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Wait, what????

I guess I’m feeling cynical about just about everything right now, so perhaps my point of view isn’t realistic.

This is one of the craziest things I’ve heard him say: What is he talking about? He must have been drunk when he said that. It’s been the right that’s pushed the flag and a pledge for the last 60 years! “These colors don’t run!”, “Love it or leave it!” After 9/11 anyone who wasn’t worshiping the stars and stripes was at risk if they didn’t keep their mouths shut. As for the pledge: Francis Bellamy was a minister who was thrown out of his Baptist post because of sermons describing Jesus as a socialist. He and novelist cousin Edward Bellamy both saw a future for the United States as a country in which the government controlled virtually every aspect of a person’s life. Francis Bellamy (who also wrote for a magazine underwritten by flag sales and therefore stood to gain by having schools require a flag salute each day) and his friends got President Benjamin Harrison to incorporate Bellamy’s pledge into the 400th anniversary celebration of Columbus’ arrival in the New World. It has been recited in public schools ever since… [T]he pledge has remained a recurring political hot button.

I think everyone knows that the HBO masterpiece “Succession” was based upon the Murdoch family. Well, it turns out that the family has actually based some of its actions on “Succession.” The NY Times (link below) reports that a court in Nevada has ruled today that Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch can’t change the irrevocable trust to block the rest of the kids from having any influence on Fox News. He came down hard on them apparently but this isn’t the end of the story. I guess there are appeals and also some end runs to get the job done. But this is just fascinating: The legal maneuvering came to a head during several days of sealed, in-person testimony in Reno in September by Mr. Murdoch, Lachlan, James, Elisabeth, Prudence and a number of their representatives on the trust. The proceedings revealed that Mr. Murdoch’s children had started secretly discussing the public-relations strategy for their father’s death in April 2023.

We know that happened on January 6th. We saw it with our own eyes, heard the testimony of his own staff and read the reports. The facts cannot be disputed. Trump lied about the election of 2020, called people to Washington, incited an insurrection in which they stormed the Capitol and hunted for the Vice President chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” And we know that Trump took no action and let it unfold until late in the day he finally told the rioters that he loved them and asked them to go home. According to the once and future president, Donald Trump, none of that is what happened: None of this is the story Trump tells. Instead, he inverts both the culpability and the morality: The rioters are victims, and those seeking justice are guilty of injustices. It’s deeply and transparently self-serving. It’s also the position of the incoming president of the United States, someone empowered to enforce his vision of justice on the rest of the country. Trump sat down for a lengthy interview with NBC News’s Kristen Welker last week during which he outlined his upside-down view of the events of Jan. 6.

The anger of the crowd and the pettiness of plutocrats Princeton economist Paul Krugman just published his final New York Times column in a body of work begun in January 2000. He considers how the world has changed over 25 years. It’s a grimmer place: What strikes me, looking back, is how optimistic many people, both here and in much of the Western world, were back then and the extent to which that optimism has been replaced by anger and resentment. And I’m not just talking about members of the working class who feel betrayed by elites; some of the angriest, most resentful people in America right now — people who seem very likely to have a lot of influence with the incoming Trump administration — are billionaires who don’t feel sufficiently admired. Krugman doesn’t mention Trump again, but he’s the most prominent of those resentful billionaires. In early 2000, Krugman writes, “Polls showed a level of satisfaction with the direction of the country that looks surreal by today’s standards.” One could point to many reasons for the public mood, but the collapse of public faith in elites features prominently.

Ben Wikler on “The Daily Show” Ben Wikler, Democratic Party of Wisconsin chair, appeared Monday night on “The Daily Show” and made an impression on host Jon Stewart. That’s not easy to do for a political operative. Wikler, 43, a founding producer for Al Franken’s Air America radio show and former national adviser to MoveOn, is running for Democratic National Committee chair. “The passion that you’re bringing, that feels like what it needs in this moment,” Stewart said, remarking that DNC chairs he’s interviewed before felt much more corporate. “You are approaching [politics] from a much more populist, bottom-up standpoint than I’ve heard in the past. Other than Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy.” At that Dean reference, the audience applauded. I’ve mentioned Wikler in the context of the DNC chair’s race twice already. The two front runners for the position are Wikler and Minnesota’s DFL chair Ken Martin. I met Martin in passing this year at a North Carolina party meeting. He’s known, experienced, impressive, and connected. But indulge me.

Today Cliff Schecter and Hal Sparks talked about Kash Patel & how he could be the first possible leather daddy to head the FBI. The Steve Bannon plan is to overwhelm the media with Trump’s horrible nominees. What gets to the MSM, that makes them disqualified, isn’t the same as what makes it to late night comedy shows, or to Fox News, or RW social media. Part of what we can do with our audiences is to show how weird these people are. There are serious reasons these people are horrible, that would disqualify them to normal people like us. But we need to also point out stuff that the MAGAs have a hard time with, but we can’t reach their channels. If we tried they’d say, “I thought you were COOL WITH DEI, gays, and leather daddies!” So we put stuff out saying, “We’re cool them being gay or leather daddies, but we are not cool with their policies to destroy our national security, are you?” Frankly I don’t know which weird, corrupt, sick, incompetent or illegal activity of Trump’s nominees will knock them out of the process. But we need to find them and share them.

This story is breaking … elsewhere Al Jazeera: Seems the Islamist rebels already have their solution. The autocrat is gone. What comes next is the question. ISIS? A Taliban? Al-Qaeda? More from Al Jazeera: Cars flooding into Syria after al-Assad’s ouster Nour Qormosh, reporting near Idlib, Syria  We are here, by the N-5 Highway. Cars are moving on the highway with people returning to their homes in Syria for the first time in 14 years. The joy of the people is insurmountable. We’ve talked to the civilians here as they transport their belongings back into the country. Their joy is shared across the Syrian geography – from Idlib to Hama, Homs, Damascus, and Deraa. This is the most significant moment in the history of the Syrian revolution. The Guardian: Two senior Syrian officers told Reuters that Assad had fled Damascus, his destination unknown. The report could not be independently verified. The senior Emirati diplomat Anwar Gargash declined to say whether Assad was fleeing to the United Arab Emirates.

Celebrating a murder This story sent chills (TMZ): Internet sleuths believe they have found the jacket worn by the gunman who killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson … and now it is morbidly flying off the shelves. On Reddit, a user speculated the suspect’s jacket was a Sherpa Lined Two Picket Hooded Trucker Jacket by Levi’s … sold at Macy’s for the retail price of $225. The jacket’s popularity has since spread like wildfire on the company’s website … where more than 6,000 people were viewing the jacket at the same time — and nearly 700 were sold in the past 48 hours, according to an item popularity tool on Macy’s site. The New York Times follows up (Gift link): A grainy image of his face drew comparisons to Hollywood heartthrobs. A jacket similar to the one he’s wearing on wanted posters is reportedly flying off the shelves. And the words written on the bullets he used to kill a man in cold blood on a sidewalk on Wednesday have become, for some people, a rallying cry.