;)
The Conversation -- October 30, 2023
Trump Gags on Gag Order. Rachel Weiner & Isaac Arnsdorf of the Washington Post: "On Thursday, former attorney general William P. Barr made some less-than-flattering comments about Donald Trump. Twice over the weekend, the former president snarled back -- first insulting Barr's appearance in a campaign speech, then calling Barr 'gutless' and 'weak on social media. But one of those comments came just after a court order barring Trump from going after witnesses -- such as Barr -- who could testify at trial about his attempts to undo the 2020 election results. Minutes before the Truth Social post, U.S. District Court Judge Tanya S. Chutkan had reimposed a gag order barring Trump from comments that 'target ... any reasonably foreseeable witness' in the federal case in D.C. charging him with illegal interference in the 2020 election. When he posted about Barr, Trump had not yet been told by his attorneys that the gag order was in effect and was not intending to violate it, according to a campaign aide. A few minutes after the Barr insult, Trump wrote that he had just learned the gag order was reinstated...." ~~~
~~~ Marie: If what I heard on MSNBC is true (and I'm not sure of the source but I think it was an expert lawyer), the Trump is still in trouble: although he may or may not have known Judge Chutkan's gag order was back in force when he wrote his twoot,* he has not taken it down.
* Twoot: A "truth," as Trump calls his tweets, uttered by a bratty child from a Long Island borough with a tendency to rhotacization; thus, "tr" sounds like "tw" & "th" sounds like "t."
No Country for Old Men. Michael Bender & Michael Gold of the New York Times: "On Sunday in Sioux City, Iowa, [Donald] Trump wrongly thanked supporters of Sioux Falls, a South Dakota town about 75 miles away, correcting himself only after being pulled aside onstage and informed of the error. It was strikingly similar to a fictional scene that Mr. Trump acted out earlier this month, pretending to be [President] Biden mistaking Iowa for Idaho and needing an aide to straighten him out.... As the 2024 race for the White House heats up, Mr. Trump's increased verbal blunders threaten to undermine one of Republicans' most potent avenues of attack, and the entire point of his onstage pantomime: the argument that Mr. Biden is too old to be president."
Texas. Patrick Svitek of the Texas Tribune: Texas state "Attorney General Ken Paxton's long-delayed trial on securities fraud charges has been set for April 15. State District Judge Andrea Beall scheduled the trial during a hearing Monday morning in Houston.... Paxton was indicted on the charges over eight years ago, months into his first term as the state's top law enforcement official. The charges stem from accusations that in 2011 he tried to solicit investors in a McKinney technology company without disclosing that it was paying him to promote its stock. Paxton has pleaded not guilty."
Virginia. Laura Vozzella of the Washington Post: "Gov. Glenn Youngkin's elections team has admitted in the run-up to pivotal General Assembly elections that it removed nearly 3,400 qualified voters from the state's rolls, far higher than the administration's previous estimate of 270. Elections officials under Youngkin (R) acknowledged what it called the mistaken removal of about 3,400 voters in a news release Friday -- five weeks after early voting began for Nov. 7 General Assembly elections.... The news release claimed that local registrars had already reinstated all but 'approximately 100' of the voters, all of whom had been convicted of felonies, had their voting rights restored and then went on to violate the terms of their probation. The state's computer software had erroneously counted the probation violations as new felonies that disqualified them from voting, administration officials have said.... Democrats say the administration's shifting accounts [of the purge] cast doubt on the intentions and competence of Youngkin, who won the governorship two years ago promising to bring 'election integrity' and business-world management savvy to state government."
~~~~~~~~~~
"Lord of the Flies." Ben Jacobs of Vox: "After more than three weeks without a speaker, the elevation of the previously obscure Mike Johnson of Louisiana to lead the House was a signal that finally the chamber could get back to governing. In the next day, members forced votes next week on two resolutions of censure and one of expulsion. In other words, things aren’t getting less weird anytime soon. But they won't be returning to the status quo under former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, either. There will now be a new normal as Congress has to deal with pressing issues. The government will shut down at midnight on November 18, Israel and Hamas are at war after the horrific attack Hamas launched on October 7, much of Ukraine is still occupied by Russia, and lawmakers are grappling with how to address the near-record numbers of undocumented immigrants entering the country. The House will face this new normal with a weak speaker in a scenario that one veteran Republican insider compared to 'Lord of the Flies' after the defenestration spree of the past three weeks...."
Sam Fossum & Manu Raju of CNN: "Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who has held up military promotions for nine months, slammed a proposal being floated to change the chamber's rules to allow a vote on many of the nominations en masse and attacked the White House and Senate Democrats for not negotiating with him. 'It's typical of this place. This administration would rather burn the Senate down and that's what would happen.... If you change the rules of the Senate then it lasts forever,' Tuberville told CNN's Manu Raju.... All Senate Democrats would have to join with nine Republicans for this latest plan to work. The bloc of nominees wouldn't include some higher-level military promotions, which senators would still want to confirm one at a time. The proposal could go to the Senate Rules Committee as soon as this week, a source told CNN Thursday.... Tuberville's hold is affecting a number of senior military posts in the Middle East as the US deploys units to the area amid heightened tensions after a series of attacks on coalition bases and the crisis in Israel and Gaza."
Alan Feuer of the New York Times: "A federal judge reinstated a gag order on ... Donald J. Trump on Sunday that had been temporarily placed on hold nine days earlier, reimposing restrictions on what Mr. Trump can say about witnesses and prosecutors in the case in which he stands accused of seeking to overturn the 2020 election. In making her decision, the judge, Tanya S. Chutkan, also denied a request by Mr. Trump's lawyers to freeze the gag order for what could have been a considerably longer period, saying it can remain in effect as a federal appeals court in Washington reviews it.... Prosecutors working for Mr. Smith argued that the gag order needed to be put back in place at once because while it was on hold, Mr. Trump had violated it by attacking Mr. Smith at least three times by name. The former president, the prosecutors noted, had also violated the frozen order by twice making public comments about Mark Meadows, his former chief of staff, who could appear as a witness in the case." The ABC News story is here. (Also linked yesterday.)
Jesse Wegman of the New York Times: "At a pivotal moment during one of the Watergate hearings in 1973, President Richard Nixon's counsel, John Dean, asked a question that still resonates: 'How in God's name could so many lawyers get involved in something like this?'... Fifty years after Watergate, the nation is once again confronted with a president who grossly abused the powers of his office, leading to criminal prosecutions. And once again, that abuse relied heavily on the involvement of lawyers. If Mr. Trump's 2020 racket was 'a coup in search of a legal theory,' as one federal judge put it, these lawyers provided the theory, and the phony facts to back it up. In doing so, they severely tarnished their profession.... A disturbing number of experienced attorneys, some of whom once held prestigious posts in government and academia, were willing and eager to tell transparent lies and concoct laughable legal arguments to help a con man stay in the White House against the will of the American people." ~~~
~~~ Marie: I am struck that Wegman, although he names names, skips right over Bill Barr, suggesting to me that Barr's self-serving & very tardy come-to-Jesus turnabout is faring well.
Presidential Race 2024
Trump Forgets Where He Is. Scott Lemieux in LG&$: "The press is still trying to EMAILS! Biden's age while his almost equally old opponent keeps saying stuff like this on a daily basis: 'Though Donald Trump often makes fun of Joe Biden for his old age, Trump himself apparently forgot where he was at during a speech in Sioux City, Iowa, Sunday, greeting the crowd with, "Hello to a place where we've done very well, Sioux Falls. Thank you very much."' Sioux Falls is located more than 80 miles north in neighboring South Dakota."
Adam Nagourney of the New York Times: "The decision by Mike Pence to end his presidential campaign on Saturday was a bow to what had finally become inevitable.... The root of his campaign's collapse -- and, very possibly, his political career -- goes back to 2016, when Mr. Pence accepted [Donald] Trump's offer to be his running mate.... He had never learned to manage his relationship with Mr. Trump, to navigate the deep cultural and personal differences between a taciturn Midwestern governor and a flashy New Yorker who never played by the rules of politics that had governed Mr. Pence's career." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Ken Meyer of Mediaite: "...Donald Trump made it clear he expects Mike Pence to endorse his 2024 campaign.... [Trump said in Las Vegas,] 'People are leaving now and they're all endorsing me. I don't know about Mike Pence. He should endorse me. You know why? Because I had a great, successful presidency and he was the vice president. He should endorse me. I chose him, made him vice president. But people in politics can be very disloyal. I've never seen anything like it.'... In the past, Trump has repeatedly defended his supporters who besieged the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, including those who wanted to 'Hang Mike Pence.' Trump's former aides have testified under oath that the former president thought Pence 'deserved' to be hanged by the riotous mob." (Also linked yesterday.)
Marcy Wheeler: Mike Pence just solved one big gag-order problem: "So long as Pence was in the race running on the policy of upholding the Constitution, as he did on January 6, there was a clear conflict between the gag's restrictions on Trump's attacks on witnesses and its explicit permission to attack the policies of his rivals in the 2024 Presidential race. That conflict has been resolved. These First Amendment questions are still difficult. This appeal may still give Trump a vehicle to get SCOTUS to protect the kind of mob incitement that is at the core of the indictment. But [Saturday], Pence resolved the most difficult of the questions."
Motown Plus. Neal Boudette of the New York Times: "After winning major gains in wages and benefits from two of the three Detroit automakers, the United Automobile Workers union is looking beyond th Motor City to car companies operating nonunion factories across the South. In a speech to union members live-streamed on Facebook Sunday night, the U.A.W. president, Shawn Fain, said the union planned a push to organize plants at some of the nonunion automakers, such as Toyota, Honda and Tesla. 'One of our biggest goals coming out of this historic contract victory is to organize like we've never organized before,' Mr. Fain said. 'When we return to the bargaining table in 2028, it won't just be with the Big Three. It will be the Big Five or Big Six.' The statement was one of Mr. Fain's clearest to date that the U.A.W. intended to renew efforts to unionize the plants of foreign-owned automakers and Tesla, which operates nonunion vehicle plants in California and Texas."
~~~~~~~~~~
Maine. Shimon Prokupecz, et al., of CNN: "CNN's reporting raises new questions about the lack of follow-through to make sure [Robert Card] was not a danger despite serious warning signs that were known by authorities and are now being detailed for the first time.... The Maine National Guard asked local police to check on the reservist who killed 18 people after a soldier became concerned he would 'snap and commit a mass shooting,' according to information shared with CNN. Officers from the Sagadahoc County and Kennebec County Sheriff's Offices responded and tried to contact Robert Card on September 16.... The Sagadahoc County sergeant called for backup, tried without success to talk to the reservist and then received disturbing details from the Maine National Guard and the shooter's family. The responding sergeant from the Sagadahoc County Sheriff's Office was told 'when [he] answers the door at his trailer, in the past he usually does so with a handgun in hand out of view from the person outside,' according to the source familiar with the welfare check report."
~~~~~~~~~~
Israel/Palestine
The New York Times' live updates of developments Monday in the Israel/Hamas war are here: "Israel's military said on Monday that it had hit hundreds of Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip over the last few days, continuing to bomb and expand ground operations in the enclave, as President Biden called on Israel to prioritize the 'protection of civilians.' Several health facilities in Gaza were damaged over the weekend and hospitals there continue to receive evacuation orders from Israel, the World Health Organization's office that operates in Gaza said overnight. The agency again urged Israel to rescind its evacuation order, saying it was impossible to clear hospitals without risking the lives of patients.... The largest shipment of food, water, medical supplies and other humanitarian aid since the start of the war reached Gaza on Sunday, according to the United Nations. The 33 trucks that entered are a fraction of what civilians need in Gaza. The Israeli military said overnight that it had responded to fire from Syrian and Lebanese territory. Fighting on those borders has been nearly constant during the war with Hamas. Israeli forces were also fighting in the West Bank, according to accounts in Palestinian media." ~~~
~~~ CNN's live updates are here.
Ronen Bergman, et al., of the New York Times: "The most powerful military force in the Middle East had not only completely underestimated the magnitude of the [October 7] attack, it had totally failed in its intelligence-gathering efforts, mostly due to hubris and the mistaken assumption that Hamas was a threat contained. Despite Israel's sophisticated technological prowess in espionage, Hamas gunmen had undergone extensive training for the assault, virtually undetected for at least a year. The fighters, who were divided into different units with specific goals, had meticulous information on Israel's military bases and the layout of kibbutzim. The country's once invincible sense of security was shattered.... It is clear the attacks were possible because of a cascade of failures over recent years -- not hours, days or weeks.... Overall, arrogance among Israeli political and security officials convinced them that the country's military and technological superiority to Hamas would keep the terrorist group in check." This is a longish article that outlines causes of Israel's failure to detect the October 7 attack.
Michael Tov of Haaretz: "Facing a barrage of criticism, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu deleted a controversial social media post on Sunday in which he blamed the defense and intelligence establishment for giving him faulty assessments before the deadly Hamas attack on October 7. The prime minister then published a new tweet. 'I was wrong,' he wrote, adding that 'the things I said following the press conference should not have been said, and I apologize for that. I fully support the heads of [Israel's] security services.' In a post overnight Saturday, Netanyahu asserted that he had never received any warning about Hamas' intentions to start a war against Israel and blamed the defense establishment -- citing Aharon Haliva and Ronen Bar, the heads of Military Intelligence and the Shin Bet security service -- for Israel's failure to anticipate the attack on October 7." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Isabel Kershner of the New York Times: "For many Israelis, the episode confirmed suspicions of rifts and disarray at the top during one of the worst crises in the country's 75-year history and reinforced qualms about Mr. Netanyahu's leadership.... Among the first to call out Mr. Netanyahu's middle-of-the night comments was Benny Gantz, the centrist former defense minister and military chief who, for the sake of national unity, left the ranks of the parliamentary opposition to join Mr. Netanyahu's emergency war cabinet in the days after the massacre by Hamas.... Opinion surveys since Oct. 7 have indicated overwhelming public trust in the military and plummeting faith in government officials."
Abu Bashir, et al., of the New York Times: "On Friday at sunset..., the weak phone and internet service that had allowed some semblance of life to continue inside the blockaded enclave was suddenly severed. Two American officials said the United States believed Israel was responsible for the communications loss.... Panic rippled through the territory.... The blackout stirred terror -- and fury -- across the Gaza Strip.... Connectivity restarted spontaneously on Sunday around 4 a.m., said Abdulmajeed Melhem, chief executive of Paltel Group, the main Palestinian telecommunications company. The company had made no repairs and had no understanding of how or why service had partly returned, he said.... Isolated from the outside world -- and each other -- Gazans faced scenes from an apocalyptic movie."
Russia/Israel. CBS/AP: "Hundreds of people stormed into the main airport in Russia's Dagestan region and onto the landing field Sunday, chanting antisemitic slogans and seeking passengers arriving on a flight from Tel Aviv, Israel, Russian news agencies and social media reported. Russian news reports said the crowd surrounded the airliner, which belonged to Russian carrier Red Wings. Authorities closed the airport in Makhachkala, the capital of the predominantly Muslim region, and police converged on the facility. Dagestan's Ministry of Health said more than 20 people were injured, with two in critical condition. It said the injured included police officers and civilians.... Video on social media showed some in the crowd waving Palestinian flags and others trying to overturn a police car. Antisemitic slogans can be heard being shouted and some in the crowd examined the passports of arriving passengers, apparently in an attempt to identify those who were Israeli."
Share Article
Reader Comments (9)
Jake Tapper, quite correctly denounces Qanon quack and self-promoting traitor MTG for faux, and selective, outrage about antisemitism.
Greene is pissed, pissed, I tells ya, about Rashida Tlaib. But as Tapper points out, Greene had nothing to say about Fatty inviting a Holocaust denier, Nick Fuentes, to dinner at Marred a Lardo. In fact, Greene herself has connections to Fuentes.
But Tapper errs in his conclusion when he instructs the vicious Greene that “This shit is not a game.”
Jake, to these people everything is a game. Things like morality, ethics, basic human decency, democracy, the United Ststes itself…it’s all a game, everything is contingent and useful only as far as it benefits them.
Instructing Greene on consistency in a moral position is like criticizing Trump for putting lives in danger to help his own cause. “Pearls before swine” doesn’t come close.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/oct/25/skin-cancer-soap-
virginia-student
A high school student from Annandale Va is named "America's Top
Young Scientist" after developing a bar of soap that could be useful
in the treatment of melanoma.
It contains compounds that could reactivate dendritic cells that guard
human skin.
I think Congress should give some kind of recognition to this 14 year
old (if they're not too busy doing important stuff, like infighting and
destroying democracy).
Oh heavens, I forgot. Congress would probably pass on that since
the 14 year old is a black kid.
Not sure why, but this morning I looked up Walter Cronkite’s announcement of the death of President Kennedy, carried live on CBS on that dreadful day. For fans of irony, the first bulletin came across during the soap opera “As the World Turns”.
The clip is notable both for Cronkite’s professionalism, his mostly stoic presentation of the facts, and the momentary catch in his throat as he reported news of such a violent act. There was nothing resembling the sort of hyperbolic screaming and unsupported suppositions made popular these days by Faux “news” readers.
But what stuck out was the genuine sense of a stunned sensibility. Cronkite was no weeping willow. He had covered combat in WWII, including as part of a bombing run over Nazi Germany, from the inside of a B-17. The shooting death of the president however, clearly knocked him off his stride.
But today, we have a former President* who calls loudly for his enemies to be murdered, who instigated a deadly riot in order to hold on to power. We have a entire party calling for more guns in the aftermath of each new mass murder. And we have TV personalities applauding the violence.
We have right-wing commentators writing books about murdering liberals!
As the world turns, indeed. Soaps back then tended to be fairly conservative but ATWT was especially so. Its primary sponsor, Proctor and Gamble, looked askance at storylines involving any immoral behavior that was allowed to go unpunished, such as adultery.
Now we have a presidential candidate, a convicted rapist, who brags about sexually assaulting women and attacks any who call him on it. His fans, right-wing evangelicals, look the other way at his astonishing litany of moral failings and outright criminal actions. What would Proctor and Gamble have thought about those storylines?
And today, especially at Faux, lazy liars sit in a studio and read made up bullshit, and pride themselves on being “journalists”. Some years ago, a friend in the TV news business told me that he really felt he had made it when he was hired by The NY Times. One day, after work, sitting with fellow reporters in a bar favored by members of the fourth estate, he heard a fire engine go by. His initial reaction was to run out to see what was going on. Then he thought, “I don’t have to do that anymore. I’m in the big leagues now.” But as he was thinking that, he saw a man at the bar grab his hat and coat and bolt out the door and down the street after the fire trucks. It was Walter Cronkite.
Can you imagine TuKKKer KKKarlson doing that?
@ForrestMorris: I hate to disappoint you. Congress will not recognize that student. And not because he's Black. They won't recognize him because in the House anyway, the majority is extremely suspicious of anything science-y. They're more likely to honor "America's Top Young Conspiracy Theorist."
Open letter to Florida Governor Rhonda Santis:
Hey Gurl, wassup?
Just kidding.
But seriously Ron, I have a very difficult time thinking of anything in which I am less interested than other people’s sexual activities. Have you considered therapy for your voyeuristic perversion? Get some help, Ron. Try to get your dirty little mind off of other people’s genitals. It ain’t healthy.
And speaking of your health: I hope you wash your hands after you’ve been crawling around on the floor of public toilets, peeking under the doors of stalls. I suppose I have used public toilets as often as anyone, but I have never seen another person’s privates in a public toilet. I don’t know what sort of places you frequent, or where you and your pals go to ‘hang out’, but this isn’t an issue for normal, healthy people.
Get some help, Ron.
Newsweek
"A group of Russian nationals were able to donate to newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson’s campaign in 2018 by funneling the money through a U.S. company."
His team says they gave the money back after they found out, but it makes one wonder about his opposition to money going to Ukraine to fight off the Russian attack.
Boy, time flies when your being dumb. It’s been about a year since Elon (Free the Fascists!) Musk took over Twitter and turned that social media Goliath to a rat infested, broke-ass, advertiser averse waste dump overrun by beetle brained bigots and Russian hacker farm trolls.
Soon after buying up Twitter, bills started coming due, then the layoffs began followed by the hollowing out of content moderation forces.
“Things quickly went downhill from there. Free Press and our allies launched the #StopToxicTwitter coalition soon after Musk reneged on his pledge to combat the spread of hate and disinformation. We urged the platform’s top advertisers to pause all placements on Twitter until they received assurances that Musk would safeguard their brands. Advertisers left Twitter in droves: Within three months of the launch of #StopToxicTwitter, more than 500 advertisers stopped their Twitter spending, sending a powerful message to Musk that they would not bankroll the unchecked spread of hate and disinformation. The advertiser exodus, which continued through the year, is a major contributor to the precipitous drop in revenue at Twitter.”
Yeah. Way to go!
But Musky has a plan! (Don’t all grifters?)
Charge more for the same shit! Yeah! That’ll do it. But then there’s that pesky problem of advertisers fleeing like they just found out that, as contestants on that game show “The Floor is Lava”, it really is. Lava, that is. Hmmm…
Hey! Let’s give TuKKKer KKKarlson a major perch on the platform! That’ll do it!
“That’s right. Carlson, whose former Fox News show was so toxic that only the My Pillow guy and a handful of companies you’ve never heard of would advertise on Fox News while it aired, is allegedly part of the grand plan to bring advertisers back to the Musk Midlife Crisis Corporation.”
Well, there’s gotta be some other way to stiff the tubes and pick their pockets…
How ‘bout Elon Musk Savings and Loan?
“Elon Musk wants X to be the center of your financial world, handling anything in your life that deals with money. He expects those features to launch by the end of 2024, he told X employees during an all-hands call on Thursday, saying that people will be surprised with ‘just how powerful it is.’”
Yeah, sure. Let’s give all our money, including banking and financial information, passwords, financial history, and whatever spare change falls out of your pockets to the guy who last year set the all time Guinness Book record for losing the most money ever: $200 billion, in a little over a year.
Hey, he’s gotta have some way to pay TuKKkums. Disinformation and lies cost a ton.
Oh yeah, one other thing I forgot to mention. Elon (Mr. Sandman) Musk also wants Twitter, X, Sloppy Joe’s, whatever he’s calling it today, to be a dating app.
Yup. Now, would that be an X rated dating app?
Maybe you’re looking to meet a Matt Gaetz-type guy. But he might want to traffick your granddaughter. Or you could be in the market for a Lauren Bobo sort if you’re interested in some public groping and annoying vaping.
Can you see it now?
Single (sort of) VERY white manly gun knobber Proud Boy with a garage full of C4 and closets full of assault rifles, seeks bimbo who knows her place for some canoodling under pictures of Jesus in the courtroom with Trump, as we plan for snuffing us some Democrats.
All the best people.
Molly Jong-Fast in Vanity Fair describes Mike Johnson's challenges as speaker, highlighting "his enormous catalog of comments showcasing his wildly out-of-the-mainstream, religious views...staunchly anti-LGBTQ+ rights" and so on,
Welcome to MAGA Mike's House