#ayatollahmikejohnson — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #ayatollahmikejohnson, aggregated by home.social.
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“There ya go, that explains it! Trump is in serious decline.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
This week has been rather mind-blowing for me. First, I watched Former Congresswoman Liz Cheney stand beside Vice President Kamala Harris and heartily endorse her. The number of top Republicans going out of their way to stop DonOld is really heartening. The utter destruction left in the path of Hurricane Helene was beyond the warzone feeling I saw when I finally got to return home to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. I can only imagine what’s in store for us in the future if we don’t speed up policy and action on Climate Change. Then, there’s the kind of shock only practitioners of the Dismal Science could feel. “U.S. Hiring Accelerated in September, Blowing Past Expectations” is a headline in today’s Wall Street Journal. Our economy is so good we’ve booted the once-assumed takeover of the title of the largest economy in the world by China. It has been moved farther into the future if ever.
The U.S. labor market strengthened in the weeks before Election Day, as job growth accelerated in September and the unemployment rate ticked lower.
Employers added 254,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department said Friday. That was significantly more than the 150,000 economists expected, and marked the largest monthly increase since March. The unemployment rate slipped to 4.1%.
Friday’s bumper payrolls report is likely to close the door on another half-percentage-point rate cut by the Federal Reserve at its next meeting in November. It should keep officials on track to lower rates by a quarter point.
The Fed is trying to engineer what is called a soft landing, in which inflation moves down without major deterioration in the labor market. Though Friday is just one data point, it suggests that the U.S. is headed in that direction.
“It puts another set of wheels under the plane in terms of assuring a soft landing,” said Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY-Parthenon.
Friday’s report also signaled that hiring this summer wasn’t as weak as initially thought. Revised figures show employers added 72,000 more jobs in July and August combined than earlier reported.
The latest snapshot of the labor market’s health comes just a month before the U.S. presidential election, where the economy and inflation are key issues for voters. The strong jobs report could help Vice President Kamala Harris. In polls, she trails former President Donald Trump on the economy.
Stocks ticked higher. During much of the inflationary post-Covid-19 boom, stocks often quaked temporarily at stronger-than-expected economic data, because traders took such shocks as a sign that the Fed would tighten monetary policy more aggressively. Investors’ positive reaction Friday showed that they view good news as good news again—even if futures contracts tied to the federal-funds rate suggest traders are now expecting a slower pace of Fed easing.
Employers added jobs at bars and restaurants and construction, as well as in sectors that are less sensitive to the economy’s ups and downs like government, education and healthcare.
There were a few weak spots. Employers modestly cut head count in manufacturing, transportation and warehousing, and temporary help services.
Analysts also said that although September’s jobs report was unexpectedly strong, other economic data point to a slightly less robust hiring picture. Labor Department data released earlier this week showed that the share of workers quitting their jobs each month fell to its lowest rate in more than four years in August, a sign people are more hesitant about leaving their current roles for new ones.
Liz Cheney described the Republican Party as being the MAGA Party. Those left in the MAGA party are living in lies, bigotry, and a world of active sabotage of the truth and of the country. In one of the most callous moves I’ve seen in Congress, Speaker Johnson refuses to call the House back into session to provide the funding needed for FEMA. He wants it to wait until November 12. He’s wandering around Florida today.
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson said Thursday that a congressional emergency spending decision in response to Hurricane Helene “will probably correspond when Congress is expected to return to session.”
Congress will be on recess for more than a month, and is set to return to session on Nov. 12. Johnson seemed to rule out a return before then, although President Joe Biden indicated this week that he may ask Congress to convene before the break’s scheduled end.
“Right before we left on Wednesday, a week ago, Congress appropriated $20 billion to FEMA to cover the immediate aftermath of the storm,” Johnson said in Steinhatchee Thursday. “Of course, we knew it was headed into the coast at that time, so FEMA has the funding that needs to respond immediately. We’re glad to see them on the ground here.”
Johnson said damage assessments must be complete before Congress can update the disaster budget.
“It will take some time to tabulate this storm — it’s one of the biggest in our history,” Johnson said. “So, a lot of that work’s being done immediately, and I think the timing of that will probably correspond when Congress is expected to return to session right after the election, and so we’ll be on that.”
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the Federal Emergency Management Agency lacks enough funding to last through hurricane season, which ends Nov. 30.
Johnson appeared with Florida U.S. Reps. Kat Cammack and Neal Dunn at Roy’s Restaurant, which was ravaged by Helene.
The speaker of the House said that funding further disaster response will be bipartisan.
“There’ll be an appropriate amount requested to Congress, and we’ll have to dig deep and find a way to do that,” he said.
Johnson assured that Congress “will do what’s necessary to make sure that Americans are taken care of.”
What’s most impressive is to see just precisely who 175 Republicans are that voted against the aid. And, yes, it’s basically to make the Biden/Harris Administration look bad so DonOld can rant and make people forget his lousy response to disasters when he occupied the White House. This is from Newsweek. “Full List of Republicans Who Voted Against FEMA Funding Before Helene Hit,” written by Khaleda Rahman.
As Hurricane Helene careened toward Florida’s Panhandle, numerous Republicans voted against extending funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
Last week, Congress approved $20 billion for FEMA’s disaster relief fund as part of a stopgap spending bill to fund the government through December 20. But the measure left out billions of dollars in requested supplemental disaster funding.
The Senate approved the measure by a 78-18 vote on September 25 after it passed the House in a 341-82 vote. Republicans supplied the no votes in both chambers.
Some of the Republicans who voted against the bill represent states that have been hard hit by Helene, including Florida Representative Matt Gaetz.
Helene hit Florida as a Category 4 storm last Thursday, before plowing through several other states in the Southeast. The devastation could cost up to $160 billion, according to an estimate by AccuWeather.
Some Republicans railed against FEMA funding being allocated for assisting migrants after Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters on Wednesday that FEMA will run out of money before the hurricane season is over. The agency is facing a multibillion-dollar deficit, even after imposing new spending restrictions.
The New Republic has released a “Transcript: Trump’s Unhinged Handling of Disasters Revealed By Insider. An interview with Olivia Troye, a top homeland security official in the Trump administration, about how badly Trump politicized disaster response as president—as seen from the inside.” Former Republican Women are not holding back on what a disaster DonOld was. This is from Greg Sargent’s podcast, The Daily Blast.
Sargent: OK, let’s start here. The other day after Trump started pushing that lie that disaster relief is being denied to Republicans, you did a tweet that got some attention. It said this, “As a Homeland Security Advisor in the Trump White House, I witnessed firsthand how Donald Trump politicized disaster relief, leaving devastated Americans waiting for help. Leaders across the country & government were calling my office, desperate for action as Trump failed them in moments of crisis.” Can you expand on that for us?
Troye: I have a lot of memories of working in the Trump White House where there are numerous situations where the government apparatus that does the whole disaster relief declaration process would come to a halt because the disaster declaration that needed to be signed by the president was sitting on Donald Trump’s desk. It was frustrating, as you can imagine, because we as national security officials serve for the greater good of the country. Our job is to help Americans, especially someone like me, who’s in the Homeland Security role working and advising the vice president. Our jobs are to work in response to a crisis as fast as possible and manage this. There were numerous instances where I had the head of government agencies calling me saying, Can you maybe get the vice president to weigh in on this because it’s still sitting on [Trump’s] desk and he hasn’t approved it yet.
Sargent: You were working for the vice president at the time. Can you characterize your official position?
Troye: Sure. I was Mike Pence’s Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Advisor. In that role, I covered any crisis, global breaking news event that was related to whether it was global terrorism. On the Homeland space, I covered anything that was mass shootings, disaster relief like natural disasters like flooding, tornadoes, hurricanes. Anything that was a crisis domestically here that was related to the security and safety of Americans fall under me.
Sargent: All right. Just to be clear, what you just told us is that you had leaders who were trying to deal with disasters, whether in federal agencies or at the level of states or whatever, call you and try to get you to move stuff along that was being held up by the president of the United States, Donald Trump. They would try to get action by coming to you and working through the vice president. Is that what you’re telling us?
Troye: Yeah. There were numerous times when it was the secretary of DHS or the head of FEMA or even internally in the National Security Council process with the senior director we worked very closely on this effort. At times when they felt like it was stalled because Donald Trump was sitting on it or somebody had gotten to him, someone in OMB, one of whom was disagreeing with whatever was happening, depending on what state it was, they would come to me and say, We cannot get this moved forward, the people in this state are hurting right now, what can you do to help us?
I can think of a time when even Mike Pence was flying out. I believe he was flying to California and he called me. They called me from Air Force Two and said, Where is the disaster declaration? We still haven’t seen it. And I said, Well, sir, it’s sitting on the president’s desk, I can follow up on it. And he said, Please do that. I remember walking over to the West Wing and sitting outside the Oval Office saying the vice president would like to know what the status is on the disaster declaration, he would really like to get this moved along, we’ve been sitting on it for three days.
Not only do the MAGA Republicans want the country to fail and our country to fall to Tinpot dictator wannabe Donald, but they seriously want to see more death and destruction by tanking one of the most necessary and enormous FEMA responses ever. This is from NBC News. “Hurricane Helene live updates: At least 215 dead as some communities struggle to get basic supplies. People are still searching for loved ones and many residents remain isolated because of widespread damage.”
White House spokesman Andrew Bates pushed back on what he called “lies” shared by some Republican figures regarding the Hurricane Helene response.
In a new memo shared today, Bates said: “Some Republican leaders — and their partners in right wing media — are using Hurricane Helene to lie and divide us.”
“Their latest missive: baselessly claiming that FEMA is out of money to respond to Hurricane Helene — because of an existing program that supports cities and towns that are sheltering migrants. … This is FALSE,” Bates wrote.
“No disaster relief funding at all was used to support migrants housing and services. None. At. All,” he continued.
Trump echoed that false theory at a rally in Michigan yesterday, saying, “They stole the FEMA money, just like they stole it from a bank so they could give it to illegal immigrants that they want to have vote for them this season.”
Bates clarified that funding for communities to support migrants is appropriated by Congress to U.S. Customs and Border Protection and is merely administered by FEMA, and the funding isn’t related to FEMA’s response and recovery efforts.
“FEMA has the funds it needs for immediate response and recovery efforts for Hurricane Helene. In fact, FEMA has been able to provide over $45 million in direct financial assistance to individuals and families affected by Hurricane Helene, including over $17 million to those recovering and rebuilding in North Carolina,” Bates added.
I also wanted to point out that Republicans are still plotting ways to overturn the election. In the middle of all of this, is the sentencing of Tina Peters. Watch this on CNN where Jim Acosta shows the incredible number of voters that still believe Trump won the 2024. Check this sentencing hearing. This Judge rocks.
She was convicted in August for the Computer Breach associated with the My Pillow Goon. This is the AP story that details that.
Former Colorado clerk Tina Peters, the first local election official to be charged with a security breach after the 2020 election as unfounded conspiracy theories swirled, was found guilty by a jury on most charges Monday.
Peters, a one-time hero to election deniers, was accused of using someone else’s security badge to give an expert affiliated with My Pillow chief executive Mike Lindell access to the Mesa County election system and deceiving other officials about that person’s identity.
Lindell is a prominent promoter of false claims that voting machines were manipulated to steal the election from Donald Trump. His online broadcasting site has been showing a livestream of Peters’ trial and sending out daily email updates, sometimes asking for prayers for Peters and including statements from her.
Prosecutors said Peters was seeking fame and became “fixated” on voting problems after becoming involved with those who had questioned the accuracy of the 2020 presidential election results.
The breach Peters was charged of orchestrating heightened concerns over potential insider threats, in which rogue election workers sympathetic to partisan lies could use their access and knowledge to launch an attack from within.
It would be nice to think that future evil-doers would take the hint and fear a 9 year-sentence, but MAGA weirdos are nuts. So, this is an interesting tidbit from Springfield, Ohio. “Someone Was Arrested For Killing Geese In Springfield — But It Wasn’t A Haitian. Brian Comer, a 64-year-old white man, was accused of illegally hunting geese at a golf course on the day Trump amplified racist lies about Haitian immigrants in the city.” Where’s fucking lying, J Dank Vance, now?
A 64-year-old white man in Springfield, Ohio, was accused of illegally hunting geese at a golf course pond as former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, were spreading racist lies that Haitian immigrants in the area were eating geese and people’s pets.
Brian Comer was charged with a misdemeanor in connection with the Sept. 10 incident. According to an arrest affidavit obtained by HuffPost, a golfer at Rocky Lakes Golf Course in Springfield reported seeing a Canada goose floating in a pond and Comer using a shotgun to shoot another bird.
Comer didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment from HuffPost, but court records show he entered a guilty plea. A court spokesperson told HuffPost he paid $200 to cover a fine and court fees.
Journalist Steven Monacelli first posted about the arrest on Thursday on X, formerly Twitter.
This headline from The Guardian is frightening. “Two men have re-engineered the US electoral system in favor of Republicans. If the right strews
Two men recognized and exploited the anti-democratic loopholes within America’s rickety democracy in order to deliver Republicans victories that they could never win at the ballot box.
Now their willfully minoritarian creations threaten the very essence of a representative democracy: if Donald Trump, rightwing courts, gerrymandered state legislatures and an extreme Republican caucus in the US House of Representatives create constitutional chaos over the certification of this presidential election, two men cleared the path.
The single-minded determination of Leonard Leo built a conservative supermajority on the US supreme court and stacked lower and state courts with Republican ideologues that have pushed the nation to the right via the least accountable branch of government.
Chris Jankowski masterminded the partisan gerrymanders that tilted state legislatures and congressional delegations across the south and the purple midwest toward extreme Republicans, ended Barack Obama’s second term before it started, and rendered elections in Wisconsin and North Carolina all but meaningless over the last decade and a half.
Leo and Jankowski understood, separately, that the courts and state legislatures were undervalued and often undefended targets for a deliberate strategy aimed at capturing important levers of power that sometimes float under the radar. They could be Moneyball-ed, to borrow the term Michael Lewis used in his book about how the Oakland A’s made an end-run around large-market teams by understanding value that their opponents overlooked.
What Leo and Jankowski built separately would soon reinforce the other’s creation (with, of course, crucial assists from chief justice John Roberts), tightening the knots around meaningful elections, pushing policy to the extreme right and making it nearly impossible for voters to do anything about it.
Leo’s relentless focus on turning the judiciary Republican, first identifying and fast-tracking conservative jurists through his various roles at the Federalist Society, then coordinating the often eight-figure efforts to secure their confirmation on the US supreme court, helped conservatives to unpopular court-imposed victories on voting rights, abortion restrictions, gun access and gutting the regulatory state that would not have been won through the political process.
As I revealed in my book Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count, Jankowski pioneered Redmap, short for the Redistricting Majority Project. That 2010 strategy, coordinated when he worked at the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC), flipped state legislative chambers in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Alabama, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Indiana, Tennessee and several other states just ahead of the decennial redistricting. Then, with complete control of those processes, as well in Florida, Georgia, Texas and elsewhere, the RSLC helped draw some of the most extreme partisan gerrymanders in history, locking in huge Republican advantages in state legislatures and congressional delegations.
The supreme court’s decision in Citizens Unitedhelped make possible the $30m that funded Redmap. Redmap’s lines then proved so stout that they could hold back electoral waves. In 2012, the Republican party would easily hold the US House of Representatives even as they won 1.4m fewer votes nationwide; Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Michigan and Wisconsin all went for Obama statewide, but the Republicans got 64 of those states’ 94 congressional seats.
Meanwhile, as Republicans drew themselves giant edges in the US House and state chambers, and packed Democrats into fewer seats they won with bigger majorities, low-turnout, base-driven Republican primaries became the key races to win, producing a new generation of lawmakers fixated on solutions for “voter fraud”.
This grim result is a US supreme court that has been captured by conservatives, which has delivered a decade of anti-democracy decisions that have advantaged the Republican party in elections, as well as an audacious plan to gerrymander Republicans into power in state legislatures nationwide and helped produce ever-more-extreme caucuses eager to adapt draconian voter restrictions in the name of stopping fraud that they cannot prove exist. The Roberts court has blessed this as well.
You better believe all these anti-democracy folks are just waiting to get Vance into the Oval Office. Trump is chaos, but Vance is single-minded, and there’s a method to his meanness. Then there is foreign interference in this election, too. The Hill reports that “Democrats suspect Netanyahu attempting to tilt Trump-Harris race.” This is written by Alexander Bolten. ( And, of course, all the end-time fundies are wild about all-out war in that area.)
Democrats increasingly suspect Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to interfere in U.S. domestic politics by ignoring President Biden’s calls to negotiate a peace deal in Gaza and by confronting Hezbollah and Iran weeks before the U.S. election.
The rapidly escalating confrontation between Israel, Hezbollah and Hezbollah’s ally, Iran, has undercut Biden’s efforts to achieve peace through diplomacy.
The growing threat of a broader conflict has opened the door for former President Trump to argue that the world is “spiraling out of control” on Biden’s watch.
Biden’s polling numbers with Muslim Americans continue to deteriorate amid the mounting violence in the region, which poses a serious political liability to Vice President Harris in Michigan, a must-win state for Democrats.
Trump traveled to Michigan on Thursday to speak at a rally in Saginaw.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s relationship with even the most pro-Israel Democrats has becoming increasingly confrontational.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) made headlines in March when he called Netanyahu a “major obstacle” to peace and urged Israel to hold new elections. Around that time, Biden called Israel’s offensive in Gaza “over the top.”
“I certainly worry that Prime Minister Netanyahu is watching the American election as he makes decisions about his military campaigns in the north and in Gaza,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told CNN’s Erin Burnett in a Tuesday interview.
I continue to write these long blog reads these days. Every day reveals more weirdness and criminal activity. I would like to note that this was a headline. “Fox News host: Trump ‘resorted to crimes’ to hold on to power.” That also was one of the shocking events that happened this week.
Fox News host Neil Cavuto said Wednesday that a newly unsealed filing in the federal Jan. 6 case revealed former President Trump “resorted to crimes” to stay in office.
“It was in this newly unsealed court paper we’re learning that former President Trump resorted to crimes to cling to power after the 2020 election. We don’t know much more than that,” Cavuto said Wednesday on Fox News.
“A lot of this stuff was going to be coming out anyway. We’re going to be getting the latest on that, and a legal look at what is being revealed here and whether it’s giving us any new information, anything we don’t know. The timing of this, of course, is little more than about five weeks before the general election,” he added.
I see more October surprises on the horizon.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
#Repeat1968JohnBuss #AntiDemocracyMAGARepublicans #AyatollahMikeJohnson #BebeNetanyahuAndAmericanElectionInterference #FEMAFunding #HurricaneHelene #MAGARepublicanParty
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“There ya go, that explains it! Trump is in serious decline.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
This week has been rather mind-blowing for me. First, I watched Former Congresswoman Liz Cheney stand beside Vice President Kamala Harris and heartily endorse her. The number of top Republicans going out of their way to stop DonOld is really heartening. The utter destruction left in the path of Hurricane Helene was beyond the warzone feeling I saw when I finally got to return home to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. I can only imagine what’s in store for us in the future if we don’t speed up policy and action on Climate Change. Then, there’s the kind of shock only practitioners of the Dismal Science could feel. “U.S. Hiring Accelerated in September, Blowing Past Expectations” is a headline in today’s Wall Street Journal. Our economy is so good we’ve booted the once-assumed takeover of the title of the largest economy in the world by China. It has been moved farther into the future if ever.
The U.S. labor market strengthened in the weeks before Election Day, as job growth accelerated in September and the unemployment rate ticked lower.
Employers added 254,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department said Friday. That was significantly more than the 150,000 economists expected, and marked the largest monthly increase since March. The unemployment rate slipped to 4.1%.
Friday’s bumper payrolls report is likely to close the door on another half-percentage-point rate cut by the Federal Reserve at its next meeting in November. It should keep officials on track to lower rates by a quarter point.
The Fed is trying to engineer what is called a soft landing, in which inflation moves down without major deterioration in the labor market. Though Friday is just one data point, it suggests that the U.S. is headed in that direction.
“It puts another set of wheels under the plane in terms of assuring a soft landing,” said Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY-Parthenon.
Friday’s report also signaled that hiring this summer wasn’t as weak as initially thought. Revised figures show employers added 72,000 more jobs in July and August combined than earlier reported.
The latest snapshot of the labor market’s health comes just a month before the U.S. presidential election, where the economy and inflation are key issues for voters. The strong jobs report could help Vice President Kamala Harris. In polls, she trails former President Donald Trump on the economy.
Stocks ticked higher. During much of the inflationary post-Covid-19 boom, stocks often quaked temporarily at stronger-than-expected economic data, because traders took such shocks as a sign that the Fed would tighten monetary policy more aggressively. Investors’ positive reaction Friday showed that they view good news as good news again—even if futures contracts tied to the federal-funds rate suggest traders are now expecting a slower pace of Fed easing.
Employers added jobs at bars and restaurants and construction, as well as in sectors that are less sensitive to the economy’s ups and downs like government, education and healthcare.
There were a few weak spots. Employers modestly cut head count in manufacturing, transportation and warehousing, and temporary help services.
Analysts also said that although September’s jobs report was unexpectedly strong, other economic data point to a slightly less robust hiring picture. Labor Department data released earlier this week showed that the share of workers quitting their jobs each month fell to its lowest rate in more than four years in August, a sign people are more hesitant about leaving their current roles for new ones.
Liz Cheney described the Republican Party as being the MAGA Party. Those left in the MAGA party are living in lies, bigotry, and a world of active sabotage of the truth and of the country. In one of the most callous moves I’ve seen in Congress, Speaker Johnson refuses to call the House back into session to provide the funding needed for FEMA. He wants it to wait until November 12. He’s wandering around Florida today.
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson said Thursday that a congressional emergency spending decision in response to Hurricane Helene “will probably correspond when Congress is expected to return to session.”
Congress will be on recess for more than a month, and is set to return to session on Nov. 12. Johnson seemed to rule out a return before then, although President Joe Biden indicated this week that he may ask Congress to convene before the break’s scheduled end.
“Right before we left on Wednesday, a week ago, Congress appropriated $20 billion to FEMA to cover the immediate aftermath of the storm,” Johnson said in Steinhatchee Thursday. “Of course, we knew it was headed into the coast at that time, so FEMA has the funding that needs to respond immediately. We’re glad to see them on the ground here.”
Johnson said damage assessments must be complete before Congress can update the disaster budget.
“It will take some time to tabulate this storm — it’s one of the biggest in our history,” Johnson said. “So, a lot of that work’s being done immediately, and I think the timing of that will probably correspond when Congress is expected to return to session right after the election, and so we’ll be on that.”
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the Federal Emergency Management Agency lacks enough funding to last through hurricane season, which ends Nov. 30.
Johnson appeared with Florida U.S. Reps. Kat Cammack and Neal Dunn at Roy’s Restaurant, which was ravaged by Helene.
The speaker of the House said that funding further disaster response will be bipartisan.
“There’ll be an appropriate amount requested to Congress, and we’ll have to dig deep and find a way to do that,” he said.
Johnson assured that Congress “will do what’s necessary to make sure that Americans are taken care of.”
What’s most impressive is to see just precisely who 175 Republicans are that voted against the aid. And, yes, it’s basically to make the Biden/Harris Administration look bad so DonOld can rant and make people forget his lousy response to disasters when he occupied the White House. This is from Newsweek. “Full List of Republicans Who Voted Against FEMA Funding Before Helene Hit,” written by Khaleda Rahman.
As Hurricane Helene careened toward Florida’s Panhandle, numerous Republicans voted against extending funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
Last week, Congress approved $20 billion for FEMA’s disaster relief fund as part of a stopgap spending bill to fund the government through December 20. But the measure left out billions of dollars in requested supplemental disaster funding.
The Senate approved the measure by a 78-18 vote on September 25 after it passed the House in a 341-82 vote. Republicans supplied the no votes in both chambers.
Some of the Republicans who voted against the bill represent states that have been hard hit by Helene, including Florida Representative Matt Gaetz.
Helene hit Florida as a Category 4 storm last Thursday, before plowing through several other states in the Southeast. The devastation could cost up to $160 billion, according to an estimate by AccuWeather.
Some Republicans railed against FEMA funding being allocated for assisting migrants after Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters on Wednesday that FEMA will run out of money before the hurricane season is over. The agency is facing a multibillion-dollar deficit, even after imposing new spending restrictions.
The New Republic has released a “Transcript: Trump’s Unhinged Handling of Disasters Revealed By Insider. An interview with Olivia Troye, a top homeland security official in the Trump administration, about how badly Trump politicized disaster response as president—as seen from the inside.” Former Republican Women are not holding back on what a disaster DonOld was. This is from Greg Sargent’s podcast, The Daily Blast.
Sargent: OK, let’s start here. The other day after Trump started pushing that lie that disaster relief is being denied to Republicans, you did a tweet that got some attention. It said this, “As a Homeland Security Advisor in the Trump White House, I witnessed firsthand how Donald Trump politicized disaster relief, leaving devastated Americans waiting for help. Leaders across the country & government were calling my office, desperate for action as Trump failed them in moments of crisis.” Can you expand on that for us?
Troye: I have a lot of memories of working in the Trump White House where there are numerous situations where the government apparatus that does the whole disaster relief declaration process would come to a halt because the disaster declaration that needed to be signed by the president was sitting on Donald Trump’s desk. It was frustrating, as you can imagine, because we as national security officials serve for the greater good of the country. Our job is to help Americans, especially someone like me, who’s in the Homeland Security role working and advising the vice president. Our jobs are to work in response to a crisis as fast as possible and manage this. There were numerous instances where I had the head of government agencies calling me saying, Can you maybe get the vice president to weigh in on this because it’s still sitting on [Trump’s] desk and he hasn’t approved it yet.
Sargent: You were working for the vice president at the time. Can you characterize your official position?
Troye: Sure. I was Mike Pence’s Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Advisor. In that role, I covered any crisis, global breaking news event that was related to whether it was global terrorism. On the Homeland space, I covered anything that was mass shootings, disaster relief like natural disasters like flooding, tornadoes, hurricanes. Anything that was a crisis domestically here that was related to the security and safety of Americans fall under me.
Sargent: All right. Just to be clear, what you just told us is that you had leaders who were trying to deal with disasters, whether in federal agencies or at the level of states or whatever, call you and try to get you to move stuff along that was being held up by the president of the United States, Donald Trump. They would try to get action by coming to you and working through the vice president. Is that what you’re telling us?
Troye: Yeah. There were numerous times when it was the secretary of DHS or the head of FEMA or even internally in the National Security Council process with the senior director we worked very closely on this effort. At times when they felt like it was stalled because Donald Trump was sitting on it or somebody had gotten to him, someone in OMB, one of whom was disagreeing with whatever was happening, depending on what state it was, they would come to me and say, We cannot get this moved forward, the people in this state are hurting right now, what can you do to help us?
I can think of a time when even Mike Pence was flying out. I believe he was flying to California and he called me. They called me from Air Force Two and said, Where is the disaster declaration? We still haven’t seen it. And I said, Well, sir, it’s sitting on the president’s desk, I can follow up on it. And he said, Please do that. I remember walking over to the West Wing and sitting outside the Oval Office saying the vice president would like to know what the status is on the disaster declaration, he would really like to get this moved along, we’ve been sitting on it for three days.
Not only do the MAGA Republicans want the country to fail and our country to fall to Tinpot dictator wannabe Donald, but they seriously want to see more death and destruction by tanking one of the most necessary and enormous FEMA responses ever. This is from NBC News. “Hurricane Helene live updates: At least 215 dead as some communities struggle to get basic supplies. People are still searching for loved ones and many residents remain isolated because of widespread damage.”
White House spokesman Andrew Bates pushed back on what he called “lies” shared by some Republican figures regarding the Hurricane Helene response.
In a new memo shared today, Bates said: “Some Republican leaders — and their partners in right wing media — are using Hurricane Helene to lie and divide us.”
“Their latest missive: baselessly claiming that FEMA is out of money to respond to Hurricane Helene — because of an existing program that supports cities and towns that are sheltering migrants. … This is FALSE,” Bates wrote.
“No disaster relief funding at all was used to support migrants housing and services. None. At. All,” he continued.
Trump echoed that false theory at a rally in Michigan yesterday, saying, “They stole the FEMA money, just like they stole it from a bank so they could give it to illegal immigrants that they want to have vote for them this season.”
Bates clarified that funding for communities to support migrants is appropriated by Congress to U.S. Customs and Border Protection and is merely administered by FEMA, and the funding isn’t related to FEMA’s response and recovery efforts.
“FEMA has the funds it needs for immediate response and recovery efforts for Hurricane Helene. In fact, FEMA has been able to provide over $45 million in direct financial assistance to individuals and families affected by Hurricane Helene, including over $17 million to those recovering and rebuilding in North Carolina,” Bates added.
I also wanted to point out that Republicans are still plotting ways to overturn the election. In the middle of all of this, is the sentencing of Tina Peters. Watch this on CNN where Jim Acosta shows the incredible number of voters that still believe Trump won the 2024. Check this sentencing hearing. This Judge rocks.
She was convicted in August for the Computer Breach associated with the My Pillow Goon. This is the AP story that details that.
Former Colorado clerk Tina Peters, the first local election official to be charged with a security breach after the 2020 election as unfounded conspiracy theories swirled, was found guilty by a jury on most charges Monday.
Peters, a one-time hero to election deniers, was accused of using someone else’s security badge to give an expert affiliated with My Pillow chief executive Mike Lindell access to the Mesa County election system and deceiving other officials about that person’s identity.
Lindell is a prominent promoter of false claims that voting machines were manipulated to steal the election from Donald Trump. His online broadcasting site has been showing a livestream of Peters’ trial and sending out daily email updates, sometimes asking for prayers for Peters and including statements from her.
Prosecutors said Peters was seeking fame and became “fixated” on voting problems after becoming involved with those who had questioned the accuracy of the 2020 presidential election results.
The breach Peters was charged of orchestrating heightened concerns over potential insider threats, in which rogue election workers sympathetic to partisan lies could use their access and knowledge to launch an attack from within.
It would be nice to think that future evil-doers would take the hint and fear a 9 year-sentence, but MAGA weirdos are nuts. So, this is an interesting tidbit from Springfield, Ohio. “Someone Was Arrested For Killing Geese In Springfield — But It Wasn’t A Haitian. Brian Comer, a 64-year-old white man, was accused of illegally hunting geese at a golf course on the day Trump amplified racist lies about Haitian immigrants in the city.” Where’s fucking lying, J Dank Vance, now?
A 64-year-old white man in Springfield, Ohio, was accused of illegally hunting geese at a golf course pond as former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, were spreading racist lies that Haitian immigrants in the area were eating geese and people’s pets.
Brian Comer was charged with a misdemeanor in connection with the Sept. 10 incident. According to an arrest affidavit obtained by HuffPost, a golfer at Rocky Lakes Golf Course in Springfield reported seeing a Canada goose floating in a pond and Comer using a shotgun to shoot another bird.
Comer didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment from HuffPost, but court records show he entered a guilty plea. A court spokesperson told HuffPost he paid $200 to cover a fine and court fees.
Journalist Steven Monacelli first posted about the arrest on Thursday on X, formerly Twitter.
This headline from The Guardian is frightening. “Two men have re-engineered the US electoral system in favor of Republicans. If the right strews
Two men recognized and exploited the anti-democratic loopholes within America’s rickety democracy in order to deliver Republicans victories that they could never win at the ballot box.
Now their willfully minoritarian creations threaten the very essence of a representative democracy: if Donald Trump, rightwing courts, gerrymandered state legislatures and an extreme Republican caucus in the US House of Representatives create constitutional chaos over the certification of this presidential election, two men cleared the path.
The single-minded determination of Leonard Leo built a conservative supermajority on the US supreme court and stacked lower and state courts with Republican ideologues that have pushed the nation to the right via the least accountable branch of government.
Chris Jankowski masterminded the partisan gerrymanders that tilted state legislatures and congressional delegations across the south and the purple midwest toward extreme Republicans, ended Barack Obama’s second term before it started, and rendered elections in Wisconsin and North Carolina all but meaningless over the last decade and a half.
Leo and Jankowski understood, separately, that the courts and state legislatures were undervalued and often undefended targets for a deliberate strategy aimed at capturing important levers of power that sometimes float under the radar. They could be Moneyball-ed, to borrow the term Michael Lewis used in his book about how the Oakland A’s made an end-run around large-market teams by understanding value that their opponents overlooked.
What Leo and Jankowski built separately would soon reinforce the other’s creation (with, of course, crucial assists from chief justice John Roberts), tightening the knots around meaningful elections, pushing policy to the extreme right and making it nearly impossible for voters to do anything about it.
Leo’s relentless focus on turning the judiciary Republican, first identifying and fast-tracking conservative jurists through his various roles at the Federalist Society, then coordinating the often eight-figure efforts to secure their confirmation on the US supreme court, helped conservatives to unpopular court-imposed victories on voting rights, abortion restrictions, gun access and gutting the regulatory state that would not have been won through the political process.
As I revealed in my book Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count, Jankowski pioneered Redmap, short for the Redistricting Majority Project. That 2010 strategy, coordinated when he worked at the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC), flipped state legislative chambers in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Alabama, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Indiana, Tennessee and several other states just ahead of the decennial redistricting. Then, with complete control of those processes, as well in Florida, Georgia, Texas and elsewhere, the RSLC helped draw some of the most extreme partisan gerrymanders in history, locking in huge Republican advantages in state legislatures and congressional delegations.
The supreme court’s decision in Citizens Unitedhelped make possible the $30m that funded Redmap. Redmap’s lines then proved so stout that they could hold back electoral waves. In 2012, the Republican party would easily hold the US House of Representatives even as they won 1.4m fewer votes nationwide; Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Michigan and Wisconsin all went for Obama statewide, but the Republicans got 64 of those states’ 94 congressional seats.
Meanwhile, as Republicans drew themselves giant edges in the US House and state chambers, and packed Democrats into fewer seats they won with bigger majorities, low-turnout, base-driven Republican primaries became the key races to win, producing a new generation of lawmakers fixated on solutions for “voter fraud”.
This grim result is a US supreme court that has been captured by conservatives, which has delivered a decade of anti-democracy decisions that have advantaged the Republican party in elections, as well as an audacious plan to gerrymander Republicans into power in state legislatures nationwide and helped produce ever-more-extreme caucuses eager to adapt draconian voter restrictions in the name of stopping fraud that they cannot prove exist. The Roberts court has blessed this as well.
You better believe all these anti-democracy folks are just waiting to get Vance into the Oval Office. Trump is chaos, but Vance is single-minded, and there’s a method to his meanness. Then there is foreign interference in this election, too. The Hill reports that “Democrats suspect Netanyahu attempting to tilt Trump-Harris race.” This is written by Alexander Bolten. ( And, of course, all the end-time fundies are wild about all-out war in that area.)
Democrats increasingly suspect Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to interfere in U.S. domestic politics by ignoring President Biden’s calls to negotiate a peace deal in Gaza and by confronting Hezbollah and Iran weeks before the U.S. election.
The rapidly escalating confrontation between Israel, Hezbollah and Hezbollah’s ally, Iran, has undercut Biden’s efforts to achieve peace through diplomacy.
The growing threat of a broader conflict has opened the door for former President Trump to argue that the world is “spiraling out of control” on Biden’s watch.
Biden’s polling numbers with Muslim Americans continue to deteriorate amid the mounting violence in the region, which poses a serious political liability to Vice President Harris in Michigan, a must-win state for Democrats.
Trump traveled to Michigan on Thursday to speak at a rally in Saginaw.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s relationship with even the most pro-Israel Democrats has becoming increasingly confrontational.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) made headlines in March when he called Netanyahu a “major obstacle” to peace and urged Israel to hold new elections. Around that time, Biden called Israel’s offensive in Gaza “over the top.”
“I certainly worry that Prime Minister Netanyahu is watching the American election as he makes decisions about his military campaigns in the north and in Gaza,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told CNN’s Erin Burnett in a Tuesday interview.
I continue to write these long blog reads these days. Every day reveals more weirdness and criminal activity. I would like to note that this was a headline. “Fox News host: Trump ‘resorted to crimes’ to hold on to power.” That also was one of the shocking events that happened this week.
Fox News host Neil Cavuto said Wednesday that a newly unsealed filing in the federal Jan. 6 case revealed former President Trump “resorted to crimes” to stay in office.
“It was in this newly unsealed court paper we’re learning that former President Trump resorted to crimes to cling to power after the 2020 election. We don’t know much more than that,” Cavuto said Wednesday on Fox News.
“A lot of this stuff was going to be coming out anyway. We’re going to be getting the latest on that, and a legal look at what is being revealed here and whether it’s giving us any new information, anything we don’t know. The timing of this, of course, is little more than about five weeks before the general election,” he added.
I see more October surprises on the horizon.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
#Repeat1968JohnBuss #AntiDemocracyMAGARepublicans #AyatollahMikeJohnson #BebeNetanyahuAndAmericanElectionInterference #FEMAFunding #HurricaneHelene #MAGARepublicanParty
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“Felonious trump is angry, the deep state wouldn’t let him use his golf cart..” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
For the first time since moving here, I’ve got a bout of agita that’s gone to my stomach. I’m thankful for my meditation training from doctors, sangha, and teachers. It really helps. However, surfing Samsara has gotten more difficult these days. You may need to sit on a mat after reading some of the things I will share today. I’m going to go dig in the soil once I finish this. There are a lot of weeds to pull. I can visualize who represents which weed.
Public Notice has this headline today, as reported by Lisa Needham. “Mike Johnson says the quiet part on Fox.'”The justices on the court — I know many of them personally … they’ll set this straight.”
It was a given, of course, that Trump backers would spring to his defense following his conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
Trump’s supporters are trying to dox the jurors, a sheriff is saying that it’s time we put a felon in the White House, and a bunch of MAGAs are flying the American flag upside down (though we have no update from the Alitos on the status of their flagpole). One of Trump’s lawyers and his legal spokesperson have both gone on Fox News and called on the Supreme Court to get their client off the hook. (More on that later.)
But one statement stands out in all this sound and furor: GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson’s call for SCOTUS to “step in.”
The morning after the conviction, Johnson went on Fox & Friends to reassure Trump supporters that he has the ear of the justices.
“I think that the justices on the court — I know many of them personally — I think they’re deeply concerned about [Trump’s conviction], as we are. So I think they’ll set this straight, but it’s going to take awhile.”
Johnson went on to say “this will be overturned, guys, there’s no question about it. It’s just going to take some time to do it.” (Watch below.)
This remarkable statement highlights how Republicans have come to — correctly — count on the federal courts to ensure they stay in power.
The Supreme Court already overturned Colorado’s decision to remove Trump from the ballot and agreed to hear his outrageous absolute immunity claim in the January 6 case after refusing to hear it on an expedited basis when asked by prosecutor Jack Smith. That foot-dragging resulted in the March 4 date for Trump’s DC trial being removed from the calendar, and it’s exceedingly unlikely there will be a new trial date before the election.
So why wouldn’t Johnson look to the conservatives on the Supreme Court to save Trump this time around?
Too bad David McCullough passed recently. We’ll need a narrator for this version of Ken Burns’ Civil War. Burns gave the commencement speech for undergraduates at Brandeis University. It’s worth a listen or read. Burns has documented a lot of our recent history and knows us well.
Another voice, Mercy Otis Warren, a philosopher and historian during our revolution put it this way, “The study of the human character at once opens a beautiful and a deformed picture of the soul. We there find a noble principle implanted in the nature of people, but when the checks of conscience are thrown aside, humanity is obscured.” I have had the privilege for nearly half a century of making films about the US, but I have also made films about us. That is to say the two letter, lowercase, plural pronoun. All of the intimacy of “us” and also “we” and “our” and all of the majesty, complexity, contradiction, and even controversy of the US. And if I have learned anything over those years, it’s that there’s only us. There is no them. And whenever someone suggests to you, whomever it may be in your life that there’s a them, run away. Othering is the simplistic binary way to make and identify enemies, but it is also the surest way to your own self imprisonment, which brings me to a moment I’ve dreaded and forces me to suspend my longstanding attempt at neutrality.
There is no real choice this November. There is only the perpetuation, however flawed and feeble you might perceive it, of our fragile 249-year-old experiment or the entropy that will engulf and destroy us if we take the other route. When, as Mercy Otis Warren would say, “The checks of conscience are thrown aside and a deformed picture of the soul is revealed.” The presumptive Republican nominee is the opioid of all opioids, an easy cure for what some believe is the solution to our myriad pains and problems. When in fact with him, you end up re-enslaved with an even bigger problem, a worse affliction and addiction, “a bigger delusion”, James Baldwin would say, the author and finisher of our national existence, our national suicide as Mr. Lincoln prophesies. Do not be seduced by easy equalization. There is nothing equal about this equation. We are at an existential crossroads in our political and civic lives. This is a choice that could not be clearer.
The lies are more evident than ever, but they’re directed at an audience with no interest in the truth. Here’s another one from Senator Tim Scott via Axios. And yes, I’m quoting William Kristol again.
Sen. Tim Scott wants you to know: 2024 is not an abortion-policy election.
“The Supreme Court has already ruled that this is a states’ issue. President Trump and Speaker Johnson have both said that this will remain a states’ issue,” Scott said yesterday on Fox News Sunday. “That is a settled issue for our party, and frankly, it is one that takes that issue off the table for the Democrats, who have the most extreme position on abortion
Here’s some truth via Pro Publica. “Witnesses in the various criminal cases against the former president have gotten pay raises, new jobs, and more. If any benefits were intended to influence testimony, that could be a crime.” The Trump Family Crime Syndicate just can’t stop criming. Here comes another set of charges that will be hard to get through trial before November.
Nine witnesses in the criminal cases against former President Donald Trump have received significant financial benefits, including large raises from his campaign, severance packages, new jobs, and a grant of shares and cash from Trump’s media company.
The benefits have flowed from Trump’s businesses and campaign committees, according to a ProPublica analysis of public disclosures, court records and securities filings. One campaign aide had his average monthly pay double, from $26,000 to $53,500. Another employee got a $2 million severance package barring him from voluntarily cooperating with law enforcement. And one of the campaign’s top officials had her daughter hired onto the campaign staff, where she is now the fourth-highest-paid employee.
These pay increases and other benefits often came at delicate moments in the legal proceedings against Trump. One aide who was given a plum position on the board of Trump’s social media company, for example, got the seat after he was subpoenaed but before he testified.
Significant changes to a staffer’s work situation, such as bonuses, pay raises, firings or promotions, can be evidence of a crime if they come outside the normal course of business. To prove witness tampering, prosecutors would need to show that perks or punishments were intended to influence testimony.
Here’s one from Amanda Marcotte–writing for Salon–that will once again show how far the fetus fetishists will go to control women and deny them bodily autonomy. “Texas professors sue to fail students who seek abortions. Men are using abortion bans to control and abuse women in their lives for “consensual sexual intercourse”
A pair of Texas professors figured out that their female students have sex and, boy, they do not like it. So now the philosophy professor and finance professor are suing for the right to punish their students who, outside of class, have abortions.
“Pregnancy is not a disease, and elective abortions are not ‘health care,'” University of Texas at Austin professor Daniel Bonevac sneers in a federal court filing with professor John Hatfield. Instead, Bonevac writes, because pregnancy is the result of “voluntary and consensual sexual intercourse,” students should not be allowed time off to get abortions. If the students disobey and miss class for abortion care, the filing continues, the professors should be allowed to flunk students. Additionally, Bonevac asserts that he has a right to refuse to employ a teaching assistant who has had an abortion, calling such women “criminals.”
The sexual hang-ups of abortion opponents are rarely far from the surface, but even by those low standards, the unjustified male grievance on display in this new Texas lawsuit is a doozy. At issue are federal regulations, called Title IX, first signed into law by President Richard Nixon in 1972. They currently bar publicly funded schools from discriminating on the basis of sex or gender. This means that schools cannot penalize students for health care based on sex. As a male student would be granted leave if he had to travel for surgery, so must a female student, the federal statute requires. The two men argue that granting students an excused absence in such cases violates their First Amendment rights.
Even though the plaintiffs suing for the right to flunk female students for abortion include boilerplate arguments in which they feign concern that abortion is “killing,” the legal filing makes it clear that what really outrages Bonevac and Hatfield is that Title IX prevents them from controlling the private lives of students. Along with their anger about abortion, they grouse about not being allowed to punish students “for being homosexual or transgender.” They also argue they should be able to penalize teaching assistants for “cross-dressing,” by which they appear to mean allowing trans women to wear skirts.
It’s really difficult to describe these angry Christian white nationalists with any label but utter shitgibbons. If they can’t quote the Beatitudes, then they’re not really dealing with the historical Jesus. A shake-up at the Washington Post may make me finally cancel my subscription. This is the summary of the state of affairs by Politico today. “Playbook: The Trump Verdict Lands on the Hill.”
WAPO SHOCKER — SALLY BUZBEE is out as the Washington Post’s executive editor after a three-year run, to be immediately replaced by former WSJ editor in chief MATT MURRAY and, after the election, by the Telegraph’s ROBERT WINNETT. Both have previously worked under WaPo Publisher and CEO WILL LEWIS.
The announcement came in an 8:38 p.m. news release and landed as a thunderbolt to the Posties we spoke to, who were uniformly shocked by the sudden timing of Buzbee’s departure, if not necessarily by the fact of it. It was an unusually abrupt transition for the Post, where top leadership transitions are typically announced months in advance. (The newsroom did not immediately have a story ready to publish and, adding insult to injury, the NYT managed to get theirs up first.)
The buried lede: After Winnett takes over the “core” newsroom in November, Murray will lead a “third newsroom … comprised of service and social media journalism and run separately from the core news operation. The aim is to give the millions of Americans — who feel traditional news is not for them but still want to be kept informed — compelling, exciting and accurate news where they are and in the style that they want.”
It’s all about the clicks these days. Today, the Philadelphia Inquirer published an Op-Ed from one of Alito’s former clerks. “I was a law clerk for Justice Alito. He must recuse himself from hearing cases involving Donald Trump. Flying the U.S. flag upside down, once a signal of distress, has become a symbol of those who reject the results of the 2020 presidential election. When Alito did so, it was indeed a distress call.” These are the thoughts of Susan Sullivan.
As a former law clerk to Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., I often admired him as a person for his integrity and honesty. As a progressive liberal, however, I vehemently disagreed with the approach he takes to reading the Constitution, the narrow interpretation he adopts, and his reverence for the framers’restrictive intent.
Over the years, I became increasingly distressed with the results of his decisions. And then came Dobbs.
By striking down the rights of women to choose whether to terminate a pregnancy, the decision last year in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which he wrote, eviscerated women’s fundamental right to self-determination. Dobbs is not just about abortion; it is about setting the clock back and undermining the core protections enshrined within the Constitution of liberty, equality, and access to justice.
And then came the flag.
Flying the American flag upside down, formerly a signal of distress, is now understood to unequivocally telegraph support for those who have co-opted and corrupted its original intent. It has become the symbol of those who attacked the U.S. Capitol in a violent insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, who challenged — and continue to deny — the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election. It is the emblem for the “Stop the Steal” Trump factions, the symbol now held hostage by those who attacked our democracy at its very core.
The New York Times reported earlier this month that Justice Alito flew an upside-down flag at his home in Fairfax, Va., and another controversial flag at his beach house on Long Beach Island — acts that are widely accepted as an abhorrent affront to anyone who respects our constitutional democracy. So, when that flag is flown upside down by a member of the nation’s highest court, it is indeed a distress call.
The U.S. Supreme Court is currently deciding whether a president’s actions while in office are absolutely immune from criminal prosecution, irrespective of whether they concern the legitimate business of the office. Donald Trump has been indicted in state and federal courts in Washington, D.C., Florida, Georgia, and New York, alleging fraud as well ascrimes in connection with the Jan. 6 insurrection, the mishandling of classified documents, election interference, and more.
If the Supreme Court decides that he has blanket immunity — a decision expected any day now — these criminal charges, and any others, disappear. This means a president could commit serious crimes while in office, having nothing to do with the legitimate function of government, without facing any consequences. A president could theoretically hire an assassin to kill a competitor with impunity.
Justice Alito must recuse himself from having any role in the decision of these cases.
You may continue to read her rationale at the link. Meanwhile, this is an interesting read at The Guardian. “The reich stuff – what does Trump really have in common with Hitler? Comparisons between the ex-president and the 20th-century Nazi leader are controversial but a new book says they resemble each other as political performance artists.”
WhenDonald Trump shared a video that dreamed of a “unified reich” if he wins the US presidential election, and took nearly a full day to remove it, the most shocking thing was how unshocking it was.
Trump has reportedly said before that Adolf Hitler did “some good things”, echoed the Nazi dictator by calling his political opponents “vermin” and saying immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country”, and responded to a white supremacist march in Charlottesville by claiming that there were “very fine people on both sides”.
The Hitler-Trump analogy is controversial. “Some of Trump’s critics – including Biden’s campaign – argue that Trump’s incendiary rhetoric and authoritarian behavior justify the comparison,” the Politico website observed recently. “Meanwhile, Trump’s defenders – and even some of his more historically-minded critics – argue that the comparison is ahistorical; that he’s not a true fascist.”
The former camp now includes Henk de Berg, a professor of German at the University of Sheffield in Britain. The Dutchman, whose previous books include Freud’s Theory and Its Use in Literary and Cultural Studies, has just published Trump and Hitler: A Comparative Study in Lying.
In it, De Berg compares and contrasts Hitler and Trump as political performance artists and how they connect with their respective audiences. He examines the two men’s work ethic, management style and narcissism, as well as quirks such as Hitler’s toothbrush moustache and Trump’s implausible blond hair.
In a Zoom interview from his office at the university campus, De Berg quotes the American comedian and actor George Burns: “The most important thing in acting is honesty. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.” He adds: “The most important thing in populism is authenticity. The moment you’re able to fake that, you’re in.”
De Berg, 60, happened to be renewing his study of National Socialism, and rereading Hitler’s autobiographical manifesto Mein Kampf, just as Trump was first running for the White House in 2015. “Obviously, there are massive differences,” he acknowledges. “Hitler was an ideologically committed antisemite who instigated the second world war and was responsible for the Holocaust in which 6 million Jews died.
“But then I looked at their rhetorical strategies and their public relations operations and I began to see how similar they are in many ways. So I thought, OK, why not do a book looking at Hitler from the perspective of Trump?
Well, it’s another Monday in this version of the United States.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
#Repeat1968 #AyatollahMikeJohnson #ChiefInquisitorAlito #FeloniousTrump #fetusFetishists #JohnBuss #ShakeItOff #UncleTimScott #WhiteChristianNationalism