;)
The Conversation -- November 18, 2024
The most powerful solutions to fight climate change are all around us — the world’s forests. -- President Joe Biden, speaking in the Amazon region Sunday ~~~
~~~ Matt Viser of the Washington Post: “President Joe Biden stopped Sunday in [Manaus, Brazil,] in the heart of the rainforest, marking the first time a sitting U.S. president has visited the Amazon, as he sought to emphasize the importance of taking on climate change two months before a successor who is far less sympathetic to that effort takes office. Biden took a dramatic aerial survey of this portion of the world’s largest tropical rainforest in his Marine One helicopter, as well as a tour of Museu da Amazônia, a 'living museum' showcasing the forest’s diverse ecosystem. He traveled to this remote spot during a break between the conclusion of one international summit in Lima, Peru, and the beginning of another in Rio de Janeiro.... He signed a U.S. proclamation designating Nov. 17 as International Conservation Day.” The AP's report is here.
Jonathan Swan, et al., of the New York Times: “Mr. Trump had been expected to pick [as Treasury Secretary] either Howard Lutnick, the chief executive of the Wall Street firm Cantor Fitzgerald, or Scott Bessent, the founder of the investment firm Key Square Capital Management and a former money manager for George Soros. And he had been seen as likely to make the selection late last week. But he has been having second thoughts about the top two candidates, and has slowed down his selection process. He is expected to invite the contenders to interview with him this week at Mar-a-Lago. Mr. Lutnick, who has been running Mr. Trump’s transition operation, has gotten on Mr. Trump’s nerves lately. Mr. Trump has privately expressed frustration that Mr. Lutnick has been hanging around him too much and that he has been manipulating the transition process for his own ends.... [So Mr. Trump is considering other candidates, including a former Fed governor, Kevin Warsh.] He has also remarked that Mr. Warsh is smart and handsome.” ~~~
~~~ Marie: I do not understand why Trump would want to hire men he thinks are "smart and handsome." Doesn't he know he's dumb and ugly, and that smart and handsome young men can only serve to emphasize his unfitness for office and his lumpy mess of a human-ish form? ~~~
~~~ Scott Lemieux in LG&$: “The scary thing is that this is what passes for the 'normal' candidate: [citing a WSJ article] '[Scott] Bessent has defended Trump’s agenda on television and in recent op-eds. After some of his critics argued to Trump’s advisers that Bessent hadn’t sufficiently signaled support for the president-elect’s pledge to impose a series of stiff tariffs, the longtime investor wrote an op-ed for Fox News praising them....' The 'mainstream' candidate for Treasury has to write op-eds lying about how tariffs won’t increase consumer prices, even though the whole point of protective tariffs is to raise consumer prices. The stock market is in retreat after an initial post-election boost, and I suspect one reason is that some investors are begging to figure out that Trump really means it when he says he wants a massively inflationary and disruptive across-the-board tariff policy. The thing about elections is that all sales are final.”
Cecilia Kang of the New York Times: “... Donald J. Trump on Sunday chose Brendan Carr to be chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, naming a veteran Republican regulator who has publicly agreed with the incoming administration’s promises to slash regulation, go after Big Tech and punish TV networks for political bias. Mr. Carr, who currently sits on the commission, is expected to shake up a quiet agency that licenses airwaves for radio and TV, regulates phone costs, and promotes the spread of home internet. Before the election, Mr. Trump indicated he wanted the agency to strip broadcasters like NBC and CBS of their licensing for unfair coverage. Mr. Carr, 45, was the author of a chapter on the F.C.C. in the conservative Project 2025 planning document, in which he argued that the agency should also regulate the largest tech companies, such as Apple, Meta, Google and Microsoft. 'The censorship cartel must be dismantled,' Mr. Carr said last week in a post on X. Mr. Carr could drastically reshape the independent agency, expanding its mandate and wielding it as a political weapon for the right, telecommunications attorneys and analysts said.” ~~~
~~~ Marie: So here we see Trump putting the government propaganda infrastucture in place. Carr, no doubt, will be just one of the ministers of that sprawling enterprise. And, of course, so much for Trump's denials of his knowledge of the odious Project 2025.
Aaron Davis, et al., of the Washington Post: In January 2021 after the insurrection, “Travis Akers, then a naval intelligence officer..., posted ... photos [of some of Pete Hegseth's tattoos] to ... Twitter, calling the tattoos 'white supremacist symbols' — an interpretation Hegseth has since forcefully denied. The tweet was forwarded to the D.C. National Guard’s head of physical security, Master Sgt. DeRicko Gaither, who soon warned commanding general William J. Walker that the Latin phrase suggested Hegseth could be an 'insider threat.' As he was about to be deployed [to duties surrounding Joe Biden's inauguration], Hegseth — now ... Donald Trump’s nominee to be defense secretary — received a call from his superior officer ordering him to stand down.... Hegseth’s removal from the mission became a seminal moment in his life.... [He] wrote in the opening lines of his most recent book ... that he left the military because of the episode. [He wrote, 'So, I resigned. On Jan. 20, 2021, I drafted the letter. F*** Biden anyway.'” (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Marie: Hegseth claims innocence, but here's what he once wrote about the tattoo in question, according to the Post: “... Hegseth ties his belief in an existential struggle over America’s 'native' and 'Judeo-Christian' culture to the Crusades, writing that Christians, along with their 'Jewish friends and freedom-loving people everywhere,' must fight back against secularism, leftism, globalism and Muslim immigration. 'See you on the battlefield,' he writes in closing out the book. 'Together, with God’s help, we will save America. Deus vult!'” ~~~
~~~ Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: “... Donald J. Trump has told advisers he is standing by his nominee for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, after the transition team was jolted by an allegation he had sexually assaulted a woman in an interaction he insists was consensual. Mr. Trump made his view plain to aides after a conversation with Mr. Hegseth days ago....” Haberman recounts the same she-said/he-said regarding the rape allegations that WashPo writers did the other day. ~~~
~~~ Alexandra Marquez of NBC News: “Former Fox News host Pete Hegseth’s attorney on Sunday confirmed to NBC News that Hegseth ... paid a woman an undisclosed amount after she accused him of sexual assault.... Timothy Parlatore, Hegseth’s attorney..., also denied that the encounter between Hegseth and an unnamed woman, which she alleges happened in 2017, was sexual assault.”
Annie Karni of the New York Times: “When Speaker Mike Johnson said last week that he would 'strongly request' that a damning congressional ethics report on the conduct of former Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida be kept under wraps, it was a full-circle moment for the man at the center of the controversy. After all, Mr. Gaetz was the one who orchestrated the coup against the last speaker, Kevin McCarthy, that made room for Mr. Johnson ... to ascend to the top job in the House. And Mr. McCarthy always claimed his nemesis moved against him because he refused to halt the very same House Ethics Committee investigation into sexual misconduct and illicit drug use allegations against Mr. Gaetz.... Now ... Mr. Johnson is doing what Mr. McCarthy never would — intervening to try to make sure the damaging material on Mr. Gaetz never sees the light of day. It is a fitting coda to two years of tumult in the Republican-led House, disorder that was exacerbated by bad blood among individual members.” Read on.
~~~ Marie: How is it that Bible Mike, who is so sex-obsessed that he and his son monitor each other's Internet porn viewing, is so enthusiastic about covering up allegations that Matt Gaetz sexually abused girls?
David Smith of the Guardian: “This week a flurry of controversial and extremist picks for [Trump's] cabinet and other high-ranking administration positions came at a hectic pace and with a level of provocation that made heads spin.... Tara Setmayer, a former Republican communications director on Capitol Hill, said: 'Their entire political brand is shock and awe. Prior to Trump’s re-election it was notional. Now they have the power to execute all of their depravity with the full backing of American government power virtually unchecked. I don’t think the people who voted for Donald Trump, allegedly because of economic angst, have a full appreciation for what that means.'... She added: 'The Trump administration is going to plunge America into a cross between The Hunger Games and The Celebrity Apprentice, unfortunately at great expense to the future of our democracy and the humanity of millions of Americans who will suffer at the hands of this gallery of degenerates. The American electorate fucked around and now they’re going to find out.'” ~~~
~~~ Marie: And my congratulations to the Guardian for acknowledging that "fucked" is not spelled "f---ed" or "f***ed."
Roxane Gay of the New York Times: “Mr. Trump’s election demonstrates how American tolerance for the unacceptable is nearly infinite.... Mr. Trump’s voters are granted a level of care and coddling that defies credulity and that is afforded to no other voting bloc.... We must refuse to participate in a mass delusion. We must refuse to accept that the ignorance on display is a congenital condition rather than a choice.... Clearly, Mr. Trump is successful because of his faults, not despite them, because we do not live in a just world.... But to suggest we should yield even a little to Mr. Trump’s odious politics ... is unacceptable.... We cannot abandon the most vulnerable communities to assuage the most powerful. Even if we did, it would never be enough. The goal posts would keep moving until progressive politics became indistinguishable from conservative politics. We’re halfway there already.... Absolutely anything is possible, and we must acknowledge this, not out of surrender, but as a means of readying ourselves for the impossible fights ahead.” ~~~
~~~ In contrast to Gay's dark, realistic depiction of what we face, conservative New York Times columnist David French takes the bright, sunny view that Donald Trump is already beginning to fail: “Donald Trump is planting the seeds of his own political demise. The corrupt, incompetent and extremist men and women he’s appointing to many of the most critical posts in his cabinet are direct threats to the well-being of the country, but they’re also political threats to Trump and to his populist allies.... If Trump’s cabinet picks help him usher in the chaos that is the water in which he swims, then the question won’t be whether voters rebuke MAGA again, but rather how much damage it does before it fails once more.” (Also linked yesterday.)
Reversal of Fortunes. Myah Ward & Megan Messerly of Politico: “The economy Donald Trump said was broken? All it took was him winning, and consumer sentiment among Republicans soared. Elections? Suddenly Republicans are on board with the reality that they’re secure. House Speaker Mike Johnson said he saw no evidence of fraud in the 2024 campaign. And the media landscape? Viewership of Fox News has surged since Trump’s win despite his harsh criticism of the network in the run up to Nov. 5. At the same time, Democrats’ sentiment of the economy — essentially how they view its overall health — dropped by 13 percent after Trump’s win. And viewership for liberal MSNBC has seen a downturn.”
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Sanewashing Crazy Bobby. Albert Burneko of the Defector cites the text of the subhead and lede of a New York Times report on the nomination of RFJ, Jr., to head HHS: "'Vaccine skeptic.' 'Vaccine skepticism.' What the fuck are we talking about here?... You don't often encounter a word being used to describe its exact opposite in the pages of one of the English language's most prominent publications.... In my lifetime as a word-nerd, I have known 'skepticism' to refer to a sort of stubborn insistence upon rigor and evidence in place of things like dogma and 'common sense.' A skeptic, by those terms, is someone who questions what they are told. Crucially, a skeptic actually questions, as in seeks answers. A person who merely refuses to learn what can be known is not a skeptic, but rather an ignoramus.... There is no such thing as an adult 'vaccine skeptic' in the year 2024.... Any reasonable questions that a skeptical, critical-minded person might have about how and whether vaccines work can be answered by more hard, clear evidence than a person could exhaust in a year of nonstop research.... How does a shit-for-brains like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. come to be described as a 'vaccine skeptic' in the New York Times, in 2024, when he absolutely is not one, and when there is also no such thing as one?... Surely the incurable politeness of America's boneless legacy press plays a role in this." During the course of his rant Burneko supplies the Times with an appropriate word to replace "skeptic": "denier." Thanks to RAS for the link. MB: Worth a read, if just for the fun of it. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Marie: In case you were wondering what the Defector is, as I was, here's its self-description: "... a new sports blog and media company. We made this place together, we own it together, we run it together. Without access, without favor, without discretion, and without interference."
Simon Levien of the New York Times: “J. Ann Selzer, the vaunted Iowa political pollster who released an eyebrow-raising poll just before Election Day, said on Sunday that she would end her election polling operation. Ms. Selzer, 68, has long been a trusted voice in the polling industry, predicting the state’s margins of past presidential elections with an accuracy few rivaled. So when her last poll before Election Day showed Vice President Kamala Harris leading ... Donald J. Trump in Iowa, it created a political shock wave. It was a surprising result, showing Ms. Harris leading by three percentage points. And observers noted it was an outlier. But many trusted Ms. Selzer’s expertise and her track record. Nearly every other poll in Iowa showed Mr. Trump leading the state by a healthy margin, and in 2020 Mr. Trump won the state by eight points. By the time ballots were counted early this month, Mr. Trump led Ms. Harris by more than 13 points en route to his overall victory. Ms. Selzer said in a column in The Des Moines Register that she decided over a year ago that this would be the last election she polled.” Politico's story is here. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Marie: I'm wondering why it is that when untalented men make mistakes, they soldier on, often not admitting to their errors or blaming others. When talented women make mistakes, they fall on their swords, they apologize and they quit. ~~~
~~~ UPDATE. David Gilmour of Mediaite: “... Donald Trump called for an investigation into retired Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer as he accused her of undermining trust in the 2024 election, despite his decisive win in Iowa...: '... Thank you to the GREAT PEOPLE OF IOWA for giving me such a record breaking vote, despite possible ELECTION FRAUD by Ann Selzer and the now discredited 'newspaper' for which she works. An investigation is fully called for!” Thanks to Akhilleus for the link. See his commentary at the top of today's thread.
Amanda Holpuch of the New York Times: “The Justice Department has opened an investigation into the fatal shooting by a sheriff’s deputy of Sonya Massey, a woman who had called the police because she thought a prowler was outside her home and was killed after an exchange with responding officers over a pot of hot water. In a letter to officials in Sangamon County, the Justice Department said that it had reviewed reports about the shooting of Ms. Massey, who was Black, and that they raised 'serious concerns' about the Sangamon County Sheriff’s Office’s interactions with Black people and people with behavioral health disabilities. The Justice Department is also investigating the county and its central emergency dispatch system for possible violations of federal nondiscrimination policies.... The deputy, Sean Grayson, who is white, shot Ms. Massey, 36, inside her home in Springfield, Ill., on July 6.” (Also linked yesterday.)
Pat Koch Thaler is dead. You will want to read her obituary. This is supposed to be a gift link for nonsubscribers to Thaler's New York Times' obituary, by Sam Roberts. If the link doesn't work properly, I apologize. And please let me know. (Also linked yesterday.)
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Ohio. Michael Corkery of the New York Times: “Officials in Columbus, Ohio, and across the state condemned a small group of people who marched through part of the city on Saturday carrying Nazi flags and shouting racial slurs and expressions of white power. The marchers appeared to number only about a dozen people, but the invectives they shouted through a bullhorn at anyone they passed and the large swastika symbols they bore seemed to achieve their goal of rattling not just Columbus but a wider audience online.... The Anti-Defamation League said that the Columbus event fit a recent pattern of white supremacist incidents, hundreds of which have taken place across the country over the past 18 months. The marches tend to be small, unannounced to avoid counterprotesters and tailor-made for social media, said Oren Segal ... of the Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism.... Shannon Hardin, president of the Columbus City Council..., tied the incident to Donald J. Trump’s election. 'I am sorry that the president-elect has emboldened these creeps,' Mr. Hardin, a Democrat, said in a post [on X].”
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Israel/Palestine, et al. Anthony Faiola & Niha Masih of the Washington Post: “Pope Francis has said that Israel’s attacks in Gaza should be investigated to determine if they meet the legal definition of genocide, according to excerpts from a forthcoming book based on interviews with the pontiff. Francis has privately used the word 'genocide' to describe Israel’s actions, according to people who have interacted with him, The Washington Post has reported. But his comments to the journalist Hernán Reyes Alcaide, excerpted Sunday in the Italian newspaper La Stampa, are the first time he has publicly called for an investigation.”
Ukraine, et al.
Adam Entous, et al., of the New York Times: “President Biden has authorized the first use of U.S.-supplied long-range missiles by Ukraine for strikes inside Russia, U.S. officials said. The weapons are likely to be initially employed against Russian and North Korean troops in defense of Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region of western Russia, the officials said. Mr. Biden’s decision is a major change in U.S. policy. The choice has divided his advisers, and his shift comes two months before ... Donald J. Trump takes office, having vowed to limit further support for Ukraine. Allowing the Ukrainians to use the long-range missiles, known as the Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS, came in response to Russia’s surprise decision to bring North Korean troops into the fight, officials said.” The AP's report is here. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Marc Santora of the New York Times: “Russia renewed its campaign to destroy Ukraine’s battered power grid on Sunday, targeting facilities across the country with missiles and long-range drones in one of the largest and most complex bombardments of the war, Ukrainian officials said. The attack lasted several hours and featured around 120 missiles and 90 drones, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a statement. Air-defense teams destroyed 144 targets, but at least nine civilians were killed, officials said. Mr. Zelensky said F-16 pilots had shot down 10 targets. 'The enemy’s target was our energy infrastructure throughout Ukraine,' Mr. Zelensky said. 'Unfortunately, there is damage to objects from hits and falling debris.' Interceptor missiles could be seen streaking across blue skies over the capital, before exploding in thunderous claps. Similar scenes played out across Ukraine, Ukrainian officials said.” (Also linked yesterday.)
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Reader Comments (6)
Projection and promised harassment
J. Ann Selzer, whose Iowa poll gave a slight tip to Harris in that state has given up polling. But that’s not enough for the Orange Monster. He wants her investigated for—get this—undermining faith in the election. This from a lying fat fascist fuck who had “FRAUD! UNFAIR!” tattooed under the tangerine pancake makeup on his forehead for the last nine years.
The feeling of unfettered, complete power is going to trigger an explosion of kangaroo court trials overseen by his lickspittle lackies in Congress.
Darkness is falling in America. We have a sex trafficker as AG, a sexual predator in the White House, two on the Supreme Court, another running the Pentagon, unqualified cronies staffing hundreds of government offices, likely a purge of civil servants and military high command across all the armed forces, a worm eaten brain damaged huckster in charge of Americans’ health, concentration and deportation camps about to open, the richest man in the world about to make himself richer by kneecapping rivals, and profiles in cowardice on the right that will provide future historians with jaw dropping accounts of craven spinelessness in the face of a kind of evil and narcissistic fascist vengefulness never before seen in this country.
Shame on the voters who opted for this. Shame on the politicians who know better but are looking the other way to save their petty positions of Potemkin power.
Shame.
I read that Volodymyr Zelensky has been saying that Trump will be good for Ukraine in efforts to end the Russian invasion.
Good for him. He’s smarter than that fat shithead. He knows that buttering him up as a great mover and shaker is not a bad idea. It doesn’t mean, of course, that Fatty will help him, but being truthful about what a dumbass he is won’t do anything for Ukraine.
Here again, we have real world evidence of what a complete fraud is returning to the White House. A collicky child who can be manipulated by a promise of candy and pats on the head.
@Akhilleus wrote, "Shame on the politicians who know better but are looking the other way to save their petty positions of Potemkin power."
He makes an important point here that I think has been largely overlooked. When a Democratic senator compromises to go along with some policy that satisfies a Democratic president, she isn't necessarily giving up power. Indeed, she may be enhancing her chances of getting her way on some other matter, because Democrats operate in an environment of give-and-take.
This isn't so for today's Trump-tied toadies. Akhilleus is quite right to smirk at their "Potemkin power." These senators have very little power. They have to go along with whatever it is Trump tells them to do.
Sure, they keep their paying jobs, but the right-wing system being what it is, they could make more money if they quit. Sure, they still have staffs at home and in Washington to lord it over, so if that's their thing, well, okay. Sure, lobbyists still may wine & dine them in a pro forma manner (because most lobbyists know that courting toadies isn't particularly productive). And sure, people still address them as "Senator" or whatever, but people normally address "formers" by their highest honorific title anyway. In short, elected Republicans have very little power today.
So it's hard to know why any of these elected Republicans want to keep their day jobs. We used to assume it was because they enjoyed the power, because we knew "public service" wasn't high on their to-do lists. But now that they have almost no power, what's the point?
Pete Hegseth, modern crusader against the “evil Saracens” proclaims his primary allegiance with a “Deus vult” tattoo. Deus vult, “God wills it”, was, during the Crusades, the battle cry of Europeans whipped into a frenzy by Pope Urban II, crying “Holy Land! Muslims! Blah, blah, blah, kill ‘em all!” (Pretty much what is still being said today, a thousand years later, by crazies on both sides.)
As a personal note, I’ve been trying to make my way through “Deus Io Volt”, a kind of history, novel sort of thing by Evan S. Connell. “Deus io volt” is another version of what Hegseth has plastered on himself. Latin, like a lot of other things, underwent a lot of changes during the Middle Ages, but that notwithstanding, what I’ve been reading is a dense compendium of eye popping accounts of religious fanaticism, superstition, whacky traditions, fierce hatreds, and oceans of blood.
Was/is this really what god wills? Funny kind of a god. But religious fanaticism, hatred, violence, and bigotry in the name of god is alive and well today, and pretty soon this modern crusader will be in charge of the American military complex.
And here’s the thing…lots of men and women, active or retired service members, have tattoos, usually some kind of patriotic symbolism, the flag or some representative imagery or motto of their particular service, Semper Fi, for instance. This shows their loyalty to their service, their oaths, their country.
Hegseth’s loyalty, according to the symbolism he has carved into himself is to his god. And not just any god. A god of vengeance. A god of “kill ‘em all”.
Running our armed forces. Just let that sink in.
Guys like this, like Bible Mike, their allegiance is first and foremost to their religious ideology. Not the United States of America. I guess this is maybe why Bible Mike is cool with protecting a sex trafficker. Power matters more than country.
God wills it. Right?
Question:
How does the Right's war against DEI support and reflect the ideals of democracy?
In today's Bulwark, William Kristol recommends The UnPopulist The Trump Administration Will Be the Government’s Evil Twin by Robert Tracinski writing on t****'s picks:
"The common theme is that he is constructing a kind of anti-government—not in the sense of being for smaller government, but in the sense of being government’s evil twin. Every appointee is selected as a deliberate negation, even a mockery, of the function of government he or she will be in charge of.
...
There is an old Roman legend that the decadent Emperor Caligula expressed his contempt for the Roman system by appointing his favorite horse to the Senate. This is a similar assertion of power, and the point is to make everyone in the system do something ridiculous, just to show that he can make them do it.
That is the point of Trump’s anti-government: to provide more scope for the exercise of arbitrary and capricious power."