QOTD -- A Corrupt And Broken SCOTUS Eliminates The VRA

 

"... Late Wednesday morning, the U.S. Supreme Court — with three of its six-member conservative majority appointed by a racist president who routinely calls Black and brown members of Congress “low IQ” — grabbed that moral arc and twisted so hard that it broke.

"Its 6-3 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais — destined to join Dred Scott v. Sandford, Plessy v. Ferguson, and Korematsu v. United States in the SCOTUS hall of shame — struck down a Louisiana congressional map that created a new Black-voter majority district. The majority opinion by conservative firebrand Samuel Alito tried to argue that they were saving the 1965 VRA by destroying it, that political maps like the ones that currently have 23 Black House members from the former Confederacy are essentially racist — because they discriminate against white people.  [snip]

"If a corrupt and broken Supreme Court insists on playing partisan politics, then we need partisan politicians to bring them to heel. Expand the court to 13 justices, impose term limits, and investigate and impeach any justices who broke the laws about gifts or anything else.

"Radical steps? You bet, but the alternative is allowing a kangaroo court to finish the job of dismantling the American Experiment, of turning a dream that became a lie into something worse. We can’t bend the arc of the moral universe until we grab it back from the people who stole it." -- Will Bunch, Philadelphia Inquirer, from a must-read op "SCOTUS Gutting 1965 Voting Rights Act is a Wake-up Call From a Dream."  If we don't get Democrats back into power with the guts, aggressiveness, and vision to do what Bunch calls for, we will lose what's left of our democracy (and it will be gone if the only party standing up for it refuses to take the "radical steps" needed).  While they're at it, we also need a thorough-going reform of the judicial system, including eliminating the ability to shop for judges and streamlining appeals so that justice isn't delayed and justice isn't denied (see Trump, Donald).

QOTD -- Truth And Consequences

 

“'The government’s lies can be devastating,' a leading scholar — University of Colorado law professor Helen Norton — wrote in a powerful 2015 article, arguing that official government dishonesty is fundamentally unconstitutional. Norton noted that false testimony and evidence in criminal cases — what we’ve seen frequently in the immigration terror campaign — is a violation of the Constitution’s due process clause, while invented allegations that aim to silence critics are offenses against constitutionally protected free speech.

"It’s a felony to lie in federal court cases, or when testifying under oath before Congress, or in other types of governmental proceedings. And the federal statute of limitations for perjury is five years — plenty of time for a liberated U.S. Department of Justice to pursue these many cases if democratic forces can win back the White House in 2028. 

"But we should also recognize that top officials who tell deliberate lies are abusing their power in ways that, as Norton rightly argues, are grossly unconstitutional. When Noem lies to the American people about Good and how she was killed by ICE, she should resign or be impeached. When Lutnick looks into a camera and offers complete fiction about his friendship with the world’s most notorious sex trafficker, he, too, should quit immediately, or face impeachment.  [snip]

"We won’t get anything resembling democracy until we clear that widespread debris, and that means sending a bunch of these liars to prison, because they are the real criminals. America desperately needs truth and consequences." --  Will Bunch, Philadelphia Inquirer, "The Lying Is Out Of Control. People Need To Go to Prison."  As we've said before, we need junkyard dog Democrats in the White House and in the Justice Department to make sure we de-Nazify our federal government and make sure the rule of law is re-established in such a way that the MAGAt fascist party can't undermine it again. 

QOTD -- They Died As Americans

 

Will Bunch at the Philadelphia Inquirer ($$) writes movingly about immigration, immigrants, demagogues, and the lives lost on the Francis Scott Key bridge in Baltimore, concluding:

When the Dali cargo shipdemolished that bridge support on Tuesday, it also obliterated all the ridiculous lies and myths our demagogues have been spreading around immigration. There were no sex traffickers aboard the Key Bridge that night. Nobody was dealing fentanyl. They were not “animals,” but fathers and husbands like [Maynor Yassir] Suazo [Sandoval] and [Miguel] Luna, whose wife occasionally showed up in her food truck to bring the men tacos and pupusas. They were filling potholes so their children could have an even better life.

These six workers who perished were not “poisoning the blood of our country,” they were replenishing it. This is a moment of clarity when we need to reject the national disease of xenophobia and restore our faith in the United States as a beacon for the best people like Suazo. They may have been born all over the continent, but when these men plunged into our waters on Tuesday, they died as Americans. 

CNN has profiles of some the immigrant men who lost their lives on the bridge on Tuesday. In addition to Suazo Sandoval and Luna, there's Jose Mynor Lopez and Dorlian Castillo Cabrera, who are also profiled, and Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes and Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera.  The profiles are worth the time to read and to remember the next time some Malignant Loser opens his evil, hateful, bigoted mouth.

QOTD -- The White Nationalist Higher Ed Takeover

 

The Philadelphia Inquirer's Will Bunch writes about the right-wing white nationalist project, led by the likes of Chris Rufo and hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman, to rid higher education of hated "diversity, equity, and inclusion" efforts. Here's a snippet focusing on one institution's cowardice, but the entire op/ed is highly recommended:

The Louisiana Illuminator reports that ahead of governor-elect Jeff Landry’s inauguration, LSU has already scrubbed a diversity statement from the university website, renamed its office dedicated to bolstering racial equity on campus to remove the word “Inclusion” and replace it with “Engagement,” and — in the most Orwellian move — deleted all links to a campus lecture series that was called “Racism: Dismantling the System,” tossing all of it down the memory hole.

Trust me, Harvard is going to be just fine, but the true goal of a bomb-throwers like Chris Rufo or the amorally ambitious Rep. Elise Stefanik is preventing what right wingers see as the rot of diversity, and real learning about American democracy on campuses like LSU or West Virginia University or Youngstown State. These schools educate far more students than the Ivy League (just 0.4% of all collegians) and are the potential growth engines for a thriving, multiracial middle class...

The efforts, of course, aren't limited to higher education.  The "Moms for Libertines Liberty" book- banning movement is the K-12 front in the war on education.  Expect to see this repeated over and over, especially in Republican- dominated states, until essentially we will have a revanchist white nationalist system in broad swaths of the nation and a system that promotes the American values of freedom, justice and inclusion elsewhere.  Sic transit gloria, America.

QOTD -- They'll Do It Again

An excerpt from Will Bunch in the Philadelphia Inquirer, on "Why The Right Hates America And Democracy":

Russell Moore, the editor-in-chief of Christianity Today, told NPR last week that preachers whose sermons include the basics of the New Testament such as Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, in which Christ is quoted as urging his followers to “turn the other cheek” when struck, now generates a confused and sometimes angry response from today’s evangelicals. Moore said the minister is invariably asked: “Where did you get those liberal talking points?”

Moore’s comments are only shocking if you haven’t been paying attention. A 2022 poll found that more than 60% of Republicans would support declaring America as “a Christian nation,” even though a majority also recognized this is unconstitutional. They just don’t care anymore. Jesus, and his gospel of the poor, is weak. The thrice-married Donald Trump who talks of smiting their enemies is strong, the authority figure they truly want to worship from the pews.  [snip]

When all else fails — the canceling of elections, the voter suppression, the rule changing, the growing assault on the free press that makes a shocking raid like Marion County possible — force is their last resort. It was their last resort on Jan. 6, 2021, and they’re telling us now in the bright, deep-fried daylight of an Iowa fairgrounds that they’ll do it again...

And that's why they must be stopped again, part infinity.

Quote Of The Day: Trump's Mussolini Moment

"The nation’s right wing — swelled by disgruntled military veterans and those with a penchant for violence — had grown increasingly restless that fall, with occasional street clashes between these reactionaries and anti-fascists on the left. Finally, the leader of the right bloc — a big man who strutted on stage, sometimes buffoonishly — massed his followers and urged them to march on the capital and fight for their country, even though in the end he didn’t march with them.

Instead, Benito Mussolini would get in a car and drive to Rome in October 1922, where he again met up with the throng of as many as 60,000 who’d marched there after the future dictator’s speech to them in Naples. This was the-now notorious March on Rome, and the intimidation of Italy’s ruling elites by this large, angry mob and its 'strongman' leader worked beyond anyone’s wildest dream. By month’s end, King Victor Emmanuel III had ceded all political power to Mussolini and the fascists, who would not relinquish it for two decades. 

Just four months before the 100th anniversary of what is now seen as the lift-off of modern fascism, we have seen in dramatic fashion how the concept and underlying terror tactics of Mussolini’s March on Rome never went away, but lived on to be modernized by a reality-TV star who’d faked his way into the White House and was determined to stay there.

Tuesday’s riveting testimony before the House Jan. 6 Committee by former Donald Trump White House insider Cassidy Hutchinson — an afternoon that will be long remembered by historians and political fanatics, just as those hot June days when John Dean blew the whistle on Richard Nixon in 1973 — revealed just how close Trump came to a true Mussolini moment: His own plan to “march” on the U.S. Capitol."  (our emphasis) -- Will Bunch in the Philadelphia Inquirer, detailing how the Malignant Loser's fraudulent "Stop the Steal" insurrection on January 6 was a replay of Italian fascist Benito Mussolini's Black Shirt -led March on Rome in 1922, where he seized power.  Beginning with the opening paragraphs, the similarities Bunch draws are striking. The whole article is well worth a read.

Today's Black Shirts compare with the extremist Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and other right-wing militia groups, resorting to violence to achieve their illegitimate political aims. They, along with hundreds of gullible goons, were exhorted to storm the Capitol to change the outcome of the election, and install the latter-day Mussolini in power, most certainly for longer than a 4-year term.

 

QOTD -- Our Long State Of Denial

 

"When Republicans said that they would undo women’s reproductive freedom, we should have believed them the first time — beginning in the late 1970s. Instead, for too long, too many folks took the GOP’s anti-abortion stance as nothing more than a political ploy to keep the small donations rolling in and to rally the rubes behind their real agenda of endless tax cuts for the rich.

"Somehow, too many of us remained in a state of denial even as Ronald Reagan hopped in bed with Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority. As Pat Buchanan told America in 1992 that 'there is a religious war going on in this country.' As the dangers of minority-mob rule took shape in the 2000 election with the Brooks Brothers riot. As George W. Bush and Donald Trump, both guys with the fewest votes from Americans, named five of the nine justices on the High Court, some of them confirmed by senators also representing a minority of Americans. And as Mitch McConnell plowed through the guardrails of democracy to steal one of those seats. Too many of us refused to believe this was where it was all headed." -- Will Bunch, in today's The Philadelphia Inquirer, on the long road that's led us to this point -- living in a country that is "no longer the America we grew up in."  The radical Republican Christofascists' decades- long efforts to take away rights they don't consider "deeply rooted in this Nation's [Christofascist] history and tradition" --  today, abortion rights and voting rights;  later, LGTBQ rights -- have been successful not because of popular mandates (they have none), but rather due to the exercise of raw, norm- busting power.  There have been no rules for some time now, and Democrats must act accordingly, with the same ruthless energy and sense of purpose the radical Republican Christofascists have deployed.

Monday Reading

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

David Rothkopf remembers Madeleine Albright:

I remember recounting to her my unease the first few times I found myself in the Situation Room during my time in the Clinton Administration; telling her how out of place I felt. She responded, “Let me tell you something, everyone in that room has impostor’s syndrome. We all think we don’t belong. We all remember who we were in high school and wonder how we got to where we are now.”

It was a great leveler. It was also the kindest and most helpful thing she could have said.

But, of course, I knew when she said it that she was anything but an impostor. She was one of those rare leaders who are set apart not just by their hard work or public achievements, but by their humanity.

For those who knew her, that is undoubtedly why she will be most missed. But for those who did not, it is also why her actions—as a diplomat, a teacher, a champion of women—will resonate with so many for so very long. She had the strength to translate compassion, decency, and values into action. In a moment as fraught as our current one, we can only hope fate sends our way more leaders like her.

We can hope, but...

Will Bunch discusses the Supreme Court's ongoing legitimacy crisis, heightened by the Ginni Thomas- Mark Meadows cuckoo coup texts:

There was an endless stream of chatter on social media this weekend about the Ginni Thomas file, yet folks had a hard time pinning a name on the great angst they were feeling. I’ll take a stab at it. The majority of Americans — the people who gave more votes to Hillary Clinton in 2016 and even more to Biden in 2020 and put the Democrats back in nominal control of Congress — are still, despite those victories, watching the car careen off the cliff, and we are unable to find the brakes. There seems to be no way or no will to hold our staggeringly corrupt leaders accountable — whether it’s Trump defrauding the banks or plotting an attempted coup from the Oval Office, or a Supreme Court justice ruling on his wife’s bat-guano crazy political crusade. And there’s seemingly no way to stop the crazy, like QAnon, from getting crazier. I’m in a total funk over the state of the union, and when I wrote that on Twitter hundreds of people agreed with me.  [snip]

It felt fitting that the high court’s legitimacy crisis was reaching a crescendo right in the middle of the fraught confirmation for a new justice, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. Her ascension — likely to occur on close to a straight party-line vote — could have been a reaffirming moment, with KBJ bringing experience, a sharp legal mind, and, most important, new perspectives as a former public defender and as the first Black woman in Supreme Court history. Instead, the hearings were a tawdry showcase for Republican senators to spout some of the same QAnon-flavored nonsense that seems to have poisoned Ginni Thomas’ brain — and a reminder of how a toxic right-wing movement has been slowly infecting our justice system for decades.

A good read, as usual.

Margaret Sullivan explains how, even after Putin shut down Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's operation in Russia, it only increased the level of traffic to the private non- profit's other outlets:

In the first three weeks after the invasion, page views from Russia to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty sites skyrocketed to 26 million, more than 50 percent more than an earlier corresponding period. Video views from Russia to their YouTube channels more than tripled to 237 million. And this was happening despite sites being blocked within Russia.

“Despite the Kremlin pressure, people are still hungry for the truth,” Fly told me. “To some extent, they see through the propaganda, and they want to explore broader sources of information.”

He and his colleagues are particularly proud of the on-the-ground reporting in Ukraine, such as a March 10 video headlined “Ukrainian Troops Attempt to Drive Russian Forces from Village Near Kyiv.” There have been thorough reports about civilian deaths in Mariupol and about mortar fire directed at Ukrainian interior minister and journalists.

Many listeners and viewers are getting around Russia’s media barricades through the use of VPNs (virtual private networks) and “mirror sites” that duplicate content but use a different URL.

Putin's attempts to turn Russia into a hermetically sealed North Korea are doing about as well as his army in Ukraine so far.

El Salvador's 40-year-old presidential bro is getting ready to crash his country's economy:

The president of El Salvador is making a huge bet on bitcoin with his country's treasury. President Nayib Bukele is hoping to launch bitcoin-backed bonds to raise $1 billion for the country.

Bukele wants to raise the funds through international cryptocurrency traders, and to avoid his critics in the United States, including at the International Monetary Fund.

Last year, Bukele got El Salvador to become the first nation to adopt bitcoin as legal tender, right alongside the national currency, the U.S. dollar.

The bitcoin bond launch would mark another first of its kind. But while these moves are welcomed by crypto enthusiasts, they've raised concerns among detractors of the popular, unregulated asset market.

El Salvador's finance minister had announced the launch would happen in mid-March, but on Tuesday, he said it was postponed because of Russia's war in Ukraine and cryptocurrency volatility, Reuters reported.

What could possibly go wrong?

Finally, we recommend a visit to Infidel 753's link round-up for a collection of links to some of the most interesting posts from around the Internet. You likely won't agree with every point of view, but the scope of what he does every week is impressive.  Also, he has another good summation of "Putin's failed war" this week.

Monday Reading

 

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

The Philadelphia Inquirer's Will Bunch writes about the severe damage wrought by the constant promotion of lies by Fox "News," including the Big Lie, "Biden crack pipes," and the "worse than Watergate" faux Clinton "spying" nothingburger:

For an embattled Donald Trump, the news that scrolled continuously this week across the bottom of America’s most-watched cable news network — the Fox News Channel — could not have come at a more welcome time. The 45th — and hopeful 47th — president had been battered in mainstream outlets over his habit of destroying government documents and the hasty retreat of his business empire’s long-time accounting firm. But those stories weren’t airing on Fox, because its primetime hosts were pushing what they saw as a much bigger scoop.

Calling it “the biggest election and presidential spying scandal in the history of this great country,” Fox News veteran host Sean Hannity went large with a claim that the 2016 Democratic presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton had paid operatives to spy on rival Trump by “infiltrating” his computers at Trump Tower and even at the White House. Hannity’s breathless report on the alleged scandal was backdropped by a graphic calling it “Worse Than Watergate,” while his higher-rated colleague Tucker Carlson went with “Clinton campaign paid to ‘infiltrate’ Trump orbit.”

But these claims were 99% adulterated baloney. The so-called “Hillary spied on Trump” storyline was based on a new court filing by federal prosecutor John Durham, who was tasked by then-Attorney General William Barr during the Trump years to investigate their theory that the Trump-Russia probe was rife with official misconduct — and who has little to show for his work so far.

It always seems they come up with the most fabulous bullshit just when their cult leader is in the greatest peril.  Coincidence no doubt.  (We would note Fox "News'" fabricating fascists have backed off the Clinton tale after she threatened them with a malicious defamation lawsuit.)

Bunch goes on to explain why this firehose of falsehoods pumped into the heads of millions of gullible Americans every day is a precursor to installing an autocratic, anti- democratic regime that practices just this kind of thought control.

Thomas Lecaque at Religion Dispatches has an alarming look at the Christofascist "Jericho Marches," their role in the recent Canadian trucker Freedumb Convoy, and their participation in insurrection movements here and worldwide:

Jericho Marches are organized by a group by the same name. They were created by a coalition of Christian nationalists in the US. They are co-led by a Catholic think-tank writer, Arina Grossu of the Family Research Council, and an evangelical businessman, Rob Weaver. 

The Jericho Marches rose to prominence recently. Supporters have been marching around the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa for around 20 days. They are, for Americans, a gothic reminder of what had been brewing in the lead up to the J6 sacking and looting of the US Capitol. [snip]

Jericho March, the group, is one of the religious groups, movements and ideologies at play in the insurrection. The Uncivil Religion project has uncovered a bevy of beliefs. The Jericho Marches, however, were the principal symbol of J6 and the Christian nationalism at its heart, not only in DC but at state capitols around the country.

Christian nationalism is a religious idea that transcends borders, attracting a lot of support from like-minded insurrectionists abroad. 

Last year, when journalist Emma Green wrote “A Christian Insurrection” for The Atlantic, it was subtitled, “Many of those who mobbed the Capitol on Wednesday claimed to be enacting God’s will,”while the CBC Investigates’ piece on the Ottawa convoy this week is titled, “For many inside the Freedom Convoy, faith fuels the resistance.”

The links are quite clear between groupings. And now, organizing in small groups and marching around Parliament, is a new Jericho March. 

He concludes:

The elements of spiritual warfare—repeatedly deployed by Christian nationalist groups before in service of Trump and elsewhere—on the borderline of where it crosses over into physical violence, the Jericho Marches, the violent commentary supporting it, the prayer, the shofars, the echoes of J6 expressed from abroad and divorced from the actual Canadian context—these are a symptom of a broader problem. 

Illiberalism is growing. The variant around Trump—conspiracy-laden, seditionist, Christian nationalist—is getting stronger by the minute. 

Last year, it was in Washington.

This year, Ottawa. 

Next year? We should worry.

We should go beyond worry and prepare to engage and counteract.

Sasha Abramsky writed in The Nation about how the far right is targeting schools and education policy, and crime rates, to draw people to its side (and to the ballot box), sometimes with help from progressives:

Right-wing organizers regard schools both as epicenters of political battles and as arenas that draw more people into the wider conservative orbit. At times, so-called progressives have made life much easier for the conservatives in this task; witness the blithering stupid actions of the San Francisco school board over the past couple of years: debating name changes to several dozen schools instead of working to get students safely back into classrooms during the pandemic, and, with only a minimum of public comment and input, gutting the school system’s gifted program by introducing a lottery for entry into those supposedly selective schools—which resulted in this week’s recall of three school board members. In one of the country’s most liberal cities, the result wasn’t close: 70 percent of those who cast ballots voted yes on the recall question. 

Which brings me to a larger point: Right-wing organizers are showing themselves to be rather talented at harvesting popular resentment and/or fears to tarnish the entire progressive agenda. And, unfortunately, at times these days progressives are giving them ample fodder. Yes, the anti-CRT effort is both disingenuous and often laced with racist undertones; but when San Francisco school board members behave like caricatures, they provide grist to the conservative mill. 

Abramsky also discusses crime and criminal justice as another front in the emerging battle, where the right has been on the offensive:

The right has gotten criminal justice wrong for decades. They have preached punishment over rehabilitation, and promoted violent, coercive institutions as a default response to all the societal problems that lead to crime. Their solutions tend to be nonsolutions, but they do come across as “tough”—and thus viable—to a scared public.

Progressives can’t afford to ignore the rising fear that accompanies rising crime; nor can they, or should they, wash their hands of the problem of a bloated criminal justice system simply by releasing thousands of people onto the streets and into homeless encampments without wraparound, and, if need be, mandatory, services. 

It's a fair and pointed critique that progressive would do well to heed now rather than later.

So you think CNN has problems now?  Clare Malone at The New Yorker thinks you may want to fasten your seatbelts for what may be coming following a merger later this year between WarnerMedia and Discovery, with its far- right" libertarian" billionaire mega shareholder John Malone (no relation to the writer):

There are also concerns at CNN about Malone’s potential influence on the network’s editorial tone, which, during the Trump years, centered opinion in prime time more than it ever had. Some at the network have argued that the Trump Presidency and its assault on fact and the press necessitated that change in tone and emphasis. A few months ago, in another interview with CNBC, Malone said, “I would like to see CNN evolve back to the kind of journalism that it started with and actually have journalists—which would be unique and refreshing.” CNN’s chief media correspondent, Brian Stelter, interpreted the remark ominously, writing, “Malone’s comments stoked fears that Discovery might stifle CNN journalists and steer away from calling out indecency and injustice.” Malone once praised Rush Limbaugh for his willingness “to say politically incorrect things” and told Ken Auletta, in the 1994 New Yorker Profile, that he and his wife were “not socialistic.”

Last but not least, please take time to check out Infidel 753's link round-up for the best collection of links to posts of interest from around the Internet.  Check it out, as well as his essays posted throughout the week.

Monday Reading

 

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

The Philadelphia Inquirer's Will Bunch summarizes the imminent danger posed by the most evil personage ever to appear in American politics, after his most recent rally in Texas:

What happened in Conroe, Texas, on Saturday night was not politics. A politician seeking to regain the White House might craft a narrative around Biden’s struggles with inflation or with COVID-19 and make a case — no matter how absurd, given Trump’s failings on the pandemic and elsewhere — that he could do better for the voters. But increasingly Trump is less a politician and more the leader of a politics-adjacent cult. He does not want to make America great again so much as he wants to keep Donald Trump out of prison, and the most narcissistic POTUS of all time is willing to rip the United States in two to make this happen.

Trump’s chief weapons are fear and intimidation. To save American democracy, the people tasked with getting to the bottom of a former president’s high crimes and misdemeanors — on Capitol Hill and in those key courthouses — must be ready for the violence that Trump is inciting, and must summon the courage to finish their job. My fear is that Trump’s speech in Conroe will live in infamy — but the only reason it happened at all is because we have not held Trump to account for attempting to wreck American democracy on Jan. 6 ... not yet. Now, Trump has told us in no uncertain terms how he plans to break the nation this time. We can act forcefully to stop his new insurrection and punish his past crimes — or we can sit back and let the comet of autocracy strike.

The totality of what the Malignant Loser said in his Texas rally crossed several lines, including dangling pardons for the January 6 insurrectionists, and basically calling for an insurrection in the event of his indictment on any number of charges at the local, State and Federal levels.  A cornered animal like the Malignant Loser is going to use every means available to fight back, and we must be prepared for even more unprecedented, unhinged behavior from him and his cult.

The Malignant Loser's violent rhetoric has already triggered a reaction from a potential target:

The Fulton County, Georgia, district attorney is asking for the FBI's help in providing security for buildings and staff one day after former President Donald Trump called prosecutors investigating him "racists" and said his supporters should hold "the biggest protests we have ever had" in cities like Atlanta if the prosecutors "do anything wrong or illegal."

DA Fani Willis and her office are investigating Trump for his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia. A special grand jury will be seated as part of that investigation on May 2.

 

At a rally in Conroe, Texas, Saturday night, Trump, without naming them, railed against Willis plus New York Attorney General Letitia James and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Jr., who are investigating his business empire, calling them "racists." The three are Black. Trump provided no evidence of racial discrimination.

"These prosecutors are vicious, horrible people. They're racists and they're very sick -- they're mentally sick," he said. "They're going after me without any protection of my rights from the Supreme Court or most other courts. In reality, they're not after me, they're after you."

 

No, they're after you, just you, you corrupt piece of rancid, racist shit (well, maybe your corrupt spawn, too). 

 

The Republicans started this redistricting war, now Democrats hope to finish it:

Democratic state legislators in New York released a congressional redistricting map Sunday that redrew House lines to give Democrats as many as three more seats at a time when the party’s majority is in jeopardy.

The New York map is the latest redistricting win for Democrats who had been expected to suffer at the hands of Republican state legislatures that control map-drawing in many more states. But maps in two of those states, Ohio and Alabama, have already been struck down by the courts. In a third Republican state, Texas, the Justice Department has sued over lines it said discriminated against Latinos.

So far, in more than two dozen maps passed around the country, Democrats would net an additional five districts that Joe Biden would have won in 2020. The New York map, which is expected to be voted on this week and signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul (D), would bring that up to eight seats. As redistricting began last year, Republicans hoped to gain at least enough seats to overcome the current 10-member advantage held by Democrats.

Democrats are not guaranteed wins in those districts in November. The party in the White House has historically lost ground in midterm elections and turnout is generally much lower in non-presidential-election years.

The map made public Sunday would result in lines that would give Democrats 22 seats to four Republican ones. The New York delegation is currently 19 Democratic seats to eight seats for Republicans. The state lost a seat because of slow growth over the past 10 years.

As the article points out, nothing is guaranteed due to the redistricting, so Democrats still need to out strategize, out organize and out vote the party of sedition in every Congressional district and every Senate race in November.

Vox's Ellen Ioanes writes about Russian thug Vladimir Putin's myth-making about Ukraine and its ties to Russia:

As Russian troops mass on the Ukrainian border and worries of an invasion grow, Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to push a familiar Russian line about the conflict: that Ukraine belongs to Russia and that the two are “one people — a single whole.”

Specifically, much of Russia’s political positioning to launch an incursion into Ukrainian territory is based on Putin’s claim that Ukraine — like Russia, a former Soviet state — is an extension of Russia, the “little brother” that has been led astray by the West and must be reincorporated into the family. Thus, he sees Ukraine’s increasing westward turn as a provocation, by both Ukraine and NATO.

In reality, however, Ukraine has long been distinct from Russia, experts told Vox, and Putin’s current mythologizing of the Russia-Ukraine relationship fits a pattern of falsehoods designed to reconstitute imperial glory, and more importantly, to shield Putin from the threat of democracy in former Soviet republics — and possibly in Russia itself.

Finally, please make a visit to Infidel 753's link round-up for the most comprehensive, interesting collection of links from the Internet.  He also offers thoughtful essays on a regular basis, so it's always worthwhile to check in over there to see what's new.

Monday Reading

 

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

The U.S. and its NATO allies are responding to Russian thug Vladimir Putin's aggressive moves against Ukraine:

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin briefed President Joe Biden on Saturday about U.S. options for responding if Russia invades Ukraine, as well as options for U.S. military movements in advance of an invasion, according to a defense official and a senior administration official.

Among the options presented for the U.S. military in advance of an invasion were bomber flights over the region, ship visits into the Black Sea and the moving of troops and some equipment from other parts of Europe into Poland, Romania and other countries neighboring Ukraine. 

Austin presented options to reassure NATO allies and reinforce their defenses, specifically the defenses of those countries bordering Ukraine, the officials said. The goal is to show unity and strength among NATO and deter Russian aggression against allies in the region, the officials said. 

NATO said Monday that it was sending ships and fighter jets to eastern Europe and that the U.S. "has also made clear that it is considering increasing its military presence in the eastern part of the Alliance."

There's another option under consideration as well that could cripple Putin's economy:

The Biden administration is threatening to use a novel export control to damage strategic Russian industries, from artificial intelligence and quantum computing to civilian aerospace, if Moscow invades Ukraine, administration officials say.

The administration may also decide to apply the control more broadly in a way that would potentially deprive Russian citizens of some smartphones, tablets and video game consoles, said the officials.

Such moves would expand the reach of U.S. sanctions beyond financial targets to the deployment of a weapon used only once before — to nearly cripple the Chinese tech giant Huawei.

The weapon, known as the foreign direct product rule, contributed to Huawei suffering its first-ever annual revenue drop, a stunning collapse of nearly 30 percent last year.

The attraction of using the foreign direct product rule derives from the fact that virtually anything electronic these days includes semiconductors, the tiny components on which all modern technology depends, from smartphones to jets to quantum computers — and that there is hardly a semiconductor on the planet that is not made with U.S. tools or designed with U.S. software. And the administration could try to force companies in other countries to stop exporting these types of goods to Russia through this rule.

The Philadelphia Inquirer's Will Bunch wonders if America will hold Trump accountable, or be too exhausted to save its democracy:

... In a year when the fate of U.S. democracy is at least competing with the price of burritos and mask mandates in public schools for the attention of voters, there is the very real possibility of learning in prime time that our president was a crook — and then doing nothing. And that feels like it could be the actual fatal blow for our American Experiment.

Let’s face it, either way it will not be pretty, nor will it go down as smoothly as Watergate, with pundits crowing that “the system worked.” If Trump is indicted for his crimes, it’s not a wild fantasy to imagine a Jan. 6-level response, especially with the added gasoline of racism against the prosecutors in Fulton County, Manhattan and New York State who all happen to be Black Democrats. If, for example, that grand jury in Atlanta does charge Trump, it’s not hard to think that caravans of GOP voters from the red-clay foothills of Georgia or Alabama will pour into the cosmopolitan city to block his arraignment. It’s possible to see the blueprints of a true civil war.

And yet the much greater fear is that — after an ex-president’s efforts to block the peaceful transfer of power and stage the first real coup in American history is laid out in chapter and verse — a depressed, divided and utterly demoralized nation elects to do absolutely nothing about it. That, too exhausted to make the hard choices to save our democracy, we will simply wait for the comet to strike.

Robert Shapiro writes about the Biden economic boom that's being overshadowed by inflation and the pandemic, which are intertwined with each other but are receding:

People who quit in 2021 generally found new positions much faster than normal. The number of open jobs waiting to be filled averaged 9.6 million per month in 2021, 47 percent higher than the average for 2015 to 2019. Those openings outpaced the high levels of quits by 70 percent. As a result, the median length of unemployment fell from 18.4 weeks in January 2021 to 12.4 weeks by December.

The current employment boom is fueled by a highly successful economy and soaring rates of business creation. The Census Bureau reports that Americans created nearly 5.4 million private businesses in 2021—68 percent higher than the average of 3.2 million per year from 2015 to 2019. This historic level of business formation helped make the record level of quits possible, including those who left their jobs to start their own business. It also should help sustain healthy job gains throughout 2022.

In every recent period, some laid-off workers start their own businesses, often by necessity rather than choice. And they are a small piece of current business formation: All told, 16.7 million people lost their jobs in 2021, compared to 47 million who left their jobs voluntarily. 

All of these factors contributed to the strongest job growth in more than 40 years. In 2021, the economy added 6.4 million jobs—a gain of 4.5 percent, or more than three times the average job growth of 1.4 percent from 2015 to 2019. [snip]

...[M]ost economists expect inflation to recede in the coming months. The bond market is not panicking. But we haven’t seen inflation tied to supply-chain problems since 1946–47, so those predictions may be off. If they’re right and inflation ebbs, the sharp increase in wages before inflation will be permanent, since companies know that wage cuts inspire more quits and destroy morale for those who stay. The result would be the strongest GDP growth in a generation, fast-rising new businesses, a red-hot labor market, and real wage gains for most Americans.

There's much more at the links that deserves a read.

Finally, Infidel 753 has identified a slew of links to posts from around the internet for your perusal. They're always varied and interesting selections, and this week is no exception.

Monday Reading

 

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

The $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (the Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal) passed late Friday, and the President and much of his Cabinet will be out in the country over the coming weeks touting it.  If you're curious how your state will benefit from the act, go here.

As the COP26 climate summit meeting in Glasgow winds down, the Washington Post is reporting that some of the country-level climate data that's been provided so far is "flawed":

Across the world, many countries underreport their greenhouse gas emissions in their reports to the United Nations, a Washington Post investigation has found. An examination of 196 country reports reveals a giant gap between what nations declare their emissions to be versus the greenhouse gases they are sending into the atmosphere. The gap ranges from at least 8.5 billion to as high as 13.3 billion tons a year of underreported emissions — big enough to move the needle on how much the Earth will warm.

The plan to save the world from the worst of climate change is built on data. But the data the world is relying on is inaccurate.

“If we don’t know the state of emissions today, we don’t know whether we’re cutting emissions meaningfully and substantially,” said Rob Jackson, a professor at Stanford University and chair of the Global Carbon Project, a collaboration of hundreds of researchers. “The atmosphere ultimately is the truth. The atmosphere is what we care about. The concentration of methane and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is what’s affecting climate.”

So, as if the problem wasn't imminent and existential enough, the data that's been relied on is (pardon the expression) cooked.  The Post's report is a long but essential read.

Will Bunch says Democrats have to fight the culture war Republicans engage in every election cycle, but one based on our values:

I know it’s Political Punditry 101 to decry the tribalism in modern American politics, but that feels ridiculous when the Republican tribe has made it clear it will never disarm. It’s much better for the Democrats to proclaim that they, too, are a tribe — and that its tribal values of expanding democracy and citizenship rights, valuing objective learning and knowledge, and addressing problems with actual governing are the truest American values. [snip]

These voters will turn out to fight for their culture — if they are called upon — because we’ve seen it happen before. Young folks and Black and brown voters turned out for Biden in 2020 less because his platform called for expanding child care and more because he pledged to fight for “the soul of America” against Trumpism. Democrats can bring these voters back next year by reminding decent, democracy-loving Americans that their party is the thin blue line between them and book burning, a culture of ignorance, and the end of free and fair elections. That would mean an end to watching the culture war from the sidelines. It means actually fighting to win — and to kill all the bastardization of real American values.

NFL Hall of Famers unloaded on conspiracy- curious crank Aaron Rodgers in their Fox pre- game broadcast Sunday:

“I’ll give Aaron Rodgers some advice,” [Terry] Bradshaw said. “It would have been nice if he had just come to the Naval Academy and learned how to be honest. Learned not to lie. Because that’s what you did, Aaron. You lied to everyone. I understand ‘immunized.’ What you were doing was taking stuff that would keep you from getting COVID-19. You got COVID-19. Ivermectin is a cattle dewormer. Sorry, folks, that’s what it is. We are a divided nation politically. We are a divided nation on the COVID-19, whether or not to take the vaccine. And unfortunately, we’ve got players that pretty much think only about themselves. And I’m extremely disappointed in the actions of Aaron Rodgers.”

(Bradshaw, by the way, stars in a new State Farm commericial that is scheduled to debut today. Rodgers and State Farm have a longstanding partnership.)

Michael Strahan, whose Fox platform is supplemented by a weekday seat at the Good Morning America table, chastised Rodgers for his verbal “workaround” by using the term “immunized.”

“In the grand scheme of things, it’s deceptive and it’s wrong,” Strahan said. “And the presentation that he did did not help.”

Strahan also pointed out that this was not an appropriate occasion to quote Martin Luther King, Jr., something Rodgers did on Friday to justify his refusal to comply with the mask rules for unvaccinated players.

[Jimmie] Johnson said that he’s “disappointed” by the play on words, and by Rodgers’s “selfish actions.” Long focused on the public health risks that Rodgers created, along with jeopardizing the team’s chance to secure the No. 1 seed in the NFC playoff field.

ICYMI, here are some of Rodgers' greatest hits.

Finally, a trip over to Infidel 753's link round-up is always recommended for the best collection of links to posts from around the Internet.  Also, check out his essay "Enemy Economics," where he dissects a "conventional view of how economics is supposed to work" as presented by CNN.  Nailed it.

Monday Reading

 

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

E.J. Dionne, Jr.,  has some sound advice for Democrats:

Celebrate victory. Explain what you’ve achieved. Defend it from attack. Change the public conversation in your favor. Build on success to make more progress.

And for God’s sake, don’t moan about what might have been.

President Biden and Democrats in Congress are on the cusp of ending their long journey through legislative hell by enacting a remarkable list of practical, progressive programs.

This will confront them with a choice. They can follow the well-tested rules for champions of social change. Or they can repeat past mistakes by letting their opponents define what they have done and complain about the things left undone.

Republicans and the media will inevitably try to shape the negative narrative.  Don't let that be the dominant one.

Will Bunch looks at the trial of Kenosha killer Kyle Rittenhouse and sees it as part of a"55-gallon drum of highly flammable political rage" (may hit paywall):

In 2021, the post-and-possibly-pre-Trump American right has taken on many trappings of a violent cult — from the bullying, intimidating style of base conservatives who’ve screamed at or physically threatened local election officials or small-town school board members and even their families, to the Virginia crowd that seem to venerate a Trump flag from the Capitol on Jan. 6 shockingly similar to the Nazis’ worship of a “blood flag” from Hitler’s 1923 “beer hall putsch,” to the Trump-led effort to turn Ashli Babbitt — a Jan. 6 insurrectionist shot and killed by law enforcement as she attempted to lead the mob into the inner sanctums of Congress — into a worshiped martyr.

This is a 55-gallon drum of highly flammable political rage — not something that you want to come anywhere near with a lighted match. Unfortunately, Monday marks the launch of a Wisconsin murder trial with the potential for exactly that. It’s not just that the hotly disputed case of Kyle Rittenhouse — the now 18-year-old Illinois teen who picked up an AR-15-style rifle to join vigilantes during the August 2020 unrest after a police shooting in Kenosha, Wisc., and then killed two people and wounded a third during a series of altercations — could lead to near-term unrest, although there is surely that potential.

The greater risk to the republic is that a successful self-defense argument from attorneys for Rittenhouse — already a cause célèbre for the Trumpian right, which raised the $2 million to release him on bail — will be interpreted by all of the worst people as a sign from the U.S. justice system that it’s not only OK but heroic for citizens to take up arms for their perceived — and in too many cases invented — grievances.

Invented, indeed.  A lot of this has the unmistakable stink of an organized, radical movement that's being well- funded by the usual suspects, à la the Tea Party.  The Rittenhouse trial is the latest match, but not the only one, that has the potential to ignite violence.

CNN interviewed Virginia political pollster and guru Larry Sabato, who had this take on tomorrow's election in Virginia:

I'm ancient and I've been here in Virginia since the 1960s, and I've noticed one little thing. Every time a Republican is either behind or in a really close race, they find a way to drag race into the campaign.

Every time. Every time.

Sometimes it's immigrants. Sometimes it's blacks. Sometimes it's Latinos, or other groups.

This critical race theory discussion... it isn't in the ads, it's in the stump speeches.

"Critical race theory" is a way of speaking to whites and saying to whites: "Don't let the blacks take over." "They have already taken over. They have already taken over. Stop them. This is your chance to stop them."  

Tomorrow, in Virginia, is our chance to stop them.

Coup memo author John Eastman continues to prove he's an unrepentant insurrectionist:

In another awkward videotape “gotcha,” extremist Donald Trump team attorney John Eastman slammed “spineless” Republican state lawmakers who refused to reject the results of a legitimate presidential election.

Eastman boasted about a massive video conference call involving himself, Trump and Trump’s former personal attorney Rudy Giuliani with 300 Republican state legislators after Joe Biden’s victory, urging them to throw out election results.

“And they all spinelessly wouldn’t do anything,” complained Eastman, who authored the infamous “coup memos” on how to usurp American voters’ pick for president. “Even though we’d given them all the evidence ... they wouldn’t do it,” he added, apparently referring to nonexistent evidence of voter fraud.

“Look, I very much wish it were otherwise,” he said. “But these guys are spineless. If we take them out in the primaries in 2022, and the pre-condition for getting elected is we’re going to fight this stuff, maybe we’ve got an opportunity.”

Padded cell, stat!

The Glasgow summit on climate change (COP26) may well be the "inflection point" President Biden has called it.  Umair Irfan discusses what's on the agenda, what's at stake, and why all eyes are on the U.S.:

The US has the dubious distinction of being the only country to complete a 360-degree turn on the Paris agreement. It helped convene the accord in 2015, yet former President Trump withdrew the US in 2020. President Biden signed an executive order in January to rejoin and the US was formally back in the Paris accord in February.

Since the US is the wealthiest country in the world and the largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases, it plays a prominent role in climate negotiations and has an even greater obligation to act on the crisis. At COP26, the US not only has to make up for lost time, it also has to rebuild trust with other countries and show that it’s willing to be more ambitious.

“There is this sense of exhaustion about how long is it going to take for one of the biggest emitters in the world to do its fair share,” Rachel Cleetus, the clean energy policy director at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told Vox’s Rebecca Leber earlier this month.

Tell us about "exhaustion"!

Finally, you can find a far more eclectic and far more comprehensive link to posts from around the Internet over at Infidel 753's place.  Run, don't walk.

Monday Reading

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

Will Bunch in the Philadelphia Inquirer discusses the recent Nobel Peace Prize given to Filipino journalist Maria Ressa and Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov, as both a warning and a "do better" for American journalists:

It’s fitting that — thanks to Friday’s Nobel Peace Prize — world history will likely cherish Ressa, Muratov, and their brand of death-defying journalism far longer than it will remember the totems of modern U.S. media like recently retired Washington Post editor Marty Baron — whose uninspiring response to the threat to democracy posed by Donald Trump was, famously that “we’re not at war … we’re at work” — or the New York Times’ Dean Baquet, who doesn’t see journalism as activism but something he blandly calls “sophisticated true objectivity.”

Huh? [snip]

For all the Beltway journalists so eager to restore a breathless access journalism and the most cynical, “savvy” form of politics-as-a-game news coverage, the embrace by both the Nobel committee and the wider world of the more daring vision of journalism as a chief weapon in the war against rising neo-fascism — the stance so boldly adopted by Ressa and Muratov — ought to serve as a wake-up call. [snip]

The future of American democracy depends, frankly, on whether journalists stop burying their head in “the work” of balanced-but-misleading reporting and admit that, yes, actually, we are at war. We need to glom onto Maria Ressa’s vision — that when the truth is under attack, truth-telling is not a clinical science. Journalism is activism.

Sadly, due to the existential need to get clicks, ad dollars and subscriptions, we don't see the basic business model of American journalism changing, with the occasional exception for an investigative piece that makes a splash but is soon forgotten.  How far from their examples our "journalists" are.  

Speaking of American "journalism," Fox "News" recently celebrated its 25th anniversary.  Washington Post media critic Eric Wemple takes a few well- deserved swipes at the one institution news sewer that can claim responsibility for the poisonous, divisive, downward- spiraling state of American politics today:

If nothing else, Fox News had a talent for self-promotion, even before there was anything to promote.

“Fox News Channel to stress fairness” read the headline on the July 1996 story the Houston Chronicle published in the run-up to the Oct. 7, 1996, launch of Fox News, under the management of network chief Roger Ailes and News Corp. mogul Rupert Murdoch.

It’s not too late for a retraction, Houston Chronicle!  [snip]

... It’s one thing to corral a constituency; it’s quite another to poison that constituency. We won’t belabor the extensive and atrocious misadventures of Fox News, which this blog and many, many other sources have highlighted to our mutual exhaustion. There’s enough to fill a mammoth website.

For the sake of brevity, we’ll just highlight a development that so happens to coincide with the big 25th anniversary: The ongoing lawsuits against Fox News by voting-tech firms Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems. Both of these companies claim they were the subject of false coverage in the aftermath of November’s presidential election, and both sued the network for the efforts of key hosts — Sean Hannity, Maria Bartiromo, Jeanine Pirro and Lou Dobbs (who no longer has a show on Fox Business Network) are among the offenders — to associate their work with election-rigging. [snip]

It’s a machine, in other words — promoting lies, and then reporting their traction as national news. That’s what Fox News has done with the vocal plurality of Americans in its corner, 25 years running.

Their business model is stoking white grievance, racial hate, fear, all in service to their cult leader in his on- going coup.

On that on- going coup, laying the foundation for the next coup -- voter suppression laws, gerrymandering, allowing legislatures to overturn election results, etc. -- requires the willingness of elected Republican "leaders" to maintain the Big Lie.  Rep. Steve Scalise (Coup- LA) at your service:

The House’s second-ranking Republican, Rep. Steve Scalise, repeatedly refused to say on Sunday that the 2020 election wasn’t stolen, standing by Donald Trump’s lie that Democrat Joe Biden won the White House because of mass voter fraud.

More than 11 months after Americans picked their president and almost nine months since Biden was inaugurated, Scalise was unwilling during a national television interview to acknowledge the legitimacy of the vote, instead sticking to his belief that the election results should not have been certified by Congress.

“I’ve been very clear from the beginning,” he said. “If you look at a number of states, they didn’t follow their state-passed laws that govern the election for president. That is what the United States Constitution says. They don’t say the states determine what the rules are. They say the state legislatures determine the rules,” the Louisiana congressman said on “Fox News Sunday.” 

These are human weasels (no offense to weasels).  In Scalise's case, his description of himself as KKK leader "David Duke without the baggage" tells you exactly who he is.

This is the sub- moronic cult leader they're so desperate to re- install in the White House:

A new book reports that former President Donald Trump asked his top intelligence official to investigate an absurd conspiracy theory that Chinese thermostats changed votes in the 2020 election.

In an excerpt from the soon-to-be-released Betrayal by ABC News’s Jonathan Karl, which was shared on Sunday’s edition of This Week, the former president was said to be “intrigued” by the theory – which was presented to him by Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, who Trump wanted to install as acting attorney general.

“[Clark] believed that wireless thermostats made in China for Google by a company called Nest Labs might have been used to manipulate voting machines in Georgia,” Karl wrote. “The idea was nuts, but it intrigued Trump, who asked Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe to look into it.”

Some tinfoil hats should take care of it!  Also, Jeffrey Clark, the skunk willing to subvert the Department of Justice to cast doubt on the validity of the 2020 election, appears to be as nuts as his cult leader.

Lastly, for the best collection of links to posts from around the Internet, please visit Infidel 753's link round- up, which appears to get more comprehensive every week.  Keep it coming; we can handle it!.

The NYT's "Trust And Innovation" Project Torched

 

 

The "Trust and Innovation Project," a pet venture of publisher A.G. Sulzberger recently announced by the New York Effing Times, is coming in for considerable -- and well deserved -- head-scratching and mockery. The paper, which has become infamous for its years long Trump voter diner safaris, is now using this "reboot" in a search for the reasons why people just don't trust them (and, of course, to expand their subscription base).

The Philadelphia Inquirer's Will Bunch has the best take- down of this latest navel- gazing exercise by the clueless management at the Times.  His full article is worth the read, but here are some excerpts:

Yo, Trump voters in rural Ohio diners! Wake up! It’s time to put your MAGA hats back on, grind some bitter coffee and wipe the layers of grease off that Formica countertop. The New York Times still desperately wants you, and they’re coming back your way! Like, for the umpteenth time.

That may sound over the top, but I don’t know what else to say after learning that America’s most influential newsroom — after more than four years of dozens of stories informing its largely left-leaning readers that Donald Trump voters still love Donald Trump — is doubling down on efforts to persuade media-bashing right-wingers to like them, and maybe even subscribe.  [snip]

It’s true that lack of trust in the media is widespread these days, but since the dark morning of Nov. 9, 2016, the Times has been largely obsessed with its seeming failure to understand the Trump movement, but also — more weirdly — its inability to forge some kind of connection with these huddled masses who seem to hate them. In an anxious moment when the Times’ core readers and a flood of new digital subscribers looked for leadership to defend truth, science, and the role of a free press, the Times instead dwelled on the question that Sulzberger and top editor Dean Baquet asked in a letter five days after that election: “Did Donald Trump’s sheer unconventionality lead us and other news outlets to underestimate his support among American voters?”  [snip]

Instead of learning from those mistakes as we enter the Biden era, the new Times initiative seems to double down on its lost-cause obsession with wooing angry conservatives, like John Cusack holding up that boombox. Why? The crass answer would be money, as the Times — which already dominates digital journalism in America with 7 million subscribers, including more in many cities than that city’s hometown paper — is aiming for a goal of 10 million, which presumably could be reached with some (literal) buy-in from conservatives.

But more important is the Times’ stuck-in-the-1950s worldview that their self-worth as journalists comes from everyone perceiving them as balanced and fair — as opposed to a commitment to uncomfortable truths, regardless of how that might offend some readers. This apparent belief by prominent Times journalists that the public would like them more if they only understood how gosh-darned smart and overqualified its medical or legal reporters are is almost sad in its naivete. It shows that in those 58 months since the Sulzberger-Baquet letter, the Times has learned nothing about the modern conservative moment. [snip]

In other words, not only is there little — nothing, really — the Times can do to gain the trust of such non-readers, it shouldn’t even consider pandering to these instincts in the first place. A truly trustworthy news organization doesn’t cater to the concerns of any segment of the public — but only to one thing, the truth.

In today’s current fraught moment, that means an aggressive and clear-eyed approach to informing that public about the unprecedented threats to American democracy — with zero concern about “on one hand, on the other hand” forms of balance. The irony is that, in doing this, the Times might actually gain a few million new readers from so many Americans who desperately want the earned trust that comes with unvarnished truth, and not a phony, manufactured kind. If the Times still insists on clueless kowtowing instead of rising to this moment, the nation’s premier news org might be destroying journalism instead of saving it.

As with all corporate print and media operations, the imperative to increase the reader/viewer base, which drives advertising rates and revenue, is paramount.  Unfortunately, the Times appears to be moving toward an even more entrenched "both sides" model of journalism in a desperate attempt to draw more subscribers rather than, as Bunch puts it, to just tell the truth.  

Once again, we must refer to Masha Gessen's perceptive warning that institutions will not save us from autocracy.  It seems the Times is living proof of that thesis.  But be assured, they'll cover the fall of democracy evenhandedly!

BONUS:  Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog has additional thoughts on the project.

(Image:  That was then;  now, not so much.)