;)
The Conversation -- October 27, 2024
Yay! Top-Secret Docs for One & All! No Vetting Required! Shady Characters Welcome! Maggie Haberman, et al., of the New York Times: “A memo circulating among at least half a dozen advisers to former President Donald J. Trump recommends that if he is elected, he bypass traditional background checks by law enforcement officials and immediately grant security clearances to a large number of his appointees after being sworn in.... The proposal is being promoted by a small group including Boris Epshteyn, a top legal adviser to Mr. Trump who was influential in its development.... It is not clear whether Mr. Trump has seen the proposal or whether he is inclined to adopt it if he takes office. But it would allow him to quickly install loyalists in major positions without subjecting them to the risk of long-running and intrusive F.B.I. background checks, potentially increasing the risks of people with problematic histories or ties to other nations being given influential White House roles. Such checks hung up clearances for a number of aides during Mr. Trump’s presidency, including Mr. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and Mr. Epshteyn himself.”
Marie: Have you noticed that when billionaires & other super-rich people donate to Democrats, it's because they "support candidates who demonstrate a clear commitment to improving healthcare, reducing poverty and fighting climate change" or something like that? And when billionaires contribute to Republicans it's often because they want government contracts or other favors to enrich themselves (though, in fairness, some are ideologues)?
Peter Baker of the New York Times: “... in the nine years that he has been running for or serving as president, Mr. Trump has regularly evoked the language, history and motifs of fascism without hesitation or evident concern about how it would make him look.... No American commander in chief over the past couple of centuries has so aggressively sought to discredit the institutions of democracy at home while so openly embracing and envying dictators abroad.... He goes out of his way to portray himself as an American strongman, vowing if re-elected to use the military to crack down on dissent, to use the Justice Department to prosecute and imprison his foes, to shut down news media outlets that displease him, to claim authority that his predecessors did not have and to round up millions of people living in the country illegally and put them in camps or deport them en masse. He has already sought to overturn a free and fair election..., something no other sitting president ever tried to do. When that did not work, he spread demonstrable lies about the 2020 vote so pervasively that he convinced most of his supporters that Mr. Biden’s victory was illegitimate..., eroding faith in the democratic system.... He then called for the 'termination' of the Constitution so that President Biden could be instantly removed from power and himself reinstalled without a new election.” ~~~
~~~ The online New York Times is rerunning its anti-Trump “Believe Him” editorial.
The New York Times' live updates of developments Sunday in Israel's wars are here: “Iran’s leaders stressed on Sunday that they had a right to respond to Israel’s attack but appeared to take a measured tone, which could help ease concerns that the region’s two largest militaries were gearing up for all-out war. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said that the retaliatory attack on Iran had achieved all of its objectives, as analysts questioned how his government might leverage its recent military gains on the diplomatic front. On Sunday, U.S. and Israeli officials were scheduled to travel to Qatar for meetings aimed at reviving negotiations for a cease-fire in Gaza and the release of hostages held there.”
~~~~~~~~~~
Presidential Race
Michelle Obama Campaigns in “Kamalazoo.” Rebecca O'Brien & Nicholas Nehamas of the New York Times: “Michelle Obama issued an impassioned plea to American voters on Saturday — and, in particular, American men — anchored in a searing and intimate depiction of women’s bodies and reproductive health, and what she described as the life-or-death stakes of returning ... Donald J. Trump to power. In her first appearance on the campaign trail during this election, Mrs. Obama, long reluctant to engage in the political arena, described the far-reaching consequences of the 2022 Supreme Court decision overturning the constitutional right to abortion, in the concrete terms of personal tragedy.... She discussed menstrual cramps and hot flashes, describing the shame and uncertainty girls and women feel about their bodies. She told women they should demand to be treated as more than 'baby-making vessels.' And she castigated the media and many voters for holding [Vice President] Harris to a higher standard than her opponent, for 'choosing to ignore Donald Trump’s gross incompetence, while asking Kamala to dazzle us at every turn.'” ~~~
~~~ The AP's report is here. You can watch Obama's full speech here. Here's a clip: ~~~
Robert Draper of the New York Times profiles Kamala Harris.
Alexandra Petri of the Washington Post Goes There: “The Washington Post is not bothering to endorse a candidate in the 2024 presidential election. (Jeff Bezos, the founder of Blue Origin and the founder and executive chairman of Amazon and Amazon Web Services, also owns The Post.) We as a newspaper suddenly remembered, less than two weeks before the election, that we had a robust tradition 50 years ago of not telling anyone what to do with their vote for president. It is time we got back to those 'roots,' I’m told! Roots are important, of course. As recently as the 1970s, The Post did not endorse a candidate for president. As recently as centuries ago, there was no Post and the country had a king!... But if I were the paper, I would be a little embarrassed that it has fallen to me, the humor columnist, to make our presidential endorsement. I will spare you the suspense: I am endorsing Kamala Harris for president, because I like elections and want to keep having them.” ~~~
~~~ Anna Young of the New York Post, republished by AOL: “A high ranking former editor at the Washington Post is claiming that the paper’s billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, entered into a quid-pro-quo agreement with ... Donald Trump to kill the newspaper’s planned endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris. Longtime Post editor-at-large Robert Kagan, who quit after the non-endorsement on Friday, told The Daily Beast that Trump met with executives at Blue Origin – the space company owned and operated by Bezos – after the Post’s announcement, suggesting Bezos entered a deal with the possible next president. '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 reportedly said. '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.'” ~~~
~~~ Benjamin Mullin & Katie Robertson of the New York Times: “The decision by Mr. Bezos had been in the making for weeks. It is not clear what motivated his final determination or its timing.... The businesses Mr. Bezos founded, including Amazon and Blue Origin, his aerospace company, still compete regularly for lucrative government contracts. Blue Origin executives met with Mr. Trump on Friday, and the company has a $3.4 billion contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to build a lunar lander.” ~~~
~~~ The Word from Woodstein: ~~~
Statement on Washington Post’s refusal to endorse presidential candidate. pic.twitter.com/r8jrMPW5GR
— Carl Bernstein (@carlbernstein) October 26, 2024
Michael Gold of the New York Times: “When he ran for president eight years ago, Donald J. Trump floated the idea of creating a national registry of Muslims and proposed banning immigration from Muslim countries. So it was striking to see him on Saturday at a rally in suburban Detroit celebrating endorsements from a handful of Muslim and Arab American leaders. It was a political turnaround that would have seemed unthinkable during Mr. Trump’s first campaign, when he frequently spouted anti-Muslim rhetoric. As president, Mr. Trump blocked travel from several predominantly Muslim countries, creating travel chaos. And at moments during this campaign, he has drawn on the anti-Muslim sentiments from earlier in his political career. But in a tight election, Mr. Trump and his campaign have been trying to win the support of Arab American and Muslim voters who may be disaffected with Democrats over President Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza and the party’s positions on social issues. Their support is seen as especially important in Michigan, a key battleground state with many Arab American and Muslim voters. At Saturday’s rally in Novi, Mich., a suburb of Detroit, Mr. Trump invited a group of people that his campaign said included a number of Muslim and Arab American leaders to the stage, where they endorsed him. (Mr. Trump claimed they were 'highly respected leaders,' but his campaign has not provided any details about who most of them were, making it difficult to assess their prominence.)” ~~~
~~~ Marie: Gold does not seem to realize that what Trump almost always means when he describes a person as “highly respected” is “someone who supports me.”
Fuad Shalhout of Michigan Live: Donald "Trump spoke for an hour and a half [Saturday at a rally in Novi, Michigan,] and spent a portion of his time saying that Arab and Muslim voters have his support.... At the Suburban Collection Showplace ... [in Novi, Michigan,] a group of Muslim imams from the Michigan Chapter of the Arab American Bar Association took the stage to endorse Trump, expressing their support for his stance on ending the wars in the Middle East.... Joining them was the mayor of Dearborn Heights, Bill Bazzi, who also took the stage to endorse Trump." Thanks to Akhilleus for the link. ~~~
~~~ Marie: At the end of yesterday's thread, Akhilleus marveled that Muslims would support "the guy who wanted to ban all Muslims, called them all terrorist scum, and will happily do it again after he steals the election." As for me, I would speculate their support has little to do with world peace (as they claimed) and a lot to do with misogyny. In my experience, there are some Muslim men who take it as an article of faith -- literally -- that women must wholly submit to men, and that of course precludes their holding any positions of power. ~~~
~~~ Meryl Kornfield, et al., of the Washington Post: Donald “Trump slams early voting at [a] Michigan rally marking [the] start of early voting.... Trump went on to disparage Michigan’s procedures and restate his position that all voting should occur on Election Day with paper ballots. Most states allow early and absentee voting.” ~~~
~~~ Marie: Sorry, sometimes I am going to have to link stories in the Bezos Gazette -- like this time, when I couldn't find another story that emphasized (or maybe way down the page somewhere mentioned) Trump's continued antipathy to early voting, which he emphasized in a speech that should have centered on GOTV & encouraged early voting.
Lisa Lerer & Jess Bidgood of the New York Times: “A campaign marked by Donald J. Trump’s apocalyptic extremes has turned even darker in its final days.... The former president on Friday escalated his threats to prosecute and imprison a wide range of people involved in elections and politics. Hours later, on the hugely popular 'The Joe Rogan Experience' podcast, he said that the 'enemy within,' a phrase he has used to describe political opponents, poses a bigger threat to the nation than North Korea.... In a post on his social media site on Friday, Mr. Trump wrote that those who 'cheated' in the election would face 'long-term prison sentences' and would 'be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.'... During his presidency, he called for investigations of his perceived foes, and he frequently got them....
“He often singles people out by name on social media and at his rallies.... In Austin, Texas, on Friday, Mr. Trump slammed The Atlantic, which first reported the claim about his desire for generals like Hitler had, and went out of his way to note that the magazine was 'run by a guy named Goldberg' — a direct attack on the magazine’s editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, that appeared to be an antisemitic dog whistle. 'These are evil people, they’re a threat to democracy,' he said later, after referring again to Mr. Goldberg. There are signs that Mr. Trump’s statements may be having a chilling effect beyond the campaign trail on business leaders and media outlets owned by them. Both The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times announced they would not make an endorsement in the presidential contest, breaking with years of practice.”
Sebastian Murdock of the Huffington Post: “... Donald Trump heaped praise on authoritarian Chinese President Xi Jinping during a lengthy interview Friday with the podcaster Joe Rogan. 'We’re dealing with the smartest people,' Trump said, referring to the leaders of U.S. adversaries, about an hour and a half into their conversation. 'They hate when I say, you know, when the press — when I called President Xi, [the press] said, “Well, he called President Xi brilliant.” Well, he’s a brilliant guy. He controls 1.4 billion people with an iron fist. I mean, he’s a brilliant guy, whether you like it or not. And they go crazy.' 'Right, it doesn’t mean he’s not evil, or it doesn’t mean he’s not dangerous,' Rogan responded.... 'Yeah, of course not,' Trump said. 'But, actually, we have evil people in our country.'”
Sure, Trump Cares About You. Jill Colvin, et al., of the AP: “Many of Donald Trump’s supporters left a Michigan rally before he arrived after the former president kept them waiting for three hours to tape a popular podcast interview. Those who remained at the outdoor rally on an airport tarmac huddled in the cold Friday night as they waited for the former president to touch down in the battleground state. Trump apologized to the crowd for the delay, which he blamed on an interview with Joe Rogan, the nation’s most listened-to podcaster and an influential voice with younger male voters Trump is aggressively courting.... [Even when his plane was more than two hours away,] Trump recorded a video from his plane urging his supporters to stay, noting it was Friday night and promising, 'We’re going to have a good time tonight.'” (Also linked yesterday.)
Maureen Dowd of the New York Times: “Other countries overcame this stereotypical thinking about women leaders, but there is still a thick strain of it in America.... Trump is running a hypermasculine campaign — with Chief Bro Elon Musk bizarrely bouncing up and down — that is breathtakingly offensive to women. Trump is exploiting the crisis among Gen Z men, a crisis driven by loneliness, Covid isolation, economic insecurity, a lack of purpose and a feeling that the modern world seems more accommodating to young women.... At a Trump rally in Georgia on Wednesday, Tucker Carlson gave a rant that became an instant classic of perversion.... Somehow, Carlson was even more creepy and retrogressive than JD Vance, with his denunciations of 'childless cat ladies' and his dissing of postmenopausal women. Trump is phallocentric — always a sign of insecurity. At a rally in Latrobe, Pa., he rhapsodized about Arnold Palmer’s anatomy.” (Also linked yesterday.)
Eva Dou of the Washington Post: “Elon Musk’s fast-growing satellite business Starlink could be poised to gain billions of dollars more in federal contracts and subsidies under a Donald Trump presidency, industry experts say, in a reflection of the world’s richest individual’s deepening financial stake in Washington politics.... Musk has struggled to reassure parts of the defense community that he is a trustworthy partner, even as industry experts say Starlink is rapidly building out an advanced satellite surveillance system on track to be the most powerful one in history.... Musk’s shift to supporting Trump appears to be driven largely by conviction on social issues.... But the tech executive’s business empire also stands to benefit if Trump wins the election — potentially by a far larger amount than the billionaire has splashed out to support Trump’s campaign.” About those social issues: ~~~
~~~ Elon Musk, Illegal Immigrant. Edward Helmore of the Guardian: “Elon Musk briefly worked illegally in the US after abandoning a graduate studies program in California, according to a Washington Post report that contrasted the episode with the South African multibillionaire’s anti-immigration views.... [Musk] has previously maintained that his transition from student to entrepreneur was a 'legal grey area'. But the Washington Post reported Saturday that the world’s wealthiest individual was almost certainly working in the US without correct authorization for a period in 1995 after he dropped out of Stanford University to work on his debut company, Zip2, which sold for about $300m four years later. Legal experts said foreign students cannot drop out of school to build a company even if they are not getting paid. The Post also noted that – prior to the September 11 terrorist attacks agains the US in 2001 – regulation for student visas was more lax. 'If you do anything that helps to facilitate revenue creation, such as design code or try to make sales in furtherance of revenue creation, then you’re in trouble,' Leon Fresco, a former US justice department immigration litigator, told the outlet.” (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Marie: Reading the WashPo story, it appears Elon worked in the U.S. illegally at least into 1997. He seems to have broken the law in other ways, too, by lying to authorities about his immigration status a few times & by persuading his brother Kimbal -- who also was an undocumented immigrant -- to run his company. BTW, according to the WashPo story, Elon never was a student here; he was accepted into a grad program at Stanford but never enrolled in classes. Frankly, I'm not a bit troubled by workers who don't have legal status, but I am offended by hypocrites who got here as undocumented workers, yet now campaign against and even vilify today's undocumented workers. ~~~
~~~ Lora Kolodny of CNBC: “President Joe Biden called out Elon Musk ... for hypocrisy on immigration on Saturday, saying Musk launched his long career in the U.S. as an 'illegal worker' before becoming the world’s wealthiest man. The president made these remarks at a campaign event to support Democrats that took place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on Saturday.... 'He was supposed to be in school when he came on a student visa. He wasn’t in school. He was violating the law. He’s talking about all these “illegals” coming our way,” Biden [said]. He then criticized Trump and Republicans for failing to sign legislation that would fix the problem with the border.”' He added, 'We have fewer people crossing the border illegally now — or crossing the border period — than at any time since his third year as President of the United States.'”
Glenn Thrush, et al., of the New York Times: “... law enforcement officials are confronting a rising wave of threats to election workers and political activists.... On Monday, the Justice Department unsealed a complaint against a man in Philadelphia who had vowed to skin alive and kill a party official recruiting volunteer poll watchers. On Tuesday, the police in Tempe, Ariz., arrested a man in connection with shootings at a Democratic campaign office, which resulted in no injuries, and other acts of political vandalism. On Wednesday, prosecutors charged a 61-year-old man from Tampa, Fla., with threatening an election official — on top of pending charges over menacing messages sent in the past five years. And on Thursday, police officers in Phoenix arrested a person in connection with a mailbox fire, damaging some 20 ballots in a Democratic stronghold.... [A Brennan Center survey of election workers] found that almost 40 percent had been the target of threats or harassment.” (Also linked yesterday.)
~~~~~~~~~~
israel/Palestine, et al., Amy Bentov, et al., of the AP: “Israeli strikes on northern Gaza have killed at least 22 people, mostly women and children, Palestinian officials said Sunday, as the Israeli offensive in the hard-hit and isolated north entered a third week and aid groups described a humanitarian catastrophe. Israel said it targeted militants. In a separate development, a truck rammed into a bus stop near the Israeli city of Tel Aviv, wounding 35 people, according to Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue service. The circumstances were not immediately clear, but Palestinians have carried out dozens of vehicle-ramming attacks over the years. The attack occurred near the headquarters of Israel’s Mossad spy agency.”
8 Comments
Reader Comments (8)
Ha! I see that a frequent mispronunciation of my home town was not disrespect, it was foreshadowing! :^)
Today's print version of Das Bezos-Tagesblatt has an editorial page full of on-staff journos pushing back on the lack of endorsement. For those who read the Blatter, they make clear that this is a Bezos (i.e., not editorial) non-endorsement, and a misstep for a journalistic enterprise.
However, Jeff is not a journalist but an owner of stuff, and the net take away from Friday's announcement of "roots principles" is that he personally is totally susceptible to threats. He is clearly a smart guy (or, was) but doesn't seem to know that oligarchs cannot protect themselves from tyrants, and no one can make deals with psychos. Their only chance of maximizing the probability of keeping their pile is to prevent tyrants from getting the reins. Once they're enabled (look it up, Hitler fans) you are a disposable pawn.
The good news is that I'll bet that this chickenshit move has motivated a few more people, nett, to stand in line to vote against Herr Tr*mp.
The bad news is that the NYT will be totally self-righteously insufferable for years.
Michelle Obama on abortion issues
@Patrick: I read that Jeff Bezos is relocating to Miami & building a new Amazon HQ there. I'd suggest one-storey buildings. When I typed "Russian oligarch" into the Google search box, it automatically added, "falls out of window." Looks like there were a number of stories along those lines about a number of oligarchs with no suggestion that any of them survived defenestration.
As for the Times, I guess I can live with "totally self-righteously insufferable" as long as they keep pumping out those anti-Trump stories & editorials for the next week-plus. I wonder if somebody locked A.G. in his fancy washroom.
The report from Robert Kagan, who resigned from the Post in the wake of the Bezos bumfuck, makes clear the quid pro quo deal that was arranged with King Trump. Trump waited until Bezos came through for him with yet another big break for Fat Hitler before meeting with Bezos’ proxy supplicants. Now Bezos has to trust that Fat Hitler will hold up his end of this slimy deal.
Good luck with that. Trump bilked his old man when he was dying. You think he won’t screw Bezos? Would you trust a rabid rat not to bite if you stuck your hand in his rat hole?
Trump is less trustworthy than a jonesing drug addict who promises to return the wallet that he pulled out of your back pocket.
Maybe Jeffy forgets that the number one most important thing to Trump is revenge. He won’t give a watery crap that Bezos has helped him out now. He’ll remember every uncomplimentary sentence the Post has ever published. He’ll remember the Post endorsing Hillary and Biden. It’s like that old joke about Irish Alzheimer’s: they forget everything but the grudges.
But to hell with journalistic integrity, ethics, democracy, the United States. He’s gotta get in good with the dictator.
Trump v America
And here’s another thing. If Fat Hitler has been busy working out back room deals with the owner of the Post, what other slimy quid pro quo deals and arm twisting have been going on behind the scenes?
Trump has cowed the media, he owns large swaths of the judiciary, including the Supreme Court, he’s a private citizen who controls the US House of Representatives, he has a huge media empire working feverishly to shove his bullshit down our throats, he’s got Russian ratfuckers spreading disinformation on his behalf, the owners of the two largest social media companies are working for him, one, Xitter, explicitly, the other, Meta, by making sure overt political comments that try to get the vote out, are deep sixed (Zuckerberg sez he’s “done with politics”, which is his choice, but he’s forcing users into that mode as well, which means he allows Trump’s lies to go unanswered by millions), he’s got the idiot undecideds, he has scores of local election officials chomping at the bit to deny a Harris win, he has red states passing laws that make voting for Democrats something akin to finding the Northwest Passage.
What do we have?
Our votes.
It comes down to American citizens who choose not to live under a vicious, ignorant dictator, his kleptocratic family, and his MAGA thugs
I hope that’s enough.
Jake Tapper having "trouble" with his control room finding the correct fascist clip
“On Sunday, U.S. and Israeli officials were scheduled to travel to Qatar for meetings aimed at reviving negotiations for a cease-fire in Gaza and the release of hostages held there.”
From a report, linked above.
Right. More smelly effluence from the Bibi Gaslighting Company.
No way Bibi wants a cease-fire, but he had to sorta, kinda, pretend (more gaslighting) until he can hook up once again with “Kill ‘em All” Fatty, who’ll let him firebomb orphanages, old age homes, and elementary schools. A cessation of hostilities means Bibi gets the “C’mon-a my house”from the courts, where his war criminal, bribery-grifting ass will be plated and served up to some Israeli prison.
If you check “gaslighting” on Wikipedia, you’ll get a “not to be confused with fart lighting” notice.
Yeah. Bibi and Trump: notorious fart lighters. Both full of shit.