Really? When the greatest crisis of his presidency hit — a global pandemic the likes of which hadn’t been seen in one hundred years — he failed miserably. How anyone can think this man should be back in the White House is mind boggling and once he is dispatched next November, this nation is going to have to undergo some very serious soul searching to figure out what has happened to it and what to do about it.
Uncategorized
Protecting the in-group from you, the out-group Jonathan Last on Friday made sure readers saw clearly that for Republicans “law and order” has a very, very narrow meaning. Last was commenting on Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s pardon of Daniel Perry, convicted and sentenced to 25 years for the vigilante murder of Garrett Foster during a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest in 2020. Last recounts the details that put Perry, a racist murderer, behind bars, but the key detail is Abbott’s pardon: There is no legal or moral justification for pardoning Perry. His trial was fair. The jury acted reasonably. The laws he broke were well-defined and serious. He is not a good guy who had one bad moment. There is no indication that he has repented and become a different man than the one who fantasized about murder and then carried it out. The only reason to pardon Perry is political. Pardoning Perry creates political gain for Gov. Abbott because his constituents like Perry. And these voters like Perry precisely because of who he murdered.
Trump had a little meltdown last night. ‘My Speech in Dallas this weekend at the NRA’s ‘Endorsement of President Donald J. Trump,’ was attended by a Record Crowd of very enthusiastic Patriots,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “The Biden Campaign, however, put out a Fake Story that I ‘froze’ for 30 seconds, going into the ‘Musical Interlude’ section, when in actuality, the 30 to 60 second period of silence is standard in every one of my Speeches where we use the Music,” he went on, “Check out any of my Speeches!” “The reason they came up with this Disinformation is that Biden freezes all the time, can’t put two sentences together, and can rarely find his way off the stage without help,” he claimed. “Donald Trump doesn’t freeze! It is a MADE UP Biden Campaign story, put out in a dying Newspaper that I never heard of, and every Reporter knows it, including the large group that was there….” he added. Here’s the thing. Nobody’s ever mentioned that his speeches always contain a weird 30 second pause right in the middle when the music comes on.
Marjorie Taylor Greene and other MAGA leaders are demanding that Mike Johnson defind Jack Smith’s office. That’s ridiculous, of course but it’s good for fundraising, I guess. But Trump and his henchmen do have big plans for the DOJ and the FBI if they win in November: Trump, who has been indicted on dozens of criminal charges by the Justice Department, has vowed on the campaign trail to overhaul the agency if he wins the presidential election on Nov. 5 and pledged to use it to pursue his own opponents, including Democratic President Joe Biden. The plan is essentially twofold, according to the nine people interviewed by Reuters, some of whom requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. First: flood the Justice Department with stalwart conservatives unlikely to say “no” to controversial orders from the White House.
Also sprach Tom Cotton International alliances are sometimes untidy affairs. Some are built on ideological or cultural common ground. Others on trade or security interests. Or a mix. We Americans like to think of ourselves as the good guys allied with other good guys, but that’s a flattering oversimplification. Our WWII alliance with the Soviet Union under Stalin’s murderous regime was one of strategic necessity that lasted long enough to defeat Nazi Germany, and no longer. When the Saudis murdered and dismembered dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, Americans expressed appropriate outrage for an appropriate interval and then went about our business. Because the Saudis are good for U.S. business. Now Israel’s war against Hamas terrorists and its toll on civilians in Gaza is straining U.S. relations with its longtime ally. It’s about to get more strained. This is breaking news (New York Times): The International Criminal Court prosecutor, Karim Khan, said Monday that he had requested arrest warrants for the leaders of Hamas and for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel for war crimes and crimes against humanity in relation to the Oct.
And it isn’t Joe Biden For many months former president Donald Trump’s henchmen pushed the candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as an agent of chaos and a boon to Trump’s latest bid for the presidency. Salon’s Amanda Marcotte presciently called out their strategy in a piece last May called “Of course Steve Bannon and Alex Jones love RFK Jr. — he’s a great weapon for their war on reality.” At that time Kennedy was running in the Democratic primary and it was easy to dismiss the right wing “support” from the likes of Bannon and Jones as well as former Trump admirer and QANON adherent Michael Flynn, Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk and Trump henchman Roger Stone as partisan mischief. But it was more than that. They touted Kennedy as a perfect Trump running mate — a “dream ticket” ostensibly to attract low information, liberal anti-vaxxers and environmentalists to the GOP. Unfortunately for the Trumpers, their tactics appear to have backfired. Bannon worked this idea hard, suggesting that a Trump Kennedy ticket would win in a landslide.
October of 2020: Granted, it was Rasmussen but still. By the way, the 2020 Black vote came in at 8% for Trump. Today Biden spoke at the Morehouse graduation. Everyone was worried there would be a massive protest or walkout. The Morehouse president had said that they were prepared to shut down the ceremony if such a thing happened (rather than call security or police) so everyone was on high alert. There were a couple of awkward moments but no huge protest. The valedictorian ended his address by calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and Biden applauded and then later endorsed in his speech.There was no mass protest but a handful of graduates turned their backs on him. His speech seemed to be well received. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem for Biden among young Black men. A lot of young working class men of all races and ethnicity are attracted to Trump. That’s a sad comment on our culture but it is what it is. And Gaza has animated the young beyond any other issue and many of them blame Biden for the war. But when it comes down to voting, there’s a good chance that this massive racial realignment some of the polls are suggesting is overblown.
You’ll notice at the end of that ridiculous rant he also complains that Biden says he’s a “threat to democracy” plaintively wailing “what did I do?” He says he had “no wars” which is a lie. He didn’t get out of Afghanistan as he promised and his drone war was lethal. He had American troops in war zones all over the world. But be that as it may, asking “what did I do?” to deserve being called a threat to democracy is a very stupid thing to say. He is the only president to have ever illegally tried to overturn an election so that he could stay in office and incite an insurrectionist mob to storm the Capitol and stop the peaceful transfer of power during a joint session of congress. Maybe his cult members in the NRA don’t believe that was a threat to democracy but it most assuredly was. I confess to feeling a little bit disoriented lately by the flagrant gaslighting we are suffering through in this election. It’s worse than ever and it’s hard to force yourself to pay attention to it. I can’t say I blame the average voter for tuning it out. A few more highlights from his NRA speech.
Kevin Drum takes them downtown: The Washington Post reports today that consumer sentiment softened this month. That’s true enough. But they also say this: Come on, folks. Do we have to keep doing this? Nobody has to guess at consumer buying habits by looking at fast food, kitchen renovations, sneakers or afternoon lattes. Why? Because every month the government publishes a nice, tidy summary of all consumer spending. Here it is through March: If the Washington Post thinks the government is rigging the statistics they should say so. But maybe they don’t know about government statistics. Maybe someone should tell them. Kevin concludes: And guess what? The government also publishes lots of other handy statistics! I’ll spare you the charts, but real wage growth has been up steadily; home sales are down from their 2021 boom year but have increased lately; auto sales are up and have been steady lately; and durable goods consumption is up. Inflation has been hovering around 3% for an entire year, which is not especially dire.
A few items lost in the fog The New Republic has posted a 9-article special issue, “What American Fascism Would Look Like.” It’s just popped up and I won’t have time to study it until later. Not, at least, until I’ve had another cup of coffee. Heads up. “The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau plans to restart its aggressive crackdown against payday lenders and other companies that offer high-cost, short-term loans to poor borrowers, after a Supreme Court ruling this week resolved a challenge to the federal agency’s authority to act,” reports The Washington Post. Yes, that Supreme Court. The CFPB’s mom was more than pleased: “The CFPB is here to stay. In a 7-2 decision, the Supreme Court followed the law and confirmed that the CFPB’s funding structure is constitutional. For the last decade, the consumer agency has fought the big banks and predatory lenders that try to cheat hardworking people. As of this week, the CFPB has returned more than $20 billion in ill-gotten funds to American families. This isn’t the last attack on the CFPB we’ll see from Wall Street, the banks, and their Republican allies.