;)
April 18, 2022
Afternoon Update:
Alan Rappeport of the New York Times: "As millions of Americans race to finish filing their tax returns on Monday, the Biden administration made another plea for Congress to give the Internal Revenue Service more money. The call for funding to modernize the agency and beef up its enforcement staff comes as I.R.S. and Treasury Department officials have complained that they are facing an extraordinarily challenging tax season because of staff shortages and the complexity associated with distributing pandemic relief money. The Biden administration's proposals to provide the I.R.S. with $80 billion over a decade have thus far fallen flat in Congress.... It was not clear if that proposal would make it into any legislation that Democrats could pass. Republicans have staunchly opposed providing the I.R.S. with more funding." MB: Because Republicans don't want their big tax cheats friends to get caught.
Richard Cowan of Reuters: "... Donald Trump attempted a coup on Jan. 6, 2021, and that will be a centerpiece of committee hearings in Congress next month, said Democrat Jamie Raskin, a committee member who led the prosecution of Trump's second impeachment.... Raskin said the hearings will lay out for the public the steps the former president and his associates took to try to stay in power despite a clear-cut defeat. Had the rioters succeeded in preventing the certification, Raskin said, Trump 'was prepared to seize the presidency' and likely declare martial law." ~~~
~~~ Ankita Rao from the same interview: Jamie Raskin, a “progressive congressman from Maryland believes that no other crisis, even the existential threat of the changing climate, can be solved without first protecting the fabric of American democracy[.]... He said America can't fix the planet without fixing its government.... 'We've got to save the democracy in order to save the climate and save our species,' he said in an interview with the Guardian in collaboration with Reuters and Climate One public radio, as part of the Covering Climate Now media collaboration. Later Raskin added: 'We’re never going to be able to successfully deal with climate change if we're spending all our time fighting the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers and Ku Klux Klan, and the Aryan nations and all of Steve Bannon's alt-right nonsense.'"
Kathryn Joyce of Salon: Republicans are trying "to normalize the [January 6, 2021,] riot at the Capitol, and to cast its perpetrators as overwhelmingly 'ordinary people' who got caught up in the momentum of something beyond their control. But last week came decisive evidence that this simply isn't true: At least a third of those arrested in conjunction with Jan. 6 belong to a far-right network that is not just deeply interconnected but resilient and adaptable. Last Thursday, Michael Jensen, a senior researcher at the University of Maryland's National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START center), released preliminary findings on the ideological motivations and connections of about 30 percent of all Jan. 6 defendants. While his research is ongoing, Jensen has already found that at least 244 of the 816 people arrested to date were either members of 'extremist' organizations or self-identified with them."
The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race. -- Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, 2007 ~~~
~~~ Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "The Supreme Court on Monday turned away an appeal from a death row inmate in Texas who said his jury had been tainted by racial bias. The inmate, Kristopher Love, a Black man, had objected to the seating of a juror who had said he believed 'nonwhite races' to be the 'more violent races.' The court's three liberal members dissented, saying the Supreme Court should have instructed the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state's highest court for criminal matters, to reconsider Mr. Love's challenge."
Sarah Rumpf of Mediaite writes a post titled, "We Regret to Inform You That Tucker Carlson’s New Special Does In Fact Promote "Testicle Tanning'". MB: I leave it to you to decide whether or not to read on. It does occur to me, however, that every story about something TuKKKer said or did should begin, "We regret to inform you that ..."
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Marie: Late finish today. I posted links up till 9:20 am ET.
Putin's War Crimes, Ctd.
The New York Times' live updates of developments Monday in Russia's war on Ukraine are here. ~~~
~~~ The Washington Post's live updates for Monday are here. ~~~
~~~ The Guardian's live updates for Monday are here: "Unconfirmed reports are filtering in that five missiles struck Lviv early this morning. Lviv mayor, Andriy Sadovy, said in an update over his official Telegram account this morning.... Ukraine has vowed that its forces will 'fight to the end' in the besieged port city of Mariupol, after a Russian ultimatum for the remaining Ukrainian troops there to surrender expired. Russian troops said they will close the city for entry and exit on Monday and issue 'movement passes' to those who remain, according to an adviser to the mayor. Residents of the Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine have been urged to evacuate immediately.... Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has called for more weapons, describing 'every delay' as 'permission for Russia to take the lives of Ukrainians'.... Zelenskiy also claimed in the address that the regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in Ukraine's south were being transferred to 'the ruble zone' and subordinated to Russian administration.... The United Nations refugee agency said 4,869,019 Ukrainians had left the country since Russia invaded in February...." Emphasis removed. ~~~
~~~ Marie: BTW, I have found the Guardian's updates to be more up-to-the-minute than either the New York Times' or the Washington Post's.
Anton Troianovski of the New York Times: "The brutality of Moscow's war on Ukraine takes two distinct forms, familiar to those who have seen Russia's military in action elsewhere. There is the programmatic violence meted out by Russian bombs and missiles against civilians as well as military targets, meant to demoralize as much as defeat. These attacks recall the aerial destruction in 1999 and 2000 of the Chechen capital of Grozny and, in 2016, of the Syrian rebel stronghold of Aleppo. And then there is the cruelty of individual soldiers and units, the horrors of Bucha appearing to have descended directly from the slaughter a generation ago in [the Ukraine] village [of] Novye Aldi.... In Russia..., such acts are rarely investigated or even acknowledged, let alone punished. That leaves it unclear how much the low-level brutality stems from the intent of those in charge or whether commanders failed to control their troops. Combined with the apparent strategy of bombing civilian targets, many observers conclude that the Russian government -- and, perhaps, a part of Russian society -- in reality condones violence against civilians."
Neil MacFarquhar of the New York Times: "A video released by Russia's Ministry of Defense purporting to show dozens of uniformed crew members from the missile cruiser Moskva standing in formation, apparently days after the ship sank, did not answer lingering questions about the fate of the vessel and its more than 500 personnel. The questions reached the point Saturday where even Vladimir Solovyev, a popular prime-time talk-show host whose pronouncements often reflect the Kremlin line, began asking what went wrong.... The segment was unusual not least because Mr. Solovyev broached the idea that Ukraine had managed to sink the Moskva, one of the biggest naval losses anywhere in the world since World War II.... Other television talking heads in Russia have started referring to the fighting in Ukraine as a 'war' -- although they have tended to use the term when suggesting that the whole of NATO, including the United States, is ganging up on Russia.Some analysts think all the talk of NATO attacking Russia is meant to lay the groundwork for a possible general mobilization of the male population -- martial law is a necessary prior step, and a declaration of martial law requires going to war or being under threat."
Josh Halliday of the Guardian: "A second British soldier fighting with the Ukrainian army has been paraded on Russian television after being captured in the besieged city of Mariupol. Shaun Pinner said he had been fighting alongside Ukrainian marines when Vladimir Putin's forces invaded nearly eight weeks ago. The 48-year-old former British soldier appeared tired and bruised in a short propaganda video aired by Russian media on Saturday night.... He was fighting alongside his friend Aiden Aslin, 28, from Nottinghamshire, who is thought to have surrendered to the Russian military last week after his battalion ran out of ammunition."
Odd News. Alex Horton of the Washington Post: Russians fired tiny lethal darts -- called fléchettes -- into Bucha neighborhoods. They are seldom used in modern warfare. "Some human rights groups have decried the use of fléchettes because they are indiscriminate weapons that can strike civilians even if they are aimed at military formations. They are not banned by international conventions, but 'they should never be used in built-up civilian areas,' Amnesty International has said." MB: The fléchettes, which are pictured within the story, look like something you'd read about in an Agatha Christie novel.
Josh Boak of the AP: "The Biden administration is taking a key step toward ensuring that federal dollars will support U.S. manufacturing -- issuing requirements for how projects funded by the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package source their construction material. The guidance being issued Monday requires that the material purchased -- whether it's for a bridge, a highway, a water pipe or broadband internet -- be produced in the U.S., according to administration officials. However, the rules also set up a process to waive those requirements in case there are not enough domestic producers or the material costs too much, with the goal of issuing fewer waivers over time as U.S. manufacturing capacity increases."
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. James Downie of the Washington Post: “On Friday, CNN released more than 100 text messages from [Sen. Mike] Lee [R-Utah] and Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.), sent between the 2020 election and Jan. 6, 2021, to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.... Both Lee and Roy encouraged Trump and his aides to overturn the results. As Trump and associates ... beclowned themselves with conspiracy theories, Lee and Roy became more critical of the election subversion efforts. But both men still advocated for conservative lawyer John Eastman's plan to have Republican-controlled state legislatures submit alternate slates of electoral college delegates and then have Vice President Mike Pence refuse to certify Joe Biden's win.... Since [January 6, 2021]..., Lee has downplayed his earlier efforts.... So a Republican senator -- a self-proclaimed 'constitutional conservative,' no less -- misled the country about his participation in a plot to overturn a presidential election. And yet not one of the five major Sunday talk shows mentioned one word about Lee.... In a functioning democracy, it is the media's job to call out those who scheme to subvert that democracy."
As long as I count the votes, what are you going to do about it? -- Boss Tweed, 1870s
There's an expression that the vote counters are more important than the candidate, and you could use that expression here. -- Donald Trump, April 2022
Boss Trump. Shane Goldmacher of the New York Times: "Working from a large wooden desk reminiscent of the one he used in the Oval Office, [Donald] Trump has transformed Mar-a-Lago's old bridal suite into a shadow G.O.P. headquarters, amassing more than $120 million -- a war chest more than double that of the Republican National Committee itself.... Mr. Trump has ... aggressively pursuing an agenda of vengeance against Republicans who have wronged him, endorsing more than 140 candidates nationwide and turning the 2022 primaries into a stress test of his continued sway. Inspiring fear, hoarding cash, doling out favors and seeking to crush rivals, Mr. Trump is behaving not merely as a power broker but as something closer to the head of a 19th-century political machine.... An entire political economy now surrounds Mr. Trump, with Trump properties reaping huge fees: Federal candidates and committees alone have paid nearly $1.3 million to hold events at Mar-a-Lago, records show.... Yet ... Mr. Trump can be downright stingy." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Here's what I don't get. Every normal person hates dictators. We hate dictators for a number of reasons, one of which, obviously, is that we want our personal freedom: life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Yet Trumpies cry louder than anyone for freeeedom on the one hand, while voluntarily ceding it to a nasty old fart on the other. I understand the concept, "He's a dictator, but he's our dictator." But that doesn't work here, at least for political toadies. Trump is, as Goldmacher writes, stingy. And even if the toadies cross Trump accidentally, he will cut them to pieces, perhaps ruin their pathetic careers. They must give all to get close to nothing. Of if they do get some small measure of power over their little fiefdoms, Trump may snatch it away. So, aside from all the other things we know about members of the Trump mob, WTF is the matter with them? ~~~
~~~ Great answers from Akhilleus & Ken W. at the top of today's thread. And there's this: ~~~
~~~ ** Michael Kruse in Politico Magazine interviews historian & expert on autocracies Ruth Ben-Ghiat. "Ben-Ghiat:... 'He's changed the party to an authoritarian party culture.... So not only do you go after external enemies, but you go after internal enemies. You're not allowed to have any dissent.... The GOP was already going away from a democratic political culture, but he accelerated it and normalized extremism and normalized lawlessness. And so the GOP over these years has truly, in my estimation, become an authoritarian far-right party. And the other big story is that his agenda and his methods are being continued at the state level.... These states are really laboratories of autocracy now, like Florida, Texas.... One of the big talking points and strategy of right-wing authoritarianism, is to label democratic systems as tyrannical.'" Read on.
CBS News/AP: "Far-right website Infowars and two other companies owned by radio host Alex Jones have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in light of several defamation lawsuits. The filings were made in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas. Chapter 11 bankruptcy procedures put a hold on pending civil litigation while letting a business keep running as it prepares a turnaround plan.... Infowars says in the filing that it has assets of $0 to $50,000 and liabilities of $1,000,001 to $10 million.... A judge found Jones liable for damages, and a trial on how much he should pay the families is set for August." MB: Pardon my skepticism, but I suspect Alex there has been busy squirreling away his money in offshore accounts, then filing for bankruptcy protection so he wouldn't have to pay off Sandy Hook parents.
The New York Times' live updates of Covid-19 developments Monday are here.
Beyond the Beltway
France. Kim Willsher of the Guardian: "The European Union's anti-fraud body has accused Marine Le Pen and several of her party members -- including her father &-- of embezzling about €620,000 [about $807,500] while serving as members of the European parliament. France's investigative website Mediapart published a section of the new 116-report alleging that the MEPs misused EU funds for national party purposes. The claims come a week before the second round of the presidential election, on 24 April, in which Le Pen will go head to head with Emmanuel Macron."
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Marie asks wtf is the matter with sycophantic Trumpies.
The question answers itself, in part at least.
Answer: they’re sycophantic Trumpies.
There are probably a menu of reasons for cozying up to such a reprehensible, malevolent, and menacingly mercurial character as Trump, but none of them bespeaks a person of intelligence, decency, or ethical grounding.
Scottish writer Philip Kerr does a masterful job of describing the social and political climate of pre-war Germany in his early Bernie Gunther detective novels. Bernie, while solving mysteries, navigates some seriously dicey waters in post-Weimar Berlin. Pretty much everyone has some reaction/connection to the National Socialist thugs, and you meet people who are thrilled with the coming Armageddon promised by Hitler, and others thrilled with the opportunity they see for themselves by buddying up to the criminals now in charge. They’re not wholehearted fascists, but they have no problem sieg-heiling to get along.
There are plenty of that kind of amoral, opportunistic toadies in the Trump camp. But I’m guessing there are just as many wild eyed heil-Trump types. Then there are the confederates who just love being able to kick those they despise, and since Fatty does as well, they have no problem with treason, violence, and criminality.
None of these people have what you might call an examined life. Socrates would have a field day. Except he’d only end up the way he did back in good ol’ Athens. None of these assholes want someone pointing out that sycophantic Trumpies are, no matter their provenance, as Hillary once put it, deplorable, with or without the basket.
Perhaps the most hypocritical of the bunch are the so-called religious types who are delighted to toss their professed beliefs overboard in order to support a thuggish, lying, philandering traitor who sees laws, rules, and frankly, seminal Christian tenets, as inconvenient and easily dispensed with folderol. What does it say about someone who can so easily go along with a guy whose every word and deed gives the finger to their self-professed belief system which they are told, every Sunday (and sometimes every Wednesday night as well), is the only way to eternal salvation?
Throwing down Jesus for Trump? Replacing the Bible with “Art of the Deal”? Pissing on the United States in order to complete their move to fascism?
I guess you’d call them sycophantic Trumpies. Among other things.
Marie,
It's the same old problem: Understanding the fundamentally incomprehensible.
What benefits do these lovers of freedom see in adherence to an autocrat, you ask?
I'm equally puzzled but I'll take a shot at answering anyway.
I think it comes down to personality types, something I tried to get at a few weeks ago with a spoofy essay on the Me/We brain split.
Those whose attention is concentrated solely on self cannot see around corners to consequence. As long their leader supports their prejudices, beliefs and life-style, often by something as simple as publicly sharing their enemies list, he is seen not as a dictator but as their champion. Leaders do, after all, often dictate. We expect that of them and they get away with it as long as what they demand is most what their followers want. That's the "my dictator" part.
The Me brain makes it all easy because it never generalizes. It never asks the big questions, the Kantian what if's raised by the categorical imperative. To do so would spoil all the fun for the self-anointed.
As for those close to the dictator who never seem to grasp the risk that he might turn on them at any moment and utterly destroy them, I'm guessing their Me Brain is also the culprit. They are terrible at assessing risk because all they see are the immediate benefits of allying themselves with a person powerful enough to confer great rewards for their loyalty.
Me brains are excessively and wrongheadedly prideful. Their brains tell them that they are the exception, that sure, others in the great man's orbit might have stumbled, but they will not. They are too talented, too smart, too wonderful...
But, because of its limitations, its inability to see consequence for self andnever for country, the Me brain is most often wrong.
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Speaking of Agatha Christie, as I did in the body of today's page, I have just finished (well, not quite finished) watching a bunch of adaptations of Agatha Christie novels & short stories on BritBox. The last one I watched, which Hugh Laurie adapted, directed & played a part in, was called "Why Didn't They Ask Evans?" Either Christie or Laurie has the same attitude about the British rag Daily Mail as many of us do:
This is a slight paraphrase, but true to the gist of the exchange: A character says to the heroine, "This is like that Daily Mail shit, pardon my language."
She replies, "No problem. I've heard the words 'Daily Mail' before."
@Akhilleus & @Ken Winkes: Thank you for the thoughtful replies. They differ, of course, but I'd say they're not oppositional. I suppose the freeedumb the Trumpenlumpen want is not freedom from a supposedly oppressive government or an actually repressive economic system that makes serfs of most of them but freeedumb to behave irresponsibly and to be cruel to people with even fewer advantages than they have.
Looks like we are all on the same page this morning trying to answer Marie's question: ". So, aside from all the other things we know about members of the Trump mob, WTF is the matter with them?"
I couldn't help thinking of John Boy's daddy telling him that "sayin ain't doing." The Republican Party touts their "Family values" but does almost everything to destroy it. IT seems to me that it might be as simple as protecting one's hide–– contradictions be dammed–--something both Ak and Ken toil with in more sophisticated parlance. I'm thinking here of the animal kingdom: The lion king, for instance rules the herd and protects them. He may be loathsome and ornery but the females, especially, feel safe and know he will not eat his own children. I see Trump using these same tactics although in his case he is not a loyal leader––he'd gobble up and does anyone that gets in his way or doesn't hold sway. Those who sell their souls to gain power and control from this fake fuck are doomed; they may win because of him, but they must know they have sold their soul––unless they have stopped looking into their mirrors.
Vicky Ward has a piece about why Kushner may have gotten that $2 billion from the Saudis.
"I’ve learned that what’s at the heart of this potentially reveals the reason Kushner was denied a top-secret security clearance by the CIA.
I’m told it was Kushner and Kushner’s allies who blocked top-level U.S. government support for MBS’s cousin, former Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef (MBN)—a long-time intelligence and counter-terrorist asset for the U.S.—when MBN attempted a legal coup d’état in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 2017. MBN believed he had enough support from the so-called “Council of Ministers” to back him in a regime change.
If successful, both King Salman and MBS (then deputy crown prince) would have been unseated and replaced by MBN. My sources tell me it was Kushner and his allies in the White House who got word to MBS of bin Nayef’s plans, and the plot was abruptly stopped. "
@RAS: Speaking of the Daily Mail, as I was, it looks as if Elizabeth Warren will go after Kushner:
From a Daily Mail report: "Sen. Elizabeth Warren said that the Department of Justice should 'take a hard look' at whether Jared Kushner violated any criminal laws in accepting a $2 billion investment from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
"Six months after Kushner left the White House, his newly formed private equity firm Affinity Partners secured a $2 billion investment from Saudi Arabia's state-owned sovereign wealth fund, according to a New York Times report.
"Speaking with Warren, Pod Save America host and Obama-era National Security Council spokesperson Tommy Vietor called the deal 'one of the most staggeringly corrupt things I've heard.'"
We've talked about how the GOP aims at the state level politicians. In a press conference yesterday Florida Governor Ron DeSantis let it be known he is going to be involved on school board races this fall.
Sadly firewalled in The Florida Times Union.
Bobby Lee's post made me think back to yesterday's discussion of privatizing in general, public schools in particular.
Narrowing education's focus to include only those subjects and treatments acceptable to a vocal minority acts to make schools and schooling more "private," regardless of how the schools are financed.
No wonder school boards are the Right's latest battlefield.
Reminds me of something said by a pleased parent many years ago about the high school I was responsible for. "You offer a private school education at a public school price."
I took it as the compliment it was meant to be because it was not a DeSantis kind of private. She meant it enlarged, not constricted.
Mike Lee's thoughts on democracy in October 2020,
"We’re not a democracy."
"Democracy isn’t the objective; liberty, peace, and prospefity are. We want the human condition to flourish. Rank democracy can thwart that."
It is no surprise that the senator from Utah was in on the attempt to overthrow our country and the Constitution. Democracy gets in the way of Republicans' desire for control, so they think it should be optional, for them.