Today's Cartoon

 

(click on image to enlarge)

Ed.:  Yesterday, Pulitzer Prize- winning editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes announced she was quitting the oligarch- owned Washington Post.  Here's her statement, and the rough of the cartoon and the corrupt editorial decision that precipitated her leaving:

I’ve worked for the Washington Post since 2008 as an editorial cartoonist. I have had editorial feedback and productive conversations—and some differences—about cartoons I have submitted for publication, but in all that time I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at. Until now.

The cartoon that was killed criticizes the billionaire tech and media chief executives who have been doing their best to curry favor with incoming President-elect Trump. There have been multiple articles recently about these men with lucrative government contracts and an interest in eliminating regulations making their way to Mar-a-lago. The group in the cartoon included Mark Zuckerberg/Facebook & Meta founder and CEO, Sam Altman/AI CEO, Patrick Soon-Shiong/LA Times publisher, the Walt Disney Company/ABC News, and Jeff Bezos/Washington Post owner.

While it isn’t uncommon for editorial page editors to object to visual metaphors within a cartoon if it strikes that editor as unclear or isn’t correctly conveying the message intended by the cartoonist, such editorial criticism was not the case regarding this cartoon. To be clear, there have been instances where sketches have been rejected or revisions requested, but never because of the point of view inherent in the cartoon’s commentary. That’s a game changer…and dangerous for a free press.

Over the years I have watched my overseas colleagues risk their livelihoods and sometimes even their lives to expose injustices and hold their countries’ leaders accountable. As a member of the Advisory board for the Geneva based Freedom Cartoonists Foundation and a former board member of Cartoonists Rights, I believe that editorial cartoonists are vital for civic debate and have an essential role in journalism.

There will be people who say, “Hey, you work for a company and that company has the right to expect employees to adhere to what’s good for the company”. That’s true except we’re talking about news organizations that have public obligations and who are obliged to nurture a free press in a democracy. Owners of such press organizations are responsible for safeguarding that free press— and trying to get in the good graces of an autocrat-in-waiting will only result in undermining that free press.

As an editorial cartoonist, my job is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable. For the first time, my editor prevented me from doing that critical job. So I have decided to leave the Post. I doubt my decision will cause much of a stir and that it will be dismissed because I’m just a cartoonist. But I will not stop holding truth to power through my cartooning, because as they say, “Democracy dies in darkness”.

Thank you for reading this.

Once again, as for the Post's slogan "Democracy Dies in Darkness" ...  my ass!

"The Guardrails Are Already Collapsing" (UPDATED)

 

We're still not over this, and probably never will be.  Betrayals cut deep.

Jonathan Last concludes his essay on Washington Post's Jeff Bezos' decision to not endorse Kamala Harris, Bezos joining the oligarch coalition of cowards who believe their wealth and position are threatened if they don't show Trump obedience:

... These guys can hear the music. They’ve seen the sides being chosen: Elon Musk and Peter Theil assembling with Trump’s gangster government in waiting. They see Mark Zuckerberg praising Trump as a “badass.” And now they see Bezos getting in line, too.

What’s remarkable is that Trump didn’t have to arrest Bezos to secure his compliance. Trump didn’t even have to win the election. Just the fact that he has an even-money chance to become president was threat enough.

Or maybe that’s not remarkable. One of Timothy Snyder’s rules for resisting authoritarians is that “most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given.” People surrender preemptively much more often than you might expect.

Two weeks ago, Ian Bassin and Maximillian Potter wrote what might be the most prophetic essay of the year. They warned about “anticipatory obedience” in the media.

Seventeen days later, Bezos made his demonstration.

In case you needed reminding: The “guardrails” aren’t guardrails. They’re people.

And they’re already collapsing. Before a single state has been called.

Reaction from Post writers and former luminaries here and here.

As we said yesterday, if ever there was a time to cancel a subscription, this is it.

And if ever there was a time to vote, this is it. 

BONUS:  The Philadelphia Inquirer won't be cowed!  Neither will The New Yorker --

 

Proud to work for the @NewYorker which unlike the @WashingtonPost knows who to endorse: Kamala Harris for President https://t.co/u2tauRkkIW

— Jane Mayer (@JaneMayerNYer) October 25, 2024

BONUS II:  Justin Peters has a good read on this. 

BONUS III:  WaPo columnists' statement here.

UPDATE:  Former WaPo editor-at-large Kagan makes an expolosive claim --

The Washington Post’s outgoing editor-at-large and longtime columnist has made explosive claims that its owner Jeff Bezos struck a deal with Donald Trump in order to kill the newspaper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris.

Robert Kagan, who resigned from his position on Friday after more than two decades at the publication, told the Daily Beast that Trump’s meeting with executives of Bezos’ Blue Origin space company the same day that the Amazon founder had killed a plan to support Harris was proof of the backroom deal.

“Trump waited to make sure that Bezos did what he said he was going to do, and then met with the Blue Origin people,” he said on Saturday. “Which tells us that there was an actual deal made, meaning that Bezos communicated, or through his people, communicated directly with Trump, and they set up this quid pro quo.”  [snip]

According to Kagan, “all the facts” lead in the direction of Bezos attempting to transform the Post into something akin to The Wall Street Journal, a center right “anti-anti-Trump editorial slant,” with Lewis by his side.

“Some journalists will stick around for that. Some will leave. If they leave, they can be replaced,” he said.

(Cartoon:  Clay Bennett, Chattanooga Times Free Press;  more later in Today's Cartoons)

Darkness: Washington Post Owner Kills Harris Endorsement (UPDATED)

 

 

"Democracy Dies In Darkness."  That's the official slogan under the banner of the Washington Post, owned by billionaire Amazon owner Jeff Bezos and published by former Rupert Murdoch executive Will Lewis.  It's also utter bullshit.  From the Columbia Journalism Review:

On Friday, the Washington Post’s publisher, Will Lewis, announced that the paper would no longer make endorsements for president—after its journalists had already drafted an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris. The decision was made by Jeff Bezos, the paper’s owner.

Over a period of several weeks, a Post staffer told me, two Post board members, Charles Lane and Stephen W. Stromberg, had worked on drafts of a Harris endorsement. (Neither was contacted for this article.) “Normally we’d have had a meeting, review a draft, make suggestions, do editing,” the staffer told me. Editorial writers started to feel angsty a few weeks ago, per the staffer; the process stalled. Around a week ago, editorial page editor David Shipley told the editorial board that the endorsement was on track, adding that “this is obviously something our owner has an interest in.”

“We thought we were dickering over language—not over whether there would be an endorsement,” the Post staffer said. So journalists at the Post, in both the news and opinion departments, were stunned Friday after Shipley told the editorial board at a meeting that it would not take a position after all. This represents the first time the Post has sat out a presidential endorsement since 1988. 

The meeting was quickly followed by an opinion essay from publisher Lewis, who wrote, “We recognize that this will be read in a range of ways, including as a tacit endorsement of one candidate, or as a condemnation of another, or as an abdication of responsibility. That is inevitable. We don’t see it that way.” In a news story, the Post made clear that the decision came from Bezos. [snip]

The decisions at both newspapers have angered staff members, who point out that both papers have published editorials for more than nine years now describing the threats Donald Trump poses to American democracy; his constant stream of falsehoods; his role in the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol; his public policies; and his promises to be a dictator—for one day, at least—if elected.  [snip]

Ian Bassin, a democracy expert, calls these moves “anticipatory obedience”: fear by owners that if Trump wins he could take vengeance on companies that cross him. They noted that the leadership at CNN and the Post changed after the Trump administration tried to block the takeover of CNN’s parent company and tried to deny a cloud computing contract for Amazon, Bezos’s company...

What a cowardly, shameful abdication of every principle and value this paper has purportedly stood for for decades.  In an election in which the very existence of American democracy is at stake, with a fascist running to become its unbridled autocrat (and who calls journalists "enemies of the people"), a newspaper that has had the gall to dub itself as a beacon of democracy runs for the shadows. "Democracy Dies In Darkness" my ass.

 If you have a Washington Post subscription, this would be an excellent time to cancel it.

UPDATE:  Several notables, including Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, former editor executive editor Marty Baron, and editor-at-large Robert Kagan (who resigned in protest from the Post), denounced the cowardly decision not to endorse Harris. 

The Washington Post Guild issued this statement:

 

A statement from Post Guild leadership on the Washington Post's decision to not endorse a presidential candidate pic.twitter.com/fYU7hkr79K

— Washington Post Guild (@PostGuild) October 25, 2024

UPDATE 2:  Post columnists Ruth Marcus, Karen Tumulty, Eugene Robinson, Perry Bacon Jr., and cartoonist Ann Telnaes have joined the chorus condemning the decision.

(Image:  Billionaire Bezos)

Front Page Darkness

 

The ever more disappointing Washington Post ("Democracy Dies in Darkness") had an interesting way of characterizing the flurry of Republican- on- Republican violence and their threats of violence in the headline on today's front page:

(click on image to enlarge)

What they really meant to say was not "legislators," but "Republicans," specifically, Reps. Kevin McCarthy and Tim Burchett and Sen. Markwayne Mullin (see post below).  But, putting that in the headline would've made them a news organization reporting facts, as opposed to what they've become.

QOTD -- What Matters

 

"Sadly, it may well be that not enough Americans are paying attention to what is being revealed in these hearings. Those within the Republican base remain firmly in the thrall of Mr. Trump and the baseless conspiracy theories he sells them, while GOP elected officials are fearful of doing anything to turn his ire on them. Voters might want to send a message about their dissatisfaction with the status quo. But inflation will pass, wages will rise, and supply chains will adapt. The consequences of re-empowering an unhinged personality, after he has faced no serious consequences for literally trying to overthrow the democratic order, would last forever." -- Washington Post editorial board, in observing "Jan. 6 testimony shows that Donald Trump is unhinged. Voters must listen." (our emphasis)  This goes further than the Malignant Loser, though.  The party "in the thrall" of him (whether his sway may or may not be weakening) long ago adopted an anti-democratic, antediluvian, theocratic philosophy -- what we call Christofascism. The consequences of re-empowering that party in 2022 or beyond would be catastrophic and last forever.

Quotes Of The Day -- They're Coming For It All

"Friday’s ruling was another reminder, for a country that needs no more, that Americans cannot take for granted the freedoms they enjoy. Their decisions, particularly how and whether they vote, can have direct, dramatic and negative consequences for their lives. A decades-long conservative crusade to nullify federal abortion rights has now succeeded, because Senate Republicans underhandedly stacked the court with justices who have proved to be disastrously intemperate. This tragic moment should wake Americans to reality:  They must defend their rights, or they are liable to lose them." -- Washington Post editorial board this morning (our emphasis)

____________________

"The crowd began gathering a little after 10, when the word came down that the Court’s decision in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was every bit as bad as it was long feared to be. Pro-choice activists waved signs and chanted and sang. Anti-choice activists waved signs and chanted and sang, and prayed to whatever God they believe ordained that, if you have a Glock, you have more rights than if you have a uterus. Reading the 6-3 majority opinion, and the dissents thereto, is like wandering through a legal nightmare of the 19th Century. And in one line in his concurrence, Justice Clarence Thomas, who is the de facto Chief these days since, plainly, nobody’s listening to John Roberts any more, makes that awful specter into grim reality.

'In future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, & Obergefell.'

"They’re coming for it all, people. That’s what this carefully engineered radical conservative majority was bought and paid for. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse was absolutely right when he rose on the Senate floor last July 27, and tried to explain what he called The Scheme—the long-march campaign to buy a hardcore conservative majority on the Supreme Court." -- Charles P. Pierce, in Esquire, on "The Hard Right Has Gotten What It Paid For" (our emphasis).  More evidence of this, if any was needed, was the statement from Mike Pence -- yesterday's "hero" who's quickly reverted back to the Christofascist windsock he's always been -- that abortions should be banned nationwide, a position opposed by the vast majority of Americans (just like overturning Roe was).  Other prominent Republicans have made it clear that this is the ultimate goal, which can be accomplished as early as 2024, with the election of a Republican President and a Republican House and Senate.  

But overturning Griswold (contraception), Lawrence (same-sex sexual activity) and Obergefell (same-sex marriage) only requires a lawsuit bubbling up to this radical, ultra- reactionary SCOTUS for the march backwards to continue, and Clarence Thomas has openly invited them.

 

Views On Russian Aggression Against Ukraine

 

The Washington Post editorial board:

Rebutting Mr. Putin’s arguments is almost beside the point — it’s doubtful even he believes his wild accusations about Ukraine as a future platform for NATO aggression — but not entirely. The truth is that Ukraine is a member state of the United Nations, whose security Russia itself undertook to respect 28 years ago, in exchange for Ukraine’s nuclear disarmament. Ukraine has not been waging “genocide” against a Russian-speaking ethnic minority, as Mr. Putin alleged, but defending itself from a 2014-2015 Russian destabilization campaign that created the breakaway regions and engineered the seizure of Ukraine’s strategic Crimean region on the Black Sea. Mr. Putin’s pseudo-history about the kinship of Russians and Ukrainians ignores those facts. His true reason for targeting Ukraine is not Russian national security but to preserve his own power in Moscow, which would be threatened by a successful democratic experiment in a former Soviet republic of Ukraine’s size and cultural importance.

Shaun Walker, The Guardian, on possible cracks in the Kremlin's aggressive facade:

From behind his desk, frequently smirking, Putin listened one-by-one to his security council. The body contains some of the few people who have Putin’s ear, but even some of them appeared overawed by the situation and nervous at fluffing their lines.

Sergei Naryshkin, the hawkish head of Russia’s spy service, known for making aggressively anti-western statements, stuttered uncomfortably as Putin grilled him on whether he supported the decision.

“Speak directly!” Putin snapped, twice.

Eventually, when he was able to get the words out, Naryshkin said he supported “the LNR and DNR becoming part of Russia.” Putin told him that wasn’t the subject of the discussion; it was only recognition being weighed up.

Some suggested this might have been a carefully scripted encounter to show the West what other options might be available, but Naryshkin’s genuinely flustered expression suggested otherwise.

Eugene Robinson: 

If Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to gobble up another chunk of Ukraine at little or no cost to his own interests, he should have done it while Donald Trump was still president. With President Biden leading the response, Putin’s potential costs are rising — while his hoped-for benefits have evaporated. [snip]

Even in this era of scorched-earth politics, Biden’s Republican critics are at pains to formulate specific complaints about his leadership on Ukraine. A few, such as Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), have said he should have ordered a full-scale evacuation of American citizens. But others, including Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), agree with Biden that such a step would be premature and unwise. Some Republicans have attacked Biden’s energy policies, arguing that the United States should be maximizing oil and gas production to curb Putin’s coercive power, which hardly seems on point. The most common GOP criticism is the most amorphous: Putin is supposedly emboldened because he sees Biden as weak.

The precise opposite appears to be true. [snip]

But even as Russian forces strike, Putin will have to ask himself one question: Where’s Trump when I need him?

Kenya's Ambassador to the United Nations Martin Kimani to the Security Council, where every member stood against Russian aggression:

The territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine stands breached. The Charter of the United Nations continues to wilt under the relentless assault. In one moment it is invoked in reverence by the very same countries who then turned their backs on it in pursuit of objectives diametrically opposed to peace and security. In the last two meetings and the buildup of forces in Ukraine, they urged diplomacy be given a chance. Our cry was not heated and more importantly, the charter's demand to settle the dispute by peaceful means in such a manner are not in danger has been profoundly undermined. Today, the threat or use of force has been affected. Kenya is gravely concerned by the announcement made by the Russian Federation to recognize the regions of Ukraine as independent states.

Full speech here.

No one, except the captive audiences in Russia and on Fox "News", is treating Russian thug Putin's claims of Ukraine being the aggressor, or engaging in "genocide" against the Russian speaking population in eastern Ukraine, seriously.  Not that that has any importance to him at the moment. His fear of an independent, democratic Ukraine on his border is the primary driver for his desperate actions.

QOTD -- Snatching Defeat?

 

"Democratic leaders had linked the two: The infrastructure bill would pass only when the larger reconciliation package, which will take weeks or months to write, was ready for a vote. This way, the centrists, who want the $1 trillion infrastructure bill, would have a stake in the passage of the reconciliation package, which Democratic liberals and progressives want. As long as both are still on the table, each side has something big to lose if they fail to advance. The centrists are trying to break this linkage, and in so doing give themselves all the leverage in the upcoming reconciliation bill negotiations.

"Their gambit is unlikely to work; far more than nine House progressives have pledged to reject the $1 trillion infrastructure plan until the reconciliation bill is ready. If the centrists got their immediate vote on the infrastructure bill, it would likely fail. That would be a disaster for the nation, which needs both investment in roads and rails and assurance that the political system can still sometimes work. Centrists’ energy would be far better spent negotiating the reconciliation package than on insisting that progressives unilaterally disarm." -- the Washington Post editorial board, explaining the tactics and the stakes involved, should the 9 "centrist" Democrats succeed in snatching defeat from the jaws of victory by bollixing up the legislative process for passing the infrastructure plan and reconciliation bill.  The 9 are Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, Carolyn Bourdeaux of Georgia, Filemon Vela, Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez of Texas, Jared Golden of Maine, Ed Case of Hawaii, Jim Costa of California and Kurt Schrader of Oregon.  If any of them is your congressperson and you haven't already contacted them to get on board with Speaker Pelosi, now is the time to do it.

BONUS:  Here's how one progressive group is confronting them --

NEW: Progressives (@WorkingFamilies, @IndivisibleTeam, @sunrisemvmt, and Organize For Justice) launch six figure ad-buy targeting nine obstructionist Democrats blocking Biden infrastructure deal pic.twitter.com/hV8TIiNlox

— Justice Democrats (@justicedems) August 23, 2021

 

 

QOTD -- Hey WaPo Reporters, Read This

 

"We looked at data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection to see whether there’s a “crisis” — or even a “surge,” as many news outlets have characterized it. We analyzed monthly CBP data from 2012 to now and found no crisis or surge that can be attributed to Biden administration policies. Rather, the current increase in apprehensions fits a predictable pattern of seasonal changes in undocumented immigration combined with a backlog of demand because of 2020’s coronavirus border closure." -- Tom K. Wong, Gabriel De Roche and Jesus Rojas Venzor, in yesterday's (wait for it) Washington Post.  This could be somewhat embarrassing, because the Post's crack team of Republican press release stenographers (looking at you, Ashley Parker, Nick Miroff, Sean Sullivan and Tyler Pager!) and others in the media have been relentlessly flogging the "CRISIS AT THE BORDER" narrative, dutifully following in the footsteps goosesteps of Fox "News."  (But, when your traffic is down dramatically, you keep hitting the panic button labeled "major scandal here!!") 

It's going to be a long couple of years.

BONUS:  The Post's own media observer Margaret Sullivan sees what's already been developing in just the first 60 days of the Biden Administration and says it's the White House press corps that's going to be tested at Biden's first press conference tomorrow.

 

Media Desperate To Give Trump Credit For Vaccine Rollout

 

The "mainstream media" is back to its old tricks, having learned nothing from 4 years of dystopia ending in a botched coup attempt:

With the COVID-19 vaccines starting to bring the pandemic to an end, former President Trump has stepped in to take credit for the feat. 

What’s surprising is that he’s been aided in this by the Washington Post and New York Times, both of which have run articles this week arguing that the speed-up in the vaccine rollout under President Biden only builds off of a plan put into place by Trump. In short, they contend that Trump is right: he had a plan to distribute the vaccine that Biden was lucky enough to inherit.  

That’s flat wrong. A look at what actually happened in the Trump administration’s last months shows that the White House lacked a plan for the “last mile” of distribution, leaving that to the states while lobbying Congress not to pass much-needed funding that would spur state and local governments to get the vaccine into arms. 

On its own terms, the Trump administration did not have a plan to distribute the vaccine to Americans en masse beyond “let the states figure it out.”  (our emphasis)

Here's NBC's Peter Alexander whining that President Biden didn't give credit to the former guy, basically providing laudatory words to put in the President's mouth:

 

 

For his tone deaf, ahistorical kumbaya efforts, Alexander gets rightfully dunked:

 

In the long history of dumb media dynamics, “why won’t Biden give more credit to the bleach drinking insurrectionist for his management of the pandemic that killed 500k people” may be the dumbest to date https://t.co/4Tdh7rYQKf

— Dan Pfeiffer (@danpfeiffer) March 12, 2021

 

Then, we have the media "factcheckers":

 

Which doesn't sound like much of a plan---> https://t.co/mwocfi63de

— Ann Telnaes (@AnnTelnaes) March 12, 2021

There's more that could be dug up, but we're tired and it would just be redundant.

We expect (and are seeing) this revisionist history from the likes of Fox "News" and the various frothing right- wing Trumpist outlets.  But when "mainstream media" seems to be taking its cues from them, it's deeply disheartening to say the least.  The vaccine rollout has been botched in many states, thanks to the Trump "plan" noted above -- "let the states figure it out."   It's causing delays and potentially unnecessary death. That's not cause for praise.

But at least it's a pause in their whining about Biden not holding a press conference yet.

Media Whines About Biden's Press Availability

 

The whining has reached the editorial page of the Washington Post : 

WHITE HOUSE press secretary Jen Psaki said Friday that President Biden would hold a news conference “before the end of the month.” Last month would have been better, and this week would be better than next. Avoiding news conferences must not become a regular habit for Mr. Biden. He is the president, and Americans have every right to expect that he will regularly submit himself to substantial questioning.  [snip]

But each of his 15 most recent predecessors, including Mr. Trump, held a full news conference within their first 33 days in office. Mr. Biden has been in office for 46 days. It was only after journalists’ complaints became increasingly loud — and following a wave of bad press — that Ms. Psaki announced Friday that the president would appear for an extended, unaccompanied question-and-answer session with reporters.

Could it be -- just maybe -- that he's been too busy getting things done and undoing the damage left by the former guy?  Like getting the vaccination distribution program jump- started?  Like getting his administration staffed after a non-transition?  Like getting his legislative agenda lined up and passing the American Rescue Plan Act?  Bueller?  Bueller?

We're reminded of the limited positive value of these press conferences which, under the former guy, tended to allow lies and misinformation to be spread largely unchallenged by the assembled press who rarely followed up on lie- studded answers.  That's not going to be a problem with President Biden, but we see how the media is likely to act anyway based on past performance.  This is from a 2015 Columbia Journalism Review article about President Obama' press conferences (our emphasis):

The press, meanwhile, shows itself to be a willing hostage to the modern demands for a click-worthy story and a tweetable quote. At press conferences, the overwhelming tendency is to ask about the day’s headline or to look for the “gotcha” question, instead of addressing long-term accountability issues. Frequently, one journalist after the next will ask the same question, as they did during the post-election news conference. Reporters ask questions not to get information, but to get a reaction. And even with that strategy, they rarely succeed. 

Of course, no one is asking or expecting the media to throw softball questions at President Biden, but let's get real about the more prosaic motivations here, which haven't changed since that description was written. And of course, the media has a vested interest in showing that it doesn't have a political bias and will go after a Democratic president even as he's fighting anti- democratic forces in the country that would ultimately end a free press. 

But the media should also have a bias in favor of democracy, which is the existential struggle of the moment in this country that only one party is fighting. As Dan Froomkin of PressWatchers puts it:

... [O]ne party, you have certainly noticed, has over the last decade or two descended into a froth of racism, grievance and reality-denial. Asking you to triangulate between today’s Democrats and today’s Republicans is effectively asking you to lobotomize yourself. I’m against that.

Defining our job as “not taking sides between the two parties” has also empowered bad-faith critics to accuse us of bias when we are simply calling out the truth. We will not take sides with one political party or the other, ever. But we will proudly, enthusiastically, take the side of wide-ranging, fact-based debate.

So, yes, President Biden will hold a news conference soon.  Let's see if anything has changed in the way of media responsibility and perspective.

BONUS:  At least one observer aside from us is skeptical --

After Biden holds a formal news conference, which is soon I assume, given he was no doubt waiting for a wave of good news to ride, what will they complain about then?

— Schooley (@Rschooley) March 7, 2021

 

What if he just answered every question, “You’ll have to wait and see” and “I’ll be announcing something in about two weeks.” Would that clear the hurdle?

— Schooley (@Rschooley) March 7, 2021

Headlines Of The Day -- The Trump Coup

History won't be kind, part infinity (click to enlarge): 

 

Editorial Boards Hammer Trump's Coup Plots

A sampling of editorial comment on the Cuckoo Coup being attempted by Mango Mussolini.

USA Today 

No one expected President Donald Trump to be as gracious in defeat as was George H.W. Bush in 1992, the last time an incumbent was defeated. And perhaps only the starry-eyed would think Trump might implement a more aggressive pandemic response now that the numbers are surging again.

Even so, in the past couple of weeks, unable to face reality and unwilling to concede his election loss to Joe Biden, Trump has sunk to new levels of depravity and narcissism.

Rather than making the best of the situation, Trump spends his days golfing, concocting plots to overturn the election results, firing top officials who question him, planning how he might remain a kingmaker, and tweeting with the emotional clarity of a toddler left alone in his shopping cart.

Washington Post

DAY BY day, President Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of a free and fair election grow more brazen. Day by day, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and other so-called leaders of the Republican Party grow more complicit in this banana-republic style assault on democracy.

As one Trump court challenge after another fails, it is easy to dismiss his claims that the election was “stolen” as nothing but a public relations stunt. Not a harmless stunt, to be sure; he is guaranteeing that millions of Americans will see President-elect Joe Biden as less than legitimate and their own democratic system as corrupt. But a stunt, nonetheless. Watching the latest ravings of campaign lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, who on Thursday posited with no evidence whatsoever a series of increasingly wild conspiracy theories, it was possible to feel any number of emotions: pity, fury, astonishment. But nothing in his unhinged performance would lead a serious person to fear that the election results were in danger of being voided in court.

But it is a different matter entirely when the president intervenes directly in an effort to persuade state officials to overturn the voting results. This is what Mr. Trump is now doing. Having lost an election by a decisive margin, and then having lost one legal challenge to that result after another, he is now strong-arming local Republicans to simply ignore and override the results.

Wall Street Journal

President Trump has broadened his push to overturn the election outcome and threatened Republicans who challenge his refusal to concede, as looming deadlines for key states to certify their results are set to narrow the path for his legal challenges.

Mr. Trump’s postelection campaign to reverse his loss to President-elect Joe Biden—one without precedent in modern U.S. history—is increasingly showing signs of strain among some Republican lawmakers and governors, while many of the president’s own advisers say they are ready for the campaign to turn the page.

For more than two weeks, prominent Republicans have supported the president’s right to litigate the results. But some are now expressing frustration over an effort they believe has no chance of success and over Mr. Trump’s firing of a cybersecurity official who defended the election’s integrity. Some Trump advisers say they are concerned the continued push risks giving false hope to millions of Mr. Trump’s supporters.

The New York Times

The president’s raging against reality also is putting American lives at risk. The nation is in the grips of a generational economic collapse and shot through with a pandemic that has already killed more than a quarter million Americans and is on track to fell another 70,000 by Inauguration Day. Mr. Trump is refusing to allow the Biden transition team to gain access to national security briefings or details on the government’s pandemic response.

That refusal amounts to gross negligence with American lives, piled atop the gross negligence of the Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic. Dr. Scott Atlas, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, on Sunday called for Michigan residents to “rise up” against public health measures. The president reportedly hasn’t attended a meeting of that task force in several months.

The greatest damage of Mr. Trump’s recent actions, however, may come in future election seasons. Mr. Trump is establishing a vocabulary of denial to election results. He is training politicians to try to overturn outcomes they don’t like — to actively sabotage democracy.

Pressure's building on Mango Mussolini and his bootlicking minions to cooperate in the transition to the Biden-Harris administration, from Republican aligned groups like the Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Manufacturers and a handful of Republican politicians.  Thus far, the bulk of the rotted out party is sticking with Mango Mussolini, a decision that -- in the short term at least -- may cost them one or more of those Senate seats in Georgia. That might be the only positive outcome of this mess.

Quotes Of The Day -- The Damage Done

"PRESIDENT TRUMP has dropped the pretense of respecting democracy. Having lost the election, and a string of attempts to challenge vote counts, he demanded on Wednesday that state officials simply refuse to certify the results. The end game, according to Trump campaign legal adviser Jenna Ellis, is to enable Republican state lawmakers in a swing state such as Michigan to award their state’s electoral college delegates to Mr. Trump despite President-elect Joe Biden’s unassailable vote margins.

"The Post’s Robert Costa reports that Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s lawyer, is also talking up what would amount to a coup. He knows that his desultory lawsuits will not succeed, but calculates that if enough states are prevented from certifying their votes by legal deadlines, the election could be thrown into Congress, which might hand the presidency to Mr. Trump — again, against the will of the voters. [snip]

"This is beyond political norm-breaking. This is a direct assault on democracy itself. That an American president would even contemplate scheming to overturn a free and fair election is astonishing. That he is actively trying to do so should shock Americans to the core." --  Editorial in this morning's Washington Post, on the coup neo- fascist Donald "Mango  Mussolini" Trump is attempting in concert with some of his dead- enders.

 _______________________________

 

"After Trump has provided the world with this theatrical coup-that-is-not-a-coup, it is naive to imagine that the U.S. can promote democracy or the rule of law with the confidence that it did in the past. For four years, our president has openly defied many of the values we used to put at the center of our foreign-policy rhetoric. And yes, everybody has noticed. Americans may have found the spectacle of Trump trying to blackmail the Ukrainian president into launching a fake political investigation of his opponents exotic. Ukrainians found it … familiar. The next time a senior American official comes to town and tells the Ukrainian government that its International Monetary Fund loan depends on enforcing laws against corruption, why shouldn’t the Ukrainians laugh?" -- Anne Applebaum, in "The World is Never Going Back to Normal," discussing some of the damage done to American foreign policy and standing in the world by the soon- to- be ex-president.

Quotes Of The Day

Saying the quiet part loud:

“The more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence reigns, the better it is for the very clear choice on who’s best on public safety and law and order.” -- Kellyanne Conway, Thursday on "Fox and Friends," revealing COVID Donnie's game plan:  trying to benefit from the chaos and violence he's helping sustain in our cities around the country.

A mendacious convention vs. core values:

"If you recognize this as nonsense, you may not be in the target audience. The conjured specter of widespread “'urban violence,'” combined with warnings that the dictatorial Democrats against “'guns, gasoline and God'” would force Americans to wear masks, lock them down and keep them from church, may well resonate with people the GOP is aiming to fire up. And the falsely comforting portrait of the president may soothe those the party is hoping to persuade: giving them permission to support someone whose values jar their consciences by pretending his values are something else altogether.

“'In this election, it is not so much whether America will be more conservative or more liberal, more Republican or more Democrat,'” Vice President Pence said Wednesday night. “'The choice in this election is whether America remains America.'” We agree that the country’s core values are at stake in this election. This mendacious convention just provided more evidence of that."  -- Washington Post editorial this morning on the malicious nonsense peddled throughout the Republican National Convention Circus.

Historic Delusion

Editorial in this morning's Washington Post, which deserves to be memorialized for posterity:

IN A week in which the United States exceeded 50,000 new coronavirus cases on multiple days, more than double the rate of just a few weeks ago, there are important messages that President Trump could have sent from the White House podium on Thursday. He could have insisted that all Americans wear face masks in public, or urged them to steer clear of crowded July 4 celebrations. He could have pledged a renewed federal effort to expand the still-troubled program of diagnostic testing, a prerequisite for a return to normalcy. He could have given governors support for the need to impose new restrictions to contain the virus.

He did none of these things.

Instead, Mr. Trump remains in blissful denial as crisis ripples through the Sun Belt, threatening to create chaos and distress nationwide for months to come. On Wednesday, he said of the pandemic, “I think at some point that’s going to sort of just disappear, I hope.” On Thursday, in a brief appearance before reporters, without wearing a face mask and refusing to take questions, he said, “We have some areas where we are putting out the flames, or the fires, and that’s working out well.” He went on to assert that the United States, like Europe and China, is “getting it under control.” Some areas are suffering a “flare up,” he acknowledged, “and we are putting out the fires” with a strategy to “vanquish and kill the virus.”

The reality is that the virus is not under control; it is in control. Record-shattering numbers of new cases were reported Wednesday in six states: California, Georgia, Texas, North Carolina, Arizona and Alaska. New daily cases are increasing in 41 states compared to two weeks ago. Outbreaks and superspreader events are erupting, such as clusters from Myrtle Beach, S.C. In five months, the pandemic has killed nearly 19 times as many Americans as have died in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mr. Trump — whose early reaction to the pandemic was to wish it away, who failed to muster the logistical support to confront it and who then decided to walk away by leaving the response largely to the states — this week continued to engage in magical thinking, referring to the raging pandemic as “certain hot spots.” In fact, states that opened up prematurely in May are paying the price now, and Mr. Trump bears responsibility for encouraging governors to loosen the restrictions too early. It was a bad miscalculation.

Now, governors are rapidly trying to backpedal, abruptly closing bars and restaurants, but it is exceedingly difficult to shift from reopening to closure again. Mr. Trump on Thursday elided this difficulty, saying the reopening decision is “largely up to them.” He was characteristically only concerned with praising himself. “We’ve done a historic thing,” he said, adding that he saved “millions of lives” and now is opening up the country “far faster than anybody thought even possible and more successfully.”

This is historic delusion, and it has consequences in human lives.

It's deeply tragic that Trump's obvious unfitness for office had to be finally driven home by the needless and continuing loss of so many of our fellow citizens.  Now, voting him and his colluding Republican rats out in November is how we redeem ourselves as a nation and, in the process, assure that those who have died and suffered did not do so in vain.

No Longer Downplaying The Insanity?

Two articles on the front page of the Washington Post this morning seem to demonstrate that, at least at one newspaper, reporters' gloves are off in describing the divisiveness and insanity emanating from the Oval Office.

First, Philip Rucker and Toulouse Olorunnipa on two actions taken by the Orange Shitgibbon (with the headline "With ‘shooting’ tweet, Trump inflames rather than soothes tensions amid Minneapolis unrest"):

Nobody forced the crisis in Minneapolis upon President Trump. He chose to inflame the tinderbox himself when he issued an ultimatum to people protesting the death of a black man there under the custody of a white police officer.

In a pair of tweets sent at 12:53 a.m. Friday, Trump threatened to deploy the National Guard to use lethal force against demonstrators he denigrated as “THUGS.” His ominous warning — “when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!” — was flagged by Twitter as a violation of the social media platform’s rule against glorifying violence.

Having contributed to another national cleavage over racial justice, a president who was elected to lead the nation through crises effectively retreated from the responsibility of doing so on this one.

At the same time, Trump on Friday abdicated the traditional role of an American president abroad, ceding global leadership by announcing that he was “terminating” U.S. membership in the World Health Organization.

Later in the article, they quoted a political scientist who nailed the Orange Shitgibbon's utter failure at this moment in history:

“He’s perfectly incapable of exercising leadership because he doesn’t understand what leadership is,” said Max Skidmore, a political scientist at the University of Missouri at Kansas City and author of a book on presidential leadership during health crises. “He thinks of leadership as whipping up outrage from a crowd, and having them yell and support him.”

Second, Matt Zapotosky and Isaac Stanley-Becker on the crises facing America (with the headline "Gripped by disease, unemployment and outrage at the police, America plunges into crisis"):

A global pandemic has now killed more than 100,000 Americans and left 40 million unemployed in its wake. Protests — some of them violent — have once again erupted in spots across the country over police killings of black Americans.

President Trump, meanwhile, is waging a war against Twitter, attacking his political rivals, criticizing a voting practice he himself uses and suggesting that looters could be shot.

Both articles also reported on Joe Biden's calming remarks, in which he described the "open wound" of racism and urged a restoration of "the soul of America."  An easy compare and contrast.

We should also note that the national evening news broadcasts are not blinking in describing the Orange Shitgibbon's words and actions and juxtaposing them against Biden's.  Guess it's finally hard to ignore the crazed elephant in the room when there are over 100,000 deaths, 40 million unemployed and cities starting to erupt in violence, all at the same time.

More Journalism Erupting At Washington Post

The Washington Post is on fire today.  In addition to the indictment we've linked to below, here are more headlines (print edition) with stories on multiple topics that will confirm that at least this newspaper, on this Sunday, isn't playing "both sides" or "he said, she said" games:

Trump approaches crisis as if he's making reality tv

Once again, government is caught unprepared

GOP fights efforts to ease voting during pandemic

As Trump urges states to share ventilators, New York deaths surpass 3,500

Trump continues undermining independent watchdogs

None of it is perfect, and it's one day, but what a relief to see largely unvarnished facts driving the news.

(Of course, there's always a dogged outlier;  today it's "fact checker" and false equivalence maven Glenn Kessler taking a weak shot at nit- picking comments Joe Biden made about getting virus experts into China early on (!).  That's a critical topic to focus on right now, isn't it!?  No link.)

"It Did Not Have To Happen This Way"

The Washington Post has a must -read front page feature article this morning about the failures of the Trump regime, and particularly of Donald "Moron Vector" Trump himself, in recognizing and mitigating the danger of COVID-19.  The article is a devastating indictment of the inaction and bungling of the Trump regime in the crucial two months between when Moron Vector was first briefed on the danger by our intelligence agencies and when he dubbed himself a "wartime president."  If you read nothing else today, please read it.

Here's a small sampling to give you a sense of the article's unflinching critique:

... the United States will likely go down as the country that was supposedly best prepared to fight a pandemic but ended up catastrophically overmatched by the novel coronavirus, sustaining heavier casualties than any other nation.

It did not have to happen this way. Though not perfectly prepared, the United States had more expertise, resources, plans and epidemiological experience than dozens of countries that ultimately fared far better in fending off the virus.

____________________

The Trump administration received its first formal notification of the outbreak of the coronavirus in China on Jan. 3. Within days, U.S. spy agencies were signaling the seriousness of the threat to Trump by including a warning about the coronavirus — the first of many — in the President’s Daily Brief.

And yet, it took 70 days from that initial notification for Trump to treat the coronavirus not as a distant threat or harmless flu strain well under control, but as a lethal force that had outflanked America’s defenses and was poised to kill tens of thousands of citizens. That more-than-two-month stretch now stands as critical time that was squandered.

____________________

The most consequential failure involved a breakdown in efforts to develop a diagnostic test that could be mass produced and distributed across the United States, enabling agencies to map early outbreaks of the disease, and impose quarantine measures to contain them.  [snip]

Other failures cascaded through the system. The administration often seemed weeks behind the curve in reacting to the viral spread, closing doors that were already contaminated. Protracted arguments between the White House and public health agencies over funding, combined with a meager existing stockpile of emergency supplies, left vast stretches of the country’s health-care system without protective gear until the outbreak had become a pandemic. Infighting, turf wars and abrupt leadership changes hobbled the work of the coronavirus task force.

 ____________________

Beyond the suffering in store for thousands of victims and their families, the outcome has altered the international standing of the United States, damaging and diminishing its reputation as a global leader in times of extraordinary adversity.

“This has been a real blow to the sense that America was competent,” said Gregory F. Treverton, a former chairman of the National Intelligence Council, the government’s senior-most provider of intelligence analysis. He stepped down from the NIC in January 2017 and now teaches at the University of Southern California. “That was part of our global role. Traditional friends and allies looked to us because they thought we could be competently called upon to work with them in a crisis. This has been the opposite of that.”

____________________

In reality, many of the failures to stem the coronavirus outbreak in the United States were either a result of, or exacerbated by, his leadership.

For weeks, he had barely uttered a word about the crisis that didn’t downplay its severity or propagate demonstrably false information. He dismissed the warnings of intelligence officials and top public health officials in his administration.

At times, he voiced far more authentic concern about the trajectory of the stock market than the spread of the virus in the United States, railing at the chairman of the Federal Reserve and others with an intensity that he never seemed to exhibit about the possible human toll of the outbreak.

In March, as state after state imposed sweeping new restrictions on their citizens’ daily lives to protect them — triggering severe shudders in the economy — Trump second-guessed the lockdowns.

These snippets only scratch the surface of this well- researched, deep dive into the incompetence that has been a hallmark of Moron Vector and his regime of 4th- raters since the beginning.  This time, the results of that basic incompetence is costing the lives of Americans in a very graphic and transparent way.

At 8 a.m. EDT, there are over 311,000 confirmed cases and 8,454 deaths from COVID-19 in the U.S. Those numbers are rising by the minute.

It did not have to happen this way.

(Photo: Moron Vector taking a late February victory lap on the risk to Americans being "very low." How did that work out for ya',  Moron Vector?)

Media Equivocations Cosset Trump, Constitution Edition

The underlying story is awful enough (please read), but look how the Washington Post characterizes it:

President Trump suggested Wednesday that he would ask the Supreme Court to intervene if Democrats move to impeach him — a notion that legal experts said showed a misunderstanding of the Constitution.  [Ed.:  "legal experts"? We only play legal experts on this blog, but we don't think you need to be a "legal expert" to call absolute bullshit on that "notion".]

It was unclear how Trump would legally justify such a move, since the Constitution delegates impeachment proceedings to Congress, not the courts. [Ed.:  No shit, Sherlock.] Trump mentioned the idea briefly in morning tweets in which he lashed out at Democrats who are continuing to investigate him following the release of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report.  (our emphasis)

Would it be so difficult (albeit truthful) to say that, as usual, the dolt- in- chief doesn't know what he's talking about?  That it's another example of his willingness to trample on the Constitution and it's system of checks and balances?

These are the "Democracy Dies In Darkness" people, fergawdsakes.

Alas, the cosseting of this incompetent moron continues unabated in the media.

BONUS: Check out some of the reactions to the moron's tweet.