;)
The Conversation -- January 16, 2024
Kayla Guo of the New York Times: "Top Democrats and Republicans in Congress on Tuesday released a $78 billion compromise they have reached to expand the child tax credit and restore three popular expired business tax breaks, but the package face a challenging road to enactment in an election year."
AP: "A federal judge is siding with the Biden administration and blocking JetBlue Airways from buying Spirit Airlines, saying the $3.8 billion deal would reduce competition. The Justice Department sued to block the merger, saying it would drive up fares by eliminating Spirit, the nation's biggest low-cost airline.... U.S. District Judge William Young, who presided over a non-jury trial last year, said in the ruling Tuesday that the government had proven that the merger 'would substantially lessen competition' and violated a century-old antitrust law."
Katelyn Polantz of CNN: "A federal appeals court said Tuesday it won't re-hear a case concerning executive privilege and Twitter after special counsel investigators in the 2020 election interference case were allowed to access data from Donald Trump's account without telling him. The case has centered around questions about protection of communication around the presidency, and if Trump should have been informed when the special counsel's office got court approval for a search warrant for his Twitter data. Ultimately, the courts decided federal investigators could access Trump's account for its criminal probe, and Twitter could be forced to keep the search secret from Trump. Both a trial-level judge and a three-judge panel in the Washington, DC, appeals court agreed that disclosing the Twitter search to Trump or his representatives could hurt the grand jury investigation. Eleven judges of the DC Circuit declined to look at the case again on Tuesday."
Forrest M. points to this democratic underground entry, where the writer calculates that Trump "won" the Iowa caucuses by grabbing 2.7% of registered Iowa voters. Woo-woo! Marie: I checked the writer's sources and arithmetic, and it all looks correct to me. Great way to pick a president*.
digby relies a good deal on McKay Coppins' Atlantic essay about his impression of a Trump rally he attended. Thanks to RAS for the link. MB: My own impression of watching a few clips of recent Trump rallies is that he is listless, muted, boring and incoherent. Coppins does make the point that he has lost his supposed charisma and h is appeal to all but the most plugged-in MAGAts.
~~~~~~~~~~
Presidential Race 2024 -- Iowa CarcassesTM Jeanne Edition
The New York Times has a liveblog of developments in the Iowa Caucuses for today, for @7:30 am ET, there's not much in it. See yesterday's NYT liveblog, linked below.
NBC News projected at 7:33 pm CT that Donald Trump will win the Iowa Caucuses. No link. At about the same time, the AP projected that Trump would win the caucuses. MB: Maybe the bad news here is that the NYT projects (at 9:00 pm ET) that Trump will win about 52 percent of the caucus vote; i.e., more than half.
Here's the New York Times' liveblog Monday of developments in the Iowa caucuses. The caucuses began at 7:00 pm CT. The Times has the results on its front page (so free to nonsubscribers) and on the linked page. ~~~
~~~ Politico's live updates for Monday are here. CNN's live updates are here. ~~~
~~~ From the New York Times liveblog. More or less from most recent to earliest:
Shane Goldmacher: "Donald J. Trump won the Iowa caucuses on Monday, a crucial first step in his bid to reclaim the Republican nomination for the third consecutive election as voters braved the bitter cold, looked past his mounting legal jeopardy and embraced his vision of vengeful disruption." (Pinned item.)
Nicholas Nehamas: "DeSantis finishes [his concession speech] by vowing he will 'not make any excuses.' He and his campaign have spent the evening castigating the news media for calling the race early and pointed out how much money his opponents have spent against him."
Jonathan Weisman: "Vivek Ramaswamy, the 38-year-old entrepreneur and political newcomer who briefly made a splash with brash policy proposals and an outsize sense of confidence, dropped out of the race for the Republican White House nomination after a disappointing fourth-place finish in the Iowa caucuses. He then immediately endorsed ... Donald J. Trump for the White House."
Jonathan Swan: "I haven't seen Trump give a speech like [his victory speech] since election night in 2016. He's confident enough of victory that he's praising all of his rivals and talking about uniting liberals and conservatives -- an absurd notion given the polarized state of the country and Trump's own role in demonizing the left."
Nehamas: "Judging from the DeSantis campaign's public statements so far, it seems the plan is to blame the media and The A.P.'s early call for his poor performance tonight."
Nate Cohn: "The early results show an extraordinary educational divide, with Nikki Haley routing Donald Trump in precincts where a majority of the population has a college degree, even as she fails to even clear 10 percent in many less educated areas."
Ruth Igielnik: "Twenty percent of caucusgoers said they made up their minds in the last few days, according to an early exit poll from the NEP. Among that group, Haley and DeSantis are neck-and-neck, and doing slightly better than Trump. Haley is also slightly ahead among caucusgoers who said they decided this month. Trump is dominant with the two-thirds of caucus-goers who said they decided before that."
Here are a couple of entries to give you an idea of the "flavor" of the caucuses: ~~~
Rebecca O'Brien: "The precinct captains here in Malcom are struggling to log the results of the caucus, because of fuzzy internet in the grain elevator offices." ~~~
~~~ Molly Longman: "After counting the votes on the dining room table of Mayor Sharon McNutt's house in Silver City, someone whistles to get the crowd's attention and the mayor announces the preliminary count: 1 vote Ramaswamy, 8 for DeSantis, 10 for Haley and 23 for Trump. No one seems surprised."
Michael Gold: "So Nikki Haley also just showed up at the super-site in Clive where Trump, Hutchinson and Ramaswamy have all spoken."
Maggie Astor: Donald Trump Jr., speaking at Franklin Jr. High, makes the brazenly false claim that there was 'world peace' during Trump's term and attacks Haley directly, saying she wants to 'be in every war in the history of the world.'"
Gold: "Donald Trump just made an unannounced visit to a caucus site in Clive, which is now hosting a high-profile collision between campaigns. Vivek Ramaswamy, who has recently been trading jabs online with Trump, was already scheduled to show up; Asa Hutchinson, whose long-shot campaign is often mocked by Trump, is here to speak on his own behalf; and Representative Chip Roy of Texas, a top surrogate for Ron DeSantis who Trump has suggested needs to be challenged in a primary, is here to support his candidate."
Gold: "Donald Trump did a local radio interview this morning in which he barely addressed the Iowa caucuses, instead largely attacking President Biden and Democrats. At the end, he said he thought he could get a 'record-setting' or 'close to record-setting' percentage of votes tonight."
Reid Epstein & O'Brien: "President Biden's re-election campaign said on Monday that, along with two allied committees, it had pulled in $97 million during the most recent fund-raising period."
O'Brien: "The parting messages from the candidates -- in their ads as in their speeches -- have been notably negative, defensive and dark."
Jasmine Ulloa & Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: Nikki Haley's "disappointing third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses on Monday showed that for all the hype, her momentum ultimately stalled in the face of a Republican electorate still in the thrall of the former president. That included not only Mr. Trump's working-class base but also the bastions of college-educated Republicans in and around Des Moines that she was supposed to dominate. In her speech after the caucuses, Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, sharpened her attack on Mr. Trump, questioning his age and his ability to unite a fractured country. She lumped Mr. Trump with Mr. Biden as backward-looking barriers to an American revival."
Trump Urges Iowans to Die for Him. Really. Nick Robertson of the Hill: "Former President Trump encouraged his Iowa supporters to caucus for him at any cost, joking that due to extreme winter weather, 'even if you vote and then pass away, it's worth it.'... 'You can't sit home. If you're sick as a dog, you say, "Darling, I gotta make it,"' Trump said at an Indianola rally on Sunday. 'Even if you vote and then pass away, it's worth it, remember.' Meteorologists warned of 'life-threatening' conditions in Iowa for the weekend as the state prepares to caucus. Trump canceled three of his four in-person Iowa events Sunday due to the freezing cold and snow." MB: Show of hands, class, if you think Trump was "joking." Didn't think so. (Also linked yesterday.)
Dana Milbank of the Washington Post: "In Iowa -- and probably elsewhere, alas — they are all MAGA Republicans now.... Despite a year of practice, DeSantis is still painfully awkward attempting to sound human.... [At a campaign event invaded by climate change protesters, Ramaswamy] offered his exotic view that 'the earth is more covered by green surface area today than it was a century ago because carbon dioxide is plant food.' The denial of climate-change is but one plank in Ramaswamy's zany platform, which holds that Jan. 6, 2021, was an 'inside job' and white supremacy is a myth.... Haley, for all her timidity, was at least implicitly offering a serious, viable, alternative to Trump. Hers is a traditional Republican message of balanced budgets, lower taxes, help for small business, a strong national defense.... But this Republican electorate wants ... a guy who talks about being a 'dictator' on day one, echoes Hitler in his rhetoric about ethnic minorities, demands absolute immunity from legal liability and threatens 'bedlam' if he"s prosecuted."
Aaron Blake of the Washington Post outlines five takeaways from the Iowa caucuses.
Erica Green of the New York Times: "Vice President Kamala Harris warned on Monday that American freedom was 'under profound threat' in a speech honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in South Carolina, amplifying a message that the Biden administration has made a rallying cry of its re-election bid. Ms. Harris used her keynote address at a South Carolina N.A.A.C.P. event to highlight curbs placed on civil rights by Republican lawmakers and the Supreme Court in recent years. She urged the crowd of more than 100 to continue to fight for the constitutional promises Dr. King spent his life holding America accountable for."
Dan Lamothe of the Washington Post: "Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was released from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Monday, the Pentagon said, ending a two-week hospitalization he had kept secret for days after developing serious complications from a surgery to treat prostate cancer.... 'Now, as I continue to recuperate and perform my duties from home, I'm eager to fully recover and return as quickly as possible to the Pentagon,' [Austin said]. It was not immediately clear how long that may be." (Also linked yesterday.)
Spousal Privilege. Benjamin Weiser & Tracey Tully of the New York Times: "Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey and his wife, Nadine Menendez, were both charged last fall in a broad federal corruption case in which they were accused of accepting cash and gold bribes.... Both Mr. and Ms. Menendez are seeking to split their case and have separate trials, according to papers that each of their lawyers filed late Monday.... Husbands and wives cannot typically be forced to testify against each other. And Ms. Menendez wants to maintain the confidentiality of her communications with her husband, her lawyers wrote to the judge, Sidney H. Stein, of Federal District Court. The senator's lawyers, in a brief filed several hours later, made a similar argument." Read on for details.
Adam Reiss, et al., of NBC News: "... Donald Trump intends to attend the start of the new E. Jean Carroll civil damages trial on Tuesday, according to two sources...."
Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "Joseph Tacopina, the trial lawyer on Donald J. Trump's legal team with the most successes defending high-profile clients, will no longer represent the former president in his criminal trial in Manhattan, according to a notice sent to the court on Monday. Mr. Tacopina also withdrew on Monday from another case in which he was still legally representing Mr. Trump: an appeal of the verdict in a lawsuit brought by the writer E. Jean Carroll. Mr. Trump was found liable for sexual abuse an defamation last year and was ordered to pay Ms. Carroll $5 million." A Law & Crime story is here. (Also linked yesterday.)
~~~~~~~~~~
Maryland. Ken Belson of the New York Times: "The Baltimore Sun, the largest newspaper in Maryland, has been sold to David D. Smith, the executive chairman of the nationwide Sinclair network of television stations and other media.... The Sun will remain distinct from Sinclair, which is based in Maryland and owns about 200 television stations, including the Fox affiliate in Baltimore. In 2018, Sinclair drew a backlash when anchors at its stations were ordered to read an editorial about media bias. Mr. Smith fiercely disagreed with the criticism of the scripts." The Hill's story is here.
~~~~~~~~~~
Guatemala. Marie: I have paid little to no attention to the election turmoil in Guatemala. Luckily, digby has provided us with a short course. Thanks toRAS for the link.
Israel/Palestine, et al.
The Washington Post's live updates of developments Tuesday in the Israel/Hamas war are here: "Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps attacked a site in Iraq's Kurdistan region that it alleged was being used by Israel's Mossad intelligence agency to plan attacks against Iran. The Iranian-backed Houthi militant group struck a U.S.-owned container ship in the Gulf of Aden, U.S. Central Command said. The separate strikes came amid rising tensions between the United States and Iran and spurred wider fears that the conflict in Israel could spill out across the Middle East.... Israel plans to slow its military operations in southern Gaza and focus on uprooting Hamas leadership, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said in a news conference. He added that the Israeli military is still 'working to eliminate pockets of resistance' in northern Gaza." ~~~
~~~ CNN's live updates for Tuesday are here. The New York Times' live updates are here.
Karoun Demirjian of the New York Times: "... on Tuesday..., the Senate votes on a resolution that would freeze all U.S. security aid to Israel unless the State Department produces a report within 30 days examining whether the country committed human rights violations in its conduct of the war. If the Biden administration misses the deadline, the aid would be restored once Congress receives the report, or takes separate votes to ensure the assistance continues uninterrupted. The measure, forced to the floor by Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, has little chance of passing given opposition by Republicans and Democrats. But it is only one of a raft of measures that progressives in the Senate have proposed in recent weeks that reflect their uneasiness with Israel's conduct of the war and raise questions about whether and under what circumstances the United States would send a fresh infusion of funding to back the country."
Alex Horton of the Washington Post: "American military personnel recovered Iranian-made missile warheads and related components during a ship-boarding mission near Somalia last week that disrupted the weapons' suspected transit to militants in Yemen but left two elite Navy SEALs lost at sea, U.S. officials said Monday. A massive search-and-rescue operation is ongoing in the Gulf of Aden, where the incident occurred Thursday. The SEALs moved to board the vessel, described by one official as a dhow lacking proper identification.... As The Washington Post and other media previously reported, Thursday's operation took place in rough seas. When one of the SEALs slipped from a ladder while attempting to climb aboard the dhow, the second, having witnessed their comrade fall into the water, dove in to help, officials have said. Both were swept away by the powerful swells. Neither has been publicly identified."
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Reader Comments (18)
The Fat Fascist wins the popularity contest among the all white, all fearful, all vengeful, all ignorant, all Hitler crowd?
Who cares?
Half of a nearly infinitesimal number of voters, compared to all Americans eligible to vote in the US, go all in on a dangerous, wildly unstable lunatic.
So what?
All it proves is that Iowa is still a stupid place to start a national electoral season. It’s like running a medical survey to determine the general health of the overall population and starting in a cancer ward.
A more representative sampling of the population might still show a large number of terminal cases, but at least it won’t be 100%.
So again, who cares?
It’s the quadrennial quietus of the quacks.
This is interesting (or not): Just 23% of Haley's supporters say they would vote for Trump in a matchup with Biden. The plurality of
Haley voters, 43%, would vote for Biden instead.
https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/iowa-poll/
caucus/2024/01/14/iowa-poll-nikki-haley-supporters-more=likely-
vote-joe-biden-over-donald-trump-november-2024-election/
72193795007/
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/16/climate/koch-chevron-deference-supreme-court.html
Interesting case. Interesting in part because of who is interested in it (and funding it) but also because as I understand it, its objection to the regulatory state is that the government is looking at the fishermen while they are fishing.
Kinda hope they win. Of course, the fish will disappear from over-fishing, but those darn state troopers who spy on me when I drive will have to go away too.
Isn't there something fundamentally nuts about talk of the "rules of war," particularly when the phrase is applied to the wanton destruction of civilians and property?
Whoever noted that all's fair in love and war, and this can't be love...had it right. If all's fair, there are no rules.
And if all's not fair, war's rules have to far tighter than they obviously are.
All other talk of the rules of war is mere pretense that makes people feel better about the awful things they do themselves and countenance in others.
More faux virtue.
Neil Gorsuch should definitely recuse himself from the Chevron
case and he should then be required to read Dan Egan's book:
The Death and Life of the Great Lakes.
He could learn lots about overfishing and pollution. He may know
it already, but money is more important than fish, I guess.
I've just finished reading "The Kingdom, The Power, And The Glory -- American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism" by Tim Alberta. I highly recommend it, and wish I could force all the right wingnut Jesus freaks to do so. Not that it, or anything factual, could penetrate.
It is an astonishing recap of the generations of sleaze, corruption, physical and sexual abuse that has long saturated the sty of self worshiping charlatans and hypocrites, and the Repugnicant Party they have captured. All embodying the Evangelists Creed: "If the Lord hadn't have wanted them sheared, He wouldn't have made them sheep".
Read it and weep (when you're done laughing at it).
Oops.
I sincerely apologize for characterizing the Wingnut environment as a sty. That was a completely unwarranted insult -- to pigs.
I should have called it a cesspool. Mea culpa.
The SCOTUS declines....and sometimes that's good.
https://www.investwanow.org/press-releases/statement-scotus-declines-to-hear-lawsuit-to-take-away-900-million-year-from-kids-education-and-give-it-to-washingtons-mega-rich/?
Now, if it will only save the fish and not the Kochs.
digby and McCay Coppins make the argument that Americans need to be exposed more to the current Donald Trump and not just the talking heads opinions of him and short clips of his speeches. I think for most people seeing is still believing.
A note to the National Media: You've done everything in your power
to just let Trump skate back into Office that he belongs nowhere near.
With very few exceptions, you keep giving Trump a pass on his
behavior-out of some warped, misplaced sense of respect for him,
simply because of the Office he once held (and trashed).
Here's a newsflash for you: That ship has long since sailed-Trump is
no longer worthy of your uncritical respect. Whatever deference he
once deserved, he forfeited many times over-each time he threatens
anew: retribution, and mayhem, and big trouble, and terminating the
Constitution, ad-nauseum.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/1/15/2217541/Dear-National-
Media-Don-t-Look-Now-But-You-ve-been-Played
@Forrest Morris: The news media, especially the teevee media -- generally speaking -- are crass & irresponsible. But they're not as stupid as we sometimes make them out to be. They built Trump up in 2016 because his audacious remarks were "entertaining" (and the media, of course, are in the entertainment business).
Now that Trump is tired and boring, they're not covering him much. Their excuse -- repeated ad nauseam -- is that they feel so bad that they over-covered Trump in 2016, but the real reason is that they lose audience when Trump comes on the teevee.
The media are the big winners here; the American public, not so much.
Speaking of books, who knew that just reading a book could make
you famous, or at least, recognized?
After driving someone to the local hospital, I had a 5 hour wait in one
of the lounges. There were about 30 persons, 29 of them on their
cellphones or computers, and one sat reading a book (me).
Every so often, a nurse would come into the waiting room and call a
name over the microphone for someone to follow her to a recovery
room.
Then she came out and said "Forrest, follow me" so I was curious and
asked how she knew who I was.
Says she "I noticed that you were the only one reading a book, and
your friend told me your name and that you would be reading a book.
(He didn't tell her that I'd also be eating a PB&J sandwich).
P.S. Forgot to mention that the book was "Mother, Nature" which is
banned in a number of states, not for the content of the book, but
because the author, Jedidiah Jenkins is gay.
I can imagine that in a lot of states, say, Texas, that their libraries
have only a few dozen books left.
Forrest,
But among we cognoscenti, you are already famous for all the right (left) reasons!
I read the Digby post-- thanks so much. I agree-- the "King"/"God" indeed looks and sounds awful through the clips, and I don't think that matters to any of his public admirers. They are so poisoned (blood?) by the sludge rolling out of their networks that they no longer know the real him, if they ever did. We know they in the hinterlands already hate the eastern elite (raises hand: several degrees, live in the East) so it matters not what kind of people WE are. He will be elected simply because they can assemble, wear their terrible outfits, wave their terrible flags, and trash the "elite" enemies and trash Biden with lies about the 2020 election, the wars, his age, and any number of vendettas having to do with his family. I am hoping all the rest of us elites vote-- I can't imagine anyone I know staying home, but people do. They figure it won't make a difference. (Nikki won her one county by one vote, so...) Anyhow, I remain sort of hopeful, but wish all the energy devoted to covering the Carcasses was worth it, cuz I don't see it. I also reiterate that the elite media is largely in a coma when reporting anything and they share a huge amount of the blame for this guy's image.
Picture of the moment: https://democraticunderground.com/100218601498
Trump thanks the 2.7% of Iowa registered voters for his big win,
(with a 3% margin of error).
Hiroko Tabuchi, in the New York Times, reports a Supreme Court case to be argued tomorrow "about a group of commercial fishermen who oppose a government fee that they consider unreasonable. But the lawyers who have helped to propel their case to the nation’s highest court have a far more powerful backer: the petrochemicals billionaire Charles Koch....The case is one of the most consequential to come before the justices in years. A victory for the fishermen would do far more than push aside the monitoring fee, part of a system meant to prevent overfishing, that they objected to. It would very likely sharply limit the power of many federal agencies to regulate not only fisheries and the environment, but also health care, finance, telecommunications and other activities, legal experts say."
Shared link: SC case could sharply curtail the government’s regulatory authority
Laura,
Good find.
My comment:
Interesting case. Interesting in part because of who is interested in it (and funding it) but also because as I understand it, its objection to the regulatory state is that the government is looking at the fishermen while they are fishing.
Kinda hope they win. Of course, the fish will disappear from over-fishing, but those darn state troopers who spy on me when I drive will have to go away too.
As Spock says, it's only logical.