No time for melting down Hats off to Digby. She will be along presently with a recap of last night’s CNN-sponsored, Donald Trump freak show. The excerpts were bad enough. The intertubes are full of it this morning, literally and figuratively. The extremist right is gleefully declaring that liberals are “melting down” over Trump’s demented display of sociopathy. Yup, that’s our guy, they cheer. Over at The Atlantic, Arthur C. Brooks examines the psychological impacts of working to make the world a saner, safer place. Fighting back can come at a cost. Activism can make you miserable. If you expect to sustain it, choose a variety that doesn’t. And work that doesn’t turn you into what you loathe and to us vs. them-ism. The reflex my generation had for taking to the streets (pointlessly, for the most part) continues among the latest generational cohort of activists. The mental health impacts are a mixed bag: Although nearly a third of the students believed that their advocacy work improved their well-being, 60 percent reported harm to their mental health.
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All the president’s legal woes got worse last night The tsunami of lies in the town hall last night makes it hard to isolate all the atrocities. But you can be sure that prosecutors in all of his pending legal cases were taking meticulous notes of everything he said. Igor Derysh at Salon lays out the reactions of some of the TV lawyers to what Trump said last night. Former President Donald Trump may have provided additional evidence in multiple investigations during his CNN town hall event on Wednesday, legal experts say. Trump repeatedly lied during the town hall that the election was “rigged,” that Georgia “owed” him votes, that he had the right to take classified documents to Mar-a-Lago and that he does not know E. Jean Carroll — the writer who was awarded $5 million a day earlier after it found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation. “All three ongoing criminal cases got new evidence tonight against Trump,” tweeted national security attorney Bradley Moss.
Time for a drink Have I mentioned that the GOP is shameless? House Republicans passed a symbolic bill Thursday that would clamp down on unemployment insurance fraud. And one of the bill’s sponsors, Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.), demonstrated the need for the legislation by getting indicted for unemployment insurance fraud this week. You cannot make this stuff up.
On Monday of this week, Variety reported that Fox News is experiencing a burst of new advertising sales in the 8 o’clock hour formerly held by the recently fired celebrity Tucker Carlson. He had had the dubious distinction of having cable news’ top ratings for his time period but scaring away most respectable companies from buying time on his show. So it’s possible that despite the ratings slump the time slot has been experiencing since his departure, the network won’t actually suffer any more losses than they already did in their epic $787 million settlement with Dominion voting machines. They may also be saving a few dollars if it turns out that Tucker Carlson’s latest move results in his breaching the reported non-compete clause in his contract worth $25 million. Carlson posted a twitter video on Tuesday announcing that he’s going to resume his show on twitter as a way of striking a blow for free speech against all the rest of the lying media.
There has been an enormous amount of hand-wringing over a recent ABC news poll that showed Joe Biden losing to Trump if the election were held today. The keening, the crying, the rending of garments from otherwise reasonable people was astonishing considering that it was just one poll, we are a long way from the election and most of them are old enough to remember when Barack Obama was toast in 2011 when his numbers were underwater. And yes, back then there was a ton of nervous chatter about replacing him on the ballot with someone else, putting up a serious primary and all the rest. So this is something Democrats do and it’s one their most annoying traits. Anyway, here’s some news for you to chew on: As Democrats coalesce around him as their inevitable nominee, President Biden still narrowly leads former President Donald Trump in a 2024 general-election matchup, according to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll. Yet the results also expose significant vulnerabilities for Biden — including his advanced age and the widespread perception that his running mate, Vice President Kamala Harris, would not be “ready to assume the presidency” if necessary.
Tuberville says he calls White Nationalists “Americans.” Maybe it’s time to stop calling them White Nationalists. Let’s call them what they are: U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama said there should be no efforts to block different ideological groups, including white nationalists, from serving in the military and criticized President Joe Biden for taking steps to remove them even as concerns about extremism in the military dates back to the Trump administration. Tuberville, a staunch supporter of the military and a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, made the comments in a Monday interview with WBHM, a National Public Radio station in Birmingham. Asked if he believed white nationalists should be allowed to serve in the military, Tuberville said in referring to the Biden administration, “They call them that. I call them Americans.” See? There are very fine people on all sides… “We are losing in the military so fast,” Tuberville told WBHM. “Our readiness in terms of recruitment. And why?
I think this from Nicholas Goldberg in the LA Times is important to keep in mind: In Shakespeare’s plays or, say, the Victorian novels of Dickens, Trollope and Austen, there are often at least two plots moving forward at any moment: a serious dramatic story involving the work’s main heroes and villains and a comic subplot peopled by absurd characters. In the real world, we have comic subplots as well. Take Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.), who — while American democracy has spun out of control, the U.S. Capitol was overrun and Donald Trump became a serious contender for reelection — wanders on and off the national stage like a ditzy clown keeping the audience amused. Santos has been a recurring joke in the midst of our otherwise terrifying and riveting political drama — a somewhat doughy, somewhat hapless Mr. Magoo-turned-con man in a blazer, sweater and chinos. He is a fraudster who told lie after ridiculous lie, ad absurdum, about his family background, education and job experience and, though caught in the act, steadfastly refused to be held accountable. His free ride, though, could be coming to an end.
This is just depressing. Let’s just abandon all knowledge while we’re at it: At the entrance to the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University there’s a plaque with a famous quote from its founder, Alfred C. Kinsey: “We are the recorders and reporters of facts — not the judges of the behaviors we describe.” That ethos is at the heart of all the institute’s research. For generations, the Kinsey Institute has shone a light on diverse aspects of sex and sexuality, in pursuit of answers that bring us closer to understanding fundamental questions of human existence. In a time of divisive politics and disinformation, it is more imperative than ever to preserve and defend the right of such academic institutions to illuminate the unfolding frontiers of science — even, and especially, research that might challenge us as it advances our understanding of ourselves. Thus it is tremendously disappointing that Indiana lawmakers voted late last month to approve a budget that specifically blocks Indiana University from using state funding to support the Kinsey Institute, and that last week Gov.
Biden’s numbers bad for Biden, but Trump’s indictments are not for Trump? CNN broke news Tuesday night that federal prosecutors have filed criminal charges against New York Rep. George Santos (R). Coverage for now is informed speculation at best. The charges won’t be unsealed until later today when Santos is expected to appear in court in the eastern district of New York. “When someone has committed as much apparent fraud as Santos has,” Marcy Wheeler notes, “there’s no telling what the real story behind all that fraud is.” So we wait. Also in New York, a civil trial jury found Donald J. Trump guilty on Tuesday of sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll. The six men and three women voted unanimously. Also in New York, Trump still faces state charges of 34 counts of Falsifying Business Records in the First Degree. Special Counsel Jack Smith and Fulton County, Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis have yet to file federal and state charges against Trump for as much apparent criminality as Trump has committed. So we wait. As Trump continues to run for president again in 2024, we wait.
Better woke than the alternative Donald Trump’s believers, Sarah Longwell finds, are as committed as ever to their man-boy-love-god despite standing indictments and indictments yet to come: “As far as a mug shot goes, he’s going to market the hell out of that,” said Chris, a two-time Trump voter from Illinois, imagining a future arrest. “Every one of us is going to buy one of those shirts.” Most hands went up when I asked who would buy one. Republicans “are in a trap of their own making,” Longwell writes in The Atlantic: They thought that by covering for Trump they were tapping into his power, but they were actually giving away their own—mortgaging themselves and their reputations to Trump’s lies and depravities. By defending him then, they have made it impossible to credibly accuse him of anything now. This problem is compounded by the deep relationship that Trump has cultivated with Republican voters. He’s been a constant presence in their lives for eight years—or, for Apprentice fans, much longer. They defended him on Facebook and argued about him over Thanksgiving dinners.