;)
The Conversation -- February 5, 2024
Philip Bump of the Washington Post: Sen. J.D. "Vance [R-Ohio] was speaking with ABC News's George Stephanopoulos, who seemed to be focused on testing the limits of the senator's loyalty to Trump. If there's a limit, Stephanopoulos didn't find it.... 'Had you been vice president on January 6th, [2021,]' the ABC anchor asked, 'would you have certified the election results?' 'If I had been vice president, I would have told the states, like Pennsylvania, Georgia and so many others, that we needed to have multiple slates of electors, and I think the U.S. Congress should have fought over it from there,' Vance said. 'That is the legitimate way to deal with an election that a lot of folks, including me, think had a lot of problems in 2020.' It is not a legitimate way to do so, at all."
U.K. Mark Landler of the New York Times: "King Charles III has been diagnosed with cancer and is suspending his public engagements to undergo treatment, casting a shadow over a busy reign that began less than 18 months ago.... The announcement, made by Buckingham Palace on Monday evening, came a week after the 75-year-old sovereign was discharged from a London hospital, following a procedure to treat an enlarged prostate. The palace did not disclose what form of cancer Charles has, but a palace official said it was not prostate cancer. Doctors detected the cancer during that procedure, and the king began treatment on Monday."
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Liz Goodwin & Leigh Ann Caldwell of the Washington Post: "After months of talks, Senate negotiators on Sunday released a sweeping bipartisan border security deal that is aimed at discouraging migrants from crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. The $118 billion national security legislation also includes billions of dollars in funding for Ukraine, Israel, the Indo-Pacific and humanitarian aid, but it has a politically perilous path ahead.... Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced that he would hold the first procedural vote on the legislation on Wednesday, leaving the bill's boosters little time to sell its provisions. 'Senators must shut out the noise from those who want this agreement to fail for their own political agendas,' he said in a statement Sunday evening. The legislation -- a top priority for President Biden -- would, if passed, mark the first significant action taken by Congress on immigration in decades. It attempts to close loopholes in the asylum process, limit the use of parole for migrants at the border and give the president new authority to effectively shut down the border to migrants when attempted crossings are high. 'Get it to my desk so I can sign it into law immediately,' Biden said in a statement....
"The politics of the deal abruptly changed when Trump and his allies began attacking the idea of passing any border legislation -- fearful that addressing the border crisis might remove a potent campaign issue for him in an election year.... [Speaker of the House Mike] Johnson said this weekend he planned a vote in the House on billions in aid to Israel without money for Ukraine or the border, further complicating the Senate deal's prospects.... In a letter to his Democratic colleagues, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) called Johnson's new Israel-only bill 'a cynical attempt to undermine the Senate's bipartisan effort.'" CNN's report is here. ~~~
~~~ Lauren Sforza of the Hill: "House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) blasted House Republicans on Sunday for being 'wholly owned subsidiaries of Donald Trump.' Jeffries discussed the bipartisan Senate negotiations that have been underway since late last year in the hopes of reaching an agreement on border security on ABC's 'This Week.' He told co-host George Stephanopoulos that a potential proposal by the Senate should not be 'dead on arrival' in the House before lawmakers even review the text...."
"How Donald Trump Reduced the GOP to Groveling Sycophants." Mike Lofgren in Salon: "Just as the German army did, Republicans bet on what they thought was a malleable figurehead who would shower money on the plutocracy, shovel resources to the military and bust the unions. In both cases, they mostly got what they wanted. But in both cases, they also failed to foresee that their intended stooge would not only break free of their control but exert such total domination as to reduce them to cringing toadies forever protesting their loyalty. It is a rule of human behavior ... that bullies are the most fawning bully-worshippers. Sociologist and historian Richard Hofstadter described this behavior as 'a disorder in relation to authority, characterized by an inability to find other modes for human relationship than those of more or less complete domination or submission.'... Forever demanding freedom, they really seek servility.... They never cease to be jealous of those people...." ~~~
~~~ Marie: BTW, I recommend your reading the Hofstadter essay linked above. Written in 1954, it is a stark reminder that, as Jesus spake, "The reactionaries will always be with you." Or "Trumpism is a persistent psychological disorder."
David Edwards of the Raw Story: "Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) had his microphone cut off during an interview on ABC News on Sunday after he denied statements he made about firing all civil servants. While interviewing Vance on ABC's This Week program, host George Stephanopoulos pointed to the senator's remarks on a 2021 radio program. 'I think that what Trump should do, like if I was giving him one piece of advice, fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people, and when the courts, because you will get taken to court, and then when the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say the Chief Justice has made his ruling, now let him enforce it,' Vance told the program.... [After a back-and-forth in which Vance denied his prior remarks, Stephanopoulos said,] '... you've made it very clear... You believe the president can defy the Supreme Court.' 'No, no, no, no, George,' Vance said before his microphone was cut off and the program moved to another segment."
Presidential Race
Nicholas Nehamas of the New York Times: "Fresh off an overwhelming victory in South Carolina's Democratic primary, President Biden rallied supporters on Sunday in Nevada, saying that he had kept his promises to the Black and Hispanic voters who helped elect him. Mr. Biden spoke at a community center in the historic Westside neighborhood of Las Vegas, home to an African American community in a critical battleground state. He rattled off statistics about reductions in child poverty for Black, Hispanic and Indigenous people, talked about growth in minority-owned business and attacked ... Donald J. Trump for saying that immigration was 'poisoning the blood' of the United States."
E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post has changed his mind and now thinks Donald Trump should be disqualified as a candidate for office under the terms of the Fourteenth Amendments Section 3. "The court would not be disqualifying him. He disqualified himself." What compelled his turnaround were several briefs to the Supreme Court, some of which we've highlighted here before. But here are a couple we haven't mentioned: "Sherrilyn Ifill, a Howard Law School professor and former president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, shows how [the clause's] framers were preoccupied with the 'ongoing resistance to full Black citizenship by southern states' and feared that 'Black men who had been loyal to the Union ... would be disenfranchised, while disloyal white former Confederates would be rewarded with the vote.' Trump is a present-day embodiment of their fears, she wrote, having offered 'a false narrative discrediting the votes cast in jurisdictions with high concentrations of Black voters,' including Detroit, Philadelphia and Atlanta. And to argue that barring Trump from the ballot is 'antidemocratic,' wrote professors Carol Anderson and Ian Farrell in another brief, is 'ironic … as he bears by far the most responsibility for attempting to subvert democracy on Jan. 6.'"
Which of These People Would be a Worse President? ~~~
~~~ This One? Haley Has Changed Her Mind about Secession. Sort of. David Cohen of Politico: "Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley on Sunday said that states can't secede, backtracking from remarks she made last week. 'According to the Constitution, they can't,' she told host Dana Bash on CNN's 'State of the Union.' On Wednesday, Haley had said in response to a question about Texans suggesting the state could leave the union, 'If Texas decides they want to do that, they can do that. If that whole state says we don't want to be part of America anymore, I mean, that's their decision to make.' On Sunday, the former U.N. ambassador explained she didn't mean to sound as if she approved of the idea of secession: 'What I said is, when government stops listening, let's remember states' rights matter. You have to be as close to the people as possible. No one is talking about seceding. That's not an issue at all.'" ~~~
~~~ Marie: I suspect Haley suddenly looked in the mirror and saw President Haley. So President Haley asked the mirror, "Mirror, mirror, on the wall, would I want states to be seceding during my presidency?" And the mirror had no trouble answering the question. ~~~
~~~ Or This One? Maggie Astor of the New York Times: "... Donald J. Trump, in an interview that aired on Fox News on Sunday, suggested falsely that Latin American governments were picking the citizens they didn't want and shipping them to the U.S. border, resurrecting a claim that was central to his 2016 campaign. He also accused the Chinese Communist Party -- without providing any evidence -- of orchestrating illegal immigration into the United States, and said he believed China would try to interfere in the presidential election, adding that he liked President Xi Jinping 'a lot.'... Mr. Trump also spoke approvingly, as he has before, of the military-style mass deportation of Mexican immigrants under President Dwight D. Eisenhower.... Mass deportations are part of an extreme expansion of the anti-immigration policy that Mr. Trump is planning if he is elected again." ~~~
~~~ In the Same Interview. Joe DePaolo of Mediaite: "... Fox News anchor [Maria Bartiromo] ... asked [Trump], 'How's Ronna McDaniel doing?' Trump's response revealed a shakeup is imminent. 'I think she did great when she ran Michigan for me,' Trump said. 'I think she did okay, initially, in the RNC. I would say right now, there'll probably be some changes made.'" MB: Groveling at Trump's feet for more than seven years does not buy you job security nor does it spare you a humiliating assessment on national teevee. (Party chairs generally serve more-or-less at the pleasure of their party's leader, but a normal leader eases out a chair; s/he doesn't publicly abase the chair.) ~~~
~~~ AND. Rebecca Picciotto of CNBC: Donald Trump "confirmed in an interview broadcast on Sunday that he is considering a plan to impose tariffs of 60% or higher on Chinese goods in his potential second term.... 'Maybe it's going to be more than that.' Beyond China, the former president has said he would impose a blanket 10% tariff on all U.S. imports, despite broad criticism over how that could hurt consumers.... Trump's trade war with China cost Americans an estimated $195 billion since 2018, according to the American Action Forum, a conservative think tank. The economic battle also led to the loss of more than 245,000 U.S. jobs, according to the U.S.-China Business Council. At the time, Deutsche Bank estimated that the trade war was causing the stock market to hemorrhage trillions. The tariff dispute also left the U.S. and China, once each other's biggest trading partners, on rocky geopolitical terms." ~~~
~~~ AND The "Sir" Tell. Ed Mazza of the Huffington Post: "'I have steel people that every time they see me, they start to cry,' he told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo. 'They hug me. They said, "You saved our industry."' If the story rings a bell, it's because Trump has told plenty of variations of crying people over the years, often 'tough guys' who had never cried before." Thanks to Forrest M. for the lead.
Naomi Nix of the Washington Post: "Meta was criticized Monday by a company-funded oversight board for its 'incoherent' and 'confusing' policies on manipulated media after an altered video of President Biden spread on Facebook. The social media giant opted not to remove the video, which had been edited to show Biden appearing to touch his granddaughter inappropriately. In the unaltered footage, he is placing an 'I Voted' sticker on her chest. Meta said the post did not violate its rules, which apply only to deepfakes -- photos, videos and audio created by artificial intelligence to impersonate a person -- that alter someone's speech." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Looks like fake video is the answer to Trumpbots' support of a serial sexual predator. "Okay, our guy is a pervert, but so is yours." And this is fine with Zuck.
Capitalism Is Awesome, Ctd. Tobi Raji of the Washington Post: "Target says it will no longer sell a civil rights activity kit that misidentified three prominent Black leaders ... after a high school U.S. history teacher's TikTok video calling out the errors went viral.... The 'Civil Rights Magnetic Learning Activity,' by Ohio-based Bendon Publishing, mixed up the names of American author and historian Carter G. Woodson, sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois and educator Booker T. Washington." MB: It's 2024. Do we really still have to defend against, "All Black people look alike"? (BTW, these three icons did not look remotely alike.)
Capitalism Is Awesome, Ctd. Digby highlights a Wall Street Journal article that details the millions and millions Tesla board members have made in Tesla stock options as well as all the drugs they use when they party with Elon Musk. According to the WSJ, "The Wall Street Journal reported in January that Musk has used drugs including cocaine, ecstasy, LSD and magic mushrooms, and that leaders at Tesla and SpaceX were concerned about it, particularly his recreational use of ketamine.... The volume of drug use by Musk and with board members has become concerning, some ... people [with knowledge] said." MB: On the other hand, the drug use explains a lot about how Musk has lost so many billions and why he is such a colossal jerk.
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South Dakota. Maham Javaid of the Washington Post: "The largest tribe in South Dakota has barred the state's governor from its lands for the second time in at least five years after her speech about curbing immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border 'offended' the tribal president. Frank Star Comes Out, the president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, made the Pine Ridge Reservation in southwestern South Dakota off limits to Gov. Kristi L. Noem (R) on Friday after she told the state legislature that she was sending razor wire and security personnel to Texas, and that unauthorized immigration was harming reservations.... Star Comes Out noted that the Oglala Sioux is a 'sovereign nation,' under the protection of the United States, not South Dakota. He said in a statement that Noem was using the border issue to influence Donald Trump's presidential campaign and boost her chances of becoming his running mate."
Texas. Look at Us! Look at Us! We're Fomenting a Constitutional Crisis! AND We Have Assault Weapons! David Goodman of the New York Times: "Locked in a legal battle with the Biden administration over immigration enforcement, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas said on Sunday that he was expanding his effort to establish state control over areas near the Rio Grande in an effort to deter migrants. Mr. Abbott, flanked by 13 other Republican governors, said that Texas would not limit its high-intensity efforts to the small municipal park along the river in Eagle Pass where the state has taken over and limited access for federal agents. A top Texas official said state law enforcement officers were also looking to move in on riverside ranch land north of the city that migrants have continued to use for crossing.... The assembled governors said that they backed Texas in its confrontation with the federal government. As they spoke, scores of National Guard troops stood silently with assault-style rifles across their chests."
Washington State. I Have a Nuclear Missile in My Garage. Gaya Gupta of the New York Times: "Members of the bomb squad in Bellevue, Wash., on Thursday were called to inspect parts of a military-grade missile in the garage of a resident. Elements of the larger, intact missile, such as the warhead, were missing and the authorities deemed the piece to be inert and safe, the police said in a news release on Friday. An Air Force museum in Dayton, Ohio, contacted the police in Bellevue on Jan. 31 to report that a resident had offered to donate the missile, which belonged to his late neighbor. The resident had been put in charge of his neighbor's estate, according to the Bellevue police, and said that his neighbor had originally purchased the missile from an estate sale."
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Israel/Palestine, et al. The Washington Post's live updates of developments Monday in the Israel/Hamas war are here: "The Biden administration says it will continue its military action against Iranian-backed militia groups, as Secretary of State Antony Blinken embarks on his fifth trip to the Middle East since Oct. 7. National security adviser Jake Sullivan said the strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen and militias in Iraq and Syria are 'the beginning of our response' to the killing of three U.S. soldiers in Jordan.... One of [Blinken's] goals is to seek agreement among Arab and Israeli officials over a Palestinian-led governing body for the West Bank and Gaza after the war. But significant obstacles remain. U.S. forces launched several attacks 'in self-defense' on Houthi missiles in Yemen on Sunday, Centcom said. The Houthis have threatened to 'meet escalation with escalation' and said their attacks on ships in the Red Sea would continue until Israel ends its assault on Gaza." ~~~
~~~ The New York Times live updates for Monday are here.
News Lede
New York Times: "A record-breaking California storm, which forced dozens of emergency rescues and knocked out power for hundreds of thousands of residents overnight, was expected to stall over the Los Angeles area and create more flooding on Monday. Even after torrential rains on Sunday that brought rising floodwaters, strong winds and mudslides that damaged homes, forecasters cautioned that the most dangerous part of the storm might still lie ahead, with less intense but nonstop showers expected to continue until Tuesday." This is the pinned item in a liveblog.
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Reader Comments (12)
"Tough guys, cops, marines, steel workers, auto workers, farmers
all break down and cry when they see me, saying things like 'sir, you
saved our country, you saved my business.'
I'll have to admit, I would cry too, but not for the reasons trump gives.
It's because he's so pathetic and ignorant.
https://news.yahoo.com/trumps-weird-boast-literally-bringing-
100512472html?.tsrc=daily_mail&uh_test=0_00
@Forrest Morris: I have tried to access quite a number of your links, and, like the one above, they don't work. I am guessing, but I think you must be trying to type out the URL, which is bound to lead to mistakes. Links have to be perfect, not close.
The actual link to the Yahoo! republication of the HuffPost story you attempted to link above is https://www.yahoo.com/news/trumps-weird-boast-literally-bringing-100512472.html
I linked the original HuffPost story in the body of the page, above.
Here's how to copy and paste a link. (1) Block the URL address in the box by clicking on it three times (that will highlight the entire address). (2) Then copy it (Control Key + C). (3) Then paste it into your comment (Control Key + V).Easy-peasy. You might want to test your link the first few times you try it.
@Marie: Thanks. Sounds simple, but I didn't get a computer until
I was about 80 years old and am still learning.
'You're never too old to learn.' Ha!
“It's because he's so pathetic and ignorant.”
Yeah, and a googolplex of Pinocchios, hair-on-fire liar.
But his lies, especially the “Sir” tell, say a lot about this fat loser’s psychological makeup. He’s someone, apparently, who, for all his narcissism, must harbor a deep rooted sense of his own inadequacy.
My wife and I were watching a realty show (I know, I know, there’s so much that’s not real on these things) on which one of the participants kept insisting what a good person she is. My wife pointed out that people who have to constantly remind others of their wonderfulness are often terrible people. She was right. This person turned out to be grindingly misanthropic.
I think there’s something similar with Trump. It’s not uncommon for people (especially here in the south) to use “sir” and “ma’am” when talking to strangers, mostly in the form of “It’s warm today!” “Yes, ma’am, it certainly is”. But I’ve never heard anyone (probably outside the military) begin a conversation with someone they don’t know with “Sir”, as in “Sir, you are so wonderful!” This is some weird-ass bullshit that Fatty constructs to try to signal how clearly average Americans must see him as a superior authority figure.
Trump psychology is a black hole, however, and even peering into that fucking abyss for too long can cross your wires, so I’ll stop here.
A weirdo of galactic proportions.
OK, I’ve got it all figured out now:
The Deep State rigged the Grammys to give Taylor Swift the award for best album.
This was done to bolster her fan base prior to her endorsing Biden, thus lending credibility to his winning the coming rigged election.
Early in his second term, Joe will resign due to poor health, and Kamala will be sworn in. She can then win two more rigged elections in her own right, and hold the office for nearly twelve years in total.
During this time, women of color will complete their take over and domination of the entire world.
And all of this has been engineered and masterminded by, wait for it, OPRAH.
By the way, I'm all for it. Us old white farts have been screwing things up long enough. Bring on the colored ladies.
Meant to link this last week, but so much psycho crap has been going down, it slipped through the cracks.
WNYC in New York produces a typically excellent podcast with journalist and media analyst Brooke Gladstone (possessed of a great radio voice as well as sterling insights) called “On the Media”. Highly recommended.
Last week OTM offered a most useful post-mortem on the demise (good riddance and watch for that screen door) of the DeSantolini incursion, from the point of view of how the media covered this creep, providing more general guidelines for covering political campaigns.
If you don’t have time or aren’t a podcast person, I’ll give you the bullet point version (with added commentary) because it’s very well done.
So, it’s not a surprise that Rhonda got a leg up in the world of traitors and right wing fantasy life by appearing regularly on Fox. He was essentially a Fox creation. And we know how wonderful those fabrications turn out.
His yowling on Fox brought him to the attention of one Fatty J. Trump, who then endorsed him in his run for governor of Florida. Rhonda won big, but here’s where the slope gets slippery.
Florida reporters realized what a joke DeSantis’s big win was. Money and TV combined with a nearly non-existent Democratic Party in Florida made it an easy win. But national reporters only saw the big number (19 point win) and the easy to cover horse race possibilities.
Now DeSantis is on Time Magazine’s cover as “The Future”. Frank Bruni writes a piece warning that DeSantis could be an unstoppable force, “Trump without the crazy”. Scary, right? I thought so too.
Based on the reporting. (The OTM podcast doesn’t mention this, but I recalled a wildly hagiographic article in the New Yorker in ‘22 by Dexter Filkins, one of those classic New Yorker long form pieces with deep dives into the subject, their background, family, early life, etc. Read it now and puke. It makes Rhonda sound like a genius, an all-American regular guy with a big brain, fiery warrior against Woke, soon to be President…)
Rhonda, the fierce winger policy wonk would pass all that horrible legislation that Fatty couldn’t get through.
But hang on. Florida reporters, again, recognized what a mess this guy was. His legislation was sloppy, hackneyed. So much so that Florida PoT legislators had to go back in and fix all his mistakes. The national press only saw his Big Wins. Plus, there was the weirdness. No eye contact, the shoe lifts, the go-go boots, the pudding, the disastrous Twitter campaign announcement that came too late.
As one reporter points out, in the race to anoint him as the Next Big Thing, so many important details were missed. The Jeb Bush fiasco should have been a warning that money, backers, name recognition, and horse race media coverage don’t mean shit. Especially going against a monster who doesn’t care about standards or basic democracy.
The truly big story gets missed.
And the Next Big Thing doesn’t even make it through the Iowa coffee klatches.
It’s not a mystery that we are so poorly served by a lazy and supine media. The big mystery is why it keeps happening.
William D. Cohan, who wrote about Lazard Freres and the 2008 Wall Street implosion, writes today in the Times about the relationship between massive wealth and freedom of speech.
"When only the ultrawealthy, as a practical matter, can afford to speak freely without consequences, what does freedom of speech really mean? There is a vogue among the superrich like Mr. Ackman, Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump for misconstruing the First Amendment as permission to support their particular vision of how public speech should work. Although the amendment is a negative freedom — people and businesses can constrain speech any way they like, but the government is largely enjoined from constraining it for them — the rich like to present the First Amendment as recommending there be no constraints on people who want to speak, regardless of the content of that speech."
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/05/opinion/ackman-billionaires-musk-trump-social-media-x.html
Maybe Trump and Jesus do have something in common.
MSNBC
"Why Republicans in Congress fear success
The worry that any conservative wins on taxes and immigration might still help Joe Biden beat Donald Trump has paralyzed the House and the Senate."
More concern for the common good from the capitalists:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/02/03/east-palestine-derailment-safety-lobbying/?
@Jack Mahoney: Cohan seems to be just discovering that many super-rich people can say what they want without consequences, at least in many arenas. This has been true, I imagine, since the adoption of the Bill of Rights.
But there is another socio-economic group "privileged" to speak out: the very poor. "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose." A homeless person can say anything Ackman & Musk have written on X & not pay any price for his utterances. True, the homeless person will have to find a soapbox in the park unless he is together enough to get a free public Internet connection.
It's only the vast middle-class who must conform to normative conduct and speech. Coloring outside the lines can cause them to can lose their means of livelihood, as Cohan points out, and even their homes and the usual accommodations that homes provide. They can lose their status in their communities, status some may have spent a lifetime acquiring.
I can certainly see the downside of super-rich blowhards having an outsized voice in the public discourse. But the upside is that ordinary people (who might not be invited to, say, an Elon Musk drug party) get to see what jerks they are. Their evident dimwittiness cuts them down to size. For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and make of himself a laughingstock?
Hofstadter understood us frighteningly well.
Thanks for the link, Marie. I'd forgotten that one.