Kevin Drum tells everyone to buck up. Life in these United States really isn’t more miserable than it’s ever been. He posted a video of Congressman Jamal Bowman saying: Young people are TIRED. They’re tired of growing up with forever wars, with no healthcare, with crumbling infrastructure. Young people have every right to demand better from their leaders. It’s their job to. Kevin responds: Just stop it. Joe Biden ended the Afghanistan war and cut American drone strikes nearly to zero. The US is not currently fighting any major wars and in 2022, for the first time in decades, reported no civilian deaths due to US combat. Health insurance coverage has steadily increased among the young for the past decade: And infrastructure is not “crumbling” by any stretch of rhetoric.
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Good luck with that My post on Sunday referenced Ross Douthat’s flop-sweaty warning that President Biden should stop campaigning as if he is ahead. But credit the Washington Post Editorial Board’s warning, at least to Democrats in Congress, that while hoping for the best they should plan for the worst. “Though the emergency powers that the Insurrection Act confers are inherently susceptible to abuse, presidents’ respect for democratic values and constitutional norms has by and large prevented that,” the Board begins. There’s still time to make some tweaks to the Act before January 2025. Golly jeepers, who might they be referencing between the lines? Just so we’re clear: Having gone unused since 1992, the Insurrection Act is perhaps obscure to the public today. It deserves more attention, given that there could be a second term for former president Donald Trump, who not only lacks respect for democratic norms but also actively encouraged a mob to descend on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“a direct attack on the rule of law” At the Donald Trump trial in Manhattan, Judge Juan Merchan addresses Trump’s continued violations of the gag order, Harry Litman reports. Find you in contempt again for the 10th time. It appears that 2k fine not serving as a deterrent . therefore, going forward will need to consider a jail sanction “last thing I want to do is put you in jail. you are the former Pres and possibly the next Pres as well. to put you in jail would disrupt these proceedings. also secret service and others. the magnitude of the decision not lost on me.” “but at the end of the day I have a job to do. . . your continued violations threaten to disrupt processing and constitute a direct attack on the rule of law. so as much as I don’t want to impose a jail sentence, I want you to understand that I will if necessary and appropriate” So there it is — next time –> jail. The final warning. It’s in Trump’s hands now. And we’re off. ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download.
Donald Trump whines constantly about not being able to campaign around the country because he’s stuck in a New York courtroom facing trial on felony charges. Court is only convened four days a week and he has his own plane so he could certainly be out every weekend if he chose to. He did hold a couple of rallies last week in Wisconsin and Michigan since court was only in session for three days but on his days off he’s usually playing golf at and angrily tweeting rather than glad-handing the MAGA crowd out on the stump. And he’s holding a lot of fundraisers at his Mar-a-Lago beach club. This past weekend, rather than heading out to Arizona or even next door to Pennsylvania, Trump was back in Florida regaling 400 wealthy donors at a $40,000 a ticket with an extended whine about his legal problems and the stolen election of 2020, among other MAGA greatest hits. He also said that the Biden administration is “the Gestapo” and called Special Prosecutor Jack Smith a fucking asshole. He was obviously enjoying himself.
This newsletter by Robert Reich spoke to me. I hope he doesn’t mind if I share it with you: Friends, My students are graduating at a tremulous time. The largest campus protest movement of the 21st century. The first criminal trial of a former U.S. president. The most restrictive abortion laws in the nation. Two horrific wars. All of this coming after a pandemic that claimed the lives of a million Americans. And after the first attack on the U.S. Capitol in history, provoked by the first president who refused to accept electoral defeat. Perhaps most troubling, the nation is bitterly split. Americans are demonizing those on the other side whom they disagree with. (For two weeks in April, “Civil War,” a dystopian film about a bloody alternative reality where America is at war with itself, topped box office charts, grossing more than $50 million.) My graduating students are exhausted and anxious. They are repulsed by the slaughter in Gaza, and angry by the responses of university administrators around the country to the student protesters. They’re cynical about politics.
When Trump took over the RNC and purged all the suspected disloyal employees they hire two new lawyers to oversee “election integrity.” That hasn’t worked out so well. Benen writes: One of the attorneys hired at the RNC was Christina Bobb, who was tapped to serve as the party’s senior counsel for election integrity. It wasn’t long, however, before an unfortunate problem emerged: Bobb was recently indicted for alleged election-related crimes. The other attorney was longtime Republican lawyer Charlie Spies, who was hired to serve as the RNC’s chief counsel. At least, that was the idea two months ago. NBC News reported over the weekend: After the news was made official, Trump turned to his social media platform to celebrate the developments. “Great news for the Republican Party. RINO lawyer Charlie Spies is out as Chief Counsel of the RNC,” the former president wrote, denouncing the experienced Republican lawyer who’d been hired by his own RNC team. What did this highly experienced GOP lawyer do to deserve such a scathing put down?
Can you see it? The joke is that Trump’s family finally showed up to support him. Lol. It’s actually viral marketing for this movie. I think it’s pretty clever.
The last 4 hours of psychic breakdown: Does he post anything else? Yes. He reported some of those 12 hours later. He also posts “polls” showing him beating Biden by 10 points, memes of him as Hercules, 007 and Jesus and the like, endorsements of fringe MAGA candidates and articles by right wingers saying Biden is senile. But these psychotic bleats are what he writes in his own words. Yes, they are an illustration of a very disturbed mind. But they are also cult leader propaganda messages to his flock, emotional and relentlessly repetitive. I don’t know how many of them are actually reading this stuff but I think it penetrates their minds when you combine it with his rallies, the right wing media and their constant campaign fundraising messages. It’s insane. And it’s powerful.
That cover is a perfect illustration of Trumpian projection. The Enquirer claimed that it was Hillary Clinton who was doing exactly what he and David Pecker had conspired to do. “Explosive story that will change the election” “Bribe reporters to bury the truth” “Pay hush money to hookers” “Hide her sleazy affairs” It’s never a bad idea to assume that anything Trump accuses his opponent of doing is what he’s doing himself.
As Matthew Yglesias pointed out this probably isn’t being shared on Tik Tok but young people should know about it if they care about the plight of oppressed people around the world: Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton writes in his book that Trump encouraged the Chinese dictator to continue building concentration camps used to detain millions of Uighur Muslims: “At the opening dinner of the Osaka G-20 meeting in June 2019, with only interpreters present, Xi had explained to Trump why he was basically building concentration camps in Xinjiang. According to our interpreter, Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do. The National Security Council’s top Asia staffer, Matthew Pottinger, told me that Trump said something very similar during his November 2017 trip to China.” I feel pretty confident that Trump will be much, much worse on every level than the current administration. But it appears people have forgotten how bad he was and aren’t aware of how bad he’s planning to be. As for the Uighur camps, Trump seems to be taking the idea and running with it.