Quotes Of The Day -- Posing

 

"... For Trump, he is the context.

"In Donald Trump’s mind, he is the frame of reference that everything else enters.

"Trump isn’t meeting a kid who killed people, that kid is meeting him.

"Trump isn’t with an orphan. That baby is part of his photo op.

"Trump isn’t standing over a grave. The tombstone is a piece of his campaign for president.

"And that’s why, in every one of these pictures, Trump is wearing the exact same smile and giving the exact same thumbs-up. Because to Trump, there is no context but Trump." -- Jonathan V. Last, The Bulwark, on the narcissistic sociopath Malignant Loser's go- to "thumbs-up" pose in any number of pictures, regardless of the context.

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"... This is a serious problem for Trump’s coalition. He has always posed as an ally and champion of veterans. This is a key aspect of his general attempt to convince people that his motive for running for office is selfless — he no longer cares about his own wealth and happiness and wants only to create a better world for Americans.

"But Trump doesn’t actually care about the country. The whole idea of caring about the country is difficult for him to fathom. He believes in the gangster ethos that people are universally selfish, that those who claim to uphold higher values are merely hypocrites, and the only exception are the saps who get conned into risking their lives for strangers.

"His goal in the Arlington visit was to smooth over his political liability by creating the false image that he actually cares about the honor of fallen soldiers. Instead, he confirmed once again that he doesn’t." -- Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine, on the dishonorable orange buffoon Malignant Loser's desecration of Arlington National Cemetery, as well as his comparing the Congressional Medal of Honor with the civilian Presidential Medal of Freedom.

QOTD: Lifelong Crook

 

New York Magazine's Jonathan Chait, writing today in the magazine's Intelligencer section. The conclusion:

"What’s unusual about Trump is not that a politician got into legal trouble, or even that a professional scammer went into politics, but that a political party allowed a crook to rise to its top. That, in turn, reveals the deeply unhealthy state of the GOP, not any extralegal steps being taken by his opponents.

Before he won the Republican nomination the first time, Republicans were perfectly aware that his decades of bilking customers and counterparties, lying to everybody, and surrounding himself with known criminals posed a series legal risk. Now that that risk has gone from theoretical to actual, and it is being shared by the Republican Party, they seem to believe it’s not fair to hold him legally accountable.

But no plot was necessary here. The law finally catching up to a lifelong crook is utterly predictable." (our emphasis)

Please read Chait's entire article, which documents the initial revulsion with the Malignant Loser by his now-captive party, knowing that he was deeply corrupt, and how they are now standing with him and repeating his lie that the Biden Administration / "deep state" is fighting him through "lawfare," using law to improperly persecute opponents. 

 

QOTD -- McConnell's Odious Legacy

 

"If there is one person who single-handedly held the power to banish Donald Trump from public life, and thus to save the republic from any threat he will return to power and use it as a weapon of vengeance, that person is Mitch McConnell. In the days after January 6, 2021, Trump had discredited himself with his party and stood on the brink of reputational ruin. The House had impeached him for his coup attempt, with ten Republicans joining in. With a small push, McConnell likely could have mustered enough votes to convict him and disqualify the former president from holding public office again.

"Instead, McConnell decided such a vote, by splitting his party, would put it at a disadvantage. He convinced himself Trump would simply fade away on his own. And now, three years later, Trump stands as the prohibitive favorite to regain power, as McConnell has watched his influence ebb as he fades away into retirement.

"The main story of every Republican who served in this era will be what they did as their party descended into authoritarianism. The defining story of McConnell’s career will be that he chose his own power over democracy..." --  Jonathan Chait, The New Yorker, in one of what will be many retrospectives on McConnell's destructive legacy (he goes on to note the many familiar McConnell outrages like blocking critical legislation and turning the Supreme Court into a Christofascist Republican supermajority).  He even dubbed himself "The Grim Reaper" for his mostly successful efforts at undermining progressive governance. McConnell is only stepping down from his Minority Leader post;  unfortunately, he'll be around until his term ends in 2026, or until he shuffles off the mortal coil for a much hotter climate, whichever comes first.

Quotes Of The Day -- Justifying And Succumbing

 

Jonathan Chait writes in New York Magazine about the need for some Republicans to blame (wait for it) Democrats for the Malignant Loser:

... That this theory is totally deranged hardly requires saying. There is no evidence any, let alone all, of the prosecutors investigating Trump have coordinated with the Biden administration or have any interest in affecting the Republican nomination. Trump’s legal woes are easily and parsimoniously explained by the fact he has habitually flouted the law throughout his career, beginning at least 50 years ago, when he and his father refused to allow Black people to rent apartments, and continuing through decades of assorted schemes and swindles.

More to the point, the Republican electorate’s attachment to Trump is explained even more easily. The party’s voters thrill to his bullying style; they believe his stream of lies and exist in an information ecosystem in which every fresh piece of evidence of Trump’s misconduct merely affirms the scope of the conspiracy against him. The fact that they wish to renominate a man whom they consider one of the greatest presidents in history, and who most of them believe legitimately won the 2020 election, follows naturally from their own beliefs. The choice was not imposed on them by the Democrats, the liberal media, or Jack Smith.  [snip]

...The Republican voters may be misguided in their adoration of Trump, the anti-anti-Trumpers would concede, but they had been driven to that point by any number of Democratic crimes: the smearing of Mitt Romney, the Russia investigation, Bill Clinton’s sexcapades, or any of an endless list of grievances.

The anti-anti-Trump right’s need to explain Trump as a Democratic plot serves one additional psychological function: It excuses their own apologias on his behalf. After all, if the Democrats are to blame for Trump’s hold on the Republican Party, then the anti-anti-Trumpers are justified in refusing to defect from a Trump-controlled party. By focusing their opposition on Trump’s left-wing opponents, they are directing their main energies against the very people who are responsible for Trump’s rise in the first place...

They'll fall in line, and they'll justify it by blaming Democrats, just like the common anti- democracy hypocrites that they are.

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Jon Allsop writes in Columbia Journalism Review about media coverage of the Malignant Loser, especially after his latest indictment:

... With Trump’s prior indictments, my top initial takeaway from the coverage was its sheer breathlessness, which, while instinctively justified by the stakes, often felt uncomfortably like it was playing into Trump’s broader rigging of our attention economy: he played assignment editor with his social media posts; cameras followed him to court like he was O.J. in the white Bronco; punditry often focused on the strength of the cases against him, but also fussed over optics and his mood. Roughly the same things have been true this time—and yet my top takeaway has been how tired and rote a lot of the coverage has felt, despite its persistent wall-to-wall extent. At this point, there is both everything and nothing to say about Trump; the indictment is both unprecedented and precedented, astonishing and unsurprising. Many of the words written and spoken about his subversion campaign have stressed its enormity—and yet I increasingly can’t shake the conclusion that too many reporters and editors have normalized it, at least implicitly, by covering Trump as in any sense a normal candidate for 2024. In recent days, my thoughts have returned to an observation that the media reporter Brian Stelter made in Vanity Fair last month (prior to the latest indictment): that “many news executives and political analysts appear to have succumbed to revisionist history, downplaying Trump’s destruction of a shared reality and his shredding of democratic norms”; that “it’s hard to even recall that sliver of time after January 6 when it seemed like Trump was being excommunicated from American politics.”

It's not hyperbolic to say that the Malignant Loser is the greatest threat to our country since the Civil War. He's a deranged, would-be dictator with a large following of American Christofascists who care nothing for democracy.  It's not "partisan" to observe that;  it's objective reality.

QOTD -- The Republican Cauldron Of Rage

 

"...What Republicans are fighting over is whether to accept the limits of sharing power. [snip]

"The putative complaint against McCarthy’s leadership is that he advanced “incremental cultural Marxism” through government funding. Of course, no such thing exists, which means McCarthy has no way to redress the complaint. The far right is angry about the Biden administration’s continued existence and wishes to blame the leadership for this fact.

"Because this anger has no productive channel, it returns again and again in the form of internal recriminations. The House caucus during Democratic presidencies for the last quarter-century has been an endless procession of coup attempts. Gingrich was deposed for failing in his holy mission of forcing Clinton to slash government. John Boehner and Paul Ryan were driven into retirement. The House Republican caucus will be a cauldron of rage, because the party, at its core, does not believe it should be forced to share power." --  Jonathan Chait,  in the New York Magazine's Intelligencer, with a plausible explanation of the dynamic within the rotted out Republican/ Seditionist Party that's playing out in the daily humiliation of Rep. Kevin "Qevin" McCarthy, the man who won't be Speaker.  (It should be noted that the ultimate ouster of Newt Gingrich as Speaker in late 1998 was due in large part to his ethics violations, including his affair with his now third wife Callista while he was still married to his second wife.  His failure to slash government spending was not the precipitating issue in his removal;  rather it was his exposure as a serial adulterer during a critical election season in which Republicans lost seats they expected to gain.) 

QOTD -- Obamacare Trauma

 

"... [T]he passage of Obamacare was a traumatic event for Republicans. The wound it opened in the party’s psyche has not fully healed, and even more than a decade after its passage into law, they cannot reconcile themselves to its legitimacy.

"The passage of Obamacare, even though it merely incrementally expanded an existing program (Medicaid) and copied a program designed by a Republican governor (Mitt Romney) was met by unmitigated hysteria on the right. What seemed to unhinge conservatives was less the substance of the bill than the very idea of Democrats using their control of government to … govern. Republicans became fixated with the sinister machinations that they believed had produced the bill." --  Jonathan Chait on "Why Republicans Could Never Tell Their Voters the Truth About Obamacare" in New York Magazine.  It's been the Republican mindset for decades that Democratic governance is illegitimate.  That they continue to lose elections (7 out of the last 8 Presidential popular vote) drives them further into more and more blatant anti- democracy measures wherever they have the power.  They failed for 10 years to kill the popular signature achievement of President Obama, and today we must make sure they fail to kill the popular Biden agenda.

Quotes Of The Day -- The Republican War On Democracy

 

"The thing to grasp about the Republican state-level counteroffensive against voting is that, within the bounds of party opinion, it is a compromise. Stacking the legal deck against voting, and in favor of Trump-style postelection legal challenges, arouses barely any controversy on the right. The Wall Street Journal editorial page, which has occasionally drawn publicity by criticizing Trump’s communication style and undisciplined personal conduct, gives the Texas bill a fulsome endorsement. (The Journal has been laying the groundwork to fend off another Georgia-style backlash by running column after column warning corporations to stay out of the democracy issue.) Even Liz Cheney refused to condemn voter suppression, or even concede any link between these measures and Trump’s lies about the election.

"The Republican Party, like all parties, is trying to hold together a coalition. That coalition includes people like [convicted felon Michael] Flynn, who want to simply seize power at gunpoint. The accommodation they have reached between their violent and nonviolent wings is a legal regimen designed to ensure that the next time a Trump rejects the election result, he won’t need a mob to prevail." -- Jonathan Chait, in "Texas Republicans Want to Make Trump's Coup Nice and Legal," in the current issue of New York Magazine.

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"We, the undersigned, are scholars of democracy who have watched the recent deterioration of U.S. elections and liberal democracy with growing alarm. Specifically, we have watched with deep concern as Republican-led state legislatures across the country have in recent months proposed or implemented what we consider radical changes to core electoral procedures in response to unproven and intentionally destructive allegations of a stolen election. Collectively, these initiatives are transforming several states into political systems that no longer meet the minimum conditions for free and fair elections. Hence, our entire democracy is now at risk." -- the opening paragraph of a statement of concern signed by 100 scholars who study democracies.

This is what bowing to the anti- democratic, Jim Crow - era filibuster rule would give us in the future -- a minority party dedicated to fascistic,  anti- democratic rule at all costs in as many states as it can control and, ultimately, the nation generally.  As President Biden said yesterday democracy is in peril in this country, and the enemies of democracy have made their moves.  It's past time for our response:  pass the damn "For the People Act"!

QOTD -- Losing It All

 

"At noon on January 20, Trump will be in desperate shape. His business is floundering, his partners are fleeing, his loans are delinquent, prosecutors will be coming after him, and the legal impunity he enjoyed through his office will be gone. He will be walking naked into a cold and friendless world. What appeared to be a brilliant strategy for escaping consequences was merely a tactic for putting them off. The bill is coming due." -- Jonathan Chait's conclusion to his New York Magazine piece, "Trump Is On The Verge Of Losing Everything."  The reckoning for one of the most evil of figures ever to stain our country is coming.  There are so many financial, political and legal blows about to be struck that he can't avoid all of them. This is what we need to start to purge Mango Mussolini from the body politic and our collective psyche.

A More Comprehensive Accounting: Seven Articles Of Impeachment

Jonathan Chait has compiled 82 potentially impeachable actions by nitwit narcissist Donald "Impeachable Me" Trump and organized them into 7 broad categories of impeachable misconduct.  As Chait notes, while the impeachment inquiry currently underway is focused on Trump's abuse of power in his Ukraine shakedown scandal, it's important to be reminded of (and for history to memorialize) all the evidence of Trump's violations of his oath of office.

The seven broad categories Chait identifies are:

I. Abusing Power for Political Gain (the Ukraine scandal is but one point);

II. Mishandling Classified Information (reversing security clearance denials plays big here);

III. Undermining Duly Enacted Federal Law (mostly his border wall funds misappropriation and abuse of pardon power);

IV. Obstruction of Congress (refusal to release tax returns and not accepting Congressional oversight);

V. Obstruction of Justice (the 10 instances cited in the Mueller Report, and more);

VI. Profiting From Office (all the emoluments shenanigans); and

 VII. Fomenting Violence (a cesspool of his public utterances, from "lock her up" to encouraging attacks on his opponents)

We're good with those!

However unlikely it is that House Democrats will put forth this number and scope of impeachment articles (and we think by now -- judging from the polls -- it's a good bet to go with Speaker Pelosi and Chairman Schiff's judgement), and regardless of whether the rotted- out Republican Senate will even vote on articles, the scope of Trump's crimes and misdeeds should also serve as a reminder and a warning for the future that a known quantity as blatantly unfit and utterly corrupt as Trump won't ever "pivot" into being a president once in office.  They need to be stopped before they get there.

Monday Reading

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

Jon Chait on Friday's New York Times report that the FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation on Putin puppet Donald "Rump" Trump early in his regime, and specifically what Special Counsel Mueller has been investigating:

... An agent is not the same thing as an asset. An asset can describe a wide range of relationships, but in Trump’s case, it would mean that he is subject to sexual or financial blackmail, along with possibly some form of back-channel propaganda. We know for a fact that Trump is vulnerable to sexual blackmail, but that kind of leverage, if it exists, would be difficult for Mueller to obtain. (Sexual blackmail is only useful if you keep it locked up tightly.) It’s far more likely that Trump’s financial vulnerability opened him up to Russian leverage. And that is the kind of information American investigators can access. [snip] 

The Times report tells us that collusion is only part of the story. The relationship between Trump and Putin did not merely rest on their mutual interest in the Trump campaign defeating Clinton, but indicates some deeper connection. From the very beginning of this story, pundits have underestimated the full extent of Trump’s ties to Russia and how much deeper the story might yet go. Now we already know Mueller is not merely looking into crimes, but trying to ascertain the foundational loyalties of the President of the United States.  (our emphasis)

It should be carved in stone by now: Follow the money.

We flag this problem often, and E.J. Dionne, Jr., writes about the media's obligation to our democracy not to repeat its grievous errors from 2016:

... When reason is in retreat and when candidates are given strong incentives to stir up ugly passions, we have a problem. 

This is where we are now, and President Trump is both the product of this crisis and its apotheosis. He brought home just how nonsensical and dishonest our politics have become with his assertion on Thursday about Mexico paying for his border wall: “Obviously, I never said this, and I never meant they’re going to write out a check.” 

This was shocking, even from an unrepentant liar. Trump denied ever saying something that, as David Nakamura reported in The Post, he did say “at least 212 times during his campaign and dozens more since he took office.” 

This points to the media’s major shortcoming in 2016: its continuing commitment to “both sides are equally flawed” journalism, which led to its failure to portray Trump as the moral aberration he is...

Unfortunately the media, as an institution, bends toward superficiality and moral neutrality when it comes to politics (as opposed to the "look at people doing good things" fluff that takes up so much time in print and broadcast media). Here's one discouraging, but entirely predictable, example.

A chilling reminder that there's more than one nut in the White House:

President Trump’s National Security Council asked the Pentagon in September for military options against Iran, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday. 

The request was made shortly after an attack near the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, which the White House blamed on Iranian proxies in Iraq. 

The request from the National Security Council troubled many at the Pentagon and State Department, especially given that the attack caused no casualties and little damage. 

“It definitely rattled people,” one former senior U.S. administration official told the Journal. “People were shocked. It was mind-boggling how cavalier they were about hitting Iran.” 

Months later, it remains unclear whether the proposed military actions were provided to President Donald Trump, and even whether he knew that the request was made.

The shaky hand of National Security Advisor and neocon wild man John "Snowball" Bolton is at play here.  This is looking more and more like their "wag the dog" option for distracting from Rump's ballooning problems.

Finally, please do yourselves a favor and check out Infidel 753's link round- up.  It's a great way to start the week.

Monday Reading

As always, please go to the links for the full story/ op-ed.

On the eve of Putin puppet Donald "Rump" Trump's performance review in Helsinki, Jonathan Chait has a comprehensive dive into the Trump- Russia "relationship," its many associated players (Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, Carter Page, Michael Cohen, Felix Sater, legions of Russians, etc.), and the evidence of collusion and corrupt intent in plain view.

Since the election, Trump and his advisers have continued to act like people who have a great deal to hide. In January 2017, Cohen solicited consulting payments from a firm controlled by a Russian oligarch and, when Flynn became national-security adviser, delivered to him a “peace plan” that would have consolidated the gains from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In December 2016, Jared Kushner and Russia’s ambassador discussed setting up a back-channel communications line through the Russian embassy. Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater and brother of Trump’s Education secretary, traveled to the Seychelles and met with a Putin ally in what European and Middle Eastern officials believe was another attempt to establish a back channel. Prince also appears to have lied to Congress about the meeting. 

Of course, at that point, if Trump had legal diplomatic business to discuss with Russia, the president-elect could have held a normal meeting. It is possible to construct an innocent explanation for all the lying and skulduggery, but it is not the most obvious explanation. More likely, collusion between the Russians and the Trump administration has continued beyond the campaign.

Chait "what ifs" around the evidence of Rump being a longtime Russian asset since 1987 (well, of course he is), but it's a good read nonetheless.  If all the facts and evidence are allowed to come out, this will be far and away the biggest scandal ever in American history, bar none.

While we're on the subject of the Trump- Russia scandal,  ex- Rump fixer Michael Cohen's new legal spokesperson (and Clinton family intimate) Lanny Davis put the tweet out after seeing Rudy "Ghouliani" Giuliani blathering on the Sunday talk shows:

Did @rudygiuliani really say on Sunday shows that @michaelcohen212 should cooperate with prosecutors and tell the truth? Seriously? Is that Trump and Giuliani definition of “truth”? Trump/Giuliani next to the word “truth” = oxymoron. Stay tuned.  #thetruthmatters

— Lanny Davis (@LannyDavis) July 9, 2018

We like the "stay tuned" part, but let's not wait too long for the singing to begin, mkay?

The Republican War on Women (and babies) goes international (our emphasis):

A resolution to encourage breast-feeding was expected to be approved quickly and easily by the hundreds of government delegates who gathered this spring in Geneva for the United Nations-affiliated World Health Assembly. 

Based on decades of research, the resolution says that mother’s milk is healthiest for children and countries should strive to limit the inaccurate or misleading marketing of breast milk substitutes. 

Then the United States delegation, embracing the interests of infant formula manufacturers, upended the deliberations. [snip]

The confrontation was the latest example of the Trump administration siding with corporate interests on numerous public health and environmental issues. 

Luckily, the Rump regime's bullying efforts (threatening countries with trade sanctions and withholding military aid) were thwarted by a knight in shining armor:

In the end, the Americans’ efforts were mostly unsuccessful. It was the Russians who ultimately stepped in to introduce the measure — and the Americans did not threaten them.

So that's where we are now. Bullying smaller countries in the interests of corporate America only to slink away when your puppet master steps in to act as the hero.  The damage to this country's standing and reputation is real and it's going to be long- lasting.  Sic transit gloria, America.

Lastly, please go over to Infidel 753's link round- up, where he provides "Various interesting stuff I ran across on the net over the last week."  It's a wonderful assortment of humorous, quirky, timely, newsworthy ... oh, just go over and explore for yourself!

Quotes Of The Day - Frightening Surreality

"Oliver Wendell Holmes famously summed up Franklin Roosevelt as a second-class intellect but a first-class temperament. Trump has a third-class intellect and a third-class temperament. The frightening surreality of what has happened to the United States has only begun to sink in." -- Jonathan Chait, in New York Magazine, January 23, 2017.

"Nearly a dozen of Trump’s closest confidantes helped plant an embarrassing news story about how their boss can’t handle embarrassing news stories. Which is to say: A president who prizes loyalty in his subordinates has already been betrayed by a huge swath of his inner circle." -- Eric Levitz, also in New York Magazine, January 24, 2013.

"Never Trump" Becomes "Maybe Trump"?

Worth a read is Jonathan Chait's article in New York Magazine in the aftermath of neo-fascist narcissist Donald "Rump" Trump's victory in Indiana and his presumed capture of the Republican nomination. Chait looks at the forces which have created the most dysfunctional and bitter Rethug primary in memory, where the various media-wired Governors and Senators have dropped quickly by the wayside. Once masked by corporate-style Rethug politicians and their courtiers in the media, politics on the right has now become so openly toxic, delusional and ignorant that a Rump-style figure was bound to emerge sooner or later to the applause of the mouthbreating tribal base. So what will happen between now and November, when the "Never Trump" contingent and various conservative freelancers have a choice to make?  Chait's take:

"Virtually the entire Republican apparatus will follow Trump sooner or later, because without the voters, they have no power. And those voters have revealed things about the nature of the party that many Republicans prefer to deny. Whatever abstract arguments for conservative policy — and these arguments exist, and a great many people subscribe to them earnestly — on the ground, Republican politics boils down to ethno-nationalistic passions ungoverned by reason. Once a figure has been accepted as a friendly member of their tribe, there is no level of absurdity to which he can stoop that would discredit him. And since reason cannot penetrate the crude tribalism that animates Republicans, it follows that nothing President Obama could have proposed on economic stimulus, health care, or deficits could have avoided the paroxysms of rage that faced him." (emphasis added)

Some right-wingers are vowing not to support Rump. Some are yakking about a conservative running on an independent ticket and some pundits may even vote for Clinton. We remain skeptical of their willingness to part from the tribe that has nurtured them and that will threaten them with banishment if they don't fall in behind Der Trumpenfuhrer as they march off the electoral cliff in November.