Finally Friday Reads: The Hypocrisy of the Sanctimonious Season

Posted: December 15, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Foreign Affairs, Republican politics, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , | 7 Comments

Still life with a cup on a tray, 1919, Duncan Grant

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

I’m getting ready to be one of the huddled masses who stays at home to avoid the insanity and commercialism of Crassmas season.  Check my closets!  No ugly sweaters here!  Some significant feature articles in the so-called ‘national’ newspapers highlight the decades we’ve endured where a small theocratic cult has managed to capture institutions.  Nothing like staying home this time of year with good reads and a good cup of coffee with your favorite music.

I had two doses of the season watching my granddaughters put up a series of ‘squishmallows’ onto one tree branch. These little stuffed plushies are the latest versions of beanie babies or whatever is terrifically overpriced but terribly necessary this year.  I frankly had difficulty telling them from the plushies Temple had as a puppy that only cost a few dollars. Puppy toys aren’t generally designer-branded.   I also got a photo of the two of them terrified and screaming on a store Santa’s lap, whose smile was fixed in place. I learned there’s such a thing as Santa trauma from BB.  I heard my mother’s voice coming from my depths, asking, “What did you do to them?”  Music on.  Coffee hot.  Now, for the reads.

So, let me start with a New York Times article that features the national trauma brought on by Theocratic Inquisitor Samuel Alito and his co-conspirators. “Behind the Scenes at the Dismantling of Roe v. Wade .”

Justice Barrett, selected to clinch the court’s conservative supermajority and deliver the nearly 50-year goal of the religious right, opposed even taking up the case. When the jurists were debating Mississippi’s request to hear it, she first voted in favor — but later switched to a no, according to several court insiders and a written tally. Four male justices, a minority of the court, chose to move ahead anyway, with Justice Kavanaugh providing the final vote.

Those dynamics help explain why the responses stacked up so speedily to the draft opinion in February 2022: Justice Alito appeared to have pregamed it among some of the conservative justices, out of view from other colleagues, to safeguard a coalition more fragile than it looked.

The Supreme Court deliberates in secret, and those who speak can be cast out of the fold. To piece together the hidden narrative of how the court, guided by Justice Alito, engineered a titanic shift in the law, The New York Times drew on internal documents, contemporaneous notes and interviews with more than a dozen people from the court — both conservative and liberal — who had real-time knowledge of the proceedings. Because of the institution’s insistence on confidentiality, they spoke on the condition of anonymity.

At every stage of the Dobbs litigation, Justice Alito faced impediments: a case that initially looked inauspicious, reservations by two conservative justices and efforts by colleagues to pull off a compromise. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., a conservative, along with the liberal Justice Stephen G. Breyer, worked to prevent or at least limit the outcome. Justice Breyer even considered trying to save Roe v. Wade — the 1973 ruling that established the right to abortion — by significantly eroding it.

To dismantle that decision, Justice Alito and others had to push hard, the records and interviews show. Some steps, like his apparent selective preview of the draft opinion, were time-honored ones. But in overturning Roe, the court set aside more than precedent: It tested the boundaries of how cases are decided.

Justice Ginsburg’s death hung over the process. For months, the court delayed announcing its decision to hear the case, creating the appearance of distance from her passing. The justices later allowed Mississippi to perform a bait-and-switch, widening what had been a narrower attempt to restrict abortion while she was alive into a full assault on Roe — the kind of move that has prompted dismissals of other cases.

The most glaring irregularity was the leak to Politico of Justice Alito’s draft. The identity and motive of the person who disclosed it remains unknown, but the effect of the breach is clear: It helped lock in the result, The Times found, undercutting Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Breyer’s quest to find a middle ground.

In the Dobbs case, the court “barreled over each of its normal procedural guardrails,” wrote Richard M. Re, a University of Virginia law professor and former Kavanaugh clerk on a federal appellate court, adding that “the court compromised its own deliberative process.”

Still Life, Duncan Grant

It’s a really tough and long read but one that every person concerned with freedom and privacy and every woman should read. Four men were behind the ultimate push. Four bullies got the say over the women

With their waiting game, the justices had nearly broken a record: Dobbs was the second most re-listed case ever granted review.

But sometime before the announcement, Justice Barrett had switched her vote. Just four members of the court, the bare minimum, chose to grant, with Justice Kavanaugh taking the side of Justices Alito, Gorsuch and Thomas. They overrode five colleagues — including all the female justices — who had an array of concerns. The men appeared to be betting that Justice Barrett would ultimately side with them, pushing herinto a case she had not wanted to take.

Her reasons for the reversal are unclear. But as a professor in 2013, she had written a law review article laying out the kind of dilemma she faced in spring 2021. “If the court’s opinions change with its membership, public confidence in the court as an institution might decline,” she noted. “Its members might be seen as partisan rather than impartial and case law as fueled by power rather than reason.”

That July, with its audience before the court secure, Mississippi made the case more monumental, abruptly changing its strategy. “Roe and Casey are egregiously wrong,” the state’s main brief declared on its first page. It urged the justices to be bold. “The question becomes whether this court should overrule those decisions. It should.”

Still Life with Bookcase, Duncan Grant

The Washington Post article is also about Zealot bullies whose patriarchal, xenophobic, and racist religion let them do, say, and back anyone to enable the codification of their deeply hateful beliefs. ”  Let’s just melt into some pleasant painting and escape the overarching desire to control everyone for a while.

“Why Bob Vander Plaats thinks some evangelicals can’t quit Trump.”  Might as well face it; they’re addicted to hate.  Vander Plaats is an evangelical leader in Iowa who is behind Desantis now.  As if, Trump wasn’t a big enough bully and control freak for them. The interview is based on a poll from the Iowa-based paper The Des Moines Register.  This was my family newspaper of choice growing up.  Yes, I feel strongly about these people. I’m glad I’ve moved away from them. They make awful neighbors!

The Early: The poll also found 51 percent of likely caucus-goers who describe themselves as evangelicals support Trump. Do you see a divide between evangelical leaders like yourself and evangelical voters when it comes to Trump?

Vander Plaats: No, I really don’t know if I do. There’s some evangelicals [who] believe Trump of 2016 is going to be Trump of 2024. And I get that. I understand where they’d be like, “I’d rather have Trump than Joe Biden. I want to bring Trump back because Trump was good.” I’m not discounting that stuff at all. I’m just saying I’m looking at electability and who’s going to move us forward.

There may be a disconnect there. I don’t see a huge disconnect otherwise.

The Early: How do you think the Trump of 2024 would be different from the Trump of 2016?

Vander Plaats: First of all, day one, you’re really a lame duck, because you’re in your second term.

And who’s going to make up his team? I’m very concerned about that. A lot of his team members have been under litigation, and it’s been expensive for them. And if that’s the track record — “I’m going to go serve but then I’m going to get sued” — and there’s been no real propensity to say, “I’ve got [former Trump lawyer Rudy] Giuliani‘s back,” or “I’ve got [former White House chief of staff Mark] Meadows’s back” or “I’ve got [former Trump lawyer] Jenna Ellis’s back. It’s awfully hard now to recruit people to come in.

The Early: DeSantis signed a six-week abortion ban in Florida. He has said he would support a 15-week national ban as president. Trump has not committed to doing so. Why do you think so many evangelical voters are supporting Trump over DeSantis?

Vander Plaats: Trump is well known — 100 percent name ID. And he did things that they remember. And so you’re not going to leave him until you’re sold on somebody. There’s also part of the evangelical community — which I fully understand — they want a disrupter. They just want a disrupter: “This is wrong, and we need a disrupter just to shake it up.” And I think they view Trump being a champion in that.

Still life with Ginger Jar, Sugar Bowl, Oranges, and Bath Towel, Camille Pissarro

Hunker Down!  There’s more.  This is from Wired‘s David Gilbert. “Moms for Liberty Is Tearing Itself Apart. One of the Republican Party’s most successful grassroots organizations is being torn apart by scandal, including accusations of sexual assault.”

Moms for Liberty, the extremist “parental rights group,” was supposed to help the Republican Party regain the White House. In July, former president Donald Trump called the anti-LGBTQ group with 300 active chapters across the county a “grassroots juggernaut.” They are credited with forcing schools to lift mask mandates, banning books featuring LGBTQ characters, and supporting anti-trans laws and policies across the country. The group was on track to be instrumental to the GOP in the 2024 election.

But, over the course of the past five months, the group has begun to unravel.

Experts have questioned the claims about the size of the group’s membership, and individual members have been exposed as sex offenders and acolytes of the Proud Boys. Then, last month, Moms for Liberty cofounder Bridget Ziegler admitted in a police interview to being in a relationship with her husband and another woman. The interview was conducted after the woman in question alleged that Ziegler’s husband, Florida GOP chair Christian Ziegler, had raped her.

Ziegler’s husband has denied the allegations and refused to resign from his position as GOP chair, despite calls from Florida governor Ron DeSantis and other state Republicans to do so. Ziegler is also a member of the Sarasota County School Board, and has been instrumental in ushering in Florida’s Don’t Say Gay bill, pushing a Christian agenda in public schools, and banning the teaching of critical race theory. On Tuesday night, the board voted 4–1 in favor of a nonbinding resolution calling for her to resign, marking a rapid fall from grace for Ziegler and a potential fatal blow to Moms for Liberty.

“The impact of the Zeigler scandal has been enormous on the Moms for Liberty structure,” Liz Mikitarian, the founder of the activist group STOP Moms for Liberty, which closely tracks the group’s activities, tells WIRED. “We see chapters moving away or taking a break, chapter leadership questioning their roles and scrambling at the national level to save their ‘mom’ brand. The organization is trying to distance itself from the Zieglers, but this is impossible because the Zieglers are interwoven into the very fabric of Moms for Liberty.”

Still Life with Teapot (French: Nature morte avec pot de thé), 1902 and 1906, by Paul Cézanne.

Not quite done yet.  This is from Politico.  “Republicans struggle as they keep getting forced to talk about abortion. The contrast between GOP candidates’ maneuvering toward the middle and real-world events that remind the public of the party’s most aggressively anti-abortion faction shows how vexing the issue remains for the party.”  Yes, abortion again!  It’s that fucking important.  It should be more than vexing because I watched you let these freaks get away with all kinds of things, including murder, these days.  The analysis is by Madison Fernandez.

Republicans keep trying to come up with a coherent message on abortion. And real life keeps intruding.

On the campaign trail this week, Nikki Haley was pressed — yet again — to say whether she’d sign a national abortion ban into law. She dismissed the prospect of such a ban as an effort to “scare people” and jostled with Chris Christie over who had the more reasonable position on abortion.

As the two traded shots, though, they were upstaged by events far away from New Hampshire.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, an ally of former President Donald Trump, drew national attention for blocking Kate Cox, whose fetus had a terminal condition, from having an abortion. And then, on Wednesday, the Supreme Court decided to take up a case that could affect access to mifepristone — a ruling that could get in the way of GOP efforts to sound reasonable on the issue.

The contrast between the GOP candidates’ maneuvering toward the middle and the real-world events that remind the public of the party’s most aggressively anti-abortion faction shows how vexing the issue remains for the party. Eighteen months after the fall of Roe v. Wade, even Republicans who try to moderate — or, like Donald Trump, try not to talk about it — are struggling mightily to get on the right side of popular opinion.

“We have to humanize the situation and deal with it with compassion,” Haley told reporters at Tuesday’s New Hampshire town hall when asked about the Texas case.

The conversation around abortion rights has remained front and center since the Supreme Court overturned Roe last year — from Republicans’ ongoing debate about a national abortion ban to off-year elections reemphasizing the salience of abortion rights for voters.

Republicans continue struggling to find a position they can sell to both their base and the general public, a point that Christie stressed at a New Hampshire town hall on Wednesday: “The voters in this state have a right to know where [Haley] stands, not just her happy talk,” he said. “She wants to be everything to everybody on that issue.”

Haley’s comments on the Cox case in Texas stake out a less aggressive position on abortion than some of her fellow Republicans — and it’s not the first time she has taken such a stance. In November’s GOP presidential debate, Haley urged Republicans to be “honest” about the feasibility of enacting a federal abortion ban.

Still Life with a Pewter Jug and Pink Statuette,
Henri Matisse. 1910

Ah, I’m thankful today for Hazelnut Community Coffee and the music of Claude Debussy. Moving on.  This is from Vox. “What Trump has already taken from us. Democracy is a culture — and Trump is destroying it.”  This analysis is written by Zack Beauchamp.

Democracy has grown and matured by turning into a self-fulfilling prophecy: It persists because everyone in a society believes it should and will exist. If democratic culture dims, democracy’s prospects dim with it.

The United States, the first country to claim the mantle of democracy in the modern era, has long had an exceptionally strong democratic culture. Belief in democratic ideals, liberal rights, and the basics of constitutional government are so fundamental to American identity that they’ve been collectively described as the country’s “civil religion.”

Yet today, America’s vaunted democratic culture is withering before our eyes. American democracy, once seemingly secure, is now in so much trouble that 75 percent of Americans believe that “the future of American democracy is at risk in the 2024 presidential election,” according to a study by the Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institution.

This withering took off during Donald Trump’s rise to power and has continued apace in his post-presidency. The more he attacks the foundations of the democratic system, the less everyone — both his supporters and his opponents — believe American democracy is both healthy and likely to endure.

Moreover, he has birthed an anti-democratic movement inside the Republican Party dedicated to advancing his vision (or something like it). These Republicans vocally and loudly argue American democracy is a sham — and that dire measures are justified in response. This faction is already influential, and will likely become more so given its especial prominence among the ranks of young conservatives.

As worrying as the prospect of a second Trump term is, the damage he and his allied movement have already done to American democratic culture is not hypothetical: It’s already here, it’s getting worse, and it will likely persist — even if Trump loses in 2024.

Put differently, Trump has already robbed us of our sense of security and faith in our democracy. The consequences of that theft are not abstract, but rather ones we’ll all have to deal with for years to come.

Winter Flowers William Henry Hunt, c.1850

The nations of NATO–of which we are still one–are coming to grips with having anti-democratic Hungary in its midsts as it looks to include Ukraine among its members. Hungary is taking active steps along with the  Republican Party here that loves itself some Victor Orban to defund Ukraine’s freedom fight. This is a sad statement. This is from the BBC. “Hungary blocks €50bn of EU funding for Ukraine.”

Hungary – which maintains close ties with Russia – has long opposed membership for Ukraine but did not veto that move.

Mr Orban left the negotiating room momentarily in what officials described as a pre-agreed and constructive manner, while the other 26 leaders went ahead with the vote.

He told Hungarian state radio on Friday that he had fought for eight hours to stop his EU partners but could not convince them. Ukraine’s path to EU membership would be a long process anyway, he said, and parliament in Budapest could still stop it happening if it wanted to.

Talks on the financial package ended in the early hours of Friday. EU leaders said negotiations would resume early next year, reassuring Kyiv that support would continue.

Speaking later that day, European Council President Charles Michel said he was “confident and optimistic” the EU would fulfil its promise to support Ukraine.

Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo echoed him: “The message to Ukraine is: we will be there to support you, we just need to figure out a few of the details together.”

Mr Michel had earlier confirmed that all but one EU leader had agreed on the aid package and wider budget proposals for the bloc – although Sweden still needed to consult its parliament. He vowed to achieve the necessary unanimity for the deal.

A long delay in financial aid for the country would cause big problems for Ukraine’s budget, Kyiv-based economist Sergiy Fursa told the BBC.

“It pays for all social responsibilities of the government – wages for teachers, doctors for pensions,” he said.

Ukraine is also desperately seeking the approval of a $61bn US defence aid package – but that decision is also being delayed because of major disagreements between Democrat and Republican lawmakers.

Ukraine’s counter-offensive against Russia’s occupying forces ground to a halt at the start of winter, and there are fears that the Russians could simply outgun Ukraine.

Olena Zelenska, Ukraine’s first lady, warned in a BBC interview last week that Ukrainians were in “mortal danger” of being left to die without further Western support.

On Thursday, President Putin mocked Ukraine and claimed Western “freebies” were running out.

Still Life against the Light, Henri Matisse, 1899

NATO is opening possible membership to Ukraine.  President Biden, himself, says Ukraine will join NATO in the future while Trump wants to withdraw the U.S. from the organization. The U.S. Senate is still trying to get aid to the war-torn nation.  This is from HuffPost.  “Senate Sticks Around To Help Ukraine As House Republicans Skip Town. A bipartisan deal that includes sharper immigration limits and a tougher border policy in exchange for U.S. aid to Ukraine is proving elusive on Capitol Hill.”  It seems they’ve forgotten the whole Prince of Peace thing surrounding this season, like so many.

The Senate delayed the start of its holiday break on Thursday to allow for more time to reach a deal on President Joe Biden’s emergency spending bill that lawmakers hope will pair U.S. assistance to Ukraine with major immigration reforms.

The upper chamber is expected to return to work on Monday. Meanwhile, the GOP-controlled House recessed and isn’t scheduled to return until Jan. 9, 2024, ensuring that critical military and financial assistance to Ukraine to defend against ongoing Russian aggression won’t be approved by Congress and delivered to Kyiv for at least another month.

“We have to get this done,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) insisted in a speech on the Senate floor on Thursday. “Our Republican colleagues who have said action on the border is so urgent should have no problem with continuing to work next week.”

“We know the world is watching,” he added. “We know autocrats like [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and [Chinese President Xi] Jinping are hoping for us to fail. So we need to try with everything we have to get the job done.”

Fa la la la la,  la la la la  … peace on earth, goodwill to everyone!  I’ll be at home if you need me!

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Mostly Monday Reads: Election Daze Edition

Posted: December 4, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , , , | 4 Comments

Good afternoon, Sky Dancers!

The Iowa Caucuses are on January 15th.  The New Hampshire primaries are scheduled for January 23rd. Get ready for the cray-cray. Abortion Rights and Trump’s campaign are in the headlines today. As the Boys from South Park say, “I call shenanigans!”

 The election in Kentucky has brought a young woman to the front of the abortion debate. This is a Washington Postarticle about her and how she will join the national conversation on a civil right that is very personal and essential for her. “‘Everybody’s daughter’: The rape victim behind Kentucky’s viral abortion ad. Hadley Duvall helped Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear win reelection — and she’s ready to campaign again in 2024.” The feature article was written by Caroline Kitchener.

One month before the governor thanked her for his victory, Hadley Duvall had already won.

Standing in the middle of a football field in mid-October, she looked out at the students of her small Christian university, stunned to be the one wearing the rhinestone tiara. Her classmates could have chosen to honor the student body president ora leading member of the local Bible study. Instead, they’d picked Hadley, the face of a viral ad about abortion and sexual abuse that had begun airing a month earlier, and would soon help Democrats hold the governor’s mansion in one of the most conservative states in the country.

“They don’t hate me,” Duvall,21, recalled thinking as she accepted a bouquet of red roses from her college president. “They made me homecoming queen.”

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear’s reelection campaign learned aboutDuvall because of a Facebook post about her experience she had written on June 25, 2022, the day after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The ruling triggered a near-total abortion ban in Kentucky, one of 12 states with a recently enactedban that makes no exceptions for rape or incest. Days after she heard from Beshear’s team, Duvall was sitting in the dining room of a wealthy Beshear supporter she didn’t know, staring into a video camera. She aimed her words directly atthe Republican candidate for governor, who for months had thrown his full support behind the current version of Kentucky’s law before conceding late in the campaign that he was open toadditional exceptions.

“This is to you, Daniel Cameron,” Duvall said in the ad, her blue eyes narrowed in anger.

“To tell a 12-year-old girl she must have the baby of her stepfather who raped her is unthinkable. I’m speaking out because women and girls need to have options. Daniel Cameron would give us none.”

She tells the story of the abuse in detail.  So, I have to issue another Content Warning today.  It’s about the details of a 12-year-old girl being repeatedly raped by her stepfather.

Republican Campaign Strategist Liz Mair wrote this Op-Ed in today’s New York Times. Mair has a list of clients that are basically in the deplorable basket.  “Republicans Are Finding Out That ‘Pro-Life’ Means a Lot of Things to a Lot of People.”

Well, D’oh.  Again, we see the Republican obsession with late-term “abortions,” which are usually the result of something gone horribly wrong, incredibly rare, and the OB/GYN profession considered to be deliveries with bad outcomes.  Again, they’re not even considered abortions after the point of fetal viability, where babies will be saved if possible.  The overwhelming majority are wanted pregnancies and devasting to the women and families involved.

Many conservatives may call themselves pro-life, but in practice, that may be a more aspirational statement than an accurate reflection of hard policy views. Perhaps by figuring out what it now means to be pro-life — and recognizing that pro-life policy is easiest to sell only when it amounts to a ban on abortions later in pregnancy — Republicans can come up with a new approach to the politics of the issue.

Before Roe was overturned, the term “pro-life” covered a lot of ground — which was useful over decades in galvanizing a broad coalition willing to use abortion as a political cudgel. As Republicans are finding out today, “pro-life” means many things to many people.

Reading how these people think about something so complex and personal is not anything I like to do, but it’s necessary.  There are a lot of states trying to get abortion rights on their ballots, and Republicans are pulling shenanigans to try to keep the initiatives away from voters.  We have to hear what the deplorable are doing so we can fight them at the ballot box. I put a Rolling Stone article up about South Dakota yesterday.  Today, I feature this PBS News Hour report from last August.  Given what I read about South Dakota, I can’t help but believe that deplorables in states like Ohio haven’t shared their tactics.

Across the country, Republican officials and activists who oppose abortion access have worked to make it harder to pass citizen-led ballot measures and added roadblocks to the process of getting abortion directly on the ballot  These attempts to stop voters from weighing in directly on abortion aren’t new, but advocates say the current anti-ballot-measure efforts are taking on a renewed pace and ferocity. As voters even in conservative states have chosen to back abortion rights, GOP legislators and officials have been willing to fundamentally change the rules of democracy.

“We’ve been seeing an acceleration of these attacks on ballot measure processes more every year for the past several years,” said Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project, which works to pass progressive ballot measures. “And the success that abortion rights advocates have had at the ballot box in 2022 is putting fuel on that already burning fire of red state legislatures wanting to exclude their voters from direct democracy.”

Comer engaging with his constituents. John Buss, @repeat1968

These types of initiatives are definitely part of a democratic republic that Republicans would prefer to disappear in a Trump autocracy.  So, how is the Republican plan to overthrow a constitutional democracy going? Well, look at the Trump Campaign.   This is from Politico. “Trump’s revenge? GOP braces for daily blasts from ‘orange Jesus.’ His reascension, as nominee or the eventual winner, threatens to spark the same clashes with the Hill GOP that took a heavy toll on the party.”

Congressional Republicans are steeling themselves for a return to daily life with Donald Trump — which means constant, uncomfortable questions about his erratic policy whims and political attacks.

With Trump far ahead of the GOP primary pack and leading President Joe Biden in some polls, Republicans are getting a preview of future shellshock akin to their experiences in 2016 and his presidency. It’s likely to continue for the next 11 months. And perhaps four more years after that.

Trump’s recent call to replace the Affordable Care Act is triggering a particularly unwelcome sense of deja vu within the GOP. Even as many Senate Republicans steered away from Trump over the past couple years, now they’re increasingly resigned to another general election that could inundate them with the former president’s often fact-averse and hyperbolic statements.

But Hill Republicans are girding to treat Trump the third-time nominee the same way they did Trump the neophyte candidate and then president. They’re distancing themselves and downplaying his remarks, which touch on policy stresses like his urge to end Obamacare and political grievances like his vow to come down “hard” on MSNBC for its unfavorable coverage.

“He is almost a stream of consciousness,” said Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), one of only three Senate Republicans who will remain in office after voting to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial — the other four have either already left or plan to next year. It’s “analogous to when every day he would tweet,” Cassidy added, “and 99 percent of the time it never came to anything.”

The article continues to highlight how many Trump critics are leaving their office voluntarily this year rather than face Trump and his army of congressional deplorables.  This New York Times article outlines his radical ideas for this election cycle.  The byline includes Maggie Haberman, FYI.  “Why a Second Trump Presidency May Be More Radical Than His First. Donald Trump has long exhibited authoritarian impulses, but his policy operation is now more sophisticated, and the buffers to check him are weaker.”

Mr. Trump’s violent and authoritarian rhetoric on the 2024 campaign trail has attracted growing alarm and comparisons to historical fascist dictators and contemporary populist strongmen. In recent weeks, he has dehumanized his adversaries as “vermin” who must be “rooted out,” declared that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” encouraged the shooting of shoplifters and suggested that the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, deserved to be executed for treason.

As he runs for president again facing four criminal prosecutions, Mr. Trump may seem more angry, desperate and dangerous to American-style democracy than in his first term. But the throughline that emerges is far more long-running: He has glorified political violence and spoken admiringly of autocrats for decades.

As a presidential candidate in July 2016, he praised the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein as having been “so good” at killing terrorists. Months after being inaugurated, he told the strongman leader of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, that his brutal campaign of thousands of extrajudicial killings in the name of fighting drugs was “an unbelievable job.” And throughout his four years in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump blew through boundaries and violated democratic norms.

What would be different in a second Trump administration is not so much his character as his surroundings. Forces that somewhat contained his autocratic tendencies in his first term — staff members who saw their job as sometimes restraining him, a few congressional Republicans episodically willing to criticize or oppose him, a partisan balance on the Supreme Court that occasionally ruled against him — would all be weaker.

As a result, Mr. Trump’s and his advisers’ more extreme policy plans and ideas for a second term would have a greater prospect of becoming reality.

This article written by Philip Bump in the Washington Post also addresses Trump’s campaign style. “How Donald Trump uses dishonesty.”  He might as well say the quiet part out loud.

Trump spent years trying to get people to buy gold-plated condominiums, apartments gilded with veneers of luxury and class. He spent years trying to get lots of people to buy lots of things, really, with allegations of fraud lingering around him and his company for much of that time. But he was never more successful in parlaying dishonesty into investment than since he embraced a career in national politics in 2015.

His approach that year was groundbreaking for a deceptively simple reason. Republican voters, frustrated by Barack Obama’s election and reelection, had increasingly embraced misinformation about national political issues. The Republican establishment, including elected officials, didn’t know how to deal with this. At first, they tried to co-opt the energy, reframing their desired policy preferences in the vernacular common with the tea party or fringe-right media outlets. But there was still a gap between what those outlets and right-wing commentators were endorsing and what established politicians would say.

Trump closed the gap. He said the things about immigrants that were common on the fringe-right, despite being exaggerated or false. He said the things about the left that those commentators, uncoupled from the party, were claiming on Fox News and in blogs. There was a backlash, including from the GOP establishment, that helped increase the audience for his claims. Republicans — especially the hard-right Republicans who were more likely to vote in primaries — heard him and viewed him not as a dishonest, opportunistic demagogue but as a solitary truth-telling pariah. That everyone in a position to know pointed out that Trump was wrong or lying reinforced his political branding: He was the guy challenging the elite hegemony. “Birds aren’t real,” but for an older generation.

This has been Trump’s sales approach ever since. You can see it in the rhetoric he deployed over the weekend at campaign events in Iowa, reiterating false, debunked claims about election fraud and attempting to reframe President Biden as a threat to democracy. But those are the endpoints of his approach, not the mechanism itself.

Consider this bit of rhetoric Trump offered in support of the idea that it is Biden, not him, who undermines America’s systems and history.

“You know that they’ve labeled parents at school board meetings as domestic terrorists. I mean, can you believe it?” he said in Cedar Rapids. “But they have. You know, when I first heard that — they have actually gone after parents viciously and violently, and when I first heard it, I thought people were just making it up. They haven’t made it up. You’ve seen that.”

They did make it up. This idea that the Biden administration had called parents “domestic terrorists” has been debunked repeatedly. But — because it’s so compelling a reason to despise Biden and because the debunkings don’t permeate right-wing media — the idea has become embedded in anti-Biden lore. He’s right about one thing, though: His supporters have seen that claim, on Fox News and in right-wing commentary for years. It’s false, but they’ve seen it, and here’s Trump glomming onto the idea so that he can put it to higher use: disparaging Biden and his administration as the threat to democracy.

That’s how it works, over and over. He gets buy-in on a familiar claim and then pivots it to his advantage, either by depicting himself in opposition to shared enemies or by leveraging the credibility he earns to make other false statements. Right after this riff, for example, he started talking about how his opponents purportedly cheat in elections. Graham Kates of CBS News reports that “Trump seeks “urgent review” of gag order ruling in New York civil fraud case.”  Not even a court can shut this idiot up while he destroys others’ lives.

Former President Donald Trump intends to appeal a ruling that upheld a gag order in his civil fraud trial in New York, with his attorneys saying Monday that they plan to ask the state’s highest court to review the decision.

New York Judge Arthur Engoron issued the order barring Trump from commenting publicly about his staff after the former president published a social media post disparaging Engoron’s clerk on Oct. 3, the second day of the trial. The order was later expanded to apply to attorneys in the case.

The judge found that Trump and his campaign violated the gag order twice, and Trump paid $15,000 in fines, before the appeals court temporarily stayed the order on Nov. 16. That hiatus lasted two weeks, while a panel of judges in the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court considered, and then rejected, Trump’s request to have the gag order lifted.

Trump is now seeking an “urgent review” by New York’s highest court, called the Court of Appeals, his attorneys said in a filing. Trump has accused Engoron and the clerk, Allison Greenfield, of bias in his filings.

“Without expedited review, [the defendants] will continue to suffer irreparable injury daily, as they are silenced on matters implicating the appearance of bias and impropriety on the bench during a trial of immense stakes,” Trump attorney Clifford Robert wrote. “Petitioners’ counsel have no means of preserving evidence of or arguments regarding such bias and impropriety at this time, since the Gag Orders also prohibit in-court statements.”

I’m unsure how to endure all this since we must deal with it head-on. I suppose ranting here, going to my local to drink a glass of wine and rant, plus just plain ranting to the dog and cats, will suffice for now. I’m not quite too old to also rant at my elected officials, even though there’s not much they do about anything.

We will also get this mess that Republicans have cooked up to get us to ignore Orange Caligula’s rants. Here’s more of those Crazy Train Republicans as reported by Newsweek. “Joe Biden Impeachment Looks More Likely After Walmart Confrontations: Comer.  Who had Walmart Confrontations on their Election Bingo cards?  Anyone?

Representative James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, said on Sunday that an impeachment of President Joe Biden looks more likely after House Republicans heard from their constituents at Walmart over the Thanksgiving holiday.

The GOP has been investigating Biden over allegations that he intervened and benefited from his son Hunter Biden‘s business dealings with China and Ukraine while he was vice president under former President Barack Obama, including accusations of taking bribes. The allegations have been denied by the White House and Hunter Biden’s lawyers, with Democrats criticizing the GOP’s impeachment inquiries for failing to find any meaningful evidence against the president.

Once the impeachment inquiry is complete, the Judiciary Committee will decide on whether to draw up any draft impeachment articles against Biden to be voted on by the House. Comer has said that a vote could take place by early 2024.

Better let MGT do it, or she will come after you with a machete and whack of little Jim. You remember what she did to Boerbert.

We have a few more weeks before we can actually see voter sentiment instead of reading misleading polls.  Hang in here with us!

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

You’ve got covert action
Prejudice to extremes
You’ve got primitive cunning
And high tech means
You’ve got eyes everywhere
But people see through you

 
You’ve got good manipulators
Got your store of dupes
You’ve got the idiot clamour
Of your lobby groups
You like to play on fears
But people see through you

 
You’ve got instant communication
Instant data tabulation
You got the forces of occupation
But you don’t get capitulation

 
‘Cause people see through you
People see through you
People see through you
People see through you

By Bruce Cockburn

Sunday Reads: The Republican Attack on democracy and the Constitution

Posted: December 3, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Republicans against democracy | Tags: , , , , , , | 12 Comments

Happy Sunday, Sky Dancers!

The Krampus parade rolled last night in my hood. I have a long list of those I’d like them to put in their baskets and carry off. Most of them will show up in this post of infamy today. I can’t even remember when I did a Sunday post, but here it is!

Enjoy the Krampus pix and think about which of my neighborhood Krampus I should send off to the Beltway. The guy with the red eyes is headed for Mar-a-Lago. The Former Guy’s speeches are getting truly horrifying and more demented than ever.

This is from the Washington Post. “Trump attempts to spin anti-democracy, authoritarian criticism against Biden. The former president declared his 2024 campaign as a ‘righteous crusade’ against ‘tyrants and villains.'” He gave his speech in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. His projection is prominent. If he blames someone else for doing it, it’s because he’s done it multiple times already.

Republican polling leader Donald Trump moved to deflect from criminal charges that he tried to overturn the 2020 election and from his own pledges to take revenge on his opponents if he returns to the White House, seeking to parry warnings that he presents a danger to democracy.

His speech on Saturdaywas an effort to turn the tables on rising alarms from Democrats and some Republicans that Trump’s return to power would imperil free elections and civil liberties. As candidates ramp up appearances in Iowa ahead of the caucuses on Jan. 15, the former president, who refused to accept his 2020 election loss and inspired his supporters to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power, responded by comparing President Biden to a fascist tyrant, and the campaign distributed signs reading ‘BIDEN ATTACKS DEMOCRACY.’

“Biden and his radical left allies like to pose as defenders of democracy,” Trump told a raucous crowd of a couple thousand supporters here. “But Joe Biden is not the defender of American democracy. Joe Biden is the destroyer of American democracy. … This campaign is a righteous crusade to liberate our republic from Biden and the criminals and the Biden administration.”

The speech showed that Biden’s framing of the 2024 election as democracy versus authoritarianism is resonating with voters, according to Jennifer Mercieca, a historian of American political rhetoric at Texas A&M University. Trump’s strategy to “accuse the accuser” could confuse voters about the real threat and help reassure his own supporters, she said.

“Trump’s Iowa speech continues his use of fascist rhetoric: it’s us versus them, he tells his supporters, and ‘they’ are enemies who cheat,” she said. “Authoritarians have a lot of rhetorical tricks for explaining away anti-democratic actions as actually ‘democratic.’”

The Daily Beast has this headline for the event. This is even more bizarre than his claim that the Democratic Party is coming for your dishwashers. He must be the only person that doesn’t know that dishwashers save energy and water. This is by Mark Alfred. He filed it under the category of ‘unhinged.’ “Trump (Accidentally) Has a Rare Moment of Truth at Iowa Rally. But it was fleeting, and then he was quickly back on his usual BS.”

Former President Donald Trump accidentally admitted what his critics have long accused him of at an Iowa rally on Saturday night, telling the crowd: “We’ve been waging an all-out war on American democracy.”

But just as quickly as he made the shocking remark, he corrected himself to say his “opponents” are the ones guilty of attacks on democracy.

Trump, throughout the rally, argued that he was on a “righteous crusade” in support of democracy while his team handed out “BIDEN ATTACKS DEMOCRACY” signs to rally-goers.

Trump, of course, faces dozens of charges for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results and seize another term despite having lost the election, and on the eve of the rally, a federal judge ruled that he cannot rely on presidential immunity to shield him from prosecution.

He appeared as unhinged as ever during his speech in Cedar Rapids: Mocking the late Senator and veteran John McCain, vowing for the eighth year in a row to repeal Obamacare, and warning that the left is coming to take away voters’ dishwashers.

“Obamacare is a disaster and I say we’re going to do something about it,” Trump said—a promise he has made since 2015 and has yet to carry out.

“I saved Obamacare when we got John McCain’s negative vote, you know he voted against it. He said ‘uhhhhhh thumbs downnn.’ That was an amazing night,” Trump continued, making a crude impression of McCain, who was battling brain cancer at the time.

Biden has already sought to seize on Trump’s renewed vow to gut the landmark health-care law. “To those who want to repeal this lifesaving law, let me be clear: I won’t let it happen on my watch,” Biden said on Friday.

The Affordable Health Care Act is one of the most popular laws to come out of Congress in years. Good Luck with that endeavor, Orange Caligula! Here’s another way that Republicans are killing women and democracy at the same time. “The Dirty Tricks the GOP Is Using to Keep Abortion Off the Ballot in 2024. Republicans are getting killed on reproductive rights, and they’re taking desperate measures to prevent their constituents from having a say next year.” This is from The Rolling Stone.

TIFFANY CAMPBELL USED to describe herself as a “hardcore, church-going Republican.” That changed back in 2006, when she was still running an in-home daycare in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and learned she was pregnant with twins. The prognosis was dire: one twin’s heart was pumping blood for both of them and, without intervention, neither would survive. She has a healthy 16-year-old son today because she was able to obtain an abortion. After that experience, she threw herself into politics; today she is working full-time for the campaign to restore pre-Dobbs abortion protections in South Dakota.

If the South Dakota measure makes it to the ballot, it has a good shot at passing. Since the Supreme Court struck down Roe in June of 2022, the reproductive rights movement has gone seven for seven at the ballot box, defeating efforts to restrict abortion in states like Kansas, Kentucky, and Montana, and enshrining protections in swing states like Michigan and Ohio. It’s hardly a wonder why Republicans are emptying their bag of dirty tricks to make sure it doesn’t work: inventing astronomical “costs,” conspiring with anti-abortion groups to change the ballot language, and fighting to ban petition collectors from public spaces, among other strategies.

In South Dakota, anti-abortion activists, with assists from GOP officials, have tried out a variety of  tactics in recent months. Activists have been harassed, videotaped and repeatedly called the police on petition collectors, while local officials have sought to pass ordinances banning them from collecting signatures in public places. Most recently, the attorney general warned in a letter that he was in possession of “video and photographic evidence” that could allow opponents to challenge the signatures that have been collected so far.

“The organized opposition is more aggressive than I’ve encountered in any of these fights in the past,” says Adam Weiland, who has worked on various ballot measures in the state for years. “It’s the first time I’ve ever encountered people who don’t even want you to get on the ballot and let the voters vote. That’s the whole focus of their campaign.”

Liz Cheney continues to take on the Republican Party while promoting her new book. This is from Politico. “Liz Cheney would rather see Democrats win in 2024. She warned of the “threat” from within her own party.”

Former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney would rather cede power to Democrats than see members of her own party win in 2024, she said, calling a Republican majority a “threat,” and warning of an existential crisis leading up to next year’s election.

“I believe very strongly in those principles and ideals that have defined the Republican Party, but the Republican Party of today has made a choice and they haven’t chosen the Constitution, and so I do think it presents a threat if the Republicans are in the majority in January 2025,” the Wyoming Republican said during an interview with CBS, when asked whether she would prefer a Democratic majority in 2025.

The Independent reports this on the Georgia “fake electors” case. Kenneth Cheesebro is cooperating.

The state-level criminal investigation into the 2020 election “fake electors” plot in Nevada has secured the cooperation of a key witness — Kenneth Chesebro, the lawyer who orchestrated the scheme to overturn Joe Biden’s win in the state.

Both CNN and The Washington Post report that Mr Chesebro has agreed to meet with investigators in the state in a bid to avoid prosecution there.

He pleaded guilty to charges relating to the plot in Georgia and as part of that plea deal has agreed to cooperate with the prosecution in the sprawling racketeering case against former president Donald Trump and 14 other co-defendants.

Mr Chesebro also agreed to cooperate with any relevant cases in the future both inside and outside the state.

The fake elector plot was to put forward slates of alternate pro-Trump Electoral College voters in multiple states — Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and New Mexico — with Mr Chesebro spelling out in a series of memos what they should do to return Mr Trump to the White House and snatch the election from Mr Biden.

Mr Chesebro acknowledged in one of the memos that the strategy was “controversial” and even a conservative Supreme Court would likely reject it.

In Nevada, six Republicans signed false Electoral College votes in December 2020 for then-president Trump despite the state going for Mr Biden.

Several of the fake electors are still active in politics for the Republican Party causing internal tensions between those still loyal to Mr Trump, and those who believe there need to be repercussions for the attempt to subvert democracy.

You never need to look farther than Texas to see how absofuckinglutely crazy Republicans are these days. This is from the Texas Tribune.” Texas GOP executive committee rejects proposed ban on associating with Nazi sympathizers and Holocaust deniers. Some members of the committee said such a ban, proposed two months after a prominent conservative activist was caught meeting with a famous white supremacist, might be a “slippery slope” or too vague.”

Two months after a prominent conservative activist and fundraiser was caught hosting white supremacist Nick Fuentes, leaders of the Republican Party of Texas have voted against barring the party from associating with known Nazi sympathizers and Holocaust deniers.

In a 32-29 vote on Saturday, members of the Texas GOP’s executive committee stripped a pro-Israel resolution of a clause that would have included the ban.In a separate move that stunned some members, roughly half of the board also tried to prevent a record of their vote from being kept.

In rejecting the proposed ban, the executive committee’s majority delivered a serious blow to a faction of members that has called for the party to confront its ties to groups that have recently employed or associated with outspoken white supremacists and extremists.

In October, The Texas Tribune published photos of Fuentes, an avowed admirer of Adolf Hitler who has called for a “holy war” against Jews, entering and leaving the offices of Pale Horse Strategies, a consulting firm for far-right candidates and movements.

Pale Horse Strategies is owned by Jonathan Stickland, a former state representative and at the time the leader of a political action committee, Defend Texas Liberty, that two West Texas oil billionaires have used to fund right-wing movements, candidates and politicians in the state — including Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Matt Rinaldi, chairman of the Texas GOP, was also seen entering the Pale Horse offices while Fuentes was inside for nearly 7 hours. He denied participating, however, saying he was visiting with someone else at the time and didn’t know Fuentes was there.

Defend Texas Liberty has not publicly commented on the scandal, save for a two-sentence statement condemning those who’ve tried to connect the PAC to Fuentes’ “incendiary” views. Nor has the group clarified Stickland’s current role at Defend Texas Liberty, which quietly updated its website in October to reflect that he is no longer its president. Tim Dunn, one of the two West Texas oil billionaires who primarily fund Defend Texas Liberty, confirmed the meeting between Fuentes and Stickland and called it a “serious blunder,” according to a statement from Patrick.

Well, a column about Republican nutballs wouldn’t be complete without Lady Lindsey, who has gone entirely off the leash since John McCain passed.

This is by Cobin Bolies, reporting for The Daily Beast. They watch the Republicans on Sunday Shows, so we don’t have to. “Lindsey Graham Dodges on Palestinian Civilian Deaths: ‘What’s Too Many?'” Just WTF does Trump have on this man? It must be career-ending.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Sunday seemed to dismiss thousands of dead Palestinians as merely collateral damage in Israel’s war against Hamas, asserting that the Israeli government can do whatever it needs to win.

Appearing on CNN’s State of the Union, Graham was asked about the restarted fighting following the temporary ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Graham urged the U.S. to put more pressure on Iran, a supporter of Hamas, before launching into a tirade against Vice President Kamala Harris’ declaration that too many Palestinian civilians have been killed.

“Here’s the big question: Vice President Harris has said, ‘Israel has a right to defend themselves. How you do it matters.’ The secretary of defense said it would be a strategic failure for Israel to have killed too many Palestinians,” Graham said. “I don’t want any Palestinian to die, but how do you do this? Vice President Harris, tell Israel how to destroy Hamas in a way not to hurt innocent Palestinians and I’ll pass it along.”

Graham said that Hamas allegedly embedding among civilian life in Gaza has dampened Israel’s ability to protect innocent lives. “The reason so many Palestinians are dying, I think, is because Hamas wants them to die,” Graham said. “If you have ideas about lessening civilian casualties, let me know, I’ll tell Israel. But the idea of Hamas still standing when this is over would be the ultimate strategic failure.”

CNN anchor Dana Bash further pressed Graham, asking him if he agreed with Harris and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin that too many Palestinians have died. The indignant senator demurred.

I’ve always been fiercely against Home Schooling, which is another Republican pet project. This story will trigger the heck out of you, so tread gently. It’s from the Washington Post. “What homeschooling hides: A boy tortured and starved by his stepmom. Roman Lopez was 11 when he went missing. His years of torment were concealed by homeschooling.”

NHis family had searched, taping hand-drawn “missing” posters to telephone poles and driving the streets calling out the 11-year-old’s name. So had many of his neighbors, their flashlights sweeping over the sidewalks as the winter darkness settled on the Sierra Nevada foothills. The police were searching, too, and now they had returned to the place where Roman had gone missing earlier that day: his family’s rented home in Placerville, Calif. Roman’s stepmother, Lindsay Piper, hesitated when officers showed up at her door the night of Jan. 11, 2020, asking to comb the house again. But she had told them that Roman liked to hide in odd places — even the clothes dryer — and agreed to let them in.

Brock Garvin, Roman’s 15-year-old stepbrother, was sitting in the dimly lit basement when police came downstairs shortly after 10:30 p.m. He ignored them, he said later, watching “Supernatural” on television as three officers began inspecting the black-and-yellow Home Depot storage bins stacked along the back wall.

Brock had no idea what had happened to Roman. But he did know something the police did not: Much of what his mother had said to them that day was a lie.

When she reported Roman’s disappearance, Piper told the police she was home schooling the eight kids in her household. This was technically true. It was also a ruse.

Most schools have teachers, principals, guidance counselors — professionals trained to recognize the unexplained bruises or erratic behaviors that may point to an abusive parent. Home education was an easy way to avoid the scrutiny of such people. That was the case for Piper, whose children were learning less from her about math and history than they were about violence, cruelty and neglect.

There’s something deeply wrong with us when one party in a two-party system is more interested in billionaires and power than the humanity and needs of their constituents. Like Liz says, Vote them out.

What is on your reading and blogging list today?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rbgp7TMDAM

Padded with power, here they come
International loan sharks backed by the guns
Of market-hungry military profiteers
Whose word is a swamp and whose brow is smeared
With the blood of the poor
Who rob life of its quality
Who render rage a necessity
By turning countries into labour camps
Modern slavers in drag as champions of freedom
Sinister, cynical instrument
Who makes the gun into a sacrament —
The only response to the deification
Of tyranny by so-called “developed” nations’
Idolatry of ideology
North, south, east, west
Kill the best and buy the rest
It’s just spend a buck to make a buck
You don’t really give a flying fuck
About the people in misery
IMF dirty MF
Takes away everything it can get
Always making certain that there’s one thing left
Keep them on the hook with insupportable debt
See the paid-off local bottom feeders
Passing themselves off as leaders
Kiss the ladies, shake hands with the fellows
Open for business like a cheap bordello
And they call it democracy
And they call it democracy
And they call it democracy
And they call it democracy
See the loaded eyes of the children too
Trying to make the best of it the way kids do
One day you’re going to rise from your habitual feast
To find yourself staring down the throat of the beast
They call the revolution
IMF dirty MF
Takes away everything it can get
Always making certain that there’s one thing left
Keep them on the hook with insupportable debt
And they call it democracy
And they call it democracy
And they call it democracy
And they call it democracy

by Bruce Cockburn

Finally Friday Reads: The Republican Crazy Train

Posted: November 17, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: 2024 Elections, A thread for Ranting | Tags: , , , , , , , | 11 Comments

John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Have you noticed that a good deal of Republican Politicians need some serious intervention and more than a few psychiatric evaluations?  As part of my training to be a teacher at university, I was trained to spot issues and quickly send the individual off to the District’s psychologist. I can’t say I know what happens after you get diagnosed with, say, a significant personality disorder or two, but I do know how to recognize symptoms and get the person’s help.  It was a massive effort in ’70s education colleges since School Districts could be held accountable for not diagnosing student needs and getting them help as soon as possible.  Perhaps it’s time to introduce a similar methodology to aides, staff, and those working daily with Republican officeholders. The amount of abnormal behavior screams at you from your television screen daily. I remember Nixon’s paranoia well, but it didn’t seem like a larger pattern in the party then.

Leave it to Ozzy.

All aboard Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, ay
Crazy, but that’s how it goes
Millions of people living as foes
Maybe it’s not too late
To learn how to love
And forget how to hate
Mental wounds not healing
Life’s a bitter shame
I’m going off the rails on a crazy train
I’m going off the rails on a crazy train
Let’s go

The Washington Monthly starts at the very head of the rotting fish. “Has Trump Gone Even Crazier?  Forget parsing every Biden utterance. The likely GOP nominee is forgetting where he is, stumbling over words, and waxing full fascist.”  This is written by James D. Zirin.

While neither Trump nor Biden projects John F. Kennedy’s vigor, Trump, 77, has been even more bizarre of late—doddering and disoriented in a new way.

Listen to what he has been saying lately.

He has repeatedly confused Biden and Obama, even calling Obama the current president. Doctors often ask stroke victims who is the current president to test mental acuity. We all misspeak. But put this in the context of many other indicia of cognitive decline.

Trump doesn’t know where he is. On the stump in Sioux City, Iowa, he said hello to Sioux Falls, which is in South Dakota. Okay, not that big a deal. Of course, his aides later said the teleprompter got it wrong. I wonder whether the aides are still in his employ. Perhaps they are moving boxes in Mar-a-Lago.

Misidentifying world leaders. He described Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, whom he admires, as the “great leader of Turkey.” Recep Tayyip Erdogan is authoritarian like Orban but with an Islamic hue rather than a Christian nationalist drag. Trump has said that Hungary shares a border with Russia. Seven countries border Hungary, but not Russia.

Referring to Kim Jong-Un, the hereditary dictator who rules North Korea, Trump said he was in charge of a country of 1.4 billion people, obviously confusing the Hermit Kingdom of 26 million with the Middle Kingdom of 1.4 billion.

But it’s not just misidentification. It’s the cadence and slurring of speech, too. Trump is having trouble with names. “On purpose” came out as “on perfect.” Adherents of Karl Marx came out as “markers,” not Marxists. He warned that Biden is drifting us into World War II.

Perhaps more worrisome than Trump’s mental miscues is the fact that his authoritarian tendencies have veered into even more fascistic territory, and his insults have become even more intemperate, which is saying something. (Recall that after the first 2016 presidential debate, he flogged Megyn Kelly with a reference to menstruation.) Special Counsel Jack Smith is “deranged.” While this might be understandable since Smith has indicted Trump in a Washington, D.C. federal court for using illegal means to overturn the 2020 election results and in Florida for mishandling classified documents, the bile has boiled over into invective against Smith’s wife and family, whom he insists “despise me much more than he does.”

Trump called Nancy Pelosi a “crazed lunatic” and continued to joke about the hammer assault on her 83-year-old husband, Paul, by a crazed, seemingly pro-Trump intruder who was convicted on multiple felony accounts on Thursday.

From bad to wurst. In a Veterans Day speech in New Hampshire, Trump called his political enemies “vermin,” channeling the dehumanizing language of OG fascists Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini and arguing paradoxically—and paranoically—that the pests are also “radical left thugs” who pose a greater threat to the United States than Russia, China, or even North Korea. He promised to “root out” the vermin if he regained power.

And, if you dare call out the reference to vermin or blood as Hitlerian, his spokesman threatens that your “entire existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House.”

In New Hampshire, he also called himself a “very proud election denier.” Are there humble election deniers?

Jewish and Latino groups, as well as an untold number of columnists, have condemned his statement that undocumented immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country,” the kind of volk talk that sounded better in the original German.

Deranged people, as we all have learned, can be dangerous. While it can be hard to diagnose if the unhoused man who regularly yells at you at the street corner has just plateaued or will be given to a violent attack, Trump’s policy pronouncements have become more incendiary and more insane, if that were possible.

The list of policy pronouncements should have a chilling effect on any person who values the U.S. Constitution.  But, crazy is at all levels of U.S. Federal and State Republican officials. 

The Economist had this headline today. “Donald Trump poses the biggest danger to the world in 2024.  What his victory in America’s election would mean.” Are any other media outlets listening or are the too focused on Joe Biden’s Age?

A shadow looms over the world. In this week’s edition we publish The World Ahead 2024, our 38th annual predictive guide to the coming year, and in all that time no single person has ever eclipsed our analysis as much as Donald Trump eclipses 2024. That a Trump victory next November is a coin-toss probability is beginning to sink in.

Mr Trump dominates the Republican primary. Several polls have him ahead of President Joe Biden in swing states. In one, for the New York Times, 59% of voters trusted him on the economy, compared with just 37% for Mr Biden. In the primaries, at least, civil lawsuits and criminal prosecutions have only strengthened Mr Trump. For decades Democrats have relied on support among black and Hispanic voters, but a meaningful number are abandoning the party. In the next 12 months a stumble by either candidate could determine the race—and thus upend the world.

This is a perilous moment for a man like Mr Trump to be back knocking on the door of the Oval Office. Democracy is in trouble at home. Mr Trump’s claim to have won the election in 2020 was more than a lie: it was a cynical bet that he could manipulate and intimidate his compatriots, and it has worked. America also faces growing hostility abroad, challenged by Russia in Ukraine, by Iran and its allied militias in the Middle East and by China across the Taiwan Strait and in the South China Sea. Those three countries loosely co-ordinate their efforts and share a vision of a new international order in which might is right and autocrats are secure.

Because maga Republicans have been planning his second term for months, Trump 2 would be more organised than Trump 1. True believers would occupy the most important positions. Mr Trump would be unbound in his pursuit of retribution, economic protectionism and theatrically extravagant deals. No wonder the prospect of a second Trump term fills the world’s parliaments and boardrooms with despair. But despair is not a plan. It is past time to impose order on anxiety.

The greatest threat Mr Trump poses is to his own country. Having won back power because of his election-denial in 2020, he would surely be affirmed in his gut feeling that only losers allow themselves to be bound by the norms, customs and self-sacrifice that make a nation. In pursuing his enemies, Mr Trump will wage war on any institution that stands in his way, including the courts and the Department of Justice.

This nutter is from Louisiana and believe me, the majority of us are super embarrassed by him. The YouTube below is about Representative Clay Higgin’s “Ghost Bus” comment to the Director of the FBI.  Higgins evidently believes that January 6th was a false flag operation by the deep state in the Homeland Security Department. FBI Director Christopher Ray had to remind him that the FBI was not part of that Department.

Higgins represents Southernmost Louisiana which is basically Cajun Country. He was a police captain know for his tough on crime, often violent approach to gangs in the area. Here’s more on the craziness of Representative Clay Higgins from The Guardian. “Republican praises January 6 attacker’s ‘good faith and core principles’ Louisiana congressman Clay Higgins asks judge to show leniency to Ryan Nichols, charged with assaulting police at US Capitol.”

Seeking leniency for a January 6 rioter charged with assaulting police, the Louisiana Republican congressman Clay Higgins – a former law enforcement officer himself – saluted the man’s “good character, faith and core principles”.

In video taken during the attack on Congress on 6 January 2021, the rioter was seen to say: “It’s going to be violent and yes, if you are asking, ‘Is Ryan Nichols going to bring violence? Yes, Ryan Nichols is going to bring violence.’”

Nichols, in an affidavit, admitted posting the video, attacking officers with pepper spray and urging rioters on with shouts including, “This is not a peaceful protest”

In court in Washington last week, Nichols, of Longview, Texas, pleaded guilty to two charges: obstruction and assaulting, resisting or impeding police and obstruction of an official proceeding.

More than 1,000 arrests have been made over the attack and hundreds of convictions secured, some for seditious conspiracy. Donald Trump, who incited the riot as he attempted to overturn his 2020 presidential election defeat by Joe Biden, faces 17 charges related to his election subversion, four federal and 13 at state level in Georgia.

Nine deaths have been linked to the attack staged by the former president’s supporters, including law enforcement suicides.

Higgins’ own website describes him as having “spent much of his career dedicated to uniformed service [as] an army veteran and law enforcement officer”. It also says he is “widely regarded as one of the most conservative members of Congress”.

Nonetheless, in a letter dated 7 November, he asked the US district judge in Nichols’s case, Royce C Lamberth, to show leniency when passing down sentence.

“Sir,” Higgins wrote. “I submit to you this letter in support of Ryan Taylor Nichols. He is a man of good character, faith, and core principles.

“I humbly ask that he receive fair consideration of the whole of circumstances regarding his case, condition, and background. He has already served nearly two years in the District of Columbia jail in pretrial confinement, which has been destructive to his physical (liver issues) and mental health (PTSD).”

Nichols had been under house arrest since 22 November 2022 and had “not sought to flee nor shown any indication of dangerous activity”, Higgins said.

He added: “Prior to his arrest, Mr Nichols had no criminal background and served honorably in the United States Marine Corps. He continued to serve domestically in a search and rescue capacity, even being publicly recognised for his heroic actions on national television.”

So, that cartoon sums up Higgin’s views of thugs pretty well.  I’m sure you can all name at least 5 crazy Republicans in Congress.  Now, add Higgins to that list.  Right Wingers with money, businesses, and platforms that serve as Republican enablers and donors are equally as nuts these days. I’ve heard more than a few references to Henry Ford’s wingnuttery and the bat shit crazy Elon Musk.  Musk is placing NAZI propaganda on X quite close to the ads he relies on for revenues.  This is from MediaMatters for America. “As Musk endorses antisemitic conspiracy theory, X has been placing ads for Apple, Bravo, IBM, Oracle, and Xfinity next to pro-Nazi content. CEO Linda Yaccarino previously claimed that brands are “protected from the risk of being next to” toxic posts.”  This is reported by Eric Hananoki.

Update (11/16/23): IBM released a statement to the Financial Times saying that it has “suspended all advertising on X while we investigate this entirely unacceptable situation.” Media Matters will update if the other major companies in this report take any similar actions. 

As X owner Elon Musk continues his descent into white nationalist and antisemitic conspiracy theories, his social media platform has been placing ads for major brands like Apple, Bravo (NBCUniversal), IBM, Oracle, and Xfinity (Comcast) next to content that touts Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party. The company’s placements come after CEO Linda Yaccarino claimed that brands are “protected from the risk of being next to” toxic posts on the platform.

Yaccarino has been trying to bring advertisers back to the platform by claiming it’s safe for business. She’s also claimed that X (formerly Twitter) has been “demonstrating its absolute commitment to combating antisemitism on the platform” and that “antisemitism is evil and X will always work to fight it on our platform.”

But her boss last night endorsed the pernicious antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jewish people are supporting “hordes of minorities” who are “flooding” into the country to replace white people. That conspiracy theory was the same one that motivated the deadly 2018 Tree of Life synagogue shooting.

X has also reinstated numerous accounts of bigots and paid far-right extremists, apparently including a pro-Hitler and Holocaust denier account, as part of its creator ad revenue sharing program.

During all of this Musk-induced chaos, corporate advertisements have also been appearing on pro-Hitler, Holocaust denial, white nationalist, pro-violence, and neo-Nazi accounts. Yaccarino has attempted to placate companies by claiming that “brands are now ‘protected from the risk of being next to’ potentially toxic content.”

But that certainly isn’t the case for at least five major brands: We recently found ads for Apple, Bravo, Oracle, Xfinity, and IBM next to posts that tout Hitler and his Nazi Party on X

You may see the ads placements and the offending material at the link.  CNN has this analysis by Allison Morrow. “With antisemitic tweet, Elon Musk reveals his ‘actual truth’.”

Elon Musk has publicly endorsed an antisemitic conspiracy theory popular among White supremacists: that Jewish communities push “hatred against Whites.”

That kind of overt thumbs up to an antisemitic post shocked even some of Musk’s critics, who have long called him out for using racist or otherwise bigoted dog whistles on Twitter, now known as X. It was the multibillionaire’s most explicit public statement yet endorsing anti-Jewish views.

ICYMI: Musk was responding to a post Wednesday that said Jewish communities “have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.” The post also referenced “hordes of minorities” flooding Western countries, a popular antisemitic conspiracy theory.

It’s the kind of post you can find easily on X these days, and likely would have gone unnoticed had Musk, with more than 160 million followers, not re-shared the post with the comment: “You have said the actual truth.”

The antisemitic conspiracy theory — which posits that Jews want to bring undocumented minority populations into Western countries to reduce White majorities in those nations — is often espoused by hate groups.

It’s the same conspiracy echoed in the final written words of Robert Bowers, the convicted murderer of 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018. His last social media post said that a Jewish nonprofit dedicated to aiding refugees “likes to bring invaders in that kill our people.” The mass shooting was the deadliest attack against Jews in American history.

Musk, in subsequent posts, expounded on his views. He wrote that he does not believe hatred of White people extends “to all Jewish communities.” But then he singled out the Anti-Defamation League, claiming that it promotes racism against White people.

X did not respond to requests for comment.

This confuses me to no end because other than the late Sammy Davis, Jr., I thought all European Jews were white.  I just don’t get this weird view of race and gender where some right wing nut gets to have purity standards based on some genetic code only they seem to know. I hope this sinks X for good but all that will do is likely get an even more outrageous set of hate crimes against our Jewish population.  I have issues with the Bibi’s government and with the entire concept of Zionism but for goodness’ sake, having policy differences with a nation does not mean I hate its people.  It certainly doesn’t mean I blame any American Jewish person for what the approach is now to the West Bank either. I also do not blame the population of the West Bank or Gaza on the actions of Hamas. All this right winger craziness torched to a burnt earth strategy by messianic cults just makes me very sad.

So, we need to address the continuing saga which is Congressman George Santos. He appears to be the only Drag Queen that right wing Republicans want to keep around.  After he announced he would not be running for reelection this week, he likely believed his expulsion was less likely.  That’s not a good assumption, gurl! The AP has this breaking news headline. “Ethics chairman launches a new bid to expel George Santos after a withering report on his conduct.”

The chairman of the House Ethics Committee announced Friday he has filed a resolution to force a vote on expelling Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., from Congress, one day after the committee issued a withering report detailing substantial evidence that Santos converted campaign donations for his own personal use.

Santos easily survived an expulsion vote earlier this month as lawmakers in both parties stressed the need to allow due process, as Santos is also facing nearly two dozen charges in federal court. But the release of the committee’s findings has generated new momentum for ousting the scandal-plagued freshman. Shortly after the report was released, Santos announced he would not seek reelection.

“The evidence uncovered in the Ethics Committee’s Investigative Subcommittee investigation is more than sufficient to warrant punishment and the most appropriate punishment, is expulsion,” said Rep. Michael Guest, R-Miss.

Mary Trump wrote a lot about some of the pathology of her Uncle Donald. She really slammed him for his NAZI rhetoric.  I’ll just let her discuss the Republican Crazy Train. She’s got far better credentials than me.  All I see are people with scads of delusions of grandeur.  That would be representative of Jill Stein too as far as I am concerned.   You can check out her substack here.

Stein’s Candidacy: Mary Trump also weighed in on Jill Stein’s announcement that she would run for office in 2024 on behalf of the Green Party. Calling her a “pro-Putin hack,” Mary Trump noted that she played a spoiler to Hillary Clinton’s presidential run in 2016.

“She had no chance of winning; and the only candidate whose chances she was going to hurt was Hillary Clinton. That was precisely the point,” Mary Trump said.

The psychologist said her stance against Stein was not simply because of the enormous damage she did eight years ago, but also because in those intervening years, she has done nothing. “She’s a fraud whose only purpose seems to be lining her own pockets in the service of undermining the only party that has a shot at saving American democracy,” the ex-president’s niece said.

Look Ahead: Mary Trump also said the focus in the coming weeks would be “Whether or not Donald’s mental decline is worsening or just becoming more obvious as the stressors in his life compound” and “Will the corporate media focus, in a serious and sustained way, on his multiplying verbal gaffes and cognitive errors.”

The psychologist noted that Donald Trump’s dangerous rhetoric has been ramping up and he was not only echoing Hitler but was also sometimes quoting the German dictator. While Hitler promised to “get rid of the communist vermin,” the ex-president in his “Veteran’s Day” message promised to get rid of “the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.

Yes, once again I’m reporting all the news that no one really wants to hear.  I just want to keep scaring everyone into voting for anyone but these crazy people.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?