;)
The Conversation -- September 16, 2023
Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times: "Reading ... [Mitt Romney's] surprisingly harsh and unsparing ... [criticism of his fellow Republicans], I wonder how much of it is Romney's sublimated criticism of himself.... Romney ... played a significant role in giving Trump mainstream political credibility.... This was the Romney who ... did a great deal to appeal to the most viciously right-wing figures in his party.... Romney was, not unlike the colleagues he criticizes, willing to say whatever it took to win power, even if it meant smearing nearly half the country as essentially unproductive...." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Bouie doesn't mention it, but it's worth remembering that Romney made his sizeable fortune as a ruthless venture capitalist who specialized in leveraged buyouts & quick sales that maximized the value he could extract from the targeted companies. He's not exactly a model of probity. He did not learn his predatory tendency on his father's knee: George Romney was "a folk hero of the American automotive industry" who as CEO of American Motors returned the part of his annual income he considered excessive.
Maureen Dowd of the New York Times writes about President Biden's staff muzzling him. "Is his less-than-stellar inner circle undermining the boss and giving ammunition to the nasty conservative story line about how the 80-year-old president is losing it?... By publicly treating him as though he's not in control of his faculties, by cutting him off mid-thought as though he's faltering and needs caretaking, they play into the hands of Trumpsters. His vulnerability becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.... Biden needs to start looking like he's in command. His staff is going to have to roll with him and take some risks and stop jerking the reins."
Martin Pengelly of the Guardian: "Jenna Ellis -- the Donald Trump lawyer who like the former president faces criminal charges regarding attempted election subversion in his defeat by Joe Biden in 2020 -- says she will not vote for him in the future because he is a 'malignant narcissist' who cannot admit mistakes.... 'Why I have chosen to distance is because of that frankly malignant narcissistic tendency to simply say that he's never done anything wrong.' Ellis, 38, was speaking on her show on American Family Radio, a rightwing evangelical network run by the American Family Association...." MB: Or maybe Ellis's about-face has something to do with the not-surprising fact that Trump won't authorize his PAC to help Ellis with the legal bills she's accruing in defending herself against charges brought against her in the Trump fake election-fraud conspiracy.
** Texas Is Still Texas and Republicans Are Still Republicans. Paxton Acquitted!! Zach Despart of the Texas Tribune: "The Texas Senate on Saturday acquitted Attorney General Ken Paxton of 16 articles of impeachment alleging corruption and bribery, his most artful escape in a career spent courting controversy and skirting consequences of scandal. No article received more than 14 of the required 21 votes to convict. Only two of 19 Republican Senators, Bob Nichols of Jacksonville and Kelly Hancock of North Richland Hills, voted in favor of convicting for any article -- a stark contrast to the nearly 70% of House Republicans who impeached the attorney general in May. The dramatic votes capped a two-week trial where a parade of witnesses, including former senior officials under Paxton, testified that the attorney general had repeatedly abused his office by helping his friend, struggling Austin real estate investor Nate Paul, investigate and harass his enemies, delay foreclosure sales of his properties and obtain confidential records on the police investigating him. In return, House impeachment managers said Paul paid to renovate Paxton's Austin home and helped him carry out and cover up an extramarital affair with a former Senate aide." ~~~
~~~ The New York Times ran a liveblog.
Michigan. Tim Craig of the Washington Post: "A Michigan jury acquitted three men on Friday of state charges related to the plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2020, capping multiple legal proceedings that centered on right-wing extremism and the dangers facing the country's political leaders.... When the verdict was announced, people in the courtroom gasped while the three men cried and hugged supporters, the Associated Press reported. During the trial, state prosecutors had argued that [Eric] Molitor and [twin] ...brothers [William Null & Michael Null] had participated in military-style drills and cased Whitmer's vacation property in Antrim County in northern Michigan.... But attorneys for Molitor, 39, and the Null brothers, 41, argued that the men did not actively take part in the plot and did not consider it to be a serious threat to Whitmer."
Pennsylvania. Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs of the New York Times: How a convicted murderer & prison escapee evaded capture for 13 days.
~~~~~~~~~~
Marie: In today's news, we learn that the GOP clown car is running on empty, but the dangerous villain who is operating the vehicle by remote control still may manage to mow us all down. Meanwhile, certain damsels in the court of the clowns are in various states of distress.
Rachel Weiner of the Washington Post: "The Justice Department is asking the judge overseeing Donald Trump's federal election fraud trial to impose some limitations on the former president's public comments, saying he is seeking to undermine the criminal justice system with his incendiary rhetoric.... The request was made under seal earlier this month; a redacted version was published late Friday. Trump opposes the request.... The 'limited' order [prosecutors] request would bar specific statements about witnesses, as well as any 'disparaging and inflammatory, or intimidating' comments about anyone involved in the case, including potential jurors.... Right now, prosecutors say, Trump is making inappropriate comments on a 'near-daily basis.' Examples given in the 19-page filing include Truth Social posts in which Trump called [Jack] Smith 'deranged' and his fellow prosecutors 'thugs,' [Judge Tanya] Chutkan a 'fraud, [Mike] Pence 'delusional,' and D.C. 'filthy and crime ridden,' as well as one in which Trump simply wrote, the day after his arraignment, in all caps, 'If you go after me, I'm coming after you!'" The New York Times story is here. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Katelyn Polantz of CNN: "... Donald Trump's public statements about the federal election interference investigation led to the harassment of witnesses, according to prosecutors with special counsel Jack Smith's office. Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing the federal case against Trump related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election, is weighing what to do with the special counsel prosecutors' complaints regarding the alleged harassment. The allegations were made public by the court Friday, after previous court filings indicated prosecutors were taking issue with Trump's 'extrajudicial statements' about the case. 'In its Motion, the government seeks to establish that Defendant has publicly criticized his perceived adversaries and is aware that this criticism has led to their harassment,' Chutkan wrote in an opinion Friday to unseal part of the discussions." This is an earlier version of the updated story; I'm leaving it as is because it emphasizes what a clear & present danger Trump is. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Here's the government's motion, via Politico. (Also linked yesterday.)
Kyle Cheney of Politico: "prosecutors secretly argued in April that if Donald Trump learned of their efforts to access his Twitter account, his public disclosure of the development could 'precipitate violence.'... Informing Trump about the Twitter search warrant 'could precipitate violence as occurred following the public disclosure of the search warrant executed at Mar-a-Lago,' the prosecutors warned. The new filings, part of a monthslong legal battle between Twitter ... and the special counsel's team over whether the social media company ... could inform Trump about the search warrant the investigators had obtained before it complied with its directives.... Prosecutors -- and ultimately U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell -- ... sharply rejected Twitter's notion that Trump's account might contain privileged material. Howell held Twitter in contempt in February and fined the company $350,000 for missing court-ordered deadlines to comply with the prosecutors' search warrant." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Tierney Sneed, et al., of CNN: "Twitter turned over at least 32 direct messages from ... Donald Trump's account -- @realDonaldTrump -- to special counsel Jack Smith earlier this year as part of the federal election subversion investigation, according to newly unsealed court filings. In seeking the messages, prosecutors specifically argued that Trump posed a risk of tampering with evidence.... It is not clear exactly how the [direct] messages have informed the investigation." (Also linked yesterday.)
Pre-empting Trump. Tyler Pager & Lisa Rein of the Washington Post: "The Biden administration proposed a new rule Friday seeking to bolster protections for federal workers, an explicit attempt to thwart plans by ... Donald Trump and his allies to replace career government officials with political loyalists should he be reelected. The rule seeks to halt any attempt to gut the foundation of the federal civil service, whose 2.2 million career employees serve any occupant of the White House without regard to partisanship -- and have rights to due process at every level. In the waning days of his administration, Trump tried to subvert those principles with a sweeping executive order that stripped job protections from employees in policy roles across the government.... [Trump's] executive order was the product of a four-year campaign by conservatives to bring to heel what they called a 'deep state' of bureaucrats who were resistant to the policies of the Trump White House.... [It] amounted to the most significant assault on the nonpartisan civil service in its history.... President Biden revoked that executive order on the third day of his presidency, and the new rule Friday seeks to further protect those officials." ~~~
~~~ Marie: This is another example of how eliminating the filibuster would likely have prevented any future attempts by Trump or another Trumpy president* to gut the civil service. As the WashPo report notes, "Democratic-sponsored legislation with the rough contours of Friday's proposed regulation cleared the House last year but not the Senate." As it stands, I don't think President Biden's executive order will have a long-lasting effect, as a superseding presidential order can overturn it.
Dana Milbank of the Washington Post: "The House is currently being run not by Speaker Kevin McCarthy but by backbenchers Matt Gaetz of Florida and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. Two days before departing for the August recess, McCarthy (Calif.) told his House Republican caucus that they could not justify launching a formal impeachment inquiry into President Biden over unproven (and unfounded) allegations. But on Aug. 31, Greene announced that she would not 'vote to fund the government unless we have passed an impeachment inquiry.' Later, Gaetz announced that he would speak on the House floor on Sept. 12, the first day the chamber reconvened after recess, to detail plans to seek McCarthy's ouster as speaker if he impeded the impeachment of Biden.... Donald Trump joined in the impeach-Biden lobbying.... 'Today, I am directing our House committee to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden,' [McCarthy] announced in a hastily arranged statement outside his Capitol office on Tuesday morning -- an hour before Gaetz was scheduled to deliver his speech on the floor denouncing McCarthy.' Read on.
~~~ And it's all going very smoothly: ~~~
~~~ Jacqueline Alemany & Devlin Barrett of the Washington Post: "... tensions escalated between Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee and the Justice Department.... A top GOP House investigator threatened to call Capitol Police to remove an FBI lawyer from a House office building Friday morning because he was unhappy that a senior FBI agent who appeared for a closed-door interview with the committee was accompanied by both a personal lawyer and an FBI lawyer.... Republicans have alleged that the agent, Elvis Chan, was involved with a Justice Department effort to censor conservative voices on social media.... Chan insisted on having both lawyers with him -- which [Chan's personal lawyer Larry] Berger said was unsurprising in this instance because Chan has been named in lawsuits stemming from his FBI work on social media. The committee did not back down, and at one point a person on the committee suggested they would summon the Capitol Police to remove the FBI lawyer....
"Meanwhile, the committee also tangled with the Justice Department this week as Republicans pressed for interviews with more mid-level officials who have been involved with the criminal investigation of [President] Biden's son Hunter.... The Justice Department ... has maintained a long-standing department practice of shielding line attorneys involved with ongoing investigations from Congress, leading to a growing standoff." ~~
~~~ Which brings us back to the sham impeachment inquiry: ~~~
~~~ ** Luke Broadwater of the New York Times: "As Republicans plunge forward with an impeachment inquiry looking into a complex web of allegations against President Biden, his family and his administration, witnesses they have summoned for closed-door interviews in recent weeks have undercut or pushed back against some of their major claims. In testimony this month, three witnesses from the F.B.I. and the I.R.S. have contradicted key assertions made by a whistle-blower who claimed there was political interference in the Justice Department's tax case against Mr. Biden's son, Hunter, according to hundreds of pages of transcripts obtained by The New York Times. Another former F.B.I. official, whom Republicans have accused of political bias in the Hunter Biden case, Timothy R. Thibault, condemned the allegations against him as 'false and misleading.' And a bookkeeper for the Biden family [-- Eric Schwerin --] told investigators in an informal interview that he was not aware of any financial wrongdoing by the president, according to notes taken by Democratic congressional aides and summarized in a report they released this week.... Recent testimony casts doubt on [Speaker Kevin McCarthy's] accusations [against President Biden].... Multiple witnesses have questioned another key piece of the Republican case: the allegations made by Gary Shapley, an I.R.S. agent turned whistle-blower who testified publicly that the investigation into Hunter Biden was tainted by political interference."
Andrew Jeong of the Washington Post: "Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) apologized for vaping and being disruptive during a performance of the musical 'Beetlejuice' at a city-owned theater in Denver, in a statement released by her campaign team late Friday.... [Boebert and a companion] had been reprimanded multiple times by [theater] staff for 'vaping, singing, [and] causing a disturbance' to other patrons, before being kicked out, according to an incident report shared by the city. As Boebert and her male companion are escorted out of the theater, camera footage shows her rebuking a staff member and saying, 'Do you know who I am?' and 'I will be contacting the mayor,' according to the city's incident report.... Drew Sexton, the congresswoman's campaign manager, had earlier denied accusations Boebert had been vaping, saying heavy fog machines and electronic cigarettes were being used during the show, and there might have been a misunderstanding." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Sexton's statement/lie apparently preceded release of a video, which I saw on the teevee, that clearly shows Boebert vaping; no "fog machines" were involved in the giant puff of smoke seen emanating from her e-cig. Although Boebert pretends to be pro-life, Boebert ignored a complaint of her vaping by a pregnant woman sitting nearby, according to an MSNBC on-air report. Boebert denied not just the vaping but also that a pregnant woman asked her to stop. (In addition, the video showed Boebert giving a theater employee the finger as she and her date are escorted out of the theater.) ~~~
~~~ Update: Josh Marshall of TPM goes to the videotape: "It's literally right there on video. Just like the pregnant woman said. Boebert's comical lies are all proven.... As you can see if you watch, it's pretty comprehensive.... You see Boebert rocking out, getting fondled by her current boyfriend, vaping, telling the pregnant lady to pound [sand]. There's even a little coda at the end where she's being escorted out by the usher and flips off a theater employee." Includes video, of course.
Presidential Race & Veep-Stakes 2024
Wherein Donald Pretends to Be Chivalrous. Matthew Chapman of the Raw Story: "... Donald Trump told Kristen Welker in a soon-to-be-released interview on NBC's 'Meet the Press' that he made the decision to keep former First Lady Melania Trump off the campaign trail for him, because he would rather not have her subjected to attacks,
~~~ Marie: While I'm aware that a general "tell" that Donald Trump is lying is that his lips are moving, another specific tell is when he prefaces a remark with "honestly." I don't think I've ever read his saying "honestly," when the word was not followed by an obvious lie. Donald posing as a courtly defender of his wife is fall-off-your-gallant-steed hilarious, even without the proof that he had to plow through one interview to come up with a fake answer in the next. ~~~
~~~ Update. Marie: Oh gosh, I spoke too soon. The NBC News report on the Welker interview indicates knight-in-shining-armor Donald will not be protecting his lady for long: "Former President Trump said Thursday that former First Lady Melania Trump may be back on the campaign trail with him 'pretty soon.'" What does he have to do to get Melanie to show up at a campaign event? Add another $1MM to her pre-nup payoff? As some cynical contributors suggested in yesterday's thread, Melanie may have a few teeny character flaws, but I'd say that at least she knows enough to stay as far away from her meal ticket husband at possible.
Marie: Last week I saw speculation that how Kristi Noem would be tapped as Donald Trump's 2024 running mate. Well, maybe not: ~~~
~~~ Ken Silverstein & Laura Collins of the Daily Mail: "A rising Republican star tipped by many to be Donald Trump's running mate should he win the presidential nomination has been involved in a clandestine affair for years, multiple sources tell DailyMail.com. Married South Dakota governor Kristi Noem, 51 -- who stresses her belief in 'family values' -- and Trump advisor Corey Lewandowski, who is also married, began carrying on in 2019, if not before. Now news of the relationship threatens to wreck Noem's chances of joining Trump's ticket in a potential rematch with President Joe Biden." MB: It is the Daily Mail. But still. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Eric Loomis in LG&$ disagrees with my speculation about Noem's veep chances: "Trump will probably name Noem his VP candidate because of this but you get your lolz these days when you can. And hey, I guess I can see why Pence won't meet with her alone. Mother would get jealous!... And should we speculate that it was Corey who wanted Noem to remake her face with plastic? It would be irresponsible not to speculate." MB: And this, after RockyGirl and others commented a few days ago upon Lauren Boebert's extraordinary gigantic sparkly headlights! (See videotape embedded in Josh Marshall's post.) It's as if some people don't think the pretty Republican ladies are for real. But can't we at least acknowledge that these GOP mesdames fit right in with the courtly ladies of yore, who applied every manner of artifice to enhance their looks?
Mary Beth Sheridan & Matthew Brown of the Washington Post: "Ovidio Guzmán, a son of former drug kingpin Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán who allegedly became a major trafficker himself -- and a protagonist in America's fentanyl boom -- has been extradited to the United States, the Justice Department said Friday. Prosecutors allege that the younger Guzmán, 33, helped run what Attorney General Merrick Garland has called 'the largest, most violent, and most prolific fentanyl trafficking operation in the world.' U.S. prosecutors say he and his brothers became key leaders of the Sinaloa cartel after their father was arrested in 2016. Mexican army and national guard troops captured Guzmán in the Sinaloa city of Culiacán in January in gun battles that left at least 29 people dead. He has been indicted in New York, Chicago and D.C. on federal charges of trafficking fentanyl, cocaine, heroin and other illegal drugs to the United States."
DeNeen Brown of the Washington Post: "On Sept. 15, 1963, dynamite ripped through the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., killing four Black girls in the church basement as they prepared to attend Sunday services. The powerful blast reduced the church to rubble, mangling cars in the parking lot and stopping clocks. The dynamite blew plaster off the walls and peeled the face off the image of Jesus in a stained-glass window.... Sixty years later, as the country continues to reel from recent high-profile police killings of unarmed Black Americans and lawmakers in several states restrict the teaching of Black history, the city of Birmingham is hosting a week of events to commemorate the victims of the church bombing and highlight the civil rights push that followed." Read on. ~~~
~~~ Erica Green & Abbie VanSickle of the New York Times: "Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson on Friday called on the nation to accept some of the ugliest truths in its history as she confronted the debates roiling the country about racism and violence against Black Americans. In a speech from the pulpit of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Justice Jackson, the first Black woman to serve on the nation's highest court, said that she made her first trip to Alabama 'to commemorate and mourn, celebrate -- and warn.' She was the keynote speaker to mark the 60th anniversary of a bombing by the Ku Klux Klan that killed four young girls at the church as they arrived for Sunday morning service."
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"A neuroscientist explains why stupidity is an existential threat to America".
Thanks so much for this article, unwashed and glad they mentioned this study:
"The Dunning-Kruger effect is a well-known psychological phenomenon that describes the tendency for individuals to overestimate their level of intelligence, knowledge, or competence in a particular area. They may also simultaneously misjudge the intelligence, expertise, or competence of others. In other words, they are ignorant of their own ignorance. The effect has been widely written about, and investigated empirically, with hundreds of studies published in peer-reviewed journals confirming and analyzing the phenomenon, particularly in relation to the dangers it poses in certain contexts."
I've read articles in the past linking intelligence and physical ability
to inherited genes.
In other words, you can't fix stupid.
So if a large number of these home schooling parents are stupid,
they're turning out stupid offspring.
Maybe in a hundred years or so we'll correct the problem with gene
therapy. In the meantime, we'll keep electing stupid politicians since
stupid people still vote for stupid politicians.
Maybe the word should be ignorant for some of them, as in ignorant
of what is good for the country and its citizens.
And, in addition to stupid and Dunning-Kruger, there's just plain crazy. Here is a story in the Metro (local) section of today's paper WaPo, about a woman who was just sentenced to 2 1/2 years in fedstir for her January 6 activities. She has a couple of entries on her bio that intimate that she's sort of whacko (Dishonorable Discharge from the Marines, trespassing protesting COVID policies in Boise.) She says the Spirit has told her she won't have to do time, so its OK. And she expects that the rest of us will rise up and do the right thing before she has to report:
... "“So we’ve got six weeks for America to figure it out and stand up and get some truth, or I’m going to jail,” she said."
When I read that to my wife, she said she'd get right on it.
In many other countries and many other jurisdictions, with any similar offense, this person would be sent to a psychiatric facility before doing time. But here, now, this offense, judges are not really able to call crazy crazy without incurring a mistrial or reversal. ("Just because she loves Jesus and Tr*mp, the Swamp calls her crazy!!!")
Another example of how organized insanity warps our world.
Seems to me it matters that the first person Azarian identified as suffering from Dunning-Kruger was Trump and the 2nd was Miss Margie.
Of course he had a reason for that: part of his theory is that the Vast Unwashed, a good number of them D-K sufferers, reward over-confidence (i.e., stupidity).
@Forrest Morris: Actually, Azarian hypothesizes that you can fix stupid. Sort of. If you teach people that they're not as smart as they think they are, then we can also teach them to make up for their stupidity by studying up on what they don't know and by deferring to real experts (rather than to stupid "leaders') on topics where they don't know much. This is something I think I figured out in high school or thereabouts: that knowing what you don't know -- in the long run, anyway -- is more valuable than pretending to know what you don't know. I always associated that life's lesson with appropriate humility, but as Azarian points out, it has a practical application, too.
re today's discussion:
One of the most profound and important things I have ever seen or heard:
https://youtu.be/ltjI3BXKBgY?si=6fWeMyyMHHiSXZxv