Lazy Caturday Reads

Posted: December 14, 2024 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: cat art, caturday, just because | Tags: Chris Wray, Democrats, Donald Trump, FBI, Kash Patel, media, news, politics, Robert Kennedy Jr., Tech Bros | 6 Comments

Good Afternoon!!

‘Louisa Cat Sleeps Late (1929) from the’ The Fairy Caravan, Beatrix Potter

We have just 37 days until Trump takes over the presidency. How bad will it get? Probably much worse than we can begin to imagine right now.

Lots of rich and powerful people are obviously scared to death, because they are obeying in advance. Chris Wray is quitting as FBI director, paving the way for Trump sycophant Kash Patel, who wants to completely shut down the FBI’s intelligence division. Tech bros are donating to the Inauguration fund.

Even some Democrats are indicating openness to some of Trump’s insane appointments. Are any Democrats planning to fight back? I hope so, but it’s not clear right now.

Here’s the latest:

The New York Times: In Display of Fealty, Tech Industry Curries Favor With Trump.

The $1 million donations came gradually — and then all at once.

Meta. Amazon. OpenAI’s Sam Altman. Each of these Silicon Valley companies or their leaders promised to support President-elect Donald J. Trump’s inaugural committee with seven-figure checks over the past week, often accompanied by a pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago to bend the knee.

The procession of tech leaders who traveled to hobnob with Mr. Trump face-to-face included Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, and Sergey Brin, a Google founder, who together dined with Mr. Trump on Thursday. Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, shared a meal with Mr. Trump on Friday. And Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, planned to meet with Mr. Trump in the next few days.

This was the week when many tech companies and their top executives, as reluctant as they may have been, acknowledged the reality of getting business done in Mr. Trump’s Washington. With their donations, visits and comments, they joined a party that has already raged for a month, as a cohort of influential Silicon Valley billionaires, led by Elon Musk, began running parts of Mr. Trump’s transition after endorsing him in the campaign.

While businesses frequently try to get on an incoming president’s good side, the frenzy of tech activity stood out from other industries. Until President Obama’s administration, the tech industry had largely stayed aloof from politics. Some wrote just small checks for Mr. Trump’s first inauguration.

Now the bread-breaking with Mr. Trump has become highly public. Meta and Amazon, whose founders had previously been criticized by Mr. Trump, said they would donate $1 million to Mr. Trump’s inaugural fund this week. Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, the high-profile artificial intelligence start-up, said on Friday that a $1 million donation to Mr. Trump’s inaugural fund would come from him personally.

“President Trump will lead our country into the age of A.I., and I am eager to support his efforts to ensure America stays ahead,” Mr. Altman said in a statement.

Nonprofit contributions to inaugural committees, which host patriotic-themed events around Jan. 20, are low-stakes, timeworn ways for companies to seek favor under the guise of patriotism without being pegged as overly partisan actors.

Other tech leaders have also praised Mr. Trump. Marc Benioff, the chief executive of Salesforce and the owner of Time Magazine, posted on X on Thursday that it was “a time of great promise for our nation,” after Time awarded Mr. Trump its coveted “Person of the Year” designation.

Now Apple has joined the crowd of suck-ups. Only Microsoft is holding out.

The Hill: Apple CEO visits Mar-a-Lago, joining list of tech execs seemingly courting Trump.

Apple CEO Tim Cook visited Mar-a-Lago on Friday, joining a growing list of tech executives that are seemingly courting President-elect Trump ahead of his return to the White House.

The president-elect and Cook had dinner at Trump’s Florida resort in West Palm Beach, multiple outlets reported. The meeting marked their first interaction since their call two months ago….

Mother Cat and Kittens, Beatrix Potter

The president-elect said in mid-October during his appearance on Patrick Bet-David’s podcast that the Apple executive talked to him about fines the European Union imposed on the company.

“Then two hours ago, three hours ago, he called me,” Trump said. “He said, ‘I’d like to talk to you about something.’ ‘What?’ He said, ‘The European Union has just fined us $15 billion.’ That’s a lot.” [….]

Cook was one of the many tech leaders to congratulate Trump on his win over Vice President Harris in last month’s contest.

“We look forward to engaging with you and your administration to help make sure the United States continues to lead with and be fueled by ingenuity, innovation, and creativity,” he wrote in a post on social platform X.

I imagine a hefty donation will be forthcoming.

Media owners are also caving to Trump in advance. Jeff Bezos ordered the Washington Post not to publish a planned endorsement of Kamala Harris. L.A. Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong did the same thing. Now Soon-Shiong has gone further.

The Independent: LA Times billionaire owner killed op-ed that was critical of Trump’s cabinet picks, report says.

Los Angeles Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong killed an opinion column that was critical of President-elect Donald Trump’s recent Cabinet picks, telling his paper’s editorial board that it could only publish the piece if it also ran an editorial with an opposing view, according to The New York Times.

The spiked column was set to be published in the outlet’s Sunday newspaper and website on November 24. Soon-Shiong intervened just hours before the op-ed was scheduled to be sent to the printer, prompting the editors to pull the piece as the deadline approached.

According to the NY Times, the column was headlined: “Donald Trump’s cabinet choices are not normal. The Senate’s confirmation process should be.” The editorial board decided that after the incoming president had announced a slew of controversial picks, many of which the board members were concerned about, it would have one of its writers pen a piece calling on the Senate to take its job of confirming nominees seriously.

“In addition to saying that the Senate should follow its traditional process, the editorial criticized several of Mr. Trump’s picks as being unfit for their proposed roles, including former Fox News host Pete Hegseth and former presidential contender Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,” The New York Times noted.

After Soon-Shiong’s intervention led to the editorial being pulled, the paper’s editors scrambled to find another column to fill the suddenly open slot. Ultimately, they decided on an already written piece by outgoing editorial board member Karin Klein that took a more sympathetic stance on Trump. That column was headlined, “Trump has a chance to be a true education president.”

CNN’s Reliable Sources reported on Friday morning that besides Soon-Shiong spiking the editorial, several recent opinion section headlines were also “softened” or “made more bland” by editors concerned that “anything too harsh would get rejected” by the billionaire owner. “For the most part, we’re now just writing about state and local issues,” a source told CNN.

What about the Democrats? I could find only one story about Democrats pushing back slightly. Axios: Inside Democrats’ emerging Trump inauguration boycott.

More than a dozen congressional Democrats plan to sit out President-elect Trump’s inauguration, and many more are anxiously grappling with whether to attend, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: Not every Democrat skipping the ceremony will do so to protest Trump — but a formal boycott is materializing as a first act of resistance against the incoming president.

Tabitha Twichit, Beatrix Potter

For many Democrats, the scars of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol remain fresh in the mind, marking Trump as a threat to democracy.
“For somebody who he said he’s going to lock me up, I don’t see the excitement in going to see his inauguration,” former Jan. 6 committee chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) told Axios.

State of play: Martin Luther King Jr. Day coinciding with the Jan. 20 inaugural ceremony gives many Democrats an easy out, though others planning to stay away cited a distaste for inaugurations, a loathing of Trump — and even fears for their safety.

Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) said that as a Latina, she doesn’t “feel safe coming” with Trump’s supporters pouring in for the ceremony. “I’m not going to physically be in D.C. on that day,” she told Axios.

Similarly, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) said that attending MLK Day events instead “makes sense, because why risk any chaos that might be up here?”

For other members, the reasoning is more mundane: Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) “almost never attends inaugurations” and has only been to two during his 28 years in office, his spokesperson told Axios.

The latest on Trump appointments:

Last week, Robert Kennedy, Jr. and Kash Patel began visiting Senators to push for their nominations to be approved.

On Kennedy, after yesterday, Senators will need to think carefully about how they feel about vaccines to prevent childhood diseases. Yesterday, Dakinikat posted about a top adviser to Kennedy who wants to get reverse approval for the polio vaccine.

Philip Bump at The Washington Post: When depicting the government as bad is more important than stopping polio.

When debates over the efficacy of vaccines emerge, as they increasingly do, there is a go-to example offered: the response to polio in the mid-20th century.

From 1910 to 1950, more than 376,000 Americans were afflicted with polio, with nearly 49,000 dying from the paralyzing disease. Then, in 1955, the polio vaccine was announced and approved. From 1956 to 1970, there were about 41,200 infections and about 2,000 deaths. From 1971 to 2000, 287 cases and 102 deaths. Since then? Essentially nothing at all.

This is why polio is such a good example. There was a lot of polio, with 1 out of every 2,700 Americans infected in 1952. Then there was a vaccine, and now there’s hardly any polio at all. So little, in fact, that one case that was identified in New York in 2022 earned national news headlines.

Despite the data, even the polio vaccine has not escaped the ire of the anti-vaccine movement. In 2022, a lawyer named Aaron Siri filed a citizen petition with the U.S. government seeking to block distribution of the polio vaccine for children until “a properly controlled and properly powered double-blind trial of sufficient duration is conducted to assess the safety of this product,” the New York Times reported Friday. It was one of more than a dozen vaccines Siri sought to block.

Siri, as you probably guessed, is also a longtime adviser to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald Trump’s selection to run the Department of Health and Human Services. In fact, the Times reports, Siri has been aiding Kennedy as he vets potential administration staffers.

Kennedy himself has been similarly critical of vaccines, making debunked claims about vaccine safety and pushing for restrictions on their use. He has been a prominent member of the anti-vaccine community for years but generally offered his views from the political sidelines.

Kennedy’s views are a mishmash of they’re-wrong-and-I’m-right assertions that span the gamut of credibility offered under the appealing banner of “making America healthy.” But the mishmash means that a lot of obviously dubious stuff gets mixed in with the valid stuff. The valid stuff includes Americans’ eating habits, which are obviously not great. The dubious stuff includes his embrace of the idea that airplane condensation trails are something worthy of concern. And vaccines, thanks to the pandemic and thanks to the long-standing anti-vaccine movement, are a valid element of public health that he presents as dubious.

Samuel Whiskers, Betrix Potter

In the early 1950’s, I was in elementary school in Lawrence, Kansas. My school was included in the pilot program for the Salk (polio) vaccine. One of my friends in the first grade had gotten polio and had to wear leg braces. This disease in no joke. I’m very grateful to have gotten that vaccine in early childhood. I had other childhood diseases–mumps, measles, German measles–before vaccines were available. I never had chicken pox. I think it’s possible that my hearing problem–which was first diagnosed in my early 30s–developed because of mumps or measles.

Apoorva Mandavilli at The New York Times: Are Childhood Vaccines ‘Overloading’ the Immune System? No.

It’s an idea as popular as it is incorrect: American babies now receive too many vaccines, which overwhelm their immune systems and lead to conditions like autism.

This theory has been repeated so often that it has permeated the mainstream, echoed by President-elect Donald J. Trump and his pick to be the nation’s top health official, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

“When you feed a baby, Bobby, a vaccination that is, like, 38 different vaccines and it looks like it’s been for a horse, not a, you know, 10-pound or 20-pound baby,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Kennedy on a call in July. “And then you see the baby all of a sudden starting to change radically — I’ve seen it too many times.”

On Sunday, Mr. Trump returned to the theme, saying Mr. Kennedy would investigate whether childhood vaccines caused autism, even though dozens of rigorous studies have already explored and dismissed that theory.

“I think somebody has to find out,” Mr. Trump said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

But the idea that today’s vaccines are overtaxing children’s immune systems is fundamentally flawed, experts said. Vaccines today are cleaner and more efficient, and they contain far fewer stimulants to the immune system — by orders of magnitude — than they did decades ago.

What’s more, the immune reactions produced by vaccines are “minuscule” compared with those that children experience on a daily basis, said Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, a pediatrician at Stanford University who advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccines.

Sorry to be judgmental, but Trump is a complete idiot, and so are the people who elected him.

Children harbor trillions of bacteria, more than the number of their own cells, and encounter pathogens everywhere — from caregivers and playmates; in kitchens, bathrooms and playgrounds; on toys, towels and sponges.

“That’s just the normal course of growing up, is to have fevers and develop immunity to all of the organisms that are in the environment around you,” Dr. Maldonado said. “We are built to withstand that.”

By Beatrix Potter

A vaccine’s power comes from the so-called antigens it contains — bits of a pathogen, often proteins, that elicit an immune reaction in the body.

Children harbor trillions of bacteria, more than the number of their own cells, and encounter pathogens everywhere — from caregivers and playmates; in kitchens, bathrooms and playgrounds; on toys, towels and sponges.

“That’s just the normal course of growing up, is to have fevers and develop immunity to all of the organisms that are in the environment around you,” Dr. Maldonado said. “We are built to withstand that.”

A vaccine’s power comes from the so-called antigens it contains — bits of a pathogen, often proteins, that elicit an immune reaction in the body.

For once, Mitch McConnell is the good guy in this fight, because he is a polio survivor. The New York Times: McConnell Defends Polio Vaccine, an Apparent Warning to Kennedy.

Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader and a survivor of polio, issued a pointed statement in support of the polio vaccine on Friday, hours after The New York Times reported that the lawyer for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has petitioned federal regulators to withdraw the vaccine from the market.

Without naming Mr. Kennedy, Mr. McConnell suggested that the petition could jeopardize his confirmation to be health secretary in the incoming Trump administration.

“Efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed — they’re dangerous,” said Mr. McConnell, who is stepping down as his party’s Senate leader next month but could remain a pivotal vote in Mr. Kennedy’s confirmation. “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.”

Mr. Kennedy has said he does not want to take away anyone’s vaccines. His lawyer, Aaron Siri, filed the petition in 2022 on behalf of the Informed Consent Action Network, a nonprofit run by Mr. Kennedy’s former communications director. Mr. Siri is advising Mr. Kennedy as he vets candidates for the Department of Health and Human Services.

Mr. McConnell, 82, of Kentucky, contracted polio as a child, more than a decade before the vaccine became widely available. When his left leg was paralyzed, his mother took him for treatment in Warm Springs, Ga., at the same treatment center frequented by another famous polio survivor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

On Kash Patel’s nomination for FBI director:

The New York Times: Patel Distorts Justice Dept. Benghazi Inquiry, Inflating His Role.

Kash Patel, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick to be F.B.I. director, often burnishes his credentials as a former prosecutor even as he portrays law enforcement agencies as an inept and politicized “deep state.” A critical piece of that narrative is the investigation into the 2012 attack on a diplomatic compound and a C.I.A. annex in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans.

Mr. Patel, who worked at the Justice Department from early 2014 to 2017, was involved in that inquiry. He described it in his 2023 memoir, “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy,” and in a conversation on a September podcast of “The Shawn Ryan Show.”

Three Little Kittens, Beatrix Potter

But he has both exaggerated his own importance and misleadingly distorted the department’s broader effort, according to public documents and interviews with several current and former law enforcement officials familiar with the matter. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

“By the time the D.O.J. was moving in full force to compile evidence and bring prosecutions against the Benghazi terrorists, I was leading the prosecution’s efforts at Main Justice in Washington, D.C.”
— “Government Gangsters”

“I was the main Justice lead prosecutor for Benghazi for awhile.”
— “The Shawn Ryan Show”

Mr. Patel has repeatedly made it sound as if he led the government’s overall effort to investigate and prosecute militants involved in the 2012 attack.

As Mr. Patel himself acknowledges, he worked at the department’s Washington headquarters, or “Main Justice,” and he did not remain for the duration of the investigation.

In fact, Mr. Patel, a former public defender, was a prosecutor in the department’s counterterrorism section, where his assignments included work on the Benghazi investigation. But the section only supported the investigation, which was run by a team of prosecutors at the office of the U.S. attorney in the District of Columbia, along with agents and analysts at the F.B.I.

Mr. Patel took a junior position in the counterterrorism section in late January 2014 — well after the Benghazi investigation started. He left the department in April 2017, about six months before the first Benghazi case went to trial.

A spokesman for the Trump transition did not say for how much of that period he was working on the Benghazi investigation. But Mr. Patel was responsible for handling the section’s contribution to the interagency effort for only part of his time there, the officials familiar with the matter said.

Haley Fuchs at Politico: Assessing Patel’s confirmation chances.

Trump loyalist Kash Patel’s chances to become the head of the FBI are looking better and better.

This week, Patel held meetings with 17 Republican senators, including Utah Sen.-elect John Curtis, around Capitol Hill, many of whom publicly indicated their support for his nomination. The resignation of his would-be predecessor Christopher Wray also smoothed the path for the president-elect’s pick to helm the agency after his confirmation, and Trump world is confident in the road forward.

Asked in the Capitol Hill hallways about Wray’s decision, Patel promised he would “be ready to go on Day One.”

But the Trump transition was prepared for more pushback, as the initial outlook on the nomination was murky. Patel has been known to spout conspiracies about the 2020 election, pushed supplements that he claimed could reverse the Covid-19 vaccine, and suggested he may prosecute journalists. Trump’s former Attorney General Bill Barr reportedly once said Patel would become deputy FBI director “over my dead body.” Patel has suggested he would shut down the FBI headquarters to create a “museum of the deep state” and promised to target political opponents.

The incoming Trump team was “braced for impact,” said one transition official granted anonymity to speak candidly, adding, “We were ready for this to be more of a fight. … It hasn’t turned out that way.”

Reacting to the news of Wray’s resignation, Republican senators said that Patel would have been confirmed regardless of whether Wray left on his own volition. And if he had stayed, Wray was inevitably going to be fired on Day 1, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) added.

Greg Sargent at The New Republic: How GOP Senators Are Secretly Getting Ready to Surrender to Trump.

It’s largely passing unnoticed, but Republicans are quietly laying the groundwork to give their full blessing to one of Donald Trump’s more corrupt schemes: Unleashing law enforcement on his political enemies without cause once he’s sworn in again next year. That capitulation is already underway, with an argument they’re beginning to put forward to smooth the path for Trump’s nominee to head the FBI, Kash Patel.

The New York Times has a big piece reporting that Senate Republicans are growing “warm” to Patel, who has explicitly declared that in Trump’s second term, a range of enemies of Trump should be prosecuted for no discernible legal reason whatsoever.

Why are they warming to Patel despite the obvious threat he poses? The Times reports that Republicans now harbor a “deep distrust” of the FBI, that they see it as “rotted by corruption and partisanship,” and that all this has become a new “Republican orthodoxy”:

It is the culmination of a remarkable turnabout that has been years in the making for a party that traditionally had given unyielding support for the nation’s law enforcement agencies.

Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma claims that Patel will “clean out the FBI.” And Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina insists he’lll restore the bureau’s “integrity.” In short, we’re meant to believe GOP senators back Patel because he will reform a badly corrupted agency in a way that will better serve our country.

Here’s the thing: All of that is nonsense. Most Republicans don’t actually think those things about the FBI, and they don’t actually believe Trump picked Patel to reform the bureau to address those alleged problems. Nor is there any reason to treat this as any kind of sincere, momentous ideological shift.

We should treat that very idea—that Republicans have in some principled sense begun to deeply question the FBI’s institutional role—as itself being spin. If anything, the GOP embrace of Patel carries echoes of the corrupted, secretive, intrusive FBI of the pre-Watergate days, and the new reformist pose is being hatched as fake cover to support Patel later despite what Republicans all know to be true—that Trump has selected him to transform the agency into a weapon against his enemies.

Wednesday Reads

Posted: December 4, 2024 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: abortion rights, American Fascists, just because | Tags: Abortion bans killing women, Kash Patel, martial-law, news, Pete Hegseth, politics, Portia Ngumezi, Ron De Santis, South Korea, Yoon Suk Yeol | 7 Comments

Good Morning!!

Brian Thompson, CEO of United Health Care

There’s some breaking news from NYC. The CEO of United Health Care was shot and killed on the street, and it is believed to be a “targeted attack.” The New York Times has live updates.

The executive, Brian Thompson, was shot in the chest in what people briefed on the investigations said appeared to be a targeted attack.

A manhunt is underway. Here’s the latest.

The chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, one of the nation’s largest health insurers, was fatally shot outside a hotel in Midtown Manhattan on Wednesday morning, the police said.

The executive, Brian Thompson, 50, was shot just after 6:45 a.m. at the New York Hilton Midtown on Avenue of the Americas near 54th Street, according to a police report. Mr. Thompson was taken to Mount Sinai West, where he was pronounced dead….

Officials with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs New York City’s transit system, said that the shooting did not impact subway or bus service during the morning commute….

Brian Thompson’s sister, Elena Reveiz, told The Times she is still processing the news of her brother’s death. “He was a good person and I am so sad,” Reveiz said when reached by phone. She said Thompson was a good father to his two children. She said she was on her way to see her sister, and to be with their family….

Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota called the killing “horrifying news and a terrible loss for the business and health care community in Minnesota.” [….]

New York’s police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, and Jeffrey Maddrey, chief of department, will hold a news conference at 1 Police Plaza at 11:30 a.m., the police said.

Another huge story broke yesterday from South Korea. Right wing President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law and attempted a coup. Fortunately he failed.

Haeryun Kang at The Guardian: Martial law came to South Korea – and my friends and I doomscrolled through the night.

At 10.23pm on 3 December in Seoul, I was already in bed, alternating between reading a book and watching YouTube cooking reels. That was when Yoon Suk Yeol, the president, declared emergency martial law in South Korea for the first time since 1979.

In an unannounced televised address, Yoon said the imposition of martial law was “aimed at eradicating pro-North Korean forces and protecting the constitutional order of freedom”.

Immediately, my text messages and online chat forums flared up. What the hell is going on? Is this a joke? Can I keep drinking at the bar tonight? Can my children go to school tomorrow? What exactly is the emergency? Utter confusion ensued for the next six hours, until a dramatic sequence of events led to the end of martial law at 4.30am.

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol

This was my first experience of martial law – if this short-lived circus can even be called that – something that, until now, I had only read about in history books. But even in that short time, I was terrified. The experience woke me up, once again, to the severe, unavoidable reality of Korean division. And I remembered how it can be exploited by our leaders to justify repression and control.

Thankfully, this time, Yoon’s antics were curbed. But the martial law fiasco is a testament to both the instability and resilience of South Korean democracy. It is a chilling reminder that the collective trauma of the 20th century dictatorship is not simply history.

It’s still unclear why Yoon took such an extreme measure. Martial law is defined as the temporary rule by military authorities in a time of emergency, when civil authorities are deemed unable to function. In the past, dictators have declared martial law at times of widespread national unrest and turmoil, including the Korean war. This time, it was a business-as-usual Tuesday; earlier that evening I had been for a swim at a government-run public pool.

Yoon’s measure came at a time of personal and political turmoil for him. Corruption scandals have rocked him and his family; the opposition Democratic Party has just insisted on big cuts to the budget bill despite the ruling party’s protests; Yoon’s approval ratings are hovering in the 20s – all unpleasant, sure, but stories that don’t seem all that surprising in a relatively functional democracy.

In his speech declaring martial law, Yoon expressed clear vitriol for his political opposition, for its “anti-state activities plotting rebellion”. Most South Koreans are familiar with this insidious sort of rhetoric. I grew up with this language, and still live with it, through my very conservative family in Busan. It’s a regular reminder that there is a clear political and generational divide related to the Korean division.

If you want more first-hand reporting, check out this post by Sarah Jeong at The Verge: Six hours under martial law in Seoul.

Timothy Snyder at his Substack Thinking about…: Dictators for a Day, South Korea and America.

South Korea’s president, Yoon Suk Yeol, invoked martial law, tried to install a military dictatorship — and failed completely. In his actions there are some likely similarities with the coming Trump regime, and some clear lessons for Americans to learn right now.

Yoon won a very narrow election, as did Trump. Like Trump, he refers constantly to “fake news” and calls his political opponents enemies of the state (as Trump says, “the enemy within.”) Yoon used this language to justify the imposition of martial law, as will Trump if he decides to invoke the Insurrection Act in the United States.

Like Trump, Yoon telegraphed his move in advance, and not only with such language. He surrounded himself with military men and intelligence officers who were characterized by personal loyalty. Trump is trying to do the same, now, with his proposals for Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence, Kash Patel as director of the FBI, and Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense. He also wants to purge the top ranks of the armed forces.

Yoon’s main political opponent, Lee Jae-myung, had correctly predicted that Yoon would try to implement martial law. Trump makes this prediction rather easy. Trump has spoken openly of being “dictator for a day,” and of invoking the Insurrection Act, which would allow him to deploy the military inside the United States.

The Insurrection Act is not quite the same thing as martial law. Under martial law, the military assumes the basic responsibilities associated with a civilian government. The Insurrection Act, in principle, only allows the American president to use the armed forces to assist civilian authorities to enforce some law in the presence of an insurrection. But the language of the law is quite vague. Trump makes it clear that he has in mind invoking the Insurrection Act to very broad purposes, essentially to change the regime.

In both South Korea and the United States, the legal basis for asserting greater presidential authority is antiquated. Martial law was declared in South Korea for the last time in 1979. Since the late 1980s, South Korea has moved quite decisively in the direction of meaningful elections and civil rights, thanks to the forceful activity of civil society, especially trade unions. In the United States, the Insurrection Act is an assemblage of laws passed between 1792 and 1871. It was last invoked during racial violence in Los Angeles in 1992.

Yoon’s actions, although rooted of course in his own personality and South Korean career, and enabled by South Korean law, were very trumpy. Indeed, it seems likely to me that the very presence of Trump on the international scene will make such attempts more likely, among America’s democratic allies (such as South Korea) and generally.

But Yoon failed, and very badly. His dictatorship for a day lasted only about six hours. What can Americans learn from his less-than-a-day dictatorship?

Read the rest at the Substack link.

Pete Hegseth

Back in the USA, It looks like Pete Hegseth will not be the Secretary of Defense. Yesterday, Dakinikat wrote about the devastating New Yorker article by Jane Mayer. Mayer reported in great detail Hegseth’s out-of-control drinking, his abuse of women, and his incompetence when trusted with leadership roles in small organizations.

Yesterday, NBC News reported: Pete Hegseth’s drinking worried colleagues at Fox News, sources tell NBC News.

Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for defense secretary, drank in ways that concerned his colleagues at Fox News, according to 10 current and former Fox employees who spoke with NBC News.

Two of those people said that on more than a dozen occasions during Hegseth’s time as a co-host of “Fox & Friends Weekend,” which began in 2017, they smelled alcohol on him before he went on air. Those same two people, plus another, said that during his time there he appeared on television after they’d heard him talk about being hungover as he was getting ready or on set.

One of the sources said they smelled alcohol on him as recently as last month and heard him complain about being hungover this fall.

None of the sources with whom NBC News has spoken could recall an instance when Hegseth missed a scheduled appearance because he’d been drinking.

“Everyone would be talking about it behind the scenes before he went on the air,” one of the former Fox employees said….

Three current employees said his drinking remained a concern up until Trump announced him as his choice to run the Pentagon, at which point Hegseth left Fox.

“He’s such a charming guy, but he just acted like the rules didn’t apply to him,” one of the former employees said.

Trump is considering withdrawing the Hegseth nomination and appointing Ron De Santis instead. Marc Caputo at The Bulwark: Trump Talks to DeSantis About Replacing Hegseth.

DONALD TRUMP AND RON DESANTIS have personally discussed the possibility of the Florida governor becoming the next secretary of defense amid concerns that sexual assault allegations could engulf the president-elect’s current nominee for the post, Pete Hegseth.

The talks, relayed by four sources briefed on them, are in their advanced stages. They underscore the fears within Trump world about Hegseth’s ability to survive a Senate confirmation process—despite public posturing from Hegseth and allies that he remains committed to ending up at DoD.

“These discussions are real. It’s serious. I can’t say it’s definitely going to happen, but the governor is receptive and Trump is serious, too,” a top Republican source familiar with the conversations told The Bulwark on condition of anonymity.

The discussions around DeSantis involve untangling several different political threads. The governor is currently handling the fallout of a separate Trump cabinet pick: Marco Rubio’s nomination to be secretary of state. DeSantis is weighing whether to appoint Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, to fill Rubio’s Senate seat. The possibility that the governor himself could end up at the Pentagon may factor into that decision.

Today Hegseth is again meeting with Republican Senators in a last ditch effort to convince them to support his nomination. Politico: Hegseth back on the Hill as Pentagon bid teeters.

Pete Hegseth, Trump’s embattled pick to run the Pentagon, is back on Capitol Hill today as his nomination faces even more hurdles.

Pete Hegseth’s tatoos

Concerns over Hegseth’s personal controversies are driving Trump allies to think the Defense secretary designate may not survive further scrutiny. And his fight has been complicated even more by the news that the president-elect is weighing a rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, to replace Hegseth, The Wall Street Journal was first to report. DeSantis, a former opponent in the 2024 GOP presidential primaries, offers a conservative military record and alignment with Trump’s views on “woke” military policies.

Hegseth — who has faced allegations of sexual assault and alcohol abuse — is expected to meet today with Republicans including incoming Senate Armed Services Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and the next majority leader, Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.).

Hegseth’s most crucial meeting, though, is expected to be with Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), a Senate Armed Services member who has been noncommittal about Hegseth’s nomination and is seen as a potential swing vote.

Ernst was previously floated as a potential pick for defense secretary before Trump opted for Hegseth, though she was seen as a dark horse candidate. The Iowa Republican is a traditional defense hawk, clashing somewhat with the Trump team’s views. There may also be a political divide to bridge for Ernst — who took until March to endorse Trump’s 2024 White House bid after the former president nearly swept the Republican primaries and was on a path to clinch the GOP nomination.

Ernst, the first woman combat veteran in the Senate, has a long track record of legislation aimed at addressing sexual assault and harassment in the military. That would seem to put her at odds with Hegseth, who is not only the subject of sexual assault allegations but opposes women serving in combat roles.

Ernst has also been outspoken about her own experiences with sexual assault and domestic violence. Asked about the sexual assault accusations against Hegseth, she’s said: “Any time there are allegations, you want to make sure they are properly vetted, so we’ll have that discussion.”

Another problematic candidate, Kash Patel for FBI director is facing headwinds. I’m sure we’ll be hearing much more about him, but here are a couple of articles about him.

Zach Beauchamp at Vox: I listened to hours of Trump’s FBI pick on Steve Bannon’s podcast. Oh boy.

Kash Patel, Donald Trump’s pick to direct the Federal Bureau of Intelligence, has never served in the FBI. But he has hosted Steve Bannon’s podcast.

Patel is a contributor at Real America’s Voice, the right-wing news network that produces Bannon’s show War Room, and has long appeared as a guest on the show. After top Trump adviser Bannon was imprisoned for four months earlier this year — on charges of contempt of Congress after he refused to comply with a January 6 Committee subpoena — Patel stepped up to serve as an occasional guest host.

Crazy Eyes Kash Patel

To try and understand Patel better, I listened to every episode and clip tagged with “Kash Patel” on the War Room website — and a few others that Bannon’s team missed. The overwhelming impression is that Patel is a man whose entire worldview revolves around paranoid conspiracy theories — specifically, conspiracies against both America and Trump, which for him are one and the same. It’s a specific kind of obsession that reminds me of the FBI’s first director: J. Edgar Hoover, a man who infamously abused his power to persecute political enemies.

During his various appearances on Bannon’s show, Patel and/or his interviewees declared that:

China is funding the Democratic Party and sending “military-aged males” across the Mexican and Canadian borders to prepare for a preemptive strike.

Barack Obama directs a “shadow network” that is quietly directing the intelligence community and Big Tech to persecute Trump.

Attorney General Merrick Garland wants to throw “all of us” — which is to say, Trump allies — in prison.

And Patel is willing to go to extreme measures in response to these alleged threats.

In one episode, he called on the Republican majority in Congress to unilaterally arrest Garland — invoking an obscure legal doctrine called “inherent contempt” that has never been used in this fashion in the entirety of American history. In another, he outlined a plan for a MAGA blitz of American institutions focused on getting loyalists into high office.

Lazy Caturday Reads

Posted: November 30, 2024 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: abortion rights, Abusive Relationships, cat art, caturday, misogyny, Rape Culture, U.S. Military | Tags: Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth, politics, Russia, Syria, Ukraine, war, Women in combat | 7 Comments

Good Afternoon!!

Moonflower, by Katrina Pallon

I have been fascinated by politics ever since I was 12 years old in 1960. John Kennedy’s run for president was so inspiring to me that I just caught the fever. I became a politics junkie. There have been times when I tried to pay less attention–especially during the Reagan years and later when George W. Bush was pushing his wars. But I always kept in touch enough to know basically what was happening. Since Trump was elected again, I really wish I could ignore politics completely. I just want to get in bed, pull the covers over my head and deny the reality of what’s happening. Of course, I can’t do it.

This weekend, though, I have allowed myself to ignore current events. There usually isn’t a lot of breaking news on a long holiday weekend. So right now, I’m kind of catching up. Here’s what I’m seeing out there in the real world today.

There are big developments in Syria. The New York Times: Rebels Seize Control Over Most of Syria’s Largest City.

Rebels had seized most of Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, as of Saturday, according to a war monitoring group and to fighters who were combing the streets in search of any remaining pockets of government forces.

The antigovernment rebels said they had faced little resistance on the ground in Aleppo. But Syrian government warplanes responded with airstrikes on the city for the first time since 2016, according to the war monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Aleppo came to a near standstill on Saturday, with many residents staying indoors for fear of what the sudden flip in control might mean, witnesses said. Others did venture out into the streets, welcoming the fighters and hugging them. Some rebels tried to reassure city residents and sent out at least one van to distribute bread.

The rapid advance on Aleppo came just days into a surprise rebel offensive launched on Wednesday against the autocratic regime of President Bashar al-Assad. The developments are both the most serious challenge to Mr. al-Assad’s rule and the most intense escalation in years in a civil war that had been mostly dormant.

The timing of the assault suggested that the rebels could be exploiting weaknesses across an alliance linking Iran to the militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon as well as the Assad regime in Syria and others….

Within hours from Friday into Saturday, Syrian government soldiers, security forces and police officers fled the city, according to the war monitoring group. They were replaced by the Islamist and Turkish-backed rebels sweeping through on foot, motorbikes or on trucks mounted with machine guns.

Thousands of Syrian insurgents fanned out inside Aleppo in vehicles with improvised armor and pickups, deploying to landmarks such as the old citadel on Saturday, a day after they entered Syria’s largest city facing little resistance from government troops, according to residents and fighters.

Witnesses said two airstrikes on the city’s edge late Friday targeted insurgent reinforcements and hit near residential areas. A war monitor said 20 fighters were killed.

Syria’s armed forces said in a statement Saturday that to absorb the large attack on Aleppo and save lives, it has redeployed and is preparing for a counterattack. The statement acknowledged that insurgents entered large parts of the city but said they have not established bases or checkpoints.

Insurgents were filmed outside police headquarters, in the city center, and outside the Aleppo Citadel. They tore down posters of Syrian President Bashar Assad, stepping on some and burning others.

The surprise takeover is a huge embarrassment for Assad, who managed to regain total control of the city in 2016, after expelling insurgents and thousands of civilians from its eastern neighborhoods following a grueling military campaign in which his forces were backed by Russia, Iran and its allied groups.

Wednesday Reads

Posted: November 27, 2024 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Donald Trump, just because | Tags: Donald Trump, Elon Musk, news, politics, regression to childhood, Trump, Vladimir Putin | 3 Comments

Good Afternoon!!

By Christopher Denise

I’m still struggling to recover from the shock of the election results. At first I kept paying close attention to the news, but now I find that I just want to avoid the horror of current events. I wish there was some way I could regress to childhood and be blissfully free of the pain and anxiety that comes with greater knowledge of the outside world. Right now, I’m really having a great deal of resistance to reading the news, and watching it on TV is out of the question.

I forced myself to check current events today so I could write this post. Here are some stories that caught my attention. Trump is talking to foreign leaders on insecure phones. He is still naming stunningly inappropriate people to important government posts. He’s threatening neighboring countries with ridiculous tariffs. He’s threatening to end civil service protection for government employees. He has given Elon Musk free rein to create chaos. And he appears to have gotten away with all the crimes he was indicted for. Is it any wonder that I want to go back in time and escape real life?

Today’s reads:

Michael Collins at USA Today: ‘Dangerous territory’: Trump’s unsecured calls with world leaders concern foreign policy experts.

Donald Trump had been the president-elect for just two days when he reportedly spoke by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Nov. 7.

On the call, Trump advised the Russian president not to escalate the war with Ukraine and reminded him of the U.S.’s military presence in Europe, according to an account first published by The Washington Post, which cited multiple sources familiar with the conversation.

The Kremlin, however, denied that meeting had ever taken place. “Pure fiction,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov insisted.

Normally, the U.S. would be able to document that the call had happened. But not this time.

That’s because the State Department, which traditionally helps coordinate phone calls between incoming presidents and world leaders, has been shut out of Trump’s calls with foreign dignitaries.

That means the conversations were not held over secure phone lines, no State Department staff were available to offer guidance on the nuances on foreign policy and no official interpreters were on hand to overcome language barriers that can sometimes lead to confusion or misunderstandings about exactly what was said.

For U.S. foreign policy analysts, Trump’s calls with Putin and other world leaders after his victory over Vice President Kamala Harris in the Nov. 5 election are cause for alarm.

“We’re entering a dangerous territory of telephone games, where Trump is going to have private chats with foreign leaders, and they’re going to tell their teams one thing, and Trump is going to tell our national security team another,” said Brett Bruen, a former diplomat who worked in the White House under President Barack Obama

Different interpretations of private conversations stemming from translation difficulties or misunderstandings could not only sow confusion, Bruen said, but also could trigger an international crisis.

Trump’s transition team did not respond to questions about why he has not involved the State Department in his calls with foreign leaders….

Historically, the State Department has helped coordinate phone calls between incoming presidents and foreign leaders because it’s important to ensure during the transition that the government is always speaking with one voice, particularly on matters of national security and foreign policy, according to the nonpartisan Center for Presidential Transition.

But since his first term as president, Trump has openly expressed suspicion and resentment of what he derisively calls “the Deep State,” the government bureaucrats who he argues worked secretly behind the scenes to sabotage his agenda.

By Kajsa Hallström

Read more details at the USA Today link. Trump is behaving like an enemy of the U.S., so why does he have the right to be president? This is so fucked up.

Trump has now partially agreed to some of the transition rules. The Washington Post: Trump signs transition agreement with Biden, but it lacks key guardrails.

The Trump transition team said Tuesday it had reached an agreement with the Biden White House to start coordinating the handoff of federal agencies to the new administration.

But the Trump team is still refusing to accept several typical trappings of the presidential transition process,including federal funding, equipment and office space — as well as official government background and security checks for his transition staff. The agreement does not include an ethics pledge for the president-elect, required by the Presidential Transition Act, stating that Trump will avoid conflicts of interest while in office.

An ethics plan covering the transition staff was signed by the Trump team and posted on the website of the General Services Administration, which coordinates the handover of hundreds of agencies.

The agreement clears the way for Trump-appointed “landing teams” to start entering government offices to receive briefings from career staff about the operations of hundreds of federal agencies, a ritual of presidential transitions. By turning down about $7 million in federal funding for the transition, Trump will be able to raise unlimited privatedonations for his transition.

The long delay in signing the transition deal — which was signed by Vice President Kamala Harris before the election in September — does not mean that Trump’s transition will now conform to those of his predecessors. The president-elect refused to abide by key requirements aimed at transparency and security.

The limited agreement also reflects a deep distrust the president-elect holds toward the federal governmentfor stymieing his first-term agenda or in some cases bolstering legal cases against him. Trump and his political alliespledged during the campaign to radically downsize and restructure the federal workforce of 2.2 million.

Trump’s transition team has not signed a memorandum of understanding with the Justice Department, for instance, that would allow the agency to conduct background checks and intensive reviews for the security clearances that many of Trump’s landing teams need for the Biden administration to legally share classified intelligence and national defense briefings. The briefings will only be given to Trump transition officials who have a proper security clearance and have signed a nondisclosure agreement, according to the White House.

Some ethics guardrails were put in place with the White House. Transition officials are prohibited, for instance, from using information they learn in their new roles for their personal benefit.

But the plan does not include language about the president-elect’s own ethical conduct during the transition, a new provision of the Presidential Transition Act added by Congress after ethical issues dogged the first Trump administration.

Again, why was this evil man even allowed to run for office? Read more excuses at the WaPo link.

The New York Times: Trump Picks Stanford Doctor Who Opposed Lockdowns to Head N.I.H.

President-elect Donald J. Trump said on Tuesday evening that he had selected Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford physician and economist whose authorship of an anti-lockdown treatise during the coronavirus pandemic made him a central figure in a bitter public health debate, to be the director of the National Institutes of Health.

“Together, Jay and RFK Jr. will restore the NIH to a Gold Standard of Medical Research as they examine the underlying causes of, and solutions to, America’s biggest health challenges, including our Crisis of Chronic Illness and Disease,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media, referring to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his choice to lead the N.I.H.’s parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services.

If confirmed by the Senate, Dr. Bhattacharya would lead the world’s premier medical research agency, with a $48 billion budget and 27 separate institutes and centers, each with its own research agenda, focusing on different diseases like cancer and diabetes. Dr. Bhattacharya, who is not a practicing physician, has called for overhauling the N.I.H. and limiting the power of civil servants who, he believes, played too prominent a role in shaping federal policy during the pandemic.

He is the latest in a series of Trump health picks who came to prominence during the coronavirus pandemic and who hold views on medicine and public health that are at times outside the mainstream. The president-elect’s health choices, experts agree, suggest a shake-up is coming to the nation’s public health and biomedical establishment.

Dr. Bhattacharya is one of three lead authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, a manifesto issued in 2020 that contended that the virus should be allowed to spread among young healthy people who were “at minimal risk of death” and could thus develop natural immunity, while prevention efforts were targeted to older people and the vulnerable.

Through a connection with a Stanford colleague, Dr. Scott Atlas, who was advising Mr. Trump during his first term, Dr. Bhattacharya presented his views to Alex M. Azar II, Mr. Trump’s health secretary. The condemnation from the public health establishment was swift. Dr. Bhattacharya and his fellow authors were promptly dismissed as cranks whose “fringe” policy prescriptions would lead to millions of unnecessary deaths.

Read more about this awful person at the NYT link.

By Christopher “Denise

Politico: Trump taps financier and donor Phelan to be Navy secretary.

President-elect Donald Trump has selected businessman John Phelan as his nominee to lead the Navy, according to a statement released on Tuesday night.

“It is my great honor to announce John Phelan as our next United States Secretary of the Navy! John will be a tremendous force for our Naval Servicemembers, and a steadfast leader in advancing my America First vision,” Trump wrote. “He will put the business of the U.S. Navy above all else.”

Trump’s pick of Phelan, after choosing Army National Guard Veteran and former Fox News host Pete Hegseth to lead the Defense Department, is a sign that the incoming administration could prioritize disruptors coming into the agency instead of long-tenured bureaucrats. Trump is also eyeing businessman Steve Feinberg and defense investor Trae Stephens as the Pentagon’s No. 2, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Phelan, who leads the private investment firm Rugger Management and once handled Michael Dell’s investments, was a major donor to the Trump campaign and reportedly hosted the president-elect at his Aspen, Colorado, home this summer where Trump went on a profanity-laced tirade about immigration and warned that the election could be the last the United States ever had if Vice President Kamala Harris had won.

And get this: Phelan has no military experience. Trump also consider Ronny Jackson for the job!

Politico: Kash Patel and Cliff Sims are jostling for the deputy director gig at the CIA.

Two Trump transition insiders, Cliff Sims and Kash Patel, are angling to be deputy director of the CIA — and angering others who feel they’re using their roles on the transition to undermine any would-be contenders, according to three people familiar with the matter.

The No. 2 position at the powerful spy agency is one of the most sought-after national security posts that remains unfilled. It does not require Senate confirmation — a concern for other roles, like FBI director, Patel is said to be interested in — but wields enormous influence inside the U.S. intelligence community.

The frustration toward Sims, the former White House and ODNI communications strategist, and Patel, the firebrand former House Intelligence Committee staffer and Pentagon official, stems from the fact that both are helping the transition interview candidates for the CIA role, said the three people, all of whom were granted anonymity to share details on the transition.

“The issue that a lot of us have is that these people are involved in staffing national security jobs, and at the same time they’re also promoting themselves for the same roles,” said one of the people.

There is also a concern that Patel in particular is fighting dirty. A second person said there was suspicion Patel was leaking damaging stories on Sims, citing a recent story on a blow-up Trump had after being reminded Sims wrote a tell-all memoir in 2019 after leaving the White House.

Trump has also put Elon Musk in a prominent position in his transition, and now we are hearing from Musk’s mother, who seems even stupider than her son.

CNN: Elon Musk publicized the names of government employees he wants to cut. It’s terrifying federal workers.

When President-elect Donald Trump said Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy would recommend major cuts to the federal government in his administration, many public employees knew that their jobs could be on the line.

Now they have a new fear: becoming the personal targets of the world’s richest man – and his legions of followers.

By Anna Matveeva

Last week, in the midst of the flurry of his daily missives, Musk reposted two X posts that revealed the names and titles of people holding four relatively obscure climate-related government positions. Each post has been viewed tens of millions of times, and the individuals named have been subjected to a barrage of negative attention. At least one of the four women named has deleted her social media accounts.

Although the information he posted on those government positions is available through public online databases, these posts target otherwise unknown government employees in roles that do not deal directly with the public.

Several current federal employees told CNN they’re afraid their lives will be forever changed – including physically threatened – as Musk makes behind-the-scenes bureaucrats into personal targets. Others told CNN that the threat of being in Musk’s crosshairs might even drive them from their jobs entirely – achieving Musk’s smaller government goals without so much as a proper review.

“These tactics are aimed at sowing terror and fear at federal employees,” said Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents more than 800,000 of the 2.3 million civilian federal employees. “It’s intended to make them fearful that they will become afraid to speak up.”

This isn’t new behavior for Musk, who has often singled out individuals who he claims have made mistakes or stand in his way. One former federal employee, previously targeted by Musk, said she experienced something very similar.

“It’s his way of intimidating people to either quit or also send a signal to all the other agencies that ‘you’re next’,” said Mary “Missy” Cummings, an engineering and computer science professor at George Mason University, who drew Musk’s ire because of her criticisms of Tesla when she was at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Read the rest at the link.

The Independent: Elon Musk’s mom says it’s ‘degrading’ to call her son ‘wealthy’: He’s ‘the genius of the world.’

The mother of Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, stopped by Fox Business on Monday to scold those who call her son “wealthy,” claiming it was “degrading” and that she would prefer he be referred to as the “genius of the world.”

With her son now president-elect Donald Trump’s “First Buddy” and in charge of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Maye Musk sat down with Fox Business anchor Stuart Varney to gush over her 53-year-old child’s accomplishments.

Besides talking about the younger Musk’s companies SpaceX, Tesla and X (formerly Twitter), she also dished on how well her son and Trump get along, especially since the election.

“I’ve seen them together, but very shortly. I live in New York, and they’re in Mar-a-Lago or at a SpaceX launch, and they just seem to be having fun. A lot of fun,” she declared, adding: “And it’s nice for both of them to have fun, and [Elon] really respects him a lot and is really happy that there’s a future for America now.”

She also claimed that it would be “very easy” for her son and DOGE co-chair Vivek Ramaswamy to slash the federal workforce and cut spending, citing Elon Musk’s severe and immediate layoffs when he purchased Twitter in 2022.

Seemingly parroting her son’s talking points, she absolutely trashed the press. “What they call mainstream media, but I call them dishonest Democrat media, they will be trying to break up the relationship. They will be hating everything,” she said. “And I told that to Elon, he said he expects that because they were dishonest before the election.”

Whatever.

Artist unknown

There’s just a tiny bit of possible good news from former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade at MSNBC: How Jack Smith quietly ensured Trump’s Jan. 6 case isn’t actually going anywhere.

Special counsel Jack Smith filed a motion with the trial court in the District of Columbia to dismiss the Jan. 6 election interference case against President-elect Donald Trump on Monday, kicking up a flurry of questions — namely, why would the special counsel pull the plug? Smith later filed a motion with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to dismiss the appeal of the government documents case against Trump. While Trump has vowed to fire Smith, why would the special counsel do something to make it easy for Trump, by dismissing the cases himself before Trump is sworn in to office in January? Is this simply an example of what historian Timothy Snyder calls “obeying” an authoritarian in advance?

Not at all. In fact, this move could be an effort to keep the cases alive in the long term. An interesting tell in each motion is Smith’s request to dismiss the cases “without prejudice.” That means that the cases can be filed again. By dismissing the cases now on his own terms, Smith blocks Trump’s attorney general from dismissing the cases for all time.

In addition, by filing his motions pre-emptively, Smith was able to explain his reasons for dismissing the case, rather than allowing Trump’s future AG to mischaracterize them. According to Smith, he was dismissing the case not because of the merits or strength of the cases, but because he had to. As Smith explains, the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel, whose opinions are “binding” on the special counsel, has concluded that a sitting president may not be indicted or criminally prosecuted under the Constitution. OLC reasoned that criminal charges would make it impossible for a president to carry out his constitutional duties in light of the distraction of preparing a criminal defense, the public stigma that would hamper his leadership role and the obstacles prison would impose on his ability to perform his duties.

But Smith was careful to note that this relief from criminal prosecution is “temporary,” and ends when the president leaves office. Smith cites OLC as concluding that this form of immunity for a sitting president “would generally result in the delay, but not the forbearance, of any criminal trial” That is, Trump gets a reprieve, but only during his term in office.

Of course, as in most criminal cases, the statute of limitations here is five years from the date of the last act alleged in the indictments. In the Jan. 6 case, the last alleged conduct occurred in January 2021, so the deadline for filing new charges would typically be January 2026. In the documents case, in which the last act occurred in August 2022, the statute will expire in August 2027. Both dates will arrive well before Trump’s term ends. But Smith’s brief contains another tell when he writes that OLC has “noted the possibility that a court might equitably toll the statute of limitations to permit proceeding against the President once out of office.” That is, a court could call a timeout, pausing it on Trump’s inauguration day on Jan. 21, 2025, and then restarting the clock when Trump leaves office in 2029. That would give prosecutors plenty of time to refile charges. Certainly, the tolling issue would be litigated, but by dismissing the case now, Smith preserves this issue for future prosecutors to argue.

Read the rest at MSNBC.

That’s it for me today. I don’t know how I even got through those articles. I’m going back into hibernation now.

Lazy Caturday Reads

Posted: November 23, 2024 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: cat art, caturday, Donald Trump, just because | Tags: Donald Trump, History, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, news, politics | 3 Comments

Good Afternoon!!

5d4791cf54ae9bdb99f441e05e1f50f3 Yesterday was the 61st anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. I was 15 years old, a junior in high school. I still see that day as a defining event in my life. It was my first real experience of death, and I recall how difficult it was for me to comprehend and accept that our brilliant and charismatic president was really gone forever. It was my first lesson in how quickly dramatic events can change our understanding of the world.

Everything was different after that. If Kennedy had lived, he very likely would have won a second term, and perhaps the course of the Vietnam War could have been different. Perhaps Richard Nixon would not have made his comeback and been elected president in 1968. We can’t know what would have happened, but I think that if Kennedy could have completed a second term, our history would have been very different.

Of course Lyndon Johnson did complete many of Kennedy’s projects like the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Medicare and Medicaid Act of 1965. Kennedy’s tragic death and Johnson’s legislative experience likely helped these laws get passed. But there was something about Jack Kennedy that inspired and energized the country, and that energy was lost after his death–especially after Johnson’s failure in Vietnam and his stubbor refusal to change course.

It’s the weekend and I need a break from the current madness in politics, so I’m going to share a few reads about that long ago day in 1963.

Heather Cox Richardson at Letters from an American: November 22, 2024.

It was November 22, 1963, and President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy were visiting Texas. They were there, in the home state of Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird, to try to heal a rift in the Democratic Party. The white supremacists who made up the base of the party’s southern wing loathed the Kennedy administration’s support for Black rights.

That base had turned on Kennedy when he and his brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, had backed the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in fall 1962 saying that army veteran James Meredith had the right to enroll at the University of Mississippi, more commonly known as Ole Miss.

When the Department of Justice ordered officials at Ole Miss to register Meredith, Mississippi governor Ross Barnett physically barred Meredith from entering the building and vowed to defend segregation and states’ rights.

So the Department of Justice detailed dozens of U.S. marshals to escort Meredith to the registrar and put more than 500 law enforcement officers on the campus. White supremacists rushed to meet them there and became increasingly violent. That night, Barnett told a radio audience: “We will never surrender!” The rioters destroyed property and, under cover of the darkness, fired at reporters and the federal marshals. They killed two men and wounded many others.

By Susan Herbert (after The Milkmaid by Johannes Vermeer)

The riot ended when the president sent 20,000 troops to the campus. On October 1, Meredith became the first Black American to enroll at the University of Mississippi.

The Kennedys had made it clear that the federal government would stand behind civil rights, and white supremacists joined right-wing Republicans in insisting that their stance proved that the Kennedys were communists. Using a strong federal government to regulate business would prevent a man from making all the money he might otherwise; protecting civil rights would take tax dollars from white Americans for the benefit of Black and Brown people. A bumper sticker produced during the Mississippi crisis warned that “the Castro Brothers”—equating the Kennedys with communist revolutionaries in Cuba—had gone to Ole Miss.

That conflation of Black rights and communism stoked such anger in the southern right wing that Kennedy felt obliged to travel to Dallas to try to mend some fences in the state Democratic Party.

How the day began:

On the morning of November 22, 1963, the Dallas Morning News contained a flyer saying the president was wanted for “treason” for “betraying the Constitution” and giving “support and encouragement to the Communist inspired racial riots.” Kennedy warned his wife that they were “heading into nut country today.”

But the motorcade through Dallas started out in a party atmosphere. At the head of the procession, the president and first lady waved from their car at the streets “lined with people—lots and lots of people—the children all smiling, placards, confetti, people waving from windows,” Lady Bird remembered. “There had been such a gala air,” she said, that when she heard three shots, “I thought it must be firecrackers or some sort of celebration.”

The Secret Service agents had no such moment of confusion. The cars sped forward, “terrifically fast—faster and faster,” according to Lady Bird, until they arrived at a hospital, which made Mrs. Johnson realize what had happened. “As we ground to a halt” and Secret Service agents began to pull them out of the cars, Lady Bird wrote, “I cast one last look over my shoulder and saw in the President’s car a bundle of pink, just like a drift of blossoms, lying on the back seat…Mrs. Kennedy lying over the President’s body.”

As they waited for news of the president, LBJ asked Lady Bird to go find Mrs. Kennedy. Lady Bird recalled that Secret Service agents “began to lead me up one corridor, back stairs, and down another. Suddenly, I found myself face to face with Jackie in a small hall…outside the operating room. You always think of her—or someone like her—as being insulated, protected; she was quite alone. I don’t think I ever saw anyone so much alone in my life.”

After trying to comfort Mrs. Kennedy, Lady Bird went back to the room where her husband was. It was there that Kennedy’s special assistant told them, “The President is dead,” just before journalist Malcolm Kilduff entered and addressed LBJ as “Mr. President.”

There’s a bit more at the link.

Colin Moynihan at The New York Times: Desperate Bid to Save J.F.K. Shown in Resurfaced Film.

Nearly 61 years ago, Dale Carpenter Sr. showed up on Lemmon Avenue in Dallas, hoping to film John F. Kennedy as his motorcade passed. But the president’s car had already gone by, and he recorded only some of the procession, including the back of a car carrying Lyndon Johnson and the side of the White House press bus.

So Mr. Carpenter, a businessman from Texas, rushed to Stemmons Freeway, several miles farther along the motorcade route, to try again.

There, just moments after Kennedy had been shot, he captured an urgent and chaotic scene. The president’s speeding convertible. A Secret Service agent in a dark suit sprawled on the back. Jacqueline Kennedy, in her pink Chanel outfit, little more than a blur.

Kennedy himself could not be glimpsed. He had collapsed and was close to death.

For decades Mr. Carpenter’s 8-millimeter snippets of what transpired in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, have been a family heirloom. When he died in 1991 at 77, the reel, which included footage of his twin boys’ birthday party, passed to his wife, Mabel, then to a daughter, Diana, and finally to a grandson, James Gates.

Later this month, the Kennedy footage is to be put up for sale in Boston by RR Auction, the latest in a line of assassination-related images to surface publicly after decades in comparative obscurity. The auction house says it is the only known film of the president’s car on the freeway as it sped from Dealey Plaza, the site of the shooting, to Parkland Memorial Hospital, where Kennedy was pronounced dead at 1 p.m.

Footage shot by Abraham Zapruder, a bystander, has long provided disturbing images of the assassination itself, one of the most traumatic and closely examined events in American history. Mr. Carpenter’s film shows what happened before and just after the Zapruder film was shot. The first section is a prosaic scene of the president’s motorcade; the second, a race for help imbued with all the uncertainty that filled the moments after the gunshots.

Though Mr. Carpenter’s film, just over a minute long, contains nothing likely to affect the debate over Kennedy’s death, several experts said it is still an important addition to the mosaic of images that recorded that day in Dallas.

Paul Singer at WGBH: A newly uncovered memo shows how the JFK assassination reverberated in Boston.

This story is about a trip I took to look at the files of Freedom House, and the four remarkable pages I found in those files.

Freedom House was the community-based, Black-led nonprofit that helped the city of Boston sell the Washington Park plan to Roxbury’s Black residents. And the files that Freedom House kept of that time period now sit in nearly 90 boxes in the Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections.

I called over and the archives folks warmly welcomed me to browse a small sample of the Freedom House collection. When I arrived, they had set aside two banker’s boxes full of numbered file folders.

It was in box 32, folder 1111 that I struck gold. Or, more accurately, yellow.

Four pages of yellow notepad paper, filled with cursive handwriting. It was a report about a special conference called to address the “Low Income Housing Crisis” in Boston on Nov. 22, 1963.

That date rang a bell. Wasn’t that the day JFK was shot?

It was.

And the memo documents how that tragedy played out in real time 1,700 miles from Dallas’ Dealey Plaza.

5973c13891e6f981a8219b45ab4f2511 The meeting was to address the issue of how urban renewal in 1960s Boston was hurting the city’s poor and people of color, especially the need for low-income housing. When the group broke for lunch the news of Kennedy’s death reached them.

In extraordinarily poetic terms, McGill writes that the group tried to continue with its important work of addressing low-income housing needs, but it was difficult to concentrate.

“… people were sobbing uncontrollably and our spirits kept foundering under the awful waiting vigil our hearts were keeping at the side of the president.”

When Kennedy’s death was confirmed, McGill wrote how the collective weeping grew. She witnessed a priest across the room as his face “crumpled helplessly.”

The attendees abandoned any effort to continue their work, and a closing prayer was offered.

“Charles Abrams was scheduled to deliver a special address at the close of the conference … but he had no heart to give the speech he had prepared. He talked about the tragedy and its implications instead — very briefly. Dr. Barth closed the conference with special prayers for the President, the bereaved family, and for the healing of the sickness of violence and hate in our country.”

Standing in a library basement with these pages in my hand, I was struck by how much that prayer still rings true 61 years later.

And Boston still has a low-income housing crisis.

Trump’s Awful Nominations.

Steven Contorno and Kristen Holmes at CNN: Fox hosts, cable news regulars and entertainment pros: Trump is casting a made-for-TV Cabinet.

A common thread weaves through many of Donald Trump’s picks for his incoming administration, a quality the president-elect values as highly as loyalty and perhaps even more than conventional qualifications: a flair for television.

He has plucked two Fox News stars from their airwaves – Sean Duffy for Transportation secretary and Pete Hegseth to lead the Pentagon. For the agency overseeing Medicare and Medicaid, Trump has turned to Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity physician known for his health show that aired for 13 seasons. His pick for the Department of Education, meanwhile, is Linda McMahon, who co-founded and built a professional wrestling and entertainment empire alongside her husband.

Trump’s choice for ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, had a six-year run hosting a Fox News show. Tulsi Gabbard, his selection for director of national intelligence, was a contributor on the conservative network after she left Congress and once subbed for its former primetime host Tucker Carlson.

As a former reality TV star, Trump is deeply attuned to the power of the small screen. His selection process has centered on people who can not only articulate his message but also defend him in the kind of high-stakes, combative settings that define modern media.

His transition team, operating in a war-room style setup at Mar-a-Lago, has embraced this focus. On large screens, his advisers play video clips of potential appointees’ media performances, including footage of them defending Trump but also their past criticism of him, underscoring the centrality of media strategy in his decision-making.

The outcome is a made-for-TV Cabinet who he thinks will sell his agenda to Americans and defend the administration against media scrutiny on their networks. Meanwhile, in some departments, the expectation is that deputies and top staff will oversee the day-to-day operations.

Another comment thread: incompetence and lack of relevant experience.

Ryan Bort and Asawin Suebsaeng at Rolling Stone: Team Trump Is Furious Hegseth Hid Sex Assault Claim: ‘This Is the F–king Pentagon!’

Matt Gaetz may have withdrawn his name from consideration to become Donald Trump’s attorney general over sexual misconduct accusations — but alleged sexual abuser Pete Hegseth is still fighting to persuade Republican senators to confirm him to one of the most powerful positions in government.

Hegseth was already facing an uphill confirmation battle to become the Secretary of Defense given that he is best known as a Fox News host with no government experience. The emergence of a disturbing sexual assault accusation against him from 2017 isn’t helping matters — and Trump’s team is pissed.

According to four sources familiar with the situation, some top Trump transition officials and others close to the president-elect have been puzzled, if not infuriated, that Hegseth did not preemptively inform them of the allegations against him before they made their way into the press — most notably through the publication of a police report detailing the alleged incident at a hotel in Monterey, California.

“How did he not know? Why didn’t he tell us?” a source close to Trump says. “Pete wasn’t interviewing for a job at McDonald’s; this is the fucking Pentagon! … Even if the allegations are fake, it doesn’t matter because he was supposed to tell us what we needed to know so we could be better prepared to defend him — not learn about it from the media.”

There was, the sources say, a vetting process for the Hegseth pick, but it did not uncover these details, nor was it especially invasive. Trump’s transition team did not sign agreements with the White House or the Justice Department to allow the FBI to conduct background checks on the president-elect’s nominees.

“When we ask, ‘Is there anything else we need to know about?’ that is usually a good time to mention a police report,” a Trump adviser says. “Obviously he remembered that this all happened and there is no way — I don’t think — he could have believed this wouldn’t come out once he got nominated.”

Why haven’t they withdrawn Hegseth’s name yet?

Liam Archacky at The Daily Beast: Now GOP Senators Want Another Trump Nominee’s Full FBI File.

Some Republican senators are privately eager to see the FBI file on Tulsi Gabbard, whose history of alignment with Russia has drawn concern in the wake of her nomination for the post of director of national intelligence, reported Punchbowl News.

Although Gabbard has drawn headlines for previously echoing Russian talking points on topics like the wars in Ukraine and Syria, it’s her support for leaker turned Russian citizen Edward Snowden that is allegedly most troubling for some lawmakers.

The former Democratic congresswoman openly pushed for the U.S. to “drop all charges” against Snowden in a 2020 bill that was co-sponsored by former Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz, another one-time Trump cabinet nominee who was yesterday forced to withdraw his name amid sexual misconduct allegations he denies.

Lawmakers, including members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is responsible for processing Gabbard’s nomination, reportedly find Gabbard’s support for Snowden—a former NSA employee who leaked state secrets—especially concerning because of the danger his actions posed to national security, reported Punchbowl.

Although FBI file reviews are standard for presidential cabinet candidates, Punchbowl reported that the Republican senators’ interest in doing so seems to suggest that they believe there could still be unknown information in the file—such as potential foreign contacts.

The New York Times: Trump Picks Key Figure in Project 2025 for Powerful Budget Role.

President-elect Donald J. Trump on Friday picked a key figure in Project 2025 to lead the Office of Management and Budget, elevating a longtime ally who has spent the last four years making plans to rework the American government to enhance presidential power.

The would-be nominee, Russell T. Vought, would oversee the White House budget and help determine whether federal agencies comport with the president’s policies. The role requires Senate confirmation unless Mr. Trump is able to make recess appointments.

The choice of Mr. Vought would bring in a strongly ideological figure who played a pivotal role in Mr. Trump’s first term, when he also served as budget chief. Among other things, Mr. Vought helped come up with the idea of having Mr. Trump use emergency power to circumvent Congress’s decision about how much to spend on a border wall.

Mr. Vought was a leading figure in Project 2025, the effort by conservative organizations to build a governing blueprint for Mr. Trump should he take office once again. Mr. Trump tried to distance himself from the effort during his campaign, but he has put forward people with ties to the project for his administration since the election.

Mr. Vought’s role in Project 2025 was to oversee executive orders and other unilateral actions that Mr. Trump could take during his first six months in office, with the goal of tearing down and rebuilding executive branch institutions in a way that would enhance presidential power.

Joyce Vance at Civil Discourse: Project 2025: It’s On (Predictably).

Before Bill Barr became Donald Trump’s third attorney general, he circulated a memo that was more or less an audition tape for the job he ultimately got. That memo reached both the White House Counsel’s Office and Main Justice. In it, Barr argued in favor of what had previously been a fringe theory of a powerful “unitary executive,” in other words, a president able to consolidate power at the expense of the other two branches as a very powerful leader. The writing was on the wall with Barr’s selection, although the Supreme Court cast it in stone when the conservative majority signed off on the view that presidents couldn’t be criminally prosecuted as long as the crimes they committed fell under the umbrella of official acts. Even Bill Barr would have never dreamed of arguing the president could use SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political rival and walk away with no consequences. Now, the Supreme Court says it’s so.

That’s the context that’s essential for understanding Trump’s Friday evening “nomination” (if you can call a social media announcement that) of Russell Vought to lead the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Vought is a proponent of a powerful executive and of restructuring our institutions to facilitate a government that veers toward the monarchical and away from the democratic. He was one of only four out of forty-four of Trump’s cabinet officials from his first administration who said they’d support him this time.

Vought entered OMB at the start of Trump’s first administration and was confirmed as its director in July 2020. In the archive of his official biography, his role is described like this: “he is responsible for overseeing the implementation of the President’s policy, management and regulatory agendas across the Executive Branch.” OMB is a powerful agency, and its director is, in a very real sense, a president’s right-hand man. Among the job experience Vought touts in his bio are his seven years as Vice President of Heritage Action for America, a sister organization to the Heritage Foundation, which, as readers of Civil Discourse are well aware, is where Project 2025 was incubated….

Now Vought, godfather to Project 2025 and author of its chapter on OMB, will be in charge of administering policy in the next Trump Administration. So much for Trump’s efforts—back when reporting about Project 2025 led to enormous public concern and seemed poised to shift the tide against him— to distance himself from the project. At the time, he disavowed any knowledge of or agreement with the plan, but the claims felt hollow.

Read much more about Vought at Civil Discourse.

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