Monday Reading

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

More electoral mischief in Wisconsin, which is shaping up to be the "tip of the spear" for Republican voter suppression in coming elections:

"The Republicans behind Wisconsin’s investigation into the 2020 election have made little effort to hide their intentions. Many of those supporting the investigation have connections to the Trump campaign. Leading the investigation is former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice Michael Gableman, no neutral arbiter but rather a man who told a group of supporters of former president Donald Trump in November 2020 that the election had been stolen. Asked last week if he had voted for Mr. Trump, he proudly declared: 'You bet I did.'

No surprise, then, that the 136-page draft report released last week by Mr. Gableman was full of debunked claims of misdeeds, accompanied by Mr. Gableman’s suggestion to state lawmakers that they consider 'decertifying' Wisconsin’s 2020 election results. That ridiculous suggestion, made during a state Assembly committee hearing, has no legal basis. Even Mr. Gableman conceded there would be no practical effect to such a move: Joe Biden is the president, and he can only be impeached or voted out of office."

There are Michael Gablemans throughout the corrupt and delusional Trumpist Party / Cult who will use whatever raw power they have to deny citizens their choice in elections. He and people like him are a threat to democracy.

Former Vice President Mike "Fly Guy" Pence is trying to separate himself from the stench of the Malignant Loser that he served so slavishly, using Trump's idolatry of Putin as a point of attack:

"Gearing up for what appears to be a run for president in 2024, former Vice President Mike Pence is seeking to put some daylight between him and his former boss. In a speech to Republican donors on Friday, Pence declared, 'There is no room in this party for apologists for (Russian President Vladimir) Putin. There is only room for champions of freedom.'

Former President Donald Trump, of course, has been an Olympic-level Putin apologist for years. Just two days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Trump praised Putin's actions in Ukraine as 'savvy' and 'genius.'

Trump's long bromance with Putin provides Pence with a handy political opening to distinguish himself, especially since polling shows that an overwhelming majority of Americans back increased economic sanctions against Russia, according to a CNN poll.

But if Pence thinks this will give him a significant leg up over Trump, he has misjudged both the former president and his supporters. A man who could pay an adult-film star hush money and publicly attack a Gold Star family during his first presidential campaign is hardly going to get tripped up because of his longstanding embrace of Putin."

After all, the Malignant Loser's ugly, multiple vices didn't stop right-wing Christofascists from embracing him as their Golden Calf, so this is unlikely to work, too. However, keep the heat on him anyway.

The U.N. released an important report on climate change that makes it clear that a lot of misinformation is being spread by right-winger conspiracy mongers in the U.S.:

"The expert panel’s report released last week mostly focused on the increasing risk of catastrophe to nature and humanity from climate change. But it also laid out clear evidence of how misinformation about climate change and the “deliberate undermining of science” financed and organized by “vested economic and political interests,” along with deep partisanship and polarization, are delaying action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to their impacts.

The assessment describes an atmosphere in which public perception about climate change is continually undermined by fossil fuel interests’ peddling of false, misleading and contrarian information and its circulation through social media echo chambers; where there’s an entrenched partisan divide on climate science and solutions; and people reject factual information if it conflicts with their political ideology.

Sound familiar? It should, because the climate misinformation landscape is worse in the United States than practically any other country.

While the section on misinformation covers only a few of the more than 3,600 pages in the report approved by 195 countries, it’s notable that it’s in a chapter about North America and calls out the U.S. as a hotbed for conspiracy theories, partisanship and polarization. A 2018 study of 25 countries that was cited in the IPCC report found that the U.S. had a stronger link between climate skepticism and conspiratorial and conservative ideology than in any other nation tested. These forces aren’t just a threat to democracy, they are major roadblocks to climate action and seem to have sharpened with the Trump presidency and the COVID-19 pandemic."

Finally, it's worth stopping by Infidel 753's eclectic and readable round up of links to a variety of posts around the internet. Always good stuff.

Monday Reading

 

For generations, the Republican / New Confederate / Insurrectionist Party has employed the politics of exclusion, even when their Dixiecrat forebears were denying African-Americans the vote through Jim Crow laws. Adam Serwer has a brilliant op-ed in the New York Times that goes into the history of this cruel and un-American effort: 

"Donald Trump has claimed credit for any number of things he benefited from but did not create, and the Republican Party’s reigning ideology is one of them: a politics of cruelty and exclusion that strategically exploits vulnerable Americans by portraying them as an existential threat, against whom acts of barbarism and disenfranchisement become not only justified but worthy of celebration. This approach has a long history in American politics. The most consistent threat to our democracy has always been the drive of some leaders to restrict its blessings to a select few.

This is why Joe Biden beat Mr. Trump but has not vanquished Trumpism. Mr. Trump’s main innovation was showing Republicans how much they could get away with, from shattering migrant families and banning Muslim travelers to valorizing war crimes and denigrating African, Latino and Caribbean immigrants as being from “shithole countries.” Republicans have responded with zeal, even in the aftermath of his loss, with Republican-controlled legislatures targeting constituencies they identify either with Democrats or with the rapid cultural change that conservatives hope to arrest. The most significant for democracy, however, are the election laws designed to insulate Republican power from a diverse American majority that Republicans fear no longer supports them. The focus on Mr. Trump’s — admittedly shocking — idiosyncrasies has obscured the broader logic of this strategy."  (our emphasis)

After the John Roberts Supreme Court stripped the Justice Department of its ability under the 1965 Voting Rights Act to stop voter suppression measures from being enacted (Shelby County v. Holder, 2013),  Republican State legislatures in states that had historically practiced such discrimination were free to enact the kinds of new Jim Crow laws we're seeing now. Now the Justice Department has to act after the fact, and in the case of Georgia's reactionary new laws, DOJ might not prevail according to Ian Millhiser:

"Attorney General Merrick Garland announced on Friday that the Justice Department filed a lawsuit challenging several provisions of Georgia’s recently enacted voter suppression law. And the Justice Department has a strong case on the merits against this law.

Yet it is far from clear whether the strength of their case will matter: They will have to litigate this case before a judiciary that is increasingly hostile toward voting rights claims.

The complaint in United States v. Georgia, which is signed by the most senior lawyers in the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, alleges that several provisions of the Georgia law 'were adopted with the purpose of denying or abridging Black citizens’ equal access to the political process, in violation' of the Voting Rights Act.

The DOJ does not attack the entire Georgia law, and it does not directly attack the single most troubling provision of the law, which allows Republican officials to effectively take over local election boards that have the power to close polling places and disqualify voters."   (our emphasis)

The surge of the Delta variant has prompted new quarantine measures, most notably in Australia. There's growing concern that the low percentage of vaccinated people worldwide -- and lax observance of masking, social distancing, etc. -- will trigger another pandemic cycle.

"Australia is on the verge of a national coronavirus outbreak just as most other developed economies are emerging from restrictions, with the delta variant of the virus seeding new virus clusters across the continent.

The highly transmissible variant, first detected in India, is confounding authorities’ ability to stay ahead of its spread, even with rigorous contact-tracing and domestic border closures that have allowed the country to remain largely open for most of the pandemic.  [snip]

By Monday, the country’s most populous city, Sydney, and its smallest capital, Darwin, in the remote Northern Territory, were in lockdown. Mask mandates were introduced in the federal capital, Canberra; in tropical Queensland; and in Perth, capital of Western Australia state. Victoria, home to Melbourne, imposed border restrictions on several Australian states.

Hindering officials’ efforts to contain the virus’s spread: a sense of complacency that has crept into many communities after going months with effectively zero transmission of the virus."  (our emphasis)

For a glimmer of hope that the far-right in Europe may be receding, this news that neo-fascist Marine LePen's National Rally party lost ground in France's regional elections:

"The far-right National Rally party failed to secure a single region in the decisive second round of voting for France's regional elections, according to preliminary estimates for French national media.

The second round had been seen as a key test for Marine Le Pen who had been hoping to win in one of the country's regions."

As always, we recommend a visit to Infidel 753's excellent link round- up for an eclectic and extensive collection of interesting links to posts from around the Internet.

Monday Reading (UPDATED)

 

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

Should there be any doubt whose incompetence has led to the vaccine shortage we're experiencing now, read this report from Stat:

Top Trump officials actively lobbied Congress to deny state governments any extra funding for the Covid-19 vaccine rollout last fall — despite frantic warnings from state officials that they didn’t have the money they needed to ramp up a massive vaccination operation.

The push, described to STAT by congressional aides in both parties and openly acknowledged by one of the Trump officials, came from multiple high-ranking Trump health officials in repeated meetings with legislators.

Without the extra money, states spent last October and November rationing the small pot of federal dollars they had been given. And when vaccines began shipping in December, states seemed woefully underprepared.

The previously unreported lobbying efforts underscore that even after the Trump administration spent billions helping drug makers develop Covid-19 vaccines, it not only dismissed states’ concerns about the help they would need to roll them out, but actively undermined their efforts to press Congress to get the funding they needed.

Much of the lobbying push came from Paul Mango, the former deputy chief of staff for policy at the Department of Health and Human Services. He argued, repeatedly, that states hadn’t demonstrated they needed additional funding because, at least as of last October, they hadn’t spent the $200 million that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent to states in September.

There's much more at the link worth reading.  Not getting your shots?  Thanks, Trump!

According to a Wall Street Journal report, the January 6 "Stop the Steal" rally that was the immediate catalyst for the Capitol insurrection had financial backing from one thug familiar to most and a sugar momma (WSJ paywall, so this is part of a Vox summary):

A Wall Street Journal investigation has found a number of key allies of former President Donald Trump — including far-right media personality Alex Jones and Julie Jenkins Fancelli, heir to the Publix supermarket fortune — helped to fund the rally that preceded the storming of the US Capitol on January 6 that left five dead.

According to reporters Shalini Ramachandran, Alexandra Berzon, and Rebecca Ballhaus, Jones pledged $50,000 of his own money to the event, and organized additional funds, including a $300,000 contribution from Jenkins Fancelli, who is a major GOP donor.

All told, the rally cost about $500,000, according to the report. That event, during which Trump pledged to never concede the November election to President Joe Biden — and whipped up supporters who later took over the Capitol — formed the basis of Trump’s second impeachment in the House of Representatives. In part due to comments he made at that rally, Trump has been charged with “incitement of insurrection,” and will soon face a trial in the Senate.

The Journal also reports that, according to Federal Election Commission records, “at least five former Trump campaign staffers” were involved in the logistics of the event. The rally was particularly lucrative for Trump fundraising official Caroline Wren, who was paid $730,000 throughout the 2020 election cycle for her and her firm to work on fundraising for the Trump reelection campaign team, according to the Journal. 

But there was another critical fascist faction laying the groundwork for the insurrection, as Sarah Posner points out:

Coverage of the Capitol insurrection has focused on such far-right instigators as the White supremacist Proud Boys and the Three Percenters, a militia group. But a reconstruction of the weeks leading up Jan. 6 shows how a Christian-right group formed to “stop the steal” worked to foment a bellicose Christian narrative in defense of Trump’s coup attempt and justify a holy war against an illegitimate state. In late November, two federal workers, Arina Grossu – who had previously worked for the Christian-right advocacy group Family Research Council – and Rob Weaver, formed a new Christian right group, the Jericho March. The new group’s goal, according to a news release announcing its launch, was to “prayerfully protest and call on government officials to cast light on voter fraud, corruption, and suppression of the will of the American people in this election.” In fact, the Jericho March would help lay the groundwork for the insurrection.  (our emphasis)

It's a great read that exposes the role not just the talibangelist hustlers like Paula White and Franklin Graham, but  groups like "Jericho March" that have been under the radar for most casual observers.   Their phony patina of being a "peaceful prayer" movement is only a cover, while their shock troops plan violence to attain their end of one- party, theocratic rule. (Chrissy Stroop has another look at these Christofascists here. And Rachel Mikva, too.)

As State Republican Parties descend into QAnon quackery and ramped- up voter suppression initiatives, the stakes for our democracy will hinge on passage of the new Voting Rights Act (H.R. 1) in the Senate. Ron Brownstein explains why this means the filibuster must go:

The party’s immediate political fate in the 2022 and 2024 elections is likely to turn mostly on whether Joe Biden can successfully control the coronavirus outbreak—restarting the economy and returning a sense of normalcy to daily life. But the contours of American politics just over that horizon, through 2030 and beyond, will be determined even more by whether Democrats can establish new national standards for the conduct of elections through a revised Voting Rights Act and sweeping legislation known as H.R. 1, which would set nationwide voting rules, limit “dark money” campaign spending, and ban gerrymandering of congressional districts. With both bills virtually guaranteed to pass the House, as they did in the last Congress, their fate will likely turn on whether Senate Democrats are willing to end the filibuster to approve them over Republican opposition on a simple-majority vote.

That decision carries enormous consequences for the future balance of power between the parties: The number of younger and diverse voters participating in future elections will likely be much greater if these laws pass than if they don’t, especially with state-level Republicans already pushing a new round of laws making it tougher to vote based on Donald Trump’s discredited claims of election fraud in 2020. Given those stakes, the Democrats’ voting-rights agenda is quickly becoming a focal point of the pressure from left-leaning activists to end the filibuster. “Our grass roots will not accept the notion that we had good intentions, but we just failed” to pass these laws, Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, a Democrat who is the lead sponsor of the Senate companion to H.R. 1, told me.

We're optimistic Democrats will use their power to counter the anti- democratic actions of the anti- democratic Republican Party -- January 6 changed everything.

A cautionary tale from Myanmar:  when you try to ride the tiger, you often end up inside:

Aung San Suu Kyi defended Myanmar's generals against genocide charges at The Hague. She praised soldiers as they unleashed artillery against ethnic minority settlements. She took only modest steps toward democratic changes that would chip away at the army's political power.

It wasn’t enough.

On Monday, Myanmar’s military seized power in a coup, detaining Suu Kyi, elected ministers from her National League for Democracy (NLD) party and others in a predawn raid. Though condemned internationally for defending the military and its campaign against the Rohingya minority, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who spent 15 years under house arrest until 2010 now finds herself again at the generals’ mercy.

Now that you've gone through our limited reading selection, do yourself a favor and check out Infidel 753's link round- up for a truly comprehensive selection of worthy posts from around the Internet. His essays are also worth your attention, like this one on the so- called Republican civil war.  Trust us.

UPDATE:  Rather than do excerpts from it, the New York Times basically has an extensive blueprint for impeachment managers to follow in "77 Days:  Trump's Campaign To Subvert The Election" that's a must read.

Monday Reading

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

Less than 48 hours before the first Presidential debate, dynamite goes BOOM!

The bombshell of Mango Mussolini's tax avoidance, business incompetence and mountain of debt (much held by foreign entities) is another story that would bury any other president or politician.  But, as we know, the committed Trump Cultist hears and sees only what its Dear Leader wants them to.  However, the average Joe Lunchbucket taxpayer should be bristling at the thought that the supposed billionaire paid ZERO taxes for many years and only $750 in 2016. In other words, he's paid more in hush money to his porn star hookups than he has in taxes. His enormous debt, with payments coming due, and the real prospect of undue influence by foreign debt holders is a huge national security red flag.  Needless to say, this is a huge story with major on- going implications.

File under "I Hire The Best People":

Brad Parscale, the former campaign manager for Donald Trump who was replaced by the President less than four months before the 2020 election, was armed with a gun and threatening to harm himself at his Fort Lauderdale home on Sunday afternoon, according to police and campaign officials.

Police responded to a home in the upscale Seven Isles neighborhood around 4 p.m. in reference to a man barricaded inside a house. When officers arrived on the scene, they made contact with the woman, the man’s wife, who had called 911. She told police that her husband was armed, had access to multiple firearms inside the house and was threatening to kill himself.  (our emphasis)

What a collection of crooks, psychopaths and traitors.

No surprise here.  The Washington Post endorses Joe Biden for President this morning:

In order to expel the worst president of modern times, many voters might be willing to vote for almost anybody.

Fortunately, to oust President Trump in 2020, voters do not have to lower their standards. The Democratic nominee, former vice president Joe Biden, is exceptionally well-qualified, by character and experience, to meet the daunting challenges that the nation will face over the coming four years.

Those challenges have been, to varying degrees, created, exacerbated or neglected by the incumbent: the covid-19 pandemic, which has claimed more lives in this country than anywhere else in the world; rising inequality and racial disparities; a 21st-century, high-tech authoritarianism ascendant in the world, with democracy in retreat; a planet at risk due to human-caused climate change.

Underlying them all is the question of whether U.S. democracy is any longer capable of meeting even one such challenge, let alone a host of them. Here is where Mr. Trump has done the most damage — and where Mr. Biden is almost uniquely positioned for the moment. He would restore decency, honor and competence to America’s government.

The Post led up to this endorsement in an eight- part series they called "Our Democracy in Peril."

Biden also got endorsements over the weekend from former Pennsylvania Republican Gov. Tom Ridge, who served as the first Secretary of Homeland Security under Dumbya, and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson (14.8 million Twitter followers).

Moody's Analytics has a message for voters who still think Mango Mussolini and Republicans would be better for the economy:

Moody’s Analytics, an economic-research firm, has published an economic forecast weighing the effects of Joe Biden and Donald Trump’s proposals. It finds Biden’s plan would produce dramatically faster job growth and higher wages for most workers.

Biden’s proposals would lead to 18.6 million new jobs during his first term, and the average American’s income (after taxes) would increase by $4,800. Trump’s policies would lead to an increase of 11.2 million new jobs by 2025, with minimal real income gain for average households.

The main reason Biden’s plan would produce a faster recovery is that it would increase short-term deficit spending. With interest rates very low and demand depressed, an infusion of deficit spending can accelerate growth quickly. (our emphasis)

Here's how they chart out job and GDP growth under several scenarios (click on images to enlarge):

As always, we strongly recommend heading over to Infidel 753's latest link round- up for many more roads to enlightenment (or at least some finely curated links to posts on multiple topics from around the Internet).

Monday Reading

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

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

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

New NBC poll:

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

New WaPo poll:

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

— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) March 31, 2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

Monday Reading

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

Jay Bookman names some names in his op/ ed about who shouldn't be the Democratic standard bearer in 2020.  Here's his rationale:

Whatever else it will say about him, history will see Donald Trump as a marker in time that divides what came before him from what will come after him. He is a ridiculous figure, especially as president, but the fact that he was elected anyway demonstrates the bankruptcy of that previous era and the repudiation of an approach to politics that had grown stale and unresponsive. [snip] 

Today’s challenges — climate change, unsustainable economic disparity, technological disruption, the rationalization of a dysfunctional health-care system, the restraint and redirection of nationalist passions, the growing despair and addiction in those parts of America left behind by change — these are the troubles that must now be addressed. Voters will want and deserve fresh voices and insight into tackling them.

We're willing to let the year play out a bit more before we start crossing people off the list. (Speaking of lists, Vox has one on who's running, or expected to run, for President here.)

Steve M at No More Mister Nice Blog writes about the media's propensity for taking discrete troubles of various Democrats and blowing them up into a larger meme, and contrasts it with their treatment of the news that universe- class hypocrite Donald "Rump" Trump has been employing undocumented immigrants at his Bedminster, NJ, golf club for decades:

After every bad story involving a Democrat, the media stokes the expectation of a second-order effect: Not only is Elizabeth Warren expected to be embarrassed about a decades-old form on which she called herself a Native American, she now should expect to lose credibility when talking about the disproportionate power of the wealthy, which is a completely unrelated subject. Not only is a racist photo of Ralph Northam a mark of shame for the governor, it's expected to be toxic for everyone in the Democratic Party for the next 21 months, until Election Day 2020. 

But Trump? As far as I can determine, not even Ann Coulter has called him on the hiring at Bedminster. Hey, he's a hypocrite -- ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. It's okay if you're a Republican.

It's the media's broader, updated version of "but her emails!"  Steve has another piece on this general topic here that's also worth a read.

Paul Waldman picks up on the theme of the media focusing on building narratives ("stories") that distract from what's really important to know about a candidate's campaign:

...[W]e get consumed with "issues" like that one that seem to exist only within the four corners of the campaign, not because we think they're actually meaningful or revealing but because we assume they'll have an effect on voters. Meanwhile we completely forget that we're trying to figure out who would be the best president. [snip]

... Once these "issues" take hold with reporters, they use them to frame what that candidate does from that point forward. "Still reeling from controversy over her racial identity, Elizabeth Warren announced today." "Trying to refocus attention away from the allegation that she mistreated her staff, Amy Klobuchar traveled to Iowa." Nothing they say or do can change it, yet everything they say or do is described as an attempt to distract from it. 

The project of figuring out who candidates "really" are (as opposed to who they'd like us to think they are) is a perfectly worthy one, and if there's one lesson we should have learned it's that as president they're the same people they were before. Bill Clinton cheated on his wife before he was president, and while he was president. George W. Bush lied a lot about policy while he was a candidate, and did the same as president. Donald Trump was a corrupt liar his whole life, and still is. 

The key, though, is exploring the connection: Here's who the candidate has been and is now, and this is why it would be important to their presidency. That's the part so many reporters seem to forget about once politicians start trudging through Iowa. But if there's good news, it's this: It's not too late for coverage of the campaign to get better. Those of us in the media just have to decide to do something different.

We keep seeing this movie over and over, to the detriment of our democracy.  The media seems incapable of self- correction.  Sustained, assertive push back from us is the main weapon in our arsenal.

Keeping with the media, Newscorpse reports the prime time shitshows on Fox "News" are continuing to shed audience and advertisers, with implications for further, future revenue decline:

... With MSNBC taking the number one spot in most of the primetime cable news market, Fox News would have to lower their ad rates because advertisers aren’t going pay a premium for a number two network. And with that change in leadership comes an even bigger problem for Fox. Like every cable channel, Fox News makes most of its profits through licensing fees from cable system operators. They currently have a very lucrative contract that was negotiated at the height of their ratings success. Now that they are no longer the leader, those contracts will decline in value when they are up for renewal. 

All of this is due to Fox’s determination to advance a radical right-wing agenda and to serve as the State TV mouthpiece for Donald Trump. It’s an unsustainable business model as the nation wakes up from its temporary lapse in judgement and rejects Trump and the sycophantic, cult-like GOP that he commandeered.

That story was found over at Infidel 753's link round- up, one of many he regularly collects so the rest of us don't have to do the work of plumbing the internet for interesting items.  Go take a look at what else he's discovered!

Monday Reading

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

Before we get to the mundane, a new horizon in human history is about to be reached 4 billion miles away:

Streaking through space at nearly nine miles per second, NASA's New Horizons probe closed in on a frozen remnant of the solar system's birth Monday, on track for a historic New Year's Day flyby of the most distant body ever explored. 

Officially known as 2014 MU69, the target is a small, 19-mile-wide object in the remote Kuiper Belt a billion miles past Pluto, a body so far away -- 4.1 billion miles from Earth -- it appears as little more than a speck of light even to the Hubble Space Telescope. 

Dubbed "Ultima Thule" (pronounced TOO-lee) in a NASA naming contest, the small body is thought to be literally frozen in time, a pristine remnant of the original disk of rocky debris that coalesced to form the solar system some 4.6 billion years ago. 

New Horizons will fly within 2,200 miles of Ultima Thule during the New Year's Day encounter, mapping its surface with a suite of cameras, spectrometers and other instruments to probe its structure and chemical makeup, giving scientists a close-up look at one of the solar system's original building blocks.  [snip]

While the flyby will happen in the blink of an eye, it will take 20 months for the gigabytes of stored data to make their way back to Earth, thanks to the enormous distances involved and the probe's 30-watt radio transmitter, which operates at power levels comparable to a refrigerator light. (our emphasis)

For perspective, New Horizons was launched in 2006, when Dumbya was president.

The advent of a New Year is always the occasion for retrospectives, predictions, and listicles.  Here's a telling retrospective that while familiar is at the same time unsettling:

President Trump’s year of lies, false statements and misleading claims started with some morning tweets. 

Over a couple of hours on Jan. 2, Trump made false claims about three of his favorite targets — Iran, the New York Times and Hillary Clinton. He also took credit for the “best and safest year on record” for commercial aviation, even though there had been no commercial plane crashes in the United States since 2009 and, in any case, the president has little to do with ensuring the safety of commercial aviation. 

The fusillade of tweets was the start of a year of unprecedented deception during which Trump became increasingly unmoored from the truth. When 2018 began, the president had made 1,989 false and misleading claims, according to The Fact Checker’s database, which tracks every suspect statement uttered by the president. By the end of the year, Trump had accumulated more than 7,600 untruths during his presidency — averaging more than 15 erroneous claims a day during 2018, almost triple the rate from the year before.  (our emphasis)

There's no question that Trump is a sick, unhinged monster.  The article goes on to opine about whether the firehose of lies is still working.

As for predictions, Jack Shafer offers this:

The pattern of lies and lying that Mueller has uncovered isn’t random. Many of the verified lies told by Flynn, Manafort, Gates, Papadopoulos, Van Der Zwaan and Cohen were told to protect both the tellers and the man at the top of the prosecutorial pyramid that Mueller is building: Donald Trump. 

I’m not foolish enough to predict when Mueller will close his case, but I’m brave enough to venture that Trump’s troubles are only now beginning. As Garrett M. Graff recently wrote, there are more than a dozen investigations into the various scandals connected to the president, from the Russians’ hack of the election to the purchase of influence by Middle Easterners to obstruction of justice to inauguration committee funding to campaign finance fraud. On Jan. 3, a Democratic House of Representatives will be seated and pursue aggressive, additional oversight into Trump’s affairs, further complicating his life. I can’t wait until Trump tweets his view that Congress should be dissolved. 

Trump and his team will, I suppose, attempt to lie their way out of the jams that 2019 promises. It’s my guess that Mueller is hoping for exactly that. The old lies told in Trump’s service have brought him closer to the truth. Newer lies will only hasten the president’s demise.

Kerry Eleveld lists Trump's 5 worst moments of 2018 (how difficult to winnow out just 5!).  Number 1:

The Trump administration's horrific policy of forcibly separating children from their parents at the nation's Southern border was as misguided as it was unconscionable. Trump used the federal government to terrorize desperate migrants, kidnap their children, and in some cases permanently orphan those kids. Systematically wielding the might of the federal government to inflict pain and trauma on some of the globe’s most vulnerable and defenseless people may not be the downfall of Trump’s presidency, but it was by far his lowest, most depraved episode in 2018 and worthy of an unceasing and indefinite amount of scorn and humiliation. It was monstrous, and Trump should never be allowed to live it down. 

Guess Trump won't be calling this guy "one of my generals":

The former top commander of U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan, retired four-star Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, criticized President Donald Trump's behavior and handling of the presidency, saying the commander-in-chief is dishonest and immoral. 

“I don’t think he tells the truth,” McChrystal said in an exclusive interview on “This Week” when asked by Co-Anchor Martha Raddatz if he believes the president is a liar. 

“Is Trump immoral, in your view?” Raddatz asked. 

“I think he is,” he said.  

Hooah!

As always, Infidel 753 has a great link round- up to ring out 2018.  Let's just say our favorite link has to do with a certain planet.

Monday Reading (UPDATED)

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

Today's must read:  Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse's (D-RI) "battle plan for beating the right."

Victory has traits. Victory must be organized. Organization requires strategy, preparation, tactics, training, and teamwork. Brave and able troops have been slaughtered throughout history in failures of organization. 

Losing has traits, too. As Democrats, we offer better and more popular policy positions, and we have flamboyant heroes. Yet, so often, we lose. Now we have won back a foothold on power, and the question is: what do we do with it? I’m sick of losing. I’m particularly sick of our “loser traits.” It’s time we faced up to them.

Go read it, absorb it, promote it.

In his retrospective of former Defense Secretary James Mattis, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Jim Hoagland offers his historical perspective on Mattis and the regime he worked for:

This much we know: Mattis never expected, intended or accepted that he would be driven to resign from the Trump administration. He told friends as much when they teased that he must keep a letter of resignation tucked inside his jacket pocket at all times. Unspoken but hanging in the air at such moments was the Mattisonian thought: The bastards will have to fire me. 

He abased himself — not something he would have endured willingly — by staying on in a Cabinet of crooks, dolts and sycophants who form the biggest swamp in Washington in my 50-plus professional years here.  (our emphasis)

Speaking of crooks, dolts and sycophants, Treasury Secretary Steve "Mr. Marie Antoinette" Mnuchin took a break from golfing at Cabo (while 800,000 federal employees are on shutdown furlough) to make some calls at his boss's request, the kind of calls a crook, dolt and sycophant would make:

The Treasury Department said that Mnuchin held a series of calls with CEOs of major banks: Bank of America, Citi, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo.

"The CEOs confirmed that they have ample liquidity available for lending to consumer, business markets, and all other market operations. He also confirmed that they have not experienced any clearance or margin issues and that the markets continue to function properly."

Equity markets have been rocky for various reasons, including tariff wars, general uncertainty, and the Fed increasing interest rates. No markets rise forever and we've seen a long run. A recent survey of global CEOs showed that chief financial officers overwhelmingly expect a recession by 2010 and many think 2019 will be the year. [snip]

Mnuchin's move might have made sense if there were public concerns about bank stability. Bank stocks have been taking a hit with market oscillations. When people worry about the economy, they expect that banks may suffer. When things slow, fewer people and companies take out the loans that are the source of institutional income. 

But there hasn't been a lot of concern about underlying bank stability. At least, there wasn't until Sunday evening when the tweets hit the fan. Particularly as Mnuchin was reportedly on vacation in Mexico.  (our emphasis)

Paul Krugman has a brief twitter thread on the subject here. Here's the conclusion:

We should take seriously the possibility that we're looking at an economic team as clueless as their boss -- and that they'll respond to real problems by firing off off-point tweets from various golf courses 5/

— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) December 23, 2018

See also the Update below.

All quiet on the Mueller front?  Not really.  Max Bergmann and Sam Berger tell us Individual 1's cooked:

For nearly two years, since the U.S. intelligence community released its report on the Russian campaign to assist Donald Trump in the 2016 election, the American people have been seeking an answer as to whether the Trump campaign colluded with its Russian counterpart. In the endless speculation about the direction of the investigation, a common view was that maybe the investigation would never implicate President Trump or find any collusion.

But a flurry of recent activity this past week all points in the same direction: Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation will likely implicate the president, his campaign, and his close associates in aiding and abetting a Russian conspiracy against the United States to undermine the 2016 election. [snip]

Mueller is coming. And he is clearly coming for Trump. Not simply for obstructing justice but for conspiring with a hostile foreign power to win an election. This is a scandal unlike any America has ever seen. 

Man, would that make the season bright!

Where there's smoke, there's probably something hot and burning:

Jerry Falwell Jr. confirmed that he loaned $1.8 million — with the help of President Donald Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen — to a young pool attendant he and his wife had befriended while staying six years ago at a luxury hotel. 

Buzzfeed News had previously reported on a lawsuit that claimed the evangelical leader and his wife had developed a “friendly relationship” in 2012 with Giancarlo Granda, then 21 years old, at Fontainebleau Miami Beach, and Falwell confirmed in a court filing that he helped set up the younger man in business. 

Fallwell, who runs homophobic/ theocratic Liberty University, was among the first evangelical endorsers of serial adulterer and crime boss Donald "Rump" Trump.  If you don't smell something off here, you may want to consult an ENT specialist.

Finally, as always, please check out the link round- up at Infidel 753's joint.  He's done his usual fine job of collecting items for you to browse, so give him some love.

UPDATE:  Well, we heard from the New York Stock Exchange today -- it dropped 653 points!  Thanks, Mnuchin!  Thanks, Trump!

Monday Reading

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

Max Bergmann and Sam Berger lay out the signs that the Special Counsel has the Russian collusion goods on Putin puppet Donald "Rump" Trump and his crime family, and conclude:

In the face of what Mueller has revealed, there is little question where this is going. Mueller may still be only showing us part of his hand, but it’s a damn good hand. He has signalled to us he’s found collusion. He has shown us that the president is compromised. He has told us that he has gathered information important to his investigation about contacts with people in the Trump Organization, the campaign, the transition, and even the White House. That’s everyone Trump has been connected with since he started running. And given all the redacted information in his filings and all that he’s been told by cooperating witnesses, we can be confident that Mueller will show us even more. 

Mueller is coming. And he is clearly coming for Trump. Not simply for obstructing justice but for conspiring with a hostile foreign power to win an election. This is a scandal unlike any America has ever seen.

Center- right WaPo columnist Jackson Diehl on the smug, smirking Secretary of State Mike "Pompous" Pompeo, another of Rump's "best people":

Mike Pompeo was supposed to rescue the State Department from its disastrous start in the Trump presidency. When he first turned up at Foggy Bottom on May 1, he promised to staff up a badly depleted bureaucracy, listen to its views and reinvigorate U.S. diplomacy after a year of dysfunction. State, he said, would get “back our swagger.” 

Now, after a month that has seen the secretary offer smiles and excuses to Saudi Arabia’s murderous Mohammed bin Salman, trash Congress for “caterwauling” and inspire a rare revolt by Senate Republicans, it’s time to offer a verdict: Pompeo has managed to worsen the State Department’s already abysmal standing with every significant constituency. Legislators, major allies, the media, career staff, even North Korea are alienated. The only satisfied customer may be President Trump — and even he has grounds for grievance.

Winning!

This "conspiracy theorist" is going down hard, but meanwhile the lunatic's not going to stop digging that hole deeper in the process:

The conservative writer and conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi filed a lawsuit on Sunday accusing special counsel Robert Mueller of blackmailing him to lie about President Donald Trump in the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. 

The suit, which seeks $350 million in actual and punitive damages in U.S. District Court in Washington, was filed six days after Corsi entered a formal complaint with the Justice Department alleging prosecutorial misconduct by Mueller. 

Corsi, 72, the former Washington bureau chief of the conspiracy website InfoWars, accuses Mueller's office of having illegally leaked secret information from the grand jury investigating Russian election interference. [snip] 

And it accuses the FBI, the CIA and the National Security Agency — all of whom are named as co-respondents — of having placed Corsi under illegal surveillance "at the direction of Mueller and his partisan Democrat, leftist, and ethically and legally conflicted prosecutorial staff."

The goal, the suit alleges, was to bring about a "'legal coup d'etat,' negating the will of the American voters who elected Donald J. Trump on November 6, 2016." 

What reputable attorney would file such a specious suit... oh, it's Larry Klayman.  Never mind.

At the United Nations climate summit in Poland, the United States stood shoulder- to- shoulder with the Western democrac... just kidding:

The United Nations climate summit in Poland stalled over the weekend as the U.S. joined Russia, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in declining to "welcome" a landmark study on worldwide climate change. 

All four oil-producing nations are calling for the report to be "noted" rather than "welcomed," a semantic difference that the State Department said draws a line between a U.S. acknowledgement and a full-out endorsement, The Associated Press reported. 

"The United States was willing to note the report and express appreciation to the scientists who developed it, but not to welcome it, as that would denote endorsement of the report,” the State Department said in a statement, according to the AP.

Even warnings by mega- investors failed to penetrate the self- interest and ignorance:

Global investors managing $32tn issued a stark warning to governments at the UN climate summit on Monday, demanding urgent cuts in carbon emissions and the phasing out of all coal burning. Without these, the world faces a financial crash several times worse than the 2008 crisis, they said. 

The investors include some of the world’s biggest pension funds, insurers and asset managers and marks the largest such intervention to date. They say fossil fuel subsidies must end and substantial taxes on carbon be introduced.

We conclude as always with the recommendation that you go over to Infidel 753's link round- up for a fuller spectrum of topics of interest.  Make it your next stop.

Monday Reading

With the student leaders from Margery Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL spending their summer organizing get-out-the-vote rallies for gun safety measures for the mid-terms, California is taking action in another way to limit gun violence:

"Sold from vending machines in Pennsylvania, feed depots in Nevada, pharmacies in Georgia and jewelry stores in Texas, ammunition is in many states easier to buy than cold medicine. But in California, which already enforces some of the nation’s most restrictive gun laws, there is a movement underway against the unfettered sale of bullets. 

[snip] 

Beginning next year, ammunition dealers across the state will be required to maintain logs of all sales — one of many steps California has taken to limit access to bullets. The efforts come as federal lawmakers fail to break the stalemate that for decades has blocked any new major gun control measures, despite a nationwide groundswell from students pushing for more restrictions in the wake of multiple massacres on high school and college campuses."

Paul Waldman, writing for The American Prospect, wonders whether Trump administration officials who are publicly complicit in his malevolent policies will ever be held accountable, noting the furor over the anonymous writer's op-ed piece in the New York Times:

"There are reasonable arguments for why the act of speaking out anonymously can be viewed as heroic or villainous. But the more important question is what kind of accountability will come to those whose identities we know: all the people who joined this administration, defended this president, and enabled this degraded period in American history to take place.

Imagine it's ten years from now. We don't know the extent of the damage Trump will have caused, or in what manner he will depart office. But what are we likely to say about those who are now laboring in his service? Will they have trouble getting other jobs or running for office? Will they find that wherever they go, people will say to them, 'You went to work for Donald Trump. How can we possibly trust your judgment?' Will the words 'former Trump administration official' carry the appropriate stigma, like 'convicted felon' or 'sex offender'?

Because that's certainly what should happen. In a just world, everyone who made the decision to work for Trump or publicly advocate his cause would find themselves a personal and professional pariah for the rest of their days." (our emphasis)

Billionaire greed head Elon Musk may have lost some investors after poor business decisions and his weed-smoking performance the other day, but it bears noting that, despite his visionary rhetoric, he's a union buster at heart. From The Guardian:

"Tesla and its billionaire owner, Elon Musk, have earned a reputation for union-busting efforts over the past few years. In February 2017, Musk accused a factory worker who outlined several issues within Tesla in a Medium blogpost of being a 'union plant'. In an email, Musk also promised workers free frozen yogurt in a letter to employees that framed unionization efforts as an effort against Tesla by big car companies. The same month, Tesla employee Michael Sanchez alleged he was asked to leave the Tesla factory by security for handing out pro-union flyers outside to fellow employees."

As always, please read the entire articles.