them U.S. citizens, a U.S.-based attorney and others labeled as organizers and “instigators,” 31 of whom are American.
The Homeland Security Committee, led by Rep. Bennie Thompson, D.-Miss., asked CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan to provide a copy of the list with the 59 names, a copy of any dossiers on the individuals, an explanation of why each person was included on the list, an account of who had been stopped for screening and an account of any cell phone seizures.
“The appearance that CBP is targeting journalists, lawyers, and advocates, and particularly those who work on immigration matters or report on border and immigration issues, raises questions about possible misuse of CBP’s border search authority and requires oversight to ensure the protection of Americans’ legal and constitutional rights,” the letter said.
CBP said Thursday the DHS Inspector General is investigating the list. CBP is part of DHS.
The white nationalist group Identity Evropa is so cozy with the Republican Party that members led their College Republican clubs and campaigned in support of GOP congressional candidates.
At least one Identity Evropa fan, who is not a member of the group, attended CPAC last weekend where he demanded an autograph from a leftist podcaster who, tripping on acid, signed the book “eat shit.”
Identity Evropa is a fascist organization. Its members have been involved in violent street brawls, including 2017’s deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. While other white supremacist organizations imploded after the rally, Identity Evropa attempted to cast aside the alt-right’s tarnished image and rebrand as a “clean-cut” organization. The makeover was an attempt to appeal to the mainstream Republican Party, according to chat logs released Wednesday by the media collective Unicorn Riot.
But despite its new face, the group stayed true to its fascist heart, the leaked conversations reveal.
From a White House source, the House Oversight Committee has obtained documents related to Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump’s security clearances that the Trump administration refused to provide, according to a senior Democratic aide involved in handling the documents.
Why it matters: The Trump administration’s problems with leaks will now benefit Congress, making it harder for the White House to withhold information from Democratic investigators.
The news: The White House this week rejected the committee’s request for documents on the process for granting security clearances to staffers.
The twist: But the House Oversight Committee in early February had already obtained the leaked documents that detail the entire process, from the spring of 2017 to the spring of 2018, on how both Kushner and Trump were ultimately granted their security clearances.
The senior Democratic aide who was involved in handling the documents told Axios that two staffers on the Oversight Committee said the documents are “part of the puzzle that we would be asking for” from the White House, “so we appreciate having this upfront.”
Seated at a round table littered with party favors and the paper-cutout footballs that have become tradition at his annual Super Bowl Watch Party, President Donald Trump cheered the New England Patriots and his longtime friend, team owner Robert Kraft, to victory over the Los Angeles Rams on Feb. 3.
Sometime during the party at Trump’s West Palm Beach country club, the president turned in his chair to look over his right shoulder, smiling for a photo with two women at a table behind him.
The woman who snapped the blurry Super Bowl selfie with the president was Li Yang, 45, a self-made entrepreneur from China who started a chain of Asian day spas in South Florida. Over the years, these establishments — many of which operate under the name Tokyo Day Spas — have gained a reputation for offering sexual services.
Nineteen days after Trump and Yang posed together while rooting for the Patriots, authorities would charge Kraft with soliciting prostitution at a spa in Jupiter that Yang had founded more than a decade earlier.
The Administration, of course, never formally announced that it was killing off the White House press briefing—that would have caused too great an outcry. But that is nonetheless what it has done, as Trump himself admitted in a January tweet, saying that “the reason Sarah Sanders does not go to the ‘podium’ much anymore is that the press covers her so rudely & inaccurately.” The last official briefing by Sanders was on January 28th; it was the first such briefing in forty-one days. All told, there was one press briefing in November, one in December, two in January, and none at all in February, or, so far, in March. This is not just a White House policy. The State Department, which used to give a near-daily press briefing that was considered significant by journalists from around the world, had six “department press briefings” briefings in November, two in December, none in January, two in February, and one so far in March.
This is not how it should work in a democracy, and there is no explanation other than a bad one for why this is happening. The Administration’s elimination of regular on-the-record press briefings is part of a broader war on truth and transparency by a President who will go down as the most publicly mendacious American leader we’ve yet had. (Trump’s epic speech at cpac over the weekend was both the longest and, according to the Washington Post Fact Checker, the most untruthful of his tenure, clocking in at more than two hours and approximately a hundred lies, misstatements, and falsehoods.)
That highlighted sentence part is one I keep repeating daily right after I say “What Fresh Hell is this?” “This is not how it should work in a democracy …”
In news related to the disappearance of the White House Briefing we now have the disappearance of Bill Shine who is the ex Fox Executive acting as the de facto White House Communications Director. We got a really nice bunch of background on Shine in Jane Mayer’s article at the beginning of the week. This is from CNN.
Shine, a former Fox News executive, joined the White House in July 2018, the sixth person to fill or be tapped for the top communications role. Jason Miller, Sean Spicer, Mike Dubke, Anthony Scaramucci and Hope Hicks all came before him.
He offered his resignation to President Donald Trump on Thursday but was spotted on the White House South Lawn on Friday ahead of the President’s trip to Alabama. He will be joining the 2020 re-election campaign as a senior adviser.
“Serving President Trump and this country has been the most rewarding experience of my entire life. To be a small part of all this President has done for the American people has truly been an honor. I’m looking forward to working on President Trump’s re-election campaign and spending more time with my family,” Shine said in a statement.
Shine has been shuttled over to the Trump version of CREEP to probably wine and dine Fox news so it can continue to act as a State propaganda outlet for Trump. The Why is not known but Fox lost any right to a Democratic Campaign debate over the news.
I seriously can’t take much more of this. We’ve just devolved into a Banana Republic so quickly that I feel we should all be wearing Panama hats and smoking cigars while we wait in our bread lines.
Everyone's best day with Donald Trump is their first one, and then the countdown clock immediately begins on their tenure with him. Bill Shine is latest example.He's being kept on campaign as what two people called a face-saving move. @peterbakernyt and me https://t.co/BaWoB3NGoc
So, what’s on your reading and blogging list today? I’m hoping for some better results from Manafort in the DC court which is U.S. District CourtJudge Amy Berman to whom I dedicate all these beautiful tarot card illustrations of justice. Come on Mueller! Come on Amy!! Come on Democratic Congressional Hearings! Who will rid us of these meddlesome kleptocrats?
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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.
This is from
There’s already some discussion about the HB-1 VISAs supported by Trump’s buddy, the equally vile Elon Musk, who, by Trump’s standards, should be in line to be deported, Bannon has picked a fight with him over the issue, and it’s as bugfuck ugly as the two of them are physically. This is from 
I do not know how so many privileged old white men can be so outraged about everything. All this is going on as Pete Hegseth’s hearings happen tomorrow. This is from the falling apart at the seams 
Is this the man you want commanding armed troops on your neighborhood streets if Trump gets his way? Trump has started backtracking on ending the Ukraine Invasion by Russia by giving a lot of it away to Putin. This is from 
In just 7 days, the clown car returns. We’ve seen a slight shuffle in some of the folks we’ve received news from. Jennifer Ruben announced she’s left WAPO and will be writing at 
This bit popped up over the weekend and is disturbing. 
Just so you know, future FBI Director Kash Patel is still making the rounds in the Senate Building. “Kash Patel Believes the FBI Planned Jan. 6th. His embrace of this wild conspiracy theory should disqualify him from leading the bureau.” This is from 
ProPublica
The last thing I want to post about is the Washington Post. 
I’ve been a bit on the gratuitous Buddhism-sharing thing today, which I try not to overdo, but this quote from 
And, unfortunately, we have the antithesis to her and the people she worked with and for today. This is from Mark Jacob’s writing on his blog 
The little tomboy girl I was who wanted to do everything boys do and do it better is still in me. Not backing down. Nope. Not gonna do it. Wouldn’t be prudent at this juncture. This is from Lisa Needham at 
So, since I seem to be going all economist on you these days, let me just say that I love Paul Krugman’s substack. I’m glad he left the New York Times, even though he really didn’t state a reason other than it was time. Here’s today’s offering at 
You may take the Good Doctor’s Monetary Theory lecture at the link. I can’t believe Milton Friedman would have anything positive to say about this development at all. He wrote the book on money and was awarded a Nobel Prize in Economics. And I also am having a huge hissy over the potential targeting of the FDIC. I worked in banking. I’ve worked for the Fed. This is my bailiwick. My daughter, the finance guru, didn’t fall for crypto, so I must have done something right. Don’t fall for this, either! 
I cannot see Senator Elizabeth Warren being quiet about any of this. However, the ink of the press is focused on the man with the most responsibility for this mess. Senator Mitch McConnell is objecting a lot now that he’s an ineffective backbencher. Look, he doesn’t like Polio! He wants the vaccine still! Look, he’s got something to say about how wonderful the Bush years were because we tried and failed to bomb “American Exceptionalism” into the Middle East, but it’s good policy!. But just because we know better doesn’t mean Legacy Media does. 
Let me share a few headlines that are giving me some severe heartburn. 
The problem is mostly with “political enemies.” However, it does go deeper than that. This is from Phillip Bump’s column today at the 
President Eject Incontinentia Buttocks rejects reality for a version that suits his malignant narcissism and purposes. 
We do have precedent for politicizing the FBI. I remember all of this very well, as well as the entire setup with AG John Mitchell. I had thought laws were put into place to prevent this from happening again. I also was aware that many Republicans at the time thought those laws went too far. Aaron Rupar and Thor Bensure, writing for 
So, my hair is on fire again, although it never really goes out, to be honest. There are warning signs all over the place, and only a small segment of the American populace appears to be aware of all of this. You can read Figliuzzi’s discussion of Nixon’s tricks at the link. The other headline grabber today is how a set of unelected and affirmed idiot billionaires will be going after our Social Security. This is from
Nothing is Sacred in Trumplandia except Trump and his money. You can read more about the proposed cuts at these links.
And, in the latest from Corruption and Kleptocracy Central, we have this headline in
It’s Mueller Friday!
More on this story that BB covered yesterday: 
From Axios: “
And we got more folks …
From The New Yorker today and Susan B. Glasser: “The “Enemies of the People” Have a Few Questions for the President. The White House press briefing is dead.
In news related to the disappearance of the White House Briefing we now have the disappearance of Bill Shine who is the ex Fox Executive acting as the de facto White House Communications Director. We got a really nice bunch of 
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