Marcy Wheeler takes a look at Robert Hur today and it’s very good. She is generally less critical of Merrick Garland than some but in this case she is unsparing. She points out that Garland tends to have a naive belief that all career DOJ employees are apolitical even as in the case of Hur who was appointed by Trump as a US Attorney and was involved in some of the most partisan actions of the Trump Justice Department. He clerked for Rehnquist, fergawdsakes! The details of Hur’s tenure are not well known and they are damning: The problem is, with Hur, Garland should have known better, and not just because Hur was obviously a senior member of Trump’s DOJ. At the end of last week’s Jack podcast (YouTube; Simplecast), Allison Gill and Andrew McCabe discussed the role Hur played in Trump’s DOJ. Gill replayed McCabe’s warnings, a year ago when Hur was appointed, about the former PADAG’s willingness to engage in politics.
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That ad should appeal to the remaining normie swing voters but you never know. Still, this Pew Survey from a couple of weeks ago seems relevant: That’s a lot of Republicans who say that the war in Ukraine is important to them. It’s true they don’t care as much about it as Democrats but when 75% of the entire country believes something is in the national interest you would think the Republicans would at least be a teensy bit worried that they’re on the wrong side of this one. There is no sign of that as yet. The younger members of the Senate all walked away from the national security bill and are strutting around like they’re Matt Gaetz, proud as peacocks. And I don’t think I have to say anything about the House. They’re on vacation. I always hesitate to post things by Bill Kristol, particularly on foreign policy, but I’ll do it today because this is a case in which I think there’s common ground between people like me and people like him.
Rough clay or day clay? Trump could shoot them in the middle of Fifth Avenue and they’d vote for him with their dying breaths. “My kids need you! You’re a Christian! You’re honest! Look at his family! All good kids!” David Neiwert nails it: Susie too: Okay, neither of these eligible voters are salvageable. They’re too far gone. But there are others “on the fence” surely embarrassed by these displays of lunacy. Paul Rosenberg interviewed Rachel Bitecofer about her new book, “Hit ‘Em Where It Hurts: How to Save Democracy by Beating Republicans at Their Own Game.” Bitecofer seems to be covering ground seeded in the past by George Lakoff, Drew Westen, and Anat Shenker-Osorio about appealing more to emotion than intellect. Republicans now campaign on negative partisanship, she says, while many Democrats cannot let go of their “old strategy” of campaigning on policy: “find things people like, tell them you’re going to give them that — and then appeal on your character, your biography, your qualifications for office.” Republicans dumped that approach long ago.
Tennessee State Capitol yesterday WZTV Nashville: The group of more than a dozen masked individuals marched wearing red shirts and black pants, waving flags with swastikas on them. It is not clear at this time who the group is or affiliated with, though many of the shirts said “Blood Tribe.” Your future, if you choose to accept it. Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to put a stop to it. ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.
Offered with no comment. This is MAGA.
Why would anyone want to live in a place with the name of a fascist moron emblazoned on the front? Would you buy a condo in Hitler Tower? “My client is worth hundreds and hundreds of millions,” said one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Alina Habba, during closing arguments at the trial, adding, “let alone the brand, which is worth billions.” But up and down the spine of Manhattan, condominiums in high-rise buildings emblazoned with Mr. Trump’s name have underperformed, according to sales data from two real estate tracking firms, and an analysis of the data by the Columbia University economist Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh. The line in the sand is the year 2016, when Mr. Trump was elected president. In 2016, condominiums in Trump’s buildings in New York began to decline, underperforming compared to the Manhattan condominium market. In a one-year window, condos in buildings that had the Trump logo went from selling at a 1 percent premium compared with similar units, to selling for 4 percent less, meaning that Trump condos became a “bargain” among the city’s luxury units, said Mr. Van Nieuwerburgh, a professor of real estate.
I doubt it Charlie Kirk is a major influencer on the right and his Turning Point organization is the MAGA CPAC. I doubt very seriously that Trump will dump him because he’s a racist. That’s a feature not a bug. But this story does show more of the fault lines in the GOP and that’s always good news: For more than a year, Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist and MAGA influencer, was aimed like a heat-seeking missile toward one goal — ousting Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel. It’s a battle he won. Just this week, former President Donald Trump endorsed a new slate of leaders to head the party apparatus and signaled that McDaniel’s four terms would soon come to an end. Few Republican groups have had as meteoric a rise as Kirk’s Turning Point USA, which launched in 2012. It sought to activate young conservatives and saw its fortunes grow as it attached itself to the Trump movement in 2016. The organization has raised roughly a quarter-billion dollars since, as The Associated Press reported last fall, with its fundraising exploding during the Covid pandemic.
Trump has spent the weekend blabbing about his hideous gold tennis shoes and the New York Fraud ruling. He did find time to post one thing about Navalny. Naturally it was an “analysis” from some obscure web site asserting that Donald Trump is the Navalny of the United States, with all the usual lies. But this is the important part. He smeared Navalny: And then he killed him. These wingnuts are very confused. They don’t know if Trump is just like Navalny, being falsely accused of corruption and fraud or if Navalny is actually a criminal who deserved to be treated the way he was treated. Because if they’re saying Navalny was a corrupt fraudster, he’s exactly like Trump. Which is it? I’m surprised Trump hasn’t flogged this right wing meme more than this. It’s all over social media. Maybe his feral instincts tell him that it’s probably not a good place for him to go. Instead he’s just not mentioning it. I certainly hope that the next time a real journalist sits down with him that he’s grilled on this.
Just thank you @pete.dominick Here are my comments at our last school board meeting where a few bad faith actors have tried to create a controversy in our schools with no regard to the students safety or best interest. We have a generally welcoming student body when it comes to LGBT issues. I would dare to say the kids are all right – it’s the parents who are the problem. John Lewis asked us to make good trouble. And Dr. King told us not to be silent. #LGBT #transgender #trans #BOE #humanrights #schoolboardmeetings #transrights #boardofeducation #turningpointusa #momsforliberty ♬ original sound – Pete Dominick @pete.dominick Here are my comments at our last school board meeting where a few bad faith actors have tried to create a controversy in our schools with no regard to the students safety or best interest. We have a generally welcoming student body when it comes to LGBT issues. I would dare to say the kids are all right – it’s the parents who are the problem. John Lewis asked us to make good trouble. And Dr. King told us not to be silent.
MAGA says ‘break’ Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) visited Ukraine this month and met with President Volodymyr Zelensky, who she describes as “clear-eyed and clear-voiced.” But he’s faced with a “make or break moment” in his country’s fight to remain a free country. Donald Trump wanted (and failed) to build a wall on our southern border. Vladimir Putin wants to rebuild the Iron Curtain. Spanberger shared her thoughts with Jennifer Rubin (Washington Post): Spanberger is candid about the Biden administration refusing the initial request from Ukraine for critical equipment, waiting for Europeans to act and then, finally, acceding. “Initially, I was willing to concede they were being careful,” she said. The risk of elevating the war to a major-power war is not zero. However, “we have demonstrated that Ukraine is abiding by the parameters” we set, she argued. The rigmarole leaves us consistently at least “a few months behind” Ukraine’s urgent requests. Intelligence Committee Chairman Michael R.