Fight back. We did it before. “There exists no more sordid and unlovely type of social development than a plutocracy,” Teddy Roosevelt insisted in Provincetown, Massachusetts in 1907. Roosevelt saw the harms of the first Gilded Age and sought, with public support, to end them: The utterly changed conditions of our national life necessitate changes in certain of our laws, of our governmental methods…. National sovereignty is to be upheld in so far as it means the sovereignty of the people used for the real and ultimate good of the people; and state’s rights are to be upheld in so far as they mean the people’s rights. Especially is this true in dealing with the relations of the people as a whole to the great corporations which are the distinguishing feature of modern business conditions. One hunded plus years later, we are in a second Gilded Age. Or haven’t you noticed? Robert Reich has: Billions in campaign contributions. Jim Crow 2.0.Workers exploited.Child labor has returned.Staggering inequality. Oh, and facsism. We beat back the first five at the beginning of the 20th century. Reich believes we can do it again.
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From the state that brought you Jesse Helms Al Jolson telling the audience, “You ain’t heard nothin’ yet,” in 1927’s The Jazz Singer marked the end of the silent film era. Well, buckle up. The North Carolina that brought you Jesse Helms, the state that elected Christian nationalist Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson and made him the 2024 Republican nominee for governor, isn’t done yet. The state’s Republican primary voters upset their own incumbent superintendent of public instruction, Catherine Truitt, on March 5 and replaced her on the ballot with Michele Morrow. “Every sign we had said that Catherine Truitt was going to win this election,” political scientist Dr. Chris Cooper told reporters. Jake Tapper and Andy Kaczynski introduced CNN viewers to Morrow Thursday night (via WRAL): Michele Morrow, a conservative activist who last week upset the incumbent Superintendent of Public Instruction in North Carolina’s Republican primary, expressed support in 2020 for the televised execution of former President Barack Obama and suggested killing then-President-elect Joe Biden. “Wait a minute, I tell ya,” Jolson said.
One of Donald Trump’s most famous quotes is from the 2016 campaign when he said,” I could shoot someone on 5th avenue and not lose any voters.” He seems to have convinced himself that it’s true. Despite the fact that he has been losing between 20 and 40 percent in most of the Republican primaries this year, he insists that they will all vote for him in the fall and anyway, he says, “I’m not sure we need too many.” As recently as Super Tuesday he told Right Side Broadcasting, “I don’t need votes, we have all the votes we need.” And why wouldn’t he say that? After all, as he told Newsmax again on Thursday night, “We won in 2016, we won even bigger in 2020 , we won by a lot more” so he’s certain to get as many votes this time. Or, at least, that seems to be his logic. But if he was really so sure of himself you’d think he wouldn’t need to ensure that the election is going to be a nightmare that makes 2020 look placid and serene by comparison, wouldn’t you? But that looks like what he has in mind.
So many people have tuned out of politics over the past three years because of the trauma of the Trump years, the pandemic and simple exhaustion and relief. As a result they are uninformed. Will Bunch writes: The biggest reason for the missing alarm about the prospect of Trump 47 might simply be a lack of information. The New Republic’s Greg Sargent recently reported on a poll of 1,200 voters deemed gettable for Biden in three swing states, including Pennsylvania, and found the vast majority didn’t know about Trump’s “dictator for a day” comments, or that he’d echoed Adolf Hitler in calling enemies “vermin” and claiming migrants are “poisoning the blood” of America. The pollster said only 31% of persuadable voters had heard much about these statements. You can call it voter apathy, but a lot of the blame belongs to a mainstream media that’s not banging the pots and pans like it should be and remains much more obsessed about the horse race odds of who wins the election than the stakes of an undemocratic presidency. Sargent says this presents an opportunity: That’s maddening for obvious reasons.
Here’s an interesting little insight into the workings of the FBI. You know, the agency that the Republicans want to de-fund? Maybe they need to rethink that seeing as it’s filled with MAGA insurrectionists: Hi, it’s Jason Leopold with the second installment of my new weekly newsletter, FOIA Files. If you haven’t yet, sign up now to get it delivered to your inbox every Friday. As news of the Mar-a-Lago raid unfolded on the morning of Aug. 8, 2022, it unsurprisingly drew fierce reaction from Trump, his biggest backers, and many Republican members of Congress. But a cache of documents I recently obtained from the FBI shows just how much the historic event roiled some of the bureau’s rank and file, forcing FBI Director Christopher Wray to engage in damage control. “Did this really just happen? Am I dreaming? The FBI served a Search Warrant on a former president?” wrote an incredulous bureau employee in an email that was sent to the FBI’s acting ombudsman, Chauncenette Morey, shortly after the Mar-a-Lago search. “If he took documents, give him a call and ask for them back. Like … Seriously? My own agency ….
I just read Barb McQuade’s new book. Attack from Within. How Disinformation is Sabotaging America. I had planned to go see her in person at the Commonwealth Club and ask her some questions, but it was sold out, plus I knew what would happen, the first person at the mic would say, “I don’t have a question so much as a 3 part comment ” and talk for 5 minutes.” (I’m guilty of that myself, I even used that phrasing as a joke line with my friend Cory Doctorow and Annalee Newitz at his book reading for Red Team Blues. ) My goal when asking book authors questions is to help them amplify the parts I see as important in a memorable way. Especially for an audience that needs to hear it, but will likely never read the book. So when I heard Barb was going to be on the Nicole Sandler show I wrote Nicole and said, “I think the most important point Barb makes in the book is that with social media our old metaphors of speech & debate are out of date and they are being used against us. Please get Barb to repeat this, with examples!
He claims that Trump isn’t planning to follow the “conservative agenda” he followed during their first term but that’s obviously nonsense. He’s gotten more fascist but he was fascist to begin with. But Pence not endorsing is a real rebuke to some of the other cowards like McConnell and Sununu who have decided to keep boot licking for no good reason. He was Trump’s adoring VP for four long years and he’s found the courage to just say no. Congratulations Mike. After much soul searching and attempts to rationalize helping with the coup attempt, you finally did the right thing. And I guess you liked how that felt. Or maybe you just understand that your political life as a MAGA cultist is over so you might as well let your normal flag fly. Either way, welcome to the Resistance, You may find that it feels good to be able to look yourself in the mirror every morning.
The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser watched Trump’s rally last weekend and her mind was blown. If only we could get everyone to do this at least once: [L]ike so much about Trump’s 2024 campaign, this insane oration was largely overlooked and under-covered, the flood of lies and B.S. seen as old news from a candidate whose greatest political success has been to acclimate a large swath of the population to his ever more dangerous alternate reality. No wonder Biden, trapped in a real world of real problems that defy easy solutions, is struggling to defeat him. This is partly a category error. Though we persist in treating the 2024 election as a race between an incumbent and a challenger, it is not that so much as a contest between two incumbents: Biden, the actual President, and Trump, the forever-President of Red America’s fever dreams. But Trump, while he presents himself as the country’s rightful leader, gets nothing like the intense scrutiny for his speeches that is now focussed on the current occupant of the Oval Office. The norms and traditions that Trump is intent on smashing are, once again, benefitting him.
The sloth: This made my day!❤️ pic.twitter.com/4vwuuGmtGA — Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) March 15, 2024 Just snoozing… Mama sloth holding on to a tree with her legs for a nap pic.twitter.com/ByLxS3dDk3 — Apurv Anand (@apurv_anand) March 15, 2024 Sloths—the sluggish tree-dwellers of Central and South America—spend their lives in the tropical rain forests. They move through the canopy at a rate of about 40 yards per day, munching on leaves, twigs and buds. Sloths have an exceptionally low metabolic rate and spend 15 to 20 hours per day sleeping. And surprisingly enough, the long-armed animals are excellent swimmers. They occasionally drop from their treetop perches into water for a paddle. It is my spirit animal.
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