QOTD -- Weak, Failing, And Dangerous

 

"... Trump is of course consolidating autocratic power in many unnerving ways. As law professor Kate Shaw put it to The Times, Trump is simply assuming for himself authorities that his predecessors never thought they possessed: militarizing cities via manufactured pretexts, firing statutorily protected agency heads, refusing to spend congressionally appropriated funds, shaking down media organizations and major cultural institutions, and much more. Calling Trump “failing” might seem to undercut warnings about the autocratic threat he poses.  [snip]

"There is a way to reconcile this authoritarianism-versus-failure paradox. Democrats can denounce Trump’s abuses for the Rubicon-crossing threat they pose—while also asserting that his multiplying failures are exactly why those abuses are growing more menacing and unconstrained. In short, Trump is a floundering figure of buffoonish incompetence who is simultaneously consolidating authoritarian power, which is precisely what makes this situation so combustible and dangerous. And Democrats can say exactly that." -- Greg Sargent, in The New Republic, "Trump Is A Weak And Failing President, And It's Time To Say So."  There's a message if certain Democrats in the House and Senate know how politics works.  And beyond saying, they have to have the spines to fight, and fight effectively.

QOTD -- "Fasc-ish" MAGA

 

Greg Sargent concludes an article in The New Republic on that "unified Reich" video that the Malignant Loser shared on his failing social media site, noting that the video sharing is far from the worst thing to come from the would- be dictator:

A helpful framework for understanding all this is Damon Linker’s conception of the “fasc-ish” political style. Under Trump, this has included overt support for political violence, totalitarian-style serial deception expressly understood as an assertion of the power to remake reality, depictions of a nation in total moral and spiritual collapse, and the blaming of this supposed calamity on mass betrayal by traitorous elites.

This “fasc-ish” politics also casts Trump as a martyred victim of those elites, and elevates his sacred bond with his supporters—“the people,” accurately understood—as the only hope for national redemption. It savagely dehumanizes political opponents, invents a supremely powerful leftist threat that justifies anything in response, shows limitless contempt for the very idea that rules should constrain and direct political engagement, and elevates deliberate agitprop as an idealized form of political expression. As those aforementioned Trump quotes and proposals show, he and his propagandists are trafficking in all these elements.

The video promoted by Trump’s feed contained the words “unifying Reich,” which were a tad too explicitly evocative of Nazism, requiring his disavowal. But the bigger story is unmistakable: Trump and his allies are testing how far they can push forward with a dizzying barrage of propaganda tropes and policy threats that are at least as perniciously “fasc-ish” as that video, and often far more so. And if Trump can get elected in spite of all that, they will likely claim a mandate for full-blown authoritarian rule.

The Malignant Loser and his MAGAt fellow travelers exhibit enough behavior and rhetoric to be classified as "fascist" in our book.  But there's no need to quibble over categories.  It's certain that a Malignant Loser victory in November would usher in a Dark Age in America that would forever transform us as a nation and as a democracy.

(Photo:  David Ramos, Getty Images)

QOTD -- Wrecking A MAGA Fantasy

 

"Because Donald Trump must always be seen as wielding absolute mastery over his hapless, flailing opponents, he and his propagandists want you to believe his hush-money trial in Manhattan has proven nothing but a smashing political success for him.  [snip]

"... The truth is that no one knows what will happen in this trial. It’s certainly possible Trump will get acquitted, giving him a political boost. But a conviction seems quite plausible, and it’s likely voters will punish him for it, as polls suggest they will.

"Either way, here’s what we know right now: Trump is not wielding absolute mastery over events. Trump’s own lawyers are not treating his trial as fundamentally illegitimate. Voters outside the MAGA information universe regard the charges against him as serious, and they see the other prosecutions against him in a similarly grave light. A whole lot of people will likely see Trump’s sneering dismissal of these proceedings—the dozing off, the attacks on jurors, the rage fits against the supposed unfairness of it all—as whiny entitlement, as contempt for the very notion that he should ever be held accountable for anything..." -- Greg Sargent in The New Republic on how the hush money for porn stars/ election interference/ fraud trial is wrecking a MAGA fantasy of the Malignant Loser/ Don Snoreleone/ The Godfarter as the absolute master of people and events around him.  The pea- brain buffoon's narcissism is once again working against him, this time in a forum where there are consequences for his behavior, both legally and politically.

QOTD -- "Undue Fatalism"

 

"... The impulse to sound alarms — to break voters out of their 'it can’t happen here' doldrums — is understandable. But it’s also possible to take this too far, and here it’s worth registering an irony: Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a scholar of strongman rule, has noted that a time-tested tactic of authoritarian leaders is to disarm the electorate by suggesting their glorious triumph is inevitable.

“'Authoritarians create a climate where they seem unstoppable,' Ben-Ghiat told me. 'Creating an aura of destiny around the leader galvanizes his supporters by making his movement seem much stronger than it actually is. The manipulation of perception is everything.'

"The aim is to hypnotize voters into forgetting the power and numbers that they possess, persuading them that politics is a hopelessly sordid and disappointing exercise. But that is not the story of the Trump years..." (our emphasis) -- Greg Sargent, Washington Post, advising us to adopt "a spirit of guarded and vigilant confidence" in taking on the Malignant Loser and his cult followers.  He notes that "Undue fatalism could even prove counterproductive, de-energizing voter opposition exactly when Trump is brazenly projecting his dictatorial intentions."  It also plays into his ugly narrative that the only way he loses elections is through cheating by Democrats.  We have just under a year to go.  Let's make the most of it, shall we?!

QOTD -- The MAGA Doom Loop

 

"... A new analysis by Nate Cohn of the New York Times sheds some light here. Despite President Biden’s unpopularity, recent Times polling shows his surprising resilience in swing states — and Cohn suggests this partly reflects backlash against MAGA-fied state parties in these places. By embracing Trump’s efforts to nullify his loss, they are only reminding voters that democracy is once again in peril, including whether their own votes will be counted next time.

"All of this syncs up with what political science tells us: Issues become salient for voters when elites talk about them a lot. That has certainly been the case with democracy and that will surely continue next year. Big events — such as Trump’s prosecution for Jan. 6, 2021-related offenses and the GOP’s continued devotion despite those criminal charges — will only reinforce what’s at stake.

“'As long as the MAGA-Trump faction remains a threat to free and fair elections, a consequential slice of the electorate will continue to vote on this issue,'” political scientist Lee Drutman told me.

"If there’s a silver lining, it’s that the MAGA doom loop might keep on working its magic — all the way through 2024." -- Greg Sargent in the Washington Post, on how MAGAt Republicans' continuing efforts to re- litigate the 2020 election and override the will of voters in their own states will result in a "MAGA doom loop," convincing swing voters that the Republican threat to our democracy is real and continuing. The threat to our democracy, abortion rights, and the bogus impeachment "inquiry" all look to be forming into a perfect storm for 2024.

Youth Vote Trend Should Terrify Republicans

 

Data from the Harvard Youth Poll obtained by the Washington Post's Greg Sargent should terrify MAGA Republicans as we move into the 2024 elections and beyond. Starting in the 2018 mid-term elections, the youth vote (18 - 29 year olds) came out in substantial numbers for Democrats and denied Republicans control of Congress. Likewise in 2020 and the 2022 mid-terms, the youth vote proved a powerful force for the Democrats, who echoed their views on women's reproductive rights, gun safety, climate change, and economic inequality. From Sargent's report:

"John Della Volpe, director of the poll, refers to those issues as the “big four.” They all speak to the sense of precarity that young voters feel about their physical safety, their economic future, their basic rights and even the ecological stability of the planet.

'This generation has never felt secure — personally, physically, financially,' Della Volpe told me.  [snip]

Sizable majorities now reject the idea that same-sex relationships are morally wrong (53 percent), support stricter gun laws (63 percent) and want government to provide basic necessities (62 percent).

Meanwhile, support for government doing more to curb climate change soared to 57 percent in 2020 before subsiding to 50 percent this year. That small dip may reflect preoccupation with economic doldrums unleashed by covid-19. While that 50 percent could be higher, the issue has seen a 21-point shift, and the polling question asks if respondents want action on climate 'even at the expense of economic growth.'

Many of today’s 18-to-29-year-olds, who are mostly older Gen Z Americans plus the tail end of the Millennial generation, lived their formative years during the Great Recession and the election of Trump. What’s more, these new voters are politically coming of age during a remarkable confluence of events that appear to be conspiring in an improbable way to push them to the left." (our emphasis)

This explains why Republican-controlled legislatures are feverishly devising ways to suppress the youth vote, from voter ID requirements to restrictions on college students voting in their college towns. They know their only hope is to keep as much of this demographic from voting as possible, rather than moderate their radical right-wing positions on the "big four" issues. Dems need to focus on making sure those attempts fail, and that they get the youth vote out in coming elections.

Quotes Of The Day -- Battlegrounds

 

"It is sometimes said that corporate America is a battleground in the culture wars. This has taken on ugly new meaning in the case of Target, which just announced that it will pull some LBGTQ-friendly merchandise from shelves after experiencing threats that affected its employees’ 'sense of safety.'

"Target’s surrender — which came after concerted attacks from MAGA media personalities — points to a bigger story: The anti-woke right is increasingly wielding heavy-handed tactics — including state power and violent threats — to block corporations from making their own decisions about how to adapt to social change. Though the right is losing this battle at large, it is innovating and having some success..." -- Greg Sargent in the Washington Post, leading off a column "Target's surrender to MAGA rage shows how anti-wokeness really works."  Sargent discusses how the revanchist culture war the MAGAts are engaged in targets (no pun) corporations and institutions that are simply responding to shifts in the culture at large, toward more tolerance and inclusion (yes, propelled by profit considerations).  Expect more heavy- handed, violent tactics.  Why?  Read on.

____________________

“When authoritarian leaders lose office, they come back, like, 10 times worse — they never get less extreme, they always get more extreme.  January 6 was a profoundly radicalizing event for the base, for the GOP and for Trump himself, because even assaulting the Capitol you could get away with. His campaign events have to be seen as that of an extremist radicalizing people and emotionally reeducating people to hate people.”... --  Ruth Ben-Ghiat, historian at New York University and scholar on authoritarianism, quoted in another Washington Post article, "The deepening radicalization of Donald J. Trump."  The "reeducation" of people to employ violent acts against people they've been taught to hate is a method used by fascists throughout history to gain or maintain power.  What we've seen in the  Republican /Seditionist/ Shooters Party is this "reeducation" has been part and parcel of the radicalization of the party and its base for more than half a century, culminating in its lizard id, the Malignant Loser.  It preceded him and will outlast him.

QOTD -- Extraordinary Betrayal

 

"What’s now clearer than ever is that [House Republican Minority Leader Kevin] McCarthy saw helping with Trump’s insurrection coverup — which itself is arguably an extraordinary betrayal of the country — as essential to keeping the GOP united and on a path to win the House majority.

"Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.), a member of the Jan. 6 committee, says this new reporting strengthens the case that Trump sought to use mob violence to obstruct the official proceeding of counting the presidential electors — a potential crime — by impeding the lawmakers themselves.

“'This is a meaningful corroborating detail in the already abundant evidence that Trump set about to interfere with this crucial federal proceeding, the peaceful transfer of power,” Raskin told me, noting that this also “underscores McCarthy’s complicity in helping Trump cover up for the dangerous violence that he had unleashed.'”

"Now imagine McCarthy as speaker of the House." -- Greg Sargent in the Washington Post, commenting on revelations in books by Robert Draper and by Karoun Demirjian and Rachael Bade about the Malignant Loser and his hold on the GQP.  The significant role of spineless traitor Rep. Kevin McCarthy in keeping the Malignant Loser from "blowing up the party" after the January 6 insurrection by caving to his "Big Lie" will go down as one of the most infamous chapters in American history (assuming it doesn't go down the memory hole should the GQP fascists eventually take power).

Rep. Raskin's comments suggest that the January 6 committee hearing scheduled for this Thursday, as well as the committee's final report, will clearly define McCarthy's traitorous complicity in undermining American democracy.  Sargent goes on to imagine what McCarthy would do as Speaker of the House, and the danger he poses as someone with no scruples or convictions other than gaining power, working with a Malignant Loser with similar character traits.

QOTD -- The Mythical AR-15

 

Washington Post writer Greg Sargent interviews former firearms executive Ryan Busse on the intersection between the AR-15 and right- wing conspiracists: 

Busse: Nothing conveys dominance and intimidation like a loaded AR-15. It was designed to be offensive in war. It was designed to take people’s lives.

Sargent: You’re positioning the cultural mania around the AR-15 as an aberration or a malignancy, relative to what surely are millions upon millions of gun owners who have a much healthier attitude toward their hobby.

Busse: It’s how people are using the rifle. It’s what the rifle has become.

I think the authoritarian forces in this country view the AR-15 as a central organizing symbol.

Sargent: You often see advocacy for the AR-15 from the same right wing influencers — Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump Jr., Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), etc. — who regularly traffic in versions of the “great replacement theory” or relentlessly fearmonger about leftist terrorism driving the country into civil collapse.

Why is it that those who traffic in apocalyptic fantasies about demographic doom also tend to treat the AR-15 as something with almost mythical symbolic importance?

Busse: The idea of civil war/race war with heavily-armed citizen-patriots as your warriors is hardly under the surface anymore.

I won’t go so far as to say they actually want people to die in a race war. It’s a political tool for them. They think they can use it to motivate — and make people angry and fearful and hateful.

"Motiviate" and intimidate, we'd say.  The entire interview is well worth a read.

 

Quote Of The Day: Trump And His Anti-Vaxxers

 

"There is clearly a good portion of the Republican base that in this case finds the truest expression of Trumpism in rejecting what Trump himself is telling them. Opposition to vaccines has been woven so tightly into their political identity that not even Trump himself can remove it. [snip]

"How did we get here? From the outset, the pandemic was politicized, with divisions drawn between liberals who wanted aggressive public health measures and conservatives who didn’t, egged on to deny the seriousness of the pandemic and see it as a plot concocted by enemies of Trump.

"Once aggressive public health measures became associated with Trump’s foes, feelings about the pandemic became interwoven with personal identity and one’s place in a particular community.

"And so, when the vaccines became available, they were inevitably viewed through that prism. That was true even for millions of conservatives who were perfectly fine before 2021 with having to vaccinate their kids before sending them to school, yet today recoil in rage at the very idea." -- Paul Waldman and Greg Sargent in the Washington Post on the die-hard (literally) opposition to vaccines by many members of the Trump cult.

Many have opined that Trumpism will survive Trump. The death cult within Trumpism may not.

 

Monday Reading

 

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

Michael Hiltzik in the Los Angeles Times discusses a policy of having the unvaccinated pay more for their health insurance (which could require changes in law), but concludes that before going down that road, vaccination holdouts should be made keenly aware of the potential for financial ruin stemming from their bad decisions:

...Insured but unvaccinated people who end up in the hospital with COVID-19 already face high costs: They’re likely to breach their deductible and come up against their maximum out-of-pocket charges, which typically run to thousands of dollars.

Uninsured patients will leave the hospital, assuming they recover, with tens of thousands of dollars in bills.

“The community as a whole pays the price for people being unvaccinated,” says Peter Lee, executive director of Covered California, the state’s ACA marketplace. “But even more than that, those unvaccinated will pay the price — through illness, and through higher healthcare costs they’ll be paying out of pocket.”

That makes the discussion about imposing costs on the unvaccinated “a good thing,” Lee says.  

“It’s a reminder that we want to educate and encourage everyone to get vaccinated,” he says. “Paying a little bit more premium pales in comparison to the incentive of recognizing that if you end up in the ICU, you’re going to walk out with a $40,000 bill.” Insurance may pay part of it, “but is that really dice you want to roll?”

The WaPo's Greg Sargent has several excellent analyses worth reading this morning.  The first regards if Republicans take back the House in 2022, among the highly problematic issues will be how they would politicize an investigation into the collapse in Afghanistan (much like they politicized the Benghazi! Benghazi! investigations for years to damage Hillary Clinton):

If Republicans take back the House, it will go a long way toward ensuring that we do not get anything close to full accountability for the Afghanistan debacle. They will deliberately circumscribe their investigations to limit them to only the culpability of the Biden administration.

This places big obligations on Democrats. While they control Congress, they should launch much broader investigations into the entire 20-year disaster. Unfortunately, the horrible news might leave them so politically fearful that they insist on a narrower accounting to show distance from Biden. [snip]

Let’s be clear: The administration’s withdrawal should be the subject of congressional inquiries. We need to know whether intelligence failed to adequately register the likelihood of a quick collapse by the Afghan government and army, or whether decisions were made in spite of what the intelligence got right. We need to know about failings in the process granting visas to Afghan refugees. And much more.

But looking only at these things would be insufficient. Surely a genuine reckoning into what we’re seeing now would take as its premise that it is the outgrowth of a much broader series of mistakes and failures.

The second Sargent piece worth a look concerns how the increasingly fascistic Republican far right is conflating the spread of disease (specifically COVID) with anti- immigrant hysteria:

...There’s a peculiarly ominous signal in the way GOP governors such as Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida are fusing their rejection of collective public health solutions with demagoguery about migrants.

Abbott and DeSantis, each in their own way, declare that covid-bearing migrants are crossing our border en masse. This has been widely debunked, but the story is what matters: covid and migrants as joint infestation. Meanwhile, they have converted their public positions into platforms to speak to the Trump Rump, the shriveled national minority who sees mask mandates as collectivism run amok.

It’s the fomenting of hysterical opposition to local officials enabling communities to collectively protect themselves, combined with the aggressive redirecting of blame toward migrants instead, that makes this mix so combustible. Why take sensible collective action for the public good when calling for higher walls to keep out the joint infestation carries so much more force?

This conflation is everywhere. Right-wing media propagandists are relentlessly combining fearmongering about vaccines with scapegoating of migrants, positioning nativist, ethnonationalist cruelty as a kind of higher answer than science and collective action.

"Nativist, ethnonationalist cruelty"... sound at all vaguely familiar?

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch's editorial board wonders if the malignant former guy's "nut-case battalion" is turning on him:

Former President Donald Trump appears to have created a monster he can no longer control. He inspired violent rebellion, and now the rebels are turning against him. He inspired pandemic skepticism, and now the skeptics are rejecting his appeal to get vaccinated. He cultivated wild-eyed conspiracy theories and even gave White House press passes to the worst of those nut cases. Now the leader of the nut-case battalion is reportedly questioning whether Trump is a “dumbass.”

We’ll leave it to the experts to pronounce on the accuracy of Infowars host Alex Jones’ “dumbass” diagnosis of Trump. But Jones’ assessment is an indication of where the Trump brand might be headed. Sadly, Jones attacked Trump regarding a subject on which Trump really might know what he’s talking about: vaccines and the coronavirus.  [snip]

Recall Trump’s unbridled support of the Proud Boys white supremacist group and his stubborn refusal in a presidential debate to denounce them, responding instead: “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.” They did stand by, and when Trump pointed toward Capitol Hill on Jan. 6 and urged his followers to “fight like hell” against congressional certification of his election defeat, the Proud Boys reportedly were among the first to start breaking windows to attack the Capitol.

Now that top Proud Boys leaders are in jail, some are questioning their loyalty to Trump. A convicted leader of the Capitol attack, Ethan Nordean, wrote in an online chat that The New York Times says was obtained by the FBI: “I’ve followed this guy for 4 years and given everything and lost it all. Trump, you left us on the battlefield bloody and alone.”

The editorial concludes with the hope that "moderate Republicans" in Congress would similarly abandon Trump.  That's where things break down.  There are no "moderate Republicans," and the time to have stood up for democracy was after January 6.  Beyond that, what would abandoning Trump mean in the long run?  Only that someone shrewder and even more dangerous than Trump would fill the fascist right's need for a "war leader" who wouldn't leave them "on the battlefield" next time.  The jockeying for that role is already well underway.  The battle isn't over when/ if the "dumbass" falls.

Finally, please check out Infidel 753's excellent link round- up to interesting posts from around the Internet.  There's much, much more than politics there, so if you want to browse a variety of topics, please give it a look.

QOTD -- Trumpers' "Snowflake Syndrome"

 

"On numerous fronts in our politics — from voting rights to covid-19 to the legacy of Jan. 6 — we’re being told these voters are afflicted with a deeply fragile belief system that must be carefully ministered to and humored to an extraordinary degree.

"We must pass voting restrictions everywhere to assuage these voters’ “belief” that the 2020 election was highly dubious or fraudulent. We must not argue too aggressively for coronavirus vaccines, lest they feel shamed and retreat into their anti-vax epistemological shells.

"And we must allow Republicans to appoint some of the most deranged promoters of the stolen election myth to a committee examining the insurrection so they’ll feel like its findings are credible."  Greg Sargent on Trump voters' disingenuous and dangerous "Snowflake Syndrome".

 

QOTD -- Republican Low Road States

 

"For decades throughout the 20th century, it notes, the industrial economy — combined with large federal expenditures, particularly in the South — drove a “great economic convergence,” in which poorer states steadily caught up with better-off ones.

"But more recently, the development of the knowledge economy, whose benefits are largely concentrated in cosmopolitan hubs, has reversed this trend. Meanwhile, in many red states — mostly in the South — the model of weak unions and low wages, which made them competitive for business inside the national market, is faltering in the face of globalized production.

“'Blue America is increasingly buoyed by the knowledge economy,” the analysis concludes, while “red America is struggling to find a viable growth model for the twenty-first century.'”

"How did this happen? A big part of the problem, the authors argue, is conservative governance." -- Greg Sargent summarizing an analysis by Jacob Grumbach, Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson that's part of a forthcoming book on American political economy.  Sargent's article highlights how Republican governance is harming constituents in their "low road states."  It's worth a read.

QOTD -- The Reset On "Bipartisanship"

 

"In the early morning hours on Friday, Senate Democrats passed a measure laying the groundwork to move President Biden’s big economic rescue package via the reconciliation process, by a simple majority. Republicans are already thundering with outrage.

"The move does indeed pose a serious challenge to Republicans. But it’s one that runs deeper than merely moving toward passing this one package without them. It also suggests a reset in dealing with GOP bad-faith tactics across the board — and even the beginnings of a response to the Donald Trump era and the ideology loosely described as 'Trumpism.'” -- Greg Sargent, on the reset by Democrats in dealing with the bad faith Republican tactics of dragging "negotiations" out in the name of bipartisanship, only to blame Democrats as failed unifiers when the time comes to move on without Republican support.  Good read.

Monday Reading

 

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

Robert Reich writes about what will be Mango Mussolini's vilest legacy:

Most of the 74,222,957 Americans who voted to re-elect Donald Trump – 46.8%of the votes cast in the 2020 presidential election – don’t hold Trump accountable for what he’s done to America.

Their acceptance of Trump’s behavior will be his vilest legacy. [snip]

Trump has brought impunity to the highest office in the land, wielding a wrecking ball to the most precious windowpane of all – American democracy.

The message? A president can obstruct special counsels’ investigations of his wrongdoing, push foreign officials to dig up dirt on political rivals, fire inspectors general who find corruption, order the entire executive branch to refuse congressional subpoenas, flood the Internet with fake information about his opponents, refuse to release his tax returns, accuse the press of being “fake media” and “enemies of the people”, and make money off his presidency.

And he can get away with it. Almost half of the electorate will even vote for his reelection.

A president can also lie about the results of an election without a shred of evidence – and yet, according to polls, be believed by the vast majority of those who voted for him.

74 million.   It's still hard to imagine we occupy the same space with so many damaged, dimwitted, despicable people who believed such a damaged, dimwitted, despicable person should be elected and then re- elected after the damage he wrought.

Greg Sargent has reason for optimism that the course of events from now until November 20 will be less turbulent than many of us fear:

Given how much is in chaos right now, it’s easy to get spooked into thinking we are facing a final month of extreme turbulence. But, in the interests of making the holidays a bit more restful, I’d like to suggest another scenario: Much of what we’re seeing now gets resolved without much fuss, and President Trump leaves the White House quietly.

Relatively, anyway.

Two big things right now seem to threaten maximum disruption ahead. The first is Trump’s effort to throw the $900 billion economic rescue package into chaos, which could cause a government shutdown and delay badly needed assistance from getting to the American people, at a moment of worsening economic calamity.

The second is Trump’s apparent belief that he can still somehow steal the election or, as he has mused to advisers, possibly declare martial law.

Well, we just saw Mango Mussolini capitulate on the first thing, so score one for "restful."  On the second, Sargent describes the fruitlessness of all the fantasy scenarios of an overturned election.  Good read for keeping calm and carrying on.

S.V. Date exposes the income transfer grift Mango Mussolini has been pulling on his gullible cult:

President Donald Trump’s donors — the vast majority of whom are working-class supporters and retirees contributing just a few dollars a month — put $10.5 million into the erstwhile billionaire’s own personal businesses over the course of his presidency, a HuffPost analysis found.

Some $8.5 million came from the Trump campaign and related entities that Trump controls directly. Another $2 million came from other Republican candidates and committees.

Through a trust that he controls, Trump owns the hotels, golf courses and buildings that received the money, with every penny of profit flowing to him personally.

In the name of the Father, the Son and the... holy shit!

Religious orders are supposed to provide spiritual guidance to those who join. But some of the women who entered Sisters Minor of Mary Immaculate (SMMI) say they faced physical and emotional abuse. [snip]

“I witnessed other girls just being yelled at on a constant basis by Theresa Kovacs,” said Rose, who joined SMMI in 1995. (Three interviewees asked to only be identified by their first names.) According to Rose, a sister named Georgiana often got the brunt of Kovacs’ anger.

“It would be a torrent of the nastiest stuff you could ever say to a human being, she would say to me,” said Georgiana. “It was meant to keep people in line.” [snip]

According to [former SMMI nun Patricia] Budd, they even had their food restricted.

“Basically your food is pretty much less and less,” she said. “And so, that’s pretty much like what a cult is — and break you down. That’s the whole thing. Always to break you down.”

If there's any part of the Church that's not ultimately cult- like, we'd like to know (not really).

Once again we close by recommending a visit to Infidel 753's link round- up for a comprehensive list of links to thought- provoking, humorous and otherwise "interesting stuff" he's carefully curated over the past week.  And speaking of worthy posts, check out the Jon Swift 2020 Roundup of the best blogger posts of the year.  You'll find Infidel and some of our other favorite bloggers recognized there.

Bottomless Bad Faith

What are the craven, bootlicking, anti- democracy Republican poltroons in Pennsylvania's legislature up to now that they've heard from gassy consigliere Rudy "Hands in Pants" Giuliani's parade of crackpots and racists?  More mischief:

Just hours after GOP leadership in the state House indicated they would not move to upend Pennsylvania’s election results in Harrisburg, Speaker Bryan Cutler and Majority Leader Kerry Benninghoff joined more than 60 Republican colleagues Friday in calling on members of Congress to do it instead.

In a letter Democrats dismissed as a stunt, the GOP lawmakers disavowed the election’s outcome — an 81,000-vote victory for President-elect Joe Biden — and accused Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, of “undermining the many protections” they had written into a law passed a year ago to expand widespread voting by mail. [snip]

Just a day earlier, Cutler (R., Lancaster) and Benninghoff (R., Centre) had unequivocally stated — in a memo cosigned by Senate Majority Leader Kim Ward (R., Westmoreland) and President Pro Tempore Jake Corman (R., Centre) — that state legislators had no authority to ignore certified election results and appoint Pennsylvania’s delegates to the Electoral College themselves, despite repeated calls from the president and some within their own party to do so.

“It would … set a precedent that a simple majority of the General Assembly can override the will of the people as evidenced by the popular vote,” the GOP leaders said.

That statement drew a swift rebuke from top Trump advisers on Friday. Lawyer Rudy Giuliani accused them in a tweet of “covering up for Dem[ocrat] crimes” and misleading the president. He said he was ashamed of them for “let[ting] America down.”

Legal adviser Jenna Ellis went further, retweeting a stinging rebuke from another Giuliani ally who called the GOP leadership team in Harrisburg “liars,” “cowards,” and “traitors.”

Yes, indeed, they're liars, cowards, and traitors -- that much we can heartily agree on.  On top of that, cynically pointing a finger at Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf for overseeing a fair and secure election leads into a point made by Greg Sargent, who explains in a column about the Georgia runoff election, it's much more than cowardice:

It is often claimed that Republicans who refuse to concede Trump’s loss are suffering from “cowardice” or that he has held them “hostage.” In this telling, Republicans secretly know the truth but won’t say so, simply because the political price of weathering his fearsome rage-tweets is too great.

This won’t do. It badly undersells the bottomless bad faith and dishonorable instrumentalism that Republicans are employing here. Yes, Republicans know Trump lost and that contradicting him on this point might cost them some of his supporters.

But they are fully embracing the opportunity to use this situation to their advantage, not doing so because they see no other option. They are trying to harness and channel all this depraved Trumpian rage to their instrumental advantage, not work around it, despite its extraordinarily destructive potential.

It's hard to expand on this, except to say that the incoming Biden Administration, which is already seeing this bad faith playing out every day, needn't waste any time expecting anything but more bad faith from this party of nihilistic misfits and sociopaths.  You have a mandate -  use it.

But first, let's win those two Senate seats in Georgia!

 

QOTD -- Lawless Law And Order

"What Trump really represents is the promise of law and order without the rule of law — he stands for this in combination, as part of the same package, often quite deliberately so. But law and order without the rule of law is the wielding of power and violence (both state violence and private vigilante violence) unshackled from law-and rules-bound processes.

"Let’s not flinch from this: Trump is explicitly campaigning on law and order without the rule of law, in all its terrible implications. That makes Trump not the law-and-order candidate, but rather the candidate of arbitrary violence, lawless abuses of power and civil breakdown. [snip]

"Trump is not the “law and order” candidate. He’s the candidate of arbitrary violence, state and private alike. He is the candidate of lawlessness and civil breakdown." -- Greg Sargent in today's Washington Post.  Please read the entire op/ ed for Sargent's thorough gutting of the facade of Trump as a "law and order" candidate.

BONUS:

! Asked about Kyle Rittenhouse, supporter accused of murder, Trump says he's looking into it but adds, "That was an interesting situation...he was trying to get away from them...looks like...and then they very violently attacked him...he probably would've been killed."

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) August 31, 2020

 

Tweet Of The Day -- Truth, Not Balance

We can choose to make facts matter.

Trump engaged in profound corruption toward Ukraine. Biden did not.

Trump/Rs corruptly want irrelevant witnesses. Ds fairly want relevant ones.

Let's choose *not* to sanitize this lopsided imbalance into equivalence.https://t.co/XvfogiPx1g

— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) January 18, 2020

(See also this.)

Monday Reading

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

Is the Republican Party a hate group?  Leonard Pitts, Jr., has our answer, which we've excerpted at length:

Here’s how The Southern Poverty Law Center defines a hate group.

It is, they say, “an organization that — based on its official statements or principles, the statements of its leaders, or its activities — has beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.” [snip]

Granted, in its “official statements or principles,” the party doesn’t meet the SPLC standard. Its activities and the statements of its leaders are, however, another matter. [snip]

For half a century, then, the GOP has taught white voters racial resentment, taught them to prioritize concerns about white prerogative over concerns about shuttered factories, dirty water, lack of healthcare, foreclosed futures. It did this in code — “Willie Horton,” “tax cuts,” “welfare queen” — which, while obvious to all but the most gullible, still allowed respectable white men and women to maintain fig leaves of deniability.  [snip]

Donald Trump is the payoff of that devil’s bargain. His “innovation” has been to shred subtlety and abandon code. With blunt, brutish clarity, he tells four black and brown women to “go back” where they came from, and if you don’t see racism there, you’ll never see it anywhere.

Yet bad as that is, the monstrous part is that his audience, trained by 50 years of appeals to their basest selves, cheers him on. They no longer need fig leaves. That should tell you something. As should the fact that the GOP seems to have abandoned policy altogether.

What do they stand for? Do they still care about the national debt? Do they have a strategy to combat global warming? What will they do about Russia and Iran? Who knows?

Because all they are now is the party of “Send her back!” — of outrage over Colin Kaepernick kneeling and April Ryan asking questions. That’s what passes for ideas in today’s GOP. And if that’s what Trump has made them, it’s not like they fought him tooth and nail.

So is the GOP a hate group? It’s sobering that the question can even be asked. But the inevitable answer is downright chilling. Because the SPLC offers a fair and cogent definition of that term.

And the GOP fits it with room to spare.

Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/leonard-pitts-jr/article232893067.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/leonard-pitts-jr/article232893067.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/leonard-pitts-jr/article232893067.html#storylink=cpy

No matter how they try to distract and deflect*, racism is part of their DNA, and they have their leader who has given them permission to hate and to act on that hate.

Virginia Heffernan tells us not to buy into the media narrative of Trump's juggernaut base:

Back in the arena at East Carolina University, the bellowing helped the modest-sized rally make up in volatility what it lacked in numbers. Trump lied again. He said there were no empty seats. There were empty seats. Trump’s aide Brad Parscale took on the Spicer role, crowing on Twitter that 20,000 people were in the venue. Accurate counts put attendance at about 8,000. (For comparison, an average of 18,000 people attend every single men’s basketball game at the University of North Carolina.)  [snip]

Trump’s support is clearly not all phony. Polls show Republicans approve of the job he’s doing in high numbers, which raises the question of how big that polling pool really is. Trump’s critics, in any event, do their cause a grave disservice by following his lead and exaggerating his support, which gets people buzzing and may generate a bandwagon effect: real support following simulated support.

Or something even more sinister could happen. Anti-Trumpers might become cowed and discouraged enough to stay away from the polls because they are convinced the specter of a massive GOP base can’t be beat.

Don’t listen to Trump’s lies, skip the alarmism, and turn down the “send her back” volume. Above all, remind yourself that Trump’s Gallup approval rating has fluctuated between terrible (36.8%) and bad (42.7%). He isn’t our all-time favorite. Period.

Skip the alarmism, stay focused and work like hell.  That's how we excise the tumor in the White (Supremacist) House.

Greg Sargent explains why the "send her back" chant at Trump's North Carolina rally was a breaking point:

What changed? Well, the Times also reports that Trump advisers privately warned against letting these sentiments get out of control at his rally.

So I submit to you that the key difference is twofold: Trump’s naked hatred and cruelty was captured on live television, and along with it, so was the seething anger of the hard-core Trump base.

The whole nation saw in dramatic fashion that Trump voters understood his meaning perfectly well, and watched them not just agree with it but also amplify it with as ugly and hate-curdled a chant as one could imagine.

Sargent has much more about the Republican panic that has set in around their heretofore muted racism being exposed in such raw form.  And, of course, the "send her back" chant was led by Trump's rally leaders.

*Distraction/ deflection watch:  Lest we forget (we won't), there's the testimony Wednesday of Robert Mueller that has Putin's puppet in a state of agitation, and the connections between sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein with fellow predator Trump, something that's also never far from Trump's "mind."

As always, Infidel 753 has been laboring to bring us an impressive array of links to interesting items around the internet and beyond.  Go see what we mean!

Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/leonard-pitts-jr/article232893067.html#storylink=cpy

Monday Reading

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

This is an April Fool's Day- free zone!

Despite the heavy spin applied by John Goodman stunt double William "Low" Barr's 4- page letter summarizing (?) parts of the Mueller report, the subsequent credulous acceptance by some in the blow- dried media, and the bizarre overreaching by Putin pal Donald "Rump" Trump, the public isn't buying what Barr/ the media/ Trump are selling on Russiagate:

New NBC poll:

Only 29% say Trump has been cleared of wrongdoing:https://t.co/OdfGaSqqaG

New WaPo poll:

Only 32% say Trump has been exonerated on obstruction (but public is evenly split on whether Trump committed wrongdoing re Russian interference):https://t.co/gxvlFXeXgq

— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) March 31, 2019

Greg Sargent goes on to ask, "Have we really learned nothing from the first two years of the Trump presidency?"

Welcome to the new narrative: President Trump and Republicans are “turning the tables” and going “on offense” against Democrats and the media, who, we are told, should be groveling for forgiveness in the wake of Attorney General William P. Barr’s brief summary of the special counsel’s Russiagate conclusions.

Unfortunately, there are scattered signs that some in those quarters are taking this far too seriously. We’re seeing news accounts suggesting media coverage of the Russia scandal may have overreached; columnists demanding introspection from journalistic colleagues; and analyses that overestimate the degree to which Trump can now claim victory over Democrats. Some accounts hint at angst among Democrats about how aggressive an investigative posture to strike going forward.

It’s amazing this needs to be stated, but here goes. This “new offensive” from Trump and Republicans is saturated with nonsense from top to bottom, and it is designed to get the media to back off of its entirely legitimate scrutiny of Trump, and to get Democrats to retreat from their entirely legitimate efforts to impose oversight and accountability.

Who are among the ones that can't/ don't want to learn?  Charlatans and their clueless flocks, especially those classy "prosperity" con artists:

Pastor John Gray was outed this week for begging his congregation for $250,000 to fix the church’s roof while basking in a $1.8 million mansion and buying his wife a Lamborghini. Now his church threatening anyone daring to call him out.

The Miami Herald outed the pastor, who spoke in a Sunday sermon at Relentless Church in Greenville, South Carolina. He appeared to deliver his remarks after Hope Carpenter briefly gave her own sermon praising Gray. [snip]

“I love you Pastor John and Pastor Aventer. I believe in you. I’m praying for you. I’m rooting for you,” Carpenter said. “I cut people. I got a knife right in that pocketbook. Greenville News, come on. We done went through this. I’m still here, and guess who else is still gonna be here?” Carpenter then pointed to the Grays.

Gray, who’s been supportive of President Donald Trump, appeared on national talk shows trying to deny rumors that he had a child with a woman he had an affair with. (our emphasis)

Getting others to pay for his extravagant lifestyle: check.  Not taking responsibility for debts: check. Running a scam operation:  check.  Extramarital affair: check.  No wonder this guy has an affinity for Trump.

You've no doubt heard about Trump's latest distraction and diversion gambit, which, like many of his others, will end up making things worse.  Here's Joel Mathis:

President Trump is threatening to close the U.S. border with Mexico.

He made the threat on Friday — a response to surging migrant arrivals at the border — then repeated it Saturday on Twitter. On Sunday, White House officials took to the morning news shows to make it clear he wasn't kidding. As White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said on Fox News, the president's threat "certainly isn't a bluff."

Let us hope it is. Because shutting down the border probably wouldn't do much to curb illegal immigration. It will, however, have dramatic and disastrous consequences for America. As The Washington Post reports, it "would disrupt supply chains for major U.S. automakers, trigger swift price increases for grocery shoppers, and invite lawsuits against the federal government."

Any reasonable U.S. politician would avoid such a catastrophe. But we're talking about Trump here, so anything is possible.  (our emphasis)

In a one- two punch to America's gut, Trump also wants to cut off aid to three Mexican Central American countries, ostensibly to keep migrants from leaving for the U.S.  What could possibly go wrong with that plan?

President Trump’s plan to cut off aid to three Central American countries for failing to stop the flow of migrants toward the United States breaks with years of conventional wisdom in Washington that the best way to halt migration is to attack its root causes.

The decision also runs counter to the approach advocated by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico, among others. Mr. López Obrador has been lobbying Washington to join his government in investing billions of dollars in Central America and southern Mexico, arguing that economic development and reducing violence are the most effective ways to encourage Central Americans to remain home.

Cutting off aid is “shooting yourself in the foot,” said Adriana Beltrán, the director of citizen security at the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights research group that tracks aid closely.

That's what you get when the one calling the foot- shots is an impulsive, irrational, narcissistic moron who's desperately trying to save his hide.

Sports Illustrated columnist Rick Reilly has a new book out completely dedicated to Trump's cheating at golf, "Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump."

“To say ‘Donald Trump cheats’ is like saying ‘Michael Phelps swims,’” writes Rick Reilly in the book. “He cheats at the highest level. He cheats when people are watching and he cheats when they aren’t. He cheats whether you like it or not. He cheats because that’s how he plays golf … if you’re playing golf with him, he’s going to cheat.” Reilly, who has played with Trump, also mocked Trump’s claim of a 2.8 handicap, a ridiculous allegation when Jack Nicklaus, often considered the greatest golfer in history, has a handicap of 3.4. “If Trump is a 2.8,” Reilly writes, “Queen Elizabeth is a pole vaulter.”[snip]

... But it isn’t just that he gets help with his own balls. He also makes it harder for those who are playing with him. Mike Tirico, the former ESPN football announcer, said that he once hit a great shot that he knew was close. But when he got to the putting green it was much further away than he expected. Tirico didn’t understand what happened until Trump’s caddy spoke up. “Trump’s caddy came up to me and said, ‘You know that shot you hit on the par 5?’” Tirico said. “‘It was about 10 feet from the hole. Trump threw it in the bunker. I watched him do it.’” 

What a small, small, insecure thing Putin's pal is. But we already knew that.

As always, we highly recommend a visit to Infidel 753's blog round-up for a really exceptional set of links.  One that we particularly enjoyed today was his link to BexMinx's post on a magnificent theater turned into a bookstore in Buenos Aires. Here's one of several eye- popping pictures:



A bookstore that magnificent might even encourage Trump to read. (Nah!)