A world where everyone is walking around with tracking devices

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos takes another look at the claim that the more the nasty guy gets bad legal news the stronger he becomes. And Sumner calls BS.

The idea that [CEO of the Harris Poll, Mark] Penn and [Los Angeles Times writer Scott] Jennings are selling is that narrative that Republicans, and Trump, want everyone to believe: It’s the “every time he gets knocked down again, he gets up stronger” thesis. And it is, what’s that word again? Bulls---. Every time Trump is held accountable, every MAGA account on X seems to spew “Democrats just elected Trump!” Because, somehow, they seem to be convinced that everyone else is just as angry about a slight to Trump as the folks in their Let’s Go Brandon support group. We’re not.

Fans of the nasty guy said the same thing before the 2020 election. And, after impeachment, he lost. Sumner also had a look at what the nasty guy wants in a VP candidate. + Surrogacy: How quick are they to defend the nasty guy, praise him, and attribute every bit of good news to him? + Subservience: How well can they be a blank, extremely white screen onto which any nasty guy thought can be projected – without a thought for legality or morality. + Sacrifice: Someone who will take the bullet and slow down the chase. Sumner then rates who appear to be the top four candidates according to those criteria. These candidates are: Doug Burgum, Marco Rubio, Tim Scott, and JD Vance. Beyond that I really don’t care how well each fits the criteria. Kos of Kos wrote about the conservative movement being one long grift. He shows a list of products one can buy to avoid buying a similar product that is too “woke.” One can get anti-woke water, razor blades, beer, sneakers (the gold ones that give the nasty guy a cut), pets, coffee, and even a bank. That they cost more than the corresponding “woke” product is an easy guess – a case of Ultra Right Beer goes for $57.84 ($18.65 of that for shipping) while a case of Bud Light is $21. But it keeps you from getting woke cooties. I’ve collected a bunch of pundit roundups. I’ll just go through them (with a diversion or two) even with the jumble of topics. A pundit roundup for Kos from two weeks ago by Chitown Kev quoted Thor Benson of Wired on how the nasty guy’s return to the Oval Office could create a surveillance state and do it quickly.

If he so desired, Trump could create his own version of this [Nixon era] program, but he’d be working with much more advanced technology—and it’d be in a time when there are countless data points available on every American. Hoover could have only dreamed of a world where everyone was walking around with tracking devices. ... The administration may not even need to come up with a justification for surveilling Americans without a warrant, because it could simply purchase scores of people's personal data. The federal government has been known to purchase data from private brokers in the past, and doing so doesn’t require a warrant. “We are just awash in data, and data brokers can just collect and sell these data,” Vagle says. “Law enforcement or quasi-law enforcement can collect that information.”

A momentary break from roundups to visit a Book Post by Admiral Naismith on Kos that includes a look at the book Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now, by Jaron Lanier. The book, of course, goes into these in a whole lot more detail to explain what is happening to your brain, politics, and more. Reader reviews of the book are here. Naismith just lists the reasons and I’ll mentioned some of them:

1. You are losing your free will. 2. Quitting social media is the most finely targeted way to resist the inanity of our times. 3. Social media is making you into an asshole. 4. Social media is undermining truth. ... 9. Social media is making politics impossible.

Naismith boils the ten down to two:

(1) social media is run by fascists like Zuckerberg, who use insidious propaganda techniques to make Republicans into dangerously unhinged terrorist fanatics and Democrats discouraged from voting out of sheer despair. (2) the "influencers"--not the kids on reddit with a million followers, but the REAL behind-the-scenes godzillionaires--pay billions to mine your data and f--- you over with targeted propaganda. And yet---I have a friend network via social media. I have in fact PRACTICED, not lost, empathy by interacting with them. I get to have friends in Colorado and Ohio and Florida and England, who I would never interact with at all, but for social media.

A roundup from ten days ago, Kev quoted Greg Sargent of The New Republic talking about the nasty guy saying he’ll get revenge.

In the media, this story tends to be framed as follows: Will Trump seek “revenge” for his legal travails, or won’t he? But that framing unwittingly lets Trump set the terms of this debate. It implies that he is vowing to do to Democrats what was done to him. But that’s not what Trump is actually threatening. Whereas Trump is being prosecuted on the basis of evidence that law enforcement gathered before asking grand juries to indict him, he is expressly declaring that he will prosecute President Biden and Democrats solely because this is what he endured, meaning explicitly that evidence will not be the initiating impulse.

Joan Walsh of The Nation looked at the health care plans in Project 2025. First, align care with the demands of conservative Christianity – no abortion, no transgender care, and more. Then...

Severino would also leave Americans far more vulnerable to crass capitalism when they are seeking healthcare. He wants HHS to promote private-sector Medicare Advantage plans, which—take it from me, I did my homework—may give healthy “young” seniors decent benefits at lower costs, but which get more expensive, and more restrictive, as seniors age and need more care. He recommends making Medicare Advantage the “default option” once a person qualifies for the senior-citizen health program at age 65, which would be a boon to private insurance companies, since it essentially privatizes the wildly popular public program. Severino would also repeal recent legislation allowing Medicare to negotiate better prices for commonly used drugs. And he doesn’t like Medicaid any better: He would weaken the ACA provisions that rely on Medicaid expansion and would impose work requirements on recipients.

In a roundup from eleven days ago, Greg Dworkin quoted a tweet by Steve Benen (which includes a link):

Trump to Mike Johnson: Put unqualified, scandal-plagued loyalists on the Intelligence Committee, giving them access to many of the nation's most sensitive secrets. Johnson to Trump: Sure thing. Everyone else: You've got to be kidding me.

Dworkin quoted an article in The Guardian:

The chair of Colorado’s Republican party is facing calls to resign from members of his own group after the state organization sent out an email criticizing Pride month – and later calling for rainbow-colored Pride flags to be burned. Dave Williams, who is also a representative in Colorado’s legislature, has faced swift backlash from his fellow Republicans in the wake of the controversial email sent. Much of the criticism aimed at Williams by other Republicans focused on the potential for his remarks to hurt the chances for members of their party to be elected.

I notice the criticism is not about the harm to LGBTQ people. It is good to see Republicans admit that oppressing LGBTQ people can turn voters against them. In the comments are a few good cartoons. Rob Rogers posted one of the nasty guy in a landing craft with other troops approaching the coast on D-Day (now 80 years ago). He says, “But Hitler did some good things... Right suckers?” exlrrp posted a meme of the Statue of Liberty taking a golf swing at the head of the nasty guy. And a panel posted by National Now shows Lucy and Charlie Brown and she says, “I think a lot of my anger can be traced to Patriarchy!” In a roundup from nine days ago, Dworkin quoted Dean Baker on X and Threadreader:

I was listening to a focus group sponsored by NPR of people who don't like Biden or Trump. They asked one person who was leaning towards Trump about what she saw happening in a second Trump term. She answered, he would create jobs. Given that we have created jobs at an incredible pace under Biden, this would be like saying that they want to see Trump in because he would nail Osama Bin Laden. What an incredible indictment of the media that people literally have no idea of the basic facts on the economy. And don't tell me this is based on their lived experience. They don't know lots of people who are unemployed. They get this from what they hear, not from what they see.

And in the comments... A cartoon by David Wilson shows the nasty guy speaking at a rally. A guy in a red hat says, “I wonder what his sentence is going to be.” A woman in a blue jacket says, “Me too! I haven’t heard a complete one yet.” A cartoon by Joel Pett shows a car driving past the “Church of our Malignant Christian Nationalism.” The man in the car asks, “Are we obliged to forgive them for knowing not what they do?” In a roundup from a couple days ago by Dworkin he quoted Peter Wehner of The Atlantic talking about political supporters:

But something has changed for me in the Trump era. I struggle more than I once did to wall off a person’s character from their politics when their politics is binding them to an unusually—and I would say undeniably—destructive person. The lies that MAGA world parrots are so manifestly untrue, and the Trump ethic is so manifestly cruel, that they are difficult to set aside. If a person insists, despite the overwhelming evidence, that Trump was the target of an assassination plot hatched by Biden and carried out by the FBI, this is more than an intellectual failure; it is a moral failure, and a serious one at that. It’s only reasonable to conclude that such Trump supporters have not made a good-faith effort to understand what is really and truly happening. They are choosing to live within the lie, to invoke the words of the former Czech dissident and playwright Vaclav Havel. One of the criteria that need to be taken into account in assessing the moral culpability of people is how absurd the lies are that they are espousing; a second is how intentionally they are avoiding evidence that exposes the lies because they are deeply invested in the lie; and a third is is how consequential the lie is.

Lea Page of the New York Times spent six months knocking on the doors of over 8,000 voters from across the political spectrum:

There’s an immediate intimacy in having a conversation on someone’s doorstep. It is, after all, a threshold between public and private, but who would have thought that political canvassing would be so conducive to such unvarnished honesty? Perhaps because of the fracturing of our communities, we encountered an almost universal need to be witnessed and validated, to trust. … It never felt like a loss. We had stood together on porches and broken steps, among pots of petunias and cans of sodden cigarette butts, and we listened. People told stories full of pride and full of pain. Do you see me? they seemed to ask in a hundred different ways. Do you see my beauty? Do you see my struggle? They were asking so little of us. It was easy to say yes.

Last weekend the nasty guy went to a black church in Detroit to convince people he wold be better for black people than Biden. In the comments Rambler797 included a tweet by John Rock:

“Photo shared by Detroit reporter Russ McNamara of the crowd during Trump’s visit to a Black church in the city yesterday. McNamara reported, ‘Of the 8 Black Trump voters I talked to, just one was from Detroit and zero were congregants.’” In no way surprised by this.

That photo is of the people sitting the pews. All the faces that can be seen are white. A cartoon by Barry Deutsch posted on Kos shows a man and a woman saying, “Why can’t trans people just accept their bodies as they are? ‘Gender Affirmation’ is woke crap! Normal people don’t do that!” Around them are words to show what body modifications each has had done. Some for her: shaved legs, liposuction, boob job, makeup, nose job, botox, hair dye, and pierced ears. Some for him: tattoos, chin job, hair transplant, shaved face, and tummy tuck.

Two nightmares in life: being broke and being in jail

My Sunday movie was Absolute Beginners episodes 3 and 4. This series is rated TV-MA – very much for mature audiences. I need to give a spoiler alert. So if you intend to watch, skip to the next section of this post. Lena and Niko are creating a movie they hope will get them into film school. Niko refused to do a sex scene with Lena because she is like a sister. So they recruit Igor to be in their movie. In episode 3 Lena and Niko work to become friends with Igor and make him comfortable with the idea of acting. Lena begins to show that Igor would do quite nicely as her partner in the sex scene. Niko and Lena are good friends because their parents share a vacation cottage by the seashore. But the friendship and Niko’s parents’ marriage are falling apart. Episode 4: As the student movie progresses I see why this is tagged as an LGBTQ story (which is why I started watching), though one relationship surprised me. Episodes 5 and 6 this weekend. Reactions to the nasty guy’s conviction began being posted shortly after the convictions were announced. Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos collected several. At the top is Dark Brandon with an ice cream cone in one hand and holding out a big “L” with the other. We also get such things as Derek Guy noting “First sneaker designer to be convicted of 34 felony counts.” And Discussing Film noting “‘Home Alone 2: Lost in New York’ star Donald Trump has been found guilty of 34 felony counts. Of course, the nasty guy used it as an opportunity to fundraise. JekylInHyde of the Kos community posted a bunch of editorial cartoons. Denise Oliver-Velez tweeted, “Trump’s appeal oral arguments will be in front of the first All-Black women Appellate bench. On Saturday, not quite two days after the conviction, Kos of Kos noted that punditry and conservative gaslighters claim these felony convictions are good for the nasty guy’s campaign and is energizing his supporters. First, those supporters don’t need to be “energized.” And they won’t decide the election. Kos looked at a poll by Morning Consult done after the verdict: + 54% approve of the conviction. + 34% disapprove of the conviction. That’s only a third. + “Just 15%” of Republican voters want him to drop his White House bid. “Just”? That’s a big number in a tight election. + 49% of independents think he should end his campaign. In the two previous races the nasty guy hasn’t gotten 47%. Last time around Biden got 51.3%. Of course RFK Jr. is a wildcard. Also, this really is a race in just a few battleground states. The math doesn’t look good for the nasty guy and the conviction will make the math worse. Kerry Eleveld of Kos wrote:

Republicans added a new litmus test to the list of loyalty pledges they must make to Donald Trump following his criminal conviction: Do they believe in the U.S. justice system? Before Trump's guilty verdict, Republicans were already required to say they don't believe in U.S. elections (2020 was stolen!) and that they wouldn't accept the 2024 election if Trump loses (no peaceful transfer of power!). Now the GOP has officially thrown "law and order" on the MAGA pyre too.

Larry Hogan, Maryland Republican running for the Senate, urged people to “respect the verdict.” The nasty guy campaign told him “You just ended your campaign.” But Maryland is reliably blue in presidential elections, so he has to please more liberal voters. But the Republican edict to fall in line is clear. Eleveld then listed many Republicans who did fall in line. At the top of the list is Speaker Mike Johnson. He asked the Supreme Court to force a do-over. Of course, those auditioning to be Vice Nasty spouted their condemnation of the verdict as fast as they could. At least Moscow Mitch didn’t complain about the entire legal system. David Nir of Kos noted the curious case of Republican House members from districts that voted for Biden yet who called the verdict shameful. Aldous Pennyfarthing of Kos wrote about 11 times the nasty guy was in legal or political peril (the list is not exhaustive nor in a particular order) when he was pulled out of the fire and allowed to continue. 1. “Access Hollywood” tape, rescued by the James Comey letter about Hillary Clinton. 2. His campaign launch where he declared Mexican immigrants were criminals and rapists, rescued by primary voters who didn’t think that was offensive. 3. He mocked a disabled reporter, rescued by primary voters. 4. He disrespected Gold Star families and John McCain. 5. The Mueller probe, rescued by Bill Barr’s spinning. 6. He called Nazis very fine people in Charlottesville, rescued because Nazi apologia isn’t a problem for Republicans. 7. Extorting Ukraine and first impeachment, rescued by Republicans. 8. He believed Putin over his own intelligence at the Helsinki summit, saved by dissolving Republican spines. 9. The Capitol attack and second impeachment, rescued by Moscow Mitch and Rep. Kevin McCarthy. 10. The E. Jean Carroll judgment, rescued through Republican indifference. 11. Four felony cases with 91 felony charges, rescued through Republican indifference. Last Friday Eleveld discussed the nasty guy’s apparent mental deterioration. Eleveld referred to a podcast by Chris Christie to explain the situation. The podcast was recorded before the verdict was read out. Christie recounted a discussion with the nasty guy two decades ago, summarized as:

Christie said Trump is haunted by two nightmares in life: being broke and being in jail. If Trump were to be found guilty, Christie predicted, "He will get angrier and angrier and more paranoid.”

After the verdict a reporter asked if the nasty guy was worried about going to jail. He ignored the question. But mentally he’s in a very dark place. To me it means during his campaign speeches he will emphasize violence and retribution more than he usually does while making a lot less sense. Kos of Kos wrote about whether the conviction would hurt the nasty guy in the election. He looked at several polls. Then concluded:

But you want to know how we really know that the felony conviction is hurting Trump? Because he hasn’t shut up talking about how rigged it is, demanding his entire party—the supposed “law and order” Republican Party—endorse a convicted felon as their nominee. If it didn’t hurt him, Fox News and the rest of the conservative ecosystem wouldn’t be in overdrive trying to paint the conviction as a politically motivated hit job by hostile nefarious forces. If it didn’t hurt him, he’d be bragging about the conviction, rather than attacking it

. At the top of a pundit roundup for Kos, Greg Dworkin put a montage of newspaper headlines, most of them with the words “Guilty” or “Convicted” in large font. People who don’t read the stories do read the headlines. Dworkin included a tweet by Brian Klaas:

Interviewers: I beg you. Stop asking Republicans if they think the trial was “rigged.” Ask them if they believe that candidates should be allowed to make illegal hush money payments to further their campaign. Ask them, specifically, which evidence they think the jury got wrong.

In the comments of this post there are a lot of cartoons showing the nasty guy in prison. There are a lot of variations on that theme. The only one I’ll mention is one by Ben Jennings. It shows the nasty guy having been in the communal shower for a while and the orange bronzer still washing away. Below that is a cartoon by Mike Luckovich related to Justice Alito’s scandal. There are a few women dressed in Handmaid Tale robes and bonnets. One says, “But we still have control over out flags...” Megan Herbert posted a cartoon of the orange crayon saying between the orange bronzer and the orange jumpsuit he’s going to be worn down to a stub, so he quits. Mark Sumner of Kos wrote:

Hints that Elon Musk and Donald Trump are working their way toward an alliance have been increasing for months. Trump has wanted to tap Musk’s billions to solve some of his fiscal problems—like the hundreds of millions he owes after being found liable for fraud, sexual assault, and defamation. ... Musk and [billionaire Nelson] Peltz are conducting regular soirees with other billionaires to convince them to turn against President Joe Biden. Musk isn’t satisfied with cutting a massive check for Trump; He’s trying to cut any support out from under Biden by putting pressure on other members of his billionaire boys club. ... It doesn’t matter if Trump and Musk secretly hate each other; Neither of them is interested in making friends. They’re interested in money and power, they want more of both, and they want to lock in a plutocracy that means no one can ever get in their way.

Pennyfarthing reported that Bill Pruitt, producer of the TV show The Apprentice, had a nondisclosure agreement that expired this year. So he told many of the shows secrets in an essay for Slate.

Pruitt goes on at length about the smoke and mirrors the show employed to make Trump look competent and sane, and he doesn’t mince words. He confesses that “The Apprentice” was essentially a “long con played out over a decade of watching Trump dominate prime time by shouting orders, appearing to lead, and confidently firing some of the most capable people on television.” Pruitt stresses that the con wasn’t malicious (it was just a TV show, after all), but admits that “we played fast and loose with the facts, particularly regarding Trump, and if you were one of the 28 million who tuned in, chances are you were conned.” Gee, ya think?

One way they did it was re-record his dialogue. They would put him in a boardroom set and feed him lines over the phone, which he would then say into a microphone. They did that because he couldn’t remember the contestant’s names and couldn’t describe the task the contestants were to do. That sounds quite a lot like many media outlets who cover for his many verbal stumbles. Just after the 2016 election I listened to a group of guys talk about it. One of them was not at all surprised the nasty guy won. He had traveled through America and listened to how the locals gushed over him. They said the reason for their gushing was how forceful he was on The Apprentice and we needed a president like that. Yep, they were among the conned. Also, a few years ago on Gaslit Nation hosts Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa discussed that The Apprentice was specifically designed and practically forced onto a network for the purpose of rehabilitating the nasty guy’s image. Meaning that bit about “just a TV show” wasn’t true. Dartagnan of the Kos community challenged the nasty guy’s campaign claims (going back to 2016) that he was the cause of the greatest economic turnaround in history. He said inherited an economic disaster from Obama and cleaned it up and that Biden has squandered it. Of course, the truth is nothing like that. Obama cleaned up Bush II’s economic disaster and the economy was humming along quite well, so well that former White House communications director Jen Psaki explained, “A buffoon could have kept the recovery going.” As for everyone being wealthier, that was true for pretty much only the billionaires, or .000006% of the population. After the nasty guy left Washington Biden cleaned up the pandemic’s economic mess, which has been humming along so well it has prompted the stock market to reach new highs.

As economists are fond of pointing out, the performance of the economy is mostly a consequence of events that presidents cannot control. Thus, most presidents tend to operate as stewards, carefully managing all the various unexpected crises and the domestic and global repercussions that befall their terms in office, with a view toward maintaining the nation’s economic growth. Obama governed in this manner, as has Biden, and both have the numbers to show for it. Trump, however, has shown no such forbearance, either in his appalling response to the COVID-19 pandemic or in his pet policies before that catastrophe occurred. His specific economic plans should he be elected again have been characterized as potentially disastrous. Americans’ memories may be short, but there is one basic fact they ought to keep in mind. This country has sustained two successive economic calamities during this century, in 2008 and 2020, both occurring under Republican administrations. In both circumstances, it was the Democrat—Obama in 2009 and Biden in 2021—who succeeded in pulling the economy and this nation out of a very deep, dark hole left to them by their Republican predecessor. So Americans ought to ask themselves, which party has proved itself competent at managing the economy, and which has not?

TheCriticalMind of the Kos community discussed a podcast by media personality Colin Cowherd. He’s normally known for his sports analysis, though after the conviction he had a few things to say about the nasty guy. In particular, he had a rebuttal to the dystopian fantasies the nasty guy likes to declare. Here are excerpts of what Cowherd said:

I get on planes. There’s people in normal clothes. They don't look rich to me. And the planes are all full. And the hotels are all full. And the freeways are all full. That means people are going to work.” ... Trump’s entire game plan is that the country is in a free fall. Maybe in the Trump-centric neighborhoods, it is. It’s not anywhere for my sister, who lives rurally. Doesn't have a lot of crime in her neighborhood. I don't. My friends don’t. We live all over Los Angeles in one of those big scary cities that voted for liberals. ... Stop trying to sell me on everything's ‘rigged’. The country’s falling into the sea. The economy’s terrible. The economy is OK. It's not like ‘on fire.’ But get on a plane. Find all the empty seats. I don't see them. Those aren't cheap. Either are hotel rooms over Memorial weekend.

Sumner addressed the claim by the nasty guy, Republicans, and conservative media that America has become a very violent place.

Preliminary statistics for 2023 indicate the lowest levels of violent crime ever recorded, dropping below previous records in 2014 and 2019. And that’s still not all, because right now it appears that 2024 is still trending down. Americans are safer now than they have been in decades, and the numbers have only gotten better under Biden. But you won’t hear that from Republicans, or Fox News, or much of the media. Because pushing fear is all they know. There are fewer violent crimes now than there were in 1971 under Richard Nixon, despite a population that has increased by over 100 million people. Today we are experiencing not simply fewer crimes per person, but fewer crimes overall. According to FBI statistics, there were over 5 million fewer violent crimes in the United States last year than in the final full year of Ronald Reagan's “tough on crime” administration.

In the comments of another pundit roundup Captain Frogbert discussed the requirements for getting a governmental security clearance. Summary: With a felony conviction the nasty guy does not qualify for a security clearance and, because of that, cannot execute the duties of president. That’s the big reason why he wouldn't get clearance. There are also many more: mental instability, foreign entanglements with America’s enemies (Putin), massive debts, shady business practices, long-term association with mobsters, and a history of cavalier treatment of classified intelligence (that one has 11 subpoints). And this is the guy Republicans intend to nominate. That shows they believe the rules of a civil society, morality, and rule of law do not apply to them. Sumner, in his weekly 7 stories post for Kos discussed the start of the Hunter Biden trial. Which refutes the big Republican claim that the nasty guy’s trial was rigged. If Biden had that much control over the judicial system why is Hunter on trial? In the second story for the post Sumner reviewed the effects of 20 years of same-sex marriage. He worked from an article in the Los Angeles Times. The quotes are from the Times:

“If there were negative consequences in the last 20 years of the decision to legalize marriage for same-sex couples, no one has yet been able to measure them,” researcher Benjamin Karney told the Times. ... The headline from our new analysis is no negative impacts and some positive ones. We see an increase in marriage, and that increase is driven not just by newly marrying same-sex couples, but also by an increase in marriage among different-sex couples. That was a bit surprising to us.

Keeping issues tied up in courts

I was listening to the Canadian classical music station for the usual early afternoon show when at about 1:30 the music abruptly stopped. The stations I listen to sometimes do that. But a moment later a voice said that Queen Elizabeth II of Britain had died at the age of 96. She had been the Queen for 70 years, the longest serving British monarch. Since her son Charles was 3 when she took the throne he has been the crown prince for 70 years, the longest in that role in British history. Since the Canadian station was going to discuss her reign for the rest of the afternoon I switched back to the Detroit classical station at 2:00. So we now have Charles III. I think he is 74 or will be soon. Since his mother and grandmother were so long lived – the Queen Mum lived to 101 – Charles may manage to be king for 20-30 years. Allison Donahue of Michigan Advance reported that the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that the proposal to put reproductive rights into the state constitution must appear on the November ballot. Last week the Board of State Canvassers latched onto a technicality to block the proposal. The Canvassers had already scheduled to meet tomorrow – the deadline to finalize the state part of the November ballot – to handle the expected court decision. The Court ruled 5-2 with two of the three Republicans on the Court dissenting. One of them, Justice Brian Zahra goes before voters this fall. Laina Stebbins of Michigan Advance reported the Supremes also ruled a voter protection proposal must also appear on the ballot. It was also blocked by the Board of State Canvassers. Again, the vote was 5-2 and again Zahra was one of the dissenters. Rebekah Sager of Daily Kos reported on another strange chapter in the 2020 election. A voting machine appeared on the Goodwill website. A person in Ohio bought it and then listed it on eBay, saying it was a chance to own a piece of history. Harri Hursti of Connecticut, an election security specialist, recognized what it was and bought it. When it arrived he contacted Jocelyn Benson, Michigan Secretary of State. She told him to keep the box sealed and someone would come for it. A few days later Benson thanked him and said it did originate in Michigan and that jurisdiction has now reported it to law enforcement as stolen. Mark Sumner of Kos reported that Ukraine is making advances in several places along the long front. They’re covering ground in a couple days what Russia took weeks to months to capture. All the work Ukraine did to blow up Russian supply depots is working. Kos of Kos reported the war map is changing rapidly. He also discusses the Kherson trap I’ve mentioned before. Ukraine talked a lot about a big advance against Kherson. Russia moved a lot of troops to protect the city. Then Ukraine damaged bridges so these Russian troops could not be resupplied. Everyone could see it was a trap and Russia walked into it anyway. In a sense Russia had to or face a public relations catastrophe (which they’ll face anyway when Kherson is liberated). Kos reports we now see why Ukraine was so noisy about their plans for Kherson. Their troops are now moving rapidly through Russian-held territory towards Kupiansk. This city is the railway hub for northern Donbas. Russian supplies come here by rail to be distributed to various areas of the front by rail. If Ukraine takes Kupiansk Russian supplies to Donbas are cut off. Sumner reported that within the documents recovered from Mar-a-Lago was one that detailed the military defenses of a foreign nation and included its nuclear capabilities. This is the type of document that cannot be declassified and those that may see it are quite limited. Imagine if this document was about India and given to Pakistan. Or about Iraq and given to Israel. This could lead to war and threaten the stability of the planet. Sumner then discussed what might happen next. The Department of Justice could file with the 11th Circuit Court to overturn the egregious ruling that halted investigations into the whole set of seized documents. I’ve since heard that filing has happened. A problem here – the 11th Circuit has 11 judges and 7 of them were appointed by the nasty guy. The DOJ can also proceed on indicting the nasty guy based on previous batches of documents that had been at Mar-a-Lago and on the testimony of witnesses. Sumner then discussed the nasty guy’s real purpose: delay. He has filed 3,000 lawsuits (over his lifetime?) to keep issues tied up in courts. Resolutions can take years. He has filed lawsuits over every request from Congress. For example, Congress subpoenaed his tax records back in 2019. He filed yet another appeal last month. This is how he operates. Which means that egregious ruling could also work through the courts for years. Dartagnan of Kos wrote:

It wasn’t what Republicans wanted. And it wasn’t inevitable. But it was certainly predictable. Against the backdrop of two Donald Trump-approved, ready-made candidates proudly standing next to him this week on a Pennsylvania stage, the loser of the 2020 election took extraordinary pains to remind everyone that the countdown to the 2022 midterms would be all about him, and him alone.

It doesn’t matter that Republicans are trying to make the election about inflation, crime, immigrants, sex education, or anything else. He’s making sure the Republican message is about him.

He discovered his laws affect real people

In a Ukraine update Kos of Daily Kos discussed an in-depth story in the Washington Post about the Battle of Kyiv in the first 36 days of the war. A few things Kos mentioned: Ukraine knew what Russia was planning and had plans of their own to keep Russia from mowing them over. Those plans were so tightly held that Western assessments thought there was no plan and that Russia would be in Kyiv in days. Zelenskyy was told by an aide not to expect much international help in the first few days of the invasion. The West would want to see how well Ukraine would defend itself. Maybe they don’t want weapons to get in Russian hands. Kos added that US and NATO just had a frantic retreat from Afghanistan, so didn’t want to engage unless there was a chance of success. It is a puzzle why Russia didn’t shell the Ukrainian government buildings. It’s also a puzzle that Russia still hasn’t done so. We’re glad they haven’t. Kos is also mystified by Russia’s efforts to create a new army corps. These are people who are signing up because of an offer of a hefty bonus. Kos lists some of the problems. They tend to be older men – in their 50s and older. They’re also way out of shape. They are being given a month of training – in the US Army basic training is 22 weeks and further training is several months or years beyond that. They aren’t being used to fill out crews that are incomplete because of deaths, where they would be overseen by experienced leaders. They’re formed into a new corps where no one has experience. While the current front lines are now using equipment from the 1960s some of the good modern equipment has been kept aside for this group. Well, Russia, if that’s what you want to use for cannon fodder, that’s fine with us. Keep going. Kos linked to a thread by Kamil Galeev, who has been explaining a lot of Russian culture behind this war. This thread explains why those older men are joining up – they probably have chronic indebtedness and see no way out. It seems that bonus may be the only money these recruits see. Existing soldiers are complaining about not being paid. Dartagnan of the Kos community reported that South Carolina state Rep. Neal Collins had a change of heart. He voted to enact an abortion ban for the state, then discovered it affects real people in tragic situations. In this case it was a 19 year old woman forced to continue to carry a non-viable pregnancy that might lead to infection, the loss of her uterus, or death. If Republicans hadn’t already killed irony we might use that term to describe Collins relating the woman’s plight and his change of heart as the SC legislature debated passing a more restrictive ban. That harsher ban passed one chamber and will likely pass the other and be signed into law. During the vote Collins ... abstained. Didn’t even vote no. It is good to see a legislator realize what he passes affects real people. Most Christian white males in the legislature don’t notice, or are indifferent to, the people harmed by what they do. Or maybe the harm is intentional. One reason why they don’t see who is affected by their laws is because they and their constituents have been told by the church for a long time that abortion isn’t health care, it’s murder. To say anything other than being pro-life means risking being shunned by church and community. Only bad people have to worry about such gut-wrenching decisions. This view is not going to fade quickly. In a post from last Saturday Mark Sumner of Kos included an image of the front page of that day’s New York Times, which has a headline of “U.S. Feared Trump Files Put Spies at Risk.” In the buildup to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine Biden had accurate info about what Russia was planning. That’s an example of a well placed informant. And it looks like the nasty guy betrayed several informants around the world. Sumner reviewed that the nasty guy has always had disdain for the intelligence services and whistleblowers. He’s also had disdain for protecting classified info. That’s a recipe for catastrophe. Sumner reminded us that about a week before the 2016 election James Comey, head of the FBI, announced an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails. That severely cut Clinton’s lead and she lost the Electoral College to the nasty guy. Now he is admitting that Comey’s announcement was fake, but because of it he won. Yesterday I wrote about a couple essays in the NYT saying prosecuting the nasty guy will bring about domestic unrest, to put it mildly. Greg Dworkin, in a pundit roundup for Kos, quoted Nicholas Grossman of the Daily Beast. Here’s a bit of that quote.

Whatever the Department of Justice (DOJ) decides, it will set precedent, provoke public reactions, and shape history. ... If prosecuting Trump would set a dangerous precedent, so would letting his crimes slide. We can’t know what will happen, so we should follow the law and let the chips fall where they may. But even if we say U.S. law enforcement should prioritize political impact, the “domestic tranquility” argument fails on its own terms.

Barbara Morrill of Kos reported that Sen. Lindsay Graham declared there would be riots in the streets if the nasty guy is prosecuted – essentially calling for riots. Yeah, Graham has no concern for the crimes the nasty guy committed or the resulting damage to national security or the injuries and deaths that would come from that violence.

Forcing schools to use a Russian curriculum that says Ukraine does not exist

Michigan’s COVID data, updated yesterday, continues to show a decline in the number of new cases per day. The peaks for the last few weeks are 4294, 3963, 2963, and 2535. Numbers have been adjusted since the last time I reported them. The number of deaths per day for two weeks ago have been adjusted upward to the 10-16 range, though last week has mostly been in the single digits. But the pandemic isn’t over, no matter now many people I see at the grocery store without a mask. I’m debating whether my church bell group should try to play a couple more times this month or close for the summer. The husband of one member works for a company that provided services for the Mackinac Policy Conference on Mackinac Island with many Michigan politicians attending. The news mentioned that afterward at least 30 attendees tested positive for COVID. That included this husband. Her sons – preschool and toddler – have gotten sick, though she has so far remained negative. This isn’t over. Kos of Daily Kos wrote the biggest problem of Ukraine using NATO weapons isn’t learning how to operate them though that is an issue, it’s learning how to maintain them. A good course in maintenance for some of these weapons takes months, followed by years of on the job training guided by long term sergeants Ukraine doesn’t have. The current way they are using these big weapons is to use them until they absolutely need maintenance, then ship them back to Poland. Kos included photos in a tweet by Dan Spiun showing a field full of artillery divots. Kos added:

The moon-like scarred terrain around Dovhen’ke will be inhospitable to life for decades. Russian ordinance has a dud rate of around 30%. That means the number of unexploded shells in that one picture alone likely runs in the hundreds.

Mark Sumner of Kos wrote about the situation in Kherson. Russia took this city by bribing the mayor so it is still pretty much intact. Russia has repeatedly pounded other cities into rubble while taking them. But in trying to retake Kherson Ukraine can’t do the same. They don’t want to harm their own citizens and turn their own city into rubble. That makes their job much harder. In the meantime Russia is working to force Kherson citizens to become Russian. Change all signs to Russian. Same with books. Force phones to connect to the Russian network. Allow only Russian TV and newspapers (both with news approved by Moscow). Shoot or make disappear citizens who refuse to help with the process. Force schools to use a Russian curriculum that says Ukraine does not exist. Cut off all exits except into Crimea. And when Ukraine takes a nearby village Russia reduces it to rubble so that the villagers fear a Ukrainian advance. The weather for now may allow Ukraine to bypass towns. But when Ukraine gets to Kherson there will be destruction because Russia won’t let its prize go without causing as much pain as possible. Kos wrote about the battle in Severodonetsk and why Ukraine might be fighting so hard for it. He has been puzzled by Ukraine’s actions – strategically it would be much better to fall back to Lysychansk on the bluff on the other side of the river. The city doesn’t have strategic value. I had written about Russia’s attack of the city and Ukraine’s trap. The situation remains fluid and it is hard to tell which side has how much control of the city. But the trap prompted Russia to send in reinforcements and start bombarding the city. And with all that rubble Ukraine isn’t so concerned with protecting the city and its artillery in Lysychansk can blast at Russian troops. Russia wants the city for propaganda purposes. It is the last city not under Russian control in the Luhansk region of Donbas. Russia will throw a lot of men and armaments at the town – a lot of its army is in the area. Which means Ukraine can inflict high casualties on Russia, much higher than the casualties of its own troops. And since Russia failed in its pincer movements Ukraine can still keeps its troops well supplied and bring in fresh troops as needed. This isn’t about the city. It’s about the damage being inflicted. Dmitri tweeted a reminder:

Russia still wants to annex the whole of Ukraine. If Russia is allowed any prolonged cease-fire it will come back again, having recovered losses and produced more weapons, and it will not do the same mistakes as it did the first time.

And a hundred years from now what will be remembered? Putin’s war crimes? That Russia lost a few hundred thousand men in some war? But the residents of Crimea, Donbas, Kherson, Mariupol, and god forbid Kyiv at that time in the future will mark their liberation. The sanctions will eventually end. And we’ll say Ukrainians? What Ukrainians? You mean Russians?

So let's do all we can to ensure this is Russia's first and last war with Ukraine, and not let them write history. Some countries and peoples already figured it out. Others are still waking up, slowly. But everyone will get there. I don't want to say that Ukraine will win as it's an unrealistic approach. But I know that it HAS to win for the people a hundred years from now to not be ashamed of us, like we are not ashamed of those who fought 80 years ago.

The Border Patrol doesn’t patrol just the actual border. It has a 100-mile border enforcement zone. I guess they figure border fugitives will take a while to go more than 100 miles, giving the BP plenty of time to nab them. The zone isn’t just along the border with Canada and Mexico. It includes both coasts, all of Hawaii and the perimeter of Alaska. A zone that big means all of Florida and all of Maine are in the zone. Since Lake Michigan, though surrounded by Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin, is considered part of the border, all of Michigan is in this zone, as is Chicago. A lot of big cities – two thirds of America’s population – are in the zone. Which means this is really concerning. Annieli of the Kos community reported on a case of Mr. Boule who owns a small bed-and-breakfast along the international border in Blaine, Washington. He served as a paid informant for CBP and ICE of people crossing the border illegally. From what I can tell there was a time that Boule didn’t inform these groups, protecting some of his guests, and the Border Patrol beat him. Boule sued for damages. The Supreme Court ruled on the case and ... Christian Farias tweeted:

In a 6-to-3 vote, the Supreme Court ruled that border agents may unconstitutionally enter a person's home without a warrant and assault him and ... federal courts are powerless to do anything about it. The border, once again, is a Constitution-free zone.

Back when I started to travel internationally colleagues warned me that one does not have rights until one has cleared customs. This ruling is saying one does not have rights within the border enforcement zone. Which is saying two thirds of Americans do not have rights. Dakota Adams tweeted:

The stage is being set for a DeSantis or Abbott to really let undercover BORTAC off the chain in future protests. The precedent for unlawful abduction of BLM protesters by disguised Feds without consequences has already been set, and we are going straight downhill from there.

BORTAC is the Border Patrol Tactical Unit. Even though BORTAC guys killed the Uvalde shooter I suspect how much they don’t respect human rights. Meteor Blades of Kos wrote that Republicans, with thoughts on the midterms, have produced a climate plan! Before you cheer...

Don’t be fooled. This is election PR, mostly a retread of an old package with one great big flaw: It’s an “all of the above” plan, a recipe for disaster. We have no real details yet, just promises of more to come. The plan goes heavy on support for fossil fuels, “streamlining” permitting of projects, and “modernizing” the environmental regulatory regime. There is mention of renewables, especially an increase in hydropower, and more support for nuclear. And carbon capture, carbon capture, carbon capture, the ingredient they apparently think will let them drill, frack, dig, and burn deep into the 22nd Century even though carbon capture has yet to prove its economic viability. ... It’s not as if there aren’t some worthwhile ideas in the task force’s plan. For instance, streamlining permitting could be a good thing if done right. Which means ensuring that the protection regulations are designed to provide remain in place even as permit approvals are accelerated. But, as with so much else, Republican duplicity is at the heart of the party’s streamlining approach. Permitting takes so long in large part because Republicans have worked diligently to cut staff and budgets at the Environmental Protection Agency ever since Ronald Reagan’s head-on assault on the EPA. Want quicker permitting results? Hire enough people to do the job. What Republicans really mean by streamlining is demolishing. For two decades, I’ve warned that when it comes to climate policy delay is denial. This year, in the wake of the most devastating report yet from the U.N. International Panel on Climate Change, Secretary-General António Guterres said, “Delay is death.” At its core, delay is what the Republican “climate plan” is really about.

The Republican Accountability Project quoted a bit from an article from the New York Daily News:

For too many Republicans, politics isn’t about policy; it’s about entertainment.… Joining in the collective madness is the price of admission, and dangerous conspiracy theories are a part of the show.

Can radicalize people to violence at alarming speed.

I read through the transcript of another episode of Gaslit Nation by Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa. This episode is So Many Cults, So Little Time. This episode was released last Wednesday, the 26th, while the GOP convention was still going on.

The episode begins with quotes from Michael Cohen, a one-time nasty guy fixer and confidant.

I was complicit in helping conceal the real Donald Trump. I was part of creating an illusion. Later this week, he's going to stand up and blatantly lie to you. I'm here to tell you, he can't be trusted and you shouldn't believe a word he utters. So when you watch the president this week, remember this, if he says something is huge, it's probably small.
...
The president is going to talk to you about law and order. That's laughable. Virtually everyone who worked for his campaign has been convicted of a crime or is under indictment, myself included. So when the president gets in front of the cameras this week, remember that he thinks we're all gullible, a bunch of fools.

I was a part of it and I fell for it. You don't have to like me, but please listen to me.

Kendzior and Chalupa turn to the nasty guy’s children and how dysfunctional the family is. They bring them up because perhaps half of the RNC speakers were named Trump. The nasty guy is building a dynasty. But it probably won’t include Don Jr. and Eric. However, it will include the pandemic prince and princess.

When a regime promotes nepotism (and the nasty guy isn’t the only one with family in the regime) there is no discussion of policy, there is only gossip about palace intrigues. Kendzior is annoyed with the New York Times because they focus on the gossip and don’t look at the breaches of law, and theft of elections and basic rights.

One of the speakers at the convention was Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo. It is considered highly inappropriate for a Sec. State to speak at a political event. Even worse, he did it from Jerusalem. That’s bad because Pompeo is a “Rapture fiend.” For those not up on conservative Christian end-times theology, I’ll explain the Rapture is when the true believers are taken up into heaven to protect them just before the apocalypse. So what Pompeo is doing is goosing events to trigger the Rapture (we’ll leave out how bad the theology of trying to make events so bad the Rapture happens – and lucky for Pompeo he believes he can make life hell on earth and the Rapture will make sure he doesn’t have to face the consequences). Back to what Kendzior said about him:

That is what Mike Pompeo is about. He has said so openly in speeches that he thinks that this is the apocalypse. He thinks that this is the end times and that he's on the right side of God and the corruption and brutality that he's participating in is something that is divinely sanctioned. Again, this is a deeply frightening thing to have to contend with, with this person as not only Secretary of State, but before that the head of the CIA.

Kendzior predicted the media will get it all wrong, framing inhumane actions as God’s will.

Chalupa said:

People have to have honest conversations with themselves about what their plan is in November should Trump and Barr be successful in stealing this election. What is your plan? Prepare yourself now, especially prepare yourself emotionally so you don't fall into despair. I just think everything that's been unfolding, especially this week alone, it's just going to accelerate from here on out.

Don't expect November to bring any relief. It's just going to be an acceleration of this constant far-right plummet towards authoritarianism that we've already been undergoing the last four years. And on top of that, even if Biden and his coalition of voting rights groups and lawyers–election protection lawyers–manages to pull off a victory, a free and fair election in November, we still have to contend with the Trump Family Republican Party.

For example, Fox News will still be out there, as will all those GOP senators recently removed from office (I hope!).

Many in the GOP say the nasty guy really isn’t part of the GOP. Pulling on a few decades of GOP actions, Chalupa said:

That's exactly who you are. You've always been anti-science. You've always been pro superstition. You've always been trying to turn our democracy into a theocracy, even though the founding fathers were very clear on the separation of church and state.

You’ve always been chipping away at the rights of women, voting rights. You needed to steal elections in order to come to power and so forth. You've always been the pro corruption, destroying the planet party. The Republican Party is the party of death. Donald Trump is the Republican Party, Donald Trump has always been the Republican Party since the time of Richard Nixon. It's the same players, it's the same bad actors.

So have an emotional backup plan to deal with these people. We might have to fight for ten years to get rid of them.

I had mentioned that the GOP did not write a platform this year, that the one from 2016 is still in effect. That means there is nothing in the platform for dealing with COVID-19 and the accompanying economic calamity. They have no intention of addressing them. Said Kendzior:

This is because their goal is to strip America down and sell it for parts. That has always been their goal. And a sick, weakened, impoverished America is easier to take apart than a strong, healthy, powerful America. They are trying to kill us. You can see that through their actions in response to the pandemic and they don't care who knows. And yes, you're absolutely right that this is an extension of what the Republican Party has been building to since the years of Watergate.

Talking about the Cold War and who won it (the oligarchs) Kendzior said:

And a lot of the events that have transpired since have just continually shifted control of the world and its resources away from representative government, away from institutional accountability, away from transparency and towards elite domination–criminal elite domination–as this line between government, and corporations, and organized crime, that line began to break down.

So, yeah, I just summed up all of Gaslit Nation's episodes in one paragraph.

Talk turned for a moment to the pandemic prince. Kendzior said:

Yes, and this realignment of the Middle East, which has been something that's been a goal of his long before he entered the White House. I thought there are multiple international actors whose goal in getting Trump into the White House was actually to get Kushner into the White House, and to get Kushner near classified information and get him in a position where he can make policy decisions that have absolutely nothing to do with the welfare of Americans or of America itself.

They have to do with pleasing these international actors, among them, Netanyahu and MBS. They also have to do, with some degree, with getting him out of the enormous amount of debt he was in before he took power.

The discussion turned to QAnon. Kendzior wrote about them in her book Hiding in Plain Sight but the group has become more mainstream with a member running for Congress, so it’s important to talk about them again. Yes, QAnon is dangerous – any cult is dangerous, though this one has a history of violence.

The main claim of QAnon is that the US is controlled by sadistic pedophile elites. This claim is accurate. Gaslit Nation has covered the operation run by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine and Robert Maxwell. They procured underage children for many political elites, then they had damaging evidence they could dangle over their client’s heads. We heard little about Epstein in the 2016 election because the nasty guy was accused of raping a 13-year-old that Epstein procured.

So this story was denied for a long time, but came out anyway. QAnon supporters can then say, yes, I was right. So all this other stuff must be true too. And it’s not. The best propaganda has a core of truth. This truth is more powerful because officials and journalists refuse to acknowledge it.

Some anonymous official, code named Q, supposedly has left coded clues on the internet. Q claims the nasty guy is in office to take down the “Deep State” and is the savior of these abducted and abused children who have been hidden somewhere. The nasty guy supposedly will free them and bring about justice. Because children are involved this taps into people’s emotional center.

The nasty guy is not the savior of abused children. He has been accused of being one of the abusers. The QAnon story came at a time when the #metoo movement was thriving and elite predators were being exposed. It seemed possible the connection between the nasty guy and Epstein would come under scrutiny. So this was likely a way to flip the script – portray the accused abuser as savior.

QAnon has accused a number of public figures of cannibalism, murder, and child abuse. It has then threatened those people and extended the threats to their supporters. The nasty guy is using this to portray ordinary people as threats, prompting QAnon to also threaten the same people. Thus the nasty guy has weaponized QAnon for political propaganda.

The way to shut down QAnon is to be honest about Epstein and colleagues. But people, including Democrats, have refused to tackle the core claim of Epstein’s child trafficking. There’s a good reason: They don’t know who of their own will be implicated.

We don’t know who Q is. He’s portrayed as a government official. It is quite possible he is an invention of a Kremlin disinformation campaign, helping the nasty guy divert from one crisis or another.

Kendzior discussed savior syndrome. It flourishes during autocratic consolidation as frightened citizens search for meaning in the inexplicable actions of their failed leaders. They say the once trusted officials are not incompetent or corrupt, they’re playing 3D chess. “Their motives must be presented as pure; their tactics, impeccable and impenetrable. The abdication of the admired is too much for those seeking saviors to process, no matter their political predilection.” They tell skeptics to shut up and trust the plan.

Kendzior added:

That's why we're seeing savior syndrome flourishing yet again on the Democratic side. I think people have finally abandoned “Pelosi's going to save us”, which is where they went after “Mueller is going to save us” failed. And now it's on the “2020 election will save us”, even though that election is being rigged and compromised before our eyes. So this is a very dangerous tendency that flourishes during times like this, where people are so frightened that they don't know who to trust, they just want to follow.

They don't want to think, and so I encourage you–we know, we know how scary it is right now, this is a genuinely frightening time–but try to keep your wits about you, keep your individuality, your propensity for critical thought. It's not bad to ask questions.
…
So it's not like a matter of intelligence; it's a matter of emotional manipulation. And they're doing it among the most sensitive of topics. Topics that resonate greatly with parents, or just with anyone who worries about children and topics that are rooted in a grain of truth. … One of the things that we needed to get to the bottom of is, who is part of this movement? Who is funding this movement? What is the ultimate goal? How will it be weaponized during the election?

Chalupa said about average people:

They want to give up personal responsibility because they themselves are exhausted, they themselves are under a great deal of pressure, this is an economic crisis. There's a health crisis, so why is it up to me to fix this? So people are looking for some outside force to come along. And so all of these conditions combined make some people really vulnerable to this cult mentality.

Chalupa reminded is all elections, including local, are important. For example, New York City (where Chalupa lives) has adopted the Green New Deal and there is a city climate czar. This czar has been suing the oil giants for destroying the planet. The market value of ExxonMobil has dropped and it has been removed from the Dow Jones stock index. Local matters too.

Chalupa then talked about the pandemic prince. The Daily Beast reporter Erin Banco uncovered details. Such as back in 2017 the pandemic prince asked the Russian ambassador for a back channel to Russia, to the delight of the Russians. There were also meetings on how this US administration and Russia could collaborate while maintaining plausible deniability.

Since 2016 Putin has been spreading Kremlin linked money across the US. These tentacles lock the target in. The business ties become so close that they don’t want to jeopardize the money and won’t hold Putin accountable. This is blood money. And blood money makes the world go round. So many people were making blood money with Stalin’s Soviet Union they didn’t investigate Stalin’s genocide in Ukraine (the uncovering of that genocide is the subject of Mr. Jones, a movie that Chalupa wrote). Putin is working to recreate that protection.

Strange that the US collaboration with Russia seems to work only one way. What the US gets from them tends to be useless.

The pandemic prince is behind all the worst moves of the nasty guy’s administration. He has ties to Israel, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and various Russian Oligarchs. It is them he serves, to them our money goes, through them are rights are taken away.

Kendzior said:

I kept thinking, the litmus test of whether we have an entrenched mafia State is whether Kushner is indicted. They could have gone after him a long time ago, the lies on his security clearances where he lied about illicitly meeting with foreign officials during the campaign, but also before.

That alone was enough to get him out of office, out of power early, away from classified intelligence. We're going to be living with the ramifications of Kushner's presence in this position whether he stays or not. If they do actually manage to get rid of him, he's not going to keep State secrets. He's not going to work on behalf of American interests or on behalf of the American people.

He is part of this axis of autocrats that is trying to destroy this country from without and from within. So he's incredibly dangerous and it's been alarming to me that Mueller did not indict him, the other officials didn't. And this article is just another example of the incredible damage that he's done and the incredible danger that we're in. And so I ask again, where are our officials on this?

Why is he not stopped when there's a pandemic and he is in charge of it, and he's depriving Americans of necessary medical equipment while he makes deals with dirty oligarchs who attack our elections? How much more do you need? How much more clear cut does this have to be? How much longer does the evidence list have to get?

I’ve got a few QAnon stories in browser tabs. They sat there because I wanted to take the time to explain what Qanon is. Thankfully, I waited long enough that Gaslit Nation could explain for me. So here they are, reinforcing the points GN made.

Benjamin Franklin tweeted:

People think I'm being hyperbolic or exaggerating when I say that child human traffickers are taking over the government but all the evidence is right in front of you, as if Jeffrey Epstein wasn't enough.

Qanon is necessary to hide the complicity of the GOP, which has been well documented, and defuse a scandal capable of bringing down the entire Republican Party and government.

The problem is that this idea sounds so much Iike Qanon, and is so spooky, that well meaning respectable people are afraid to look at what’s staring them in the face. This is by design.

This is the design: When someone brings up the real scandal it can be dismissed with, “Oh, that’s just QAnon.”

In another thread Franklin tweeted:

There are lots of things that attempt to debunk Q, but I’m not aware of any that say “Q is bullshit but actually a lot of the stuff it contains is actually kind of true”. Epstein is real, NXIVM is real, Craig Spence is real, Franklin scandal is real.

Q weaves together the very real scandals into a “theory of everything” that says Trump is the savior. The only thing that can beat Q is a theory of everything in which he is the villain, which has the added benefit of being true.

But you can't win these arguments with Q people, strangers or friends, unless you understand that something big and bad is going on. Not totally clear what but how can you read these articles and say that *nothing* is going on? And it's not just the USA.

Franklin then linked to articles in The Daily Beast and Vice about a sex cult with a plot to take over Mexico, the Thatcher government in Britain covering up a pedophile ring, and a journalist arrested for investigating a pedophile orphanage in the British island of Jersey.

Franklin added:

There's something going, it's international and deeply entrenched, and it only gets worse the more reading you do. You can't beat Q without addressing this, I promise.

David Neiwert of Daily Kos wrote:

A series of recent reports suggest that the cult may be growing so rapidly and spreading so widely—amplified, seemingly, by the COVID-19 pandemic and the accompanying intense use of the Internet by users following stay-at-home orders—that it is threatening to grow beyond a mere trend into a tsunami of irrational conspiracism and terrorist violence that conceivably could swamp the entire nation.

Neiwert then went into detail of these reports. Then he discussed how QAnon is becoming violent. Finally, he references a study from the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point.

What makes QAnon so potent, the study found, is that it’s a kind of meta-theory: A great gathering ground of multiple conspiracist belief systems under one umbrella, compatible with existing structures.

QAnon is becoming a part of such groups as paramilitary groups, and white supremacists. It is no longer fringe, but an ideology that can radicalize people to violence at alarming speed.

Mark Sumner of Kos reported on Marjorie Taylor Greene winning the GOP primary for a House seat in Georgia. It’s a safe GOP seat, so she’ll have no trouble winning in November. Her win is a problem because she has spouted QAnon theories. Wrote Sumner:

Greene’s words were roundly condemned by Republican leaders Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise, both of whom declared her “offensive.” But the racism and conspiracy theories weren’t offensive to Republican voters. Racism and conspiracy theories are what the Republican Party is about these days. In fact, they are all that it is about. After all, both McCarthy and Scalise have backed up every ludicrous claim by Trump. They’ve been right there, carrying the torch, leading the party toward a horde of people … waving torches.
…
[QAnon] provides a source of hate. And the modern Republican Party is all about hate.
Somehow the people who lit this fire still don’t grasp that it’s going to burn everything.

Michel Martin of NPR talked to Travis View, who co-hosts the “QAnon Anonymous” podcast. They first discussed Greene’s win, then backed up to mention some of the theories Greene has promoted. Since she became a candidate she has tried to distance herself from QAnon, but has not denounced it. View added that they see the nasty guy as their savior, that they worship him. That the nasty guy did not denounce them and instead praised them is a really big deal. The FBI has warned that QAnon is a possible source of extremism.

Christopher Bouzy tweeted:

Inauthentic accounts linked to Russia are masquerading as QAnon followers, and these accounts are targeting high profile people on social media. We believe they are attempting to discredit people with a large following who tweet/talk about social issues and voting.

We believe these accounts are a national security threat, and we are extremely concerned because the President of the United States recently praised and embraced QAnon.

150 million climate refugees

Yesterday, my handbell ensemble took part in a handbell event in the little town of Eaton Rapids, Michigan. It is south of Lansing and about an 80 minute drive from our rehearsal home near Detroit. We went there because that’s where our director lives and has a church musician job, so it is where she hosts this event. While there we taught classes (I taught one of them), participated in the massed ringing concert, and performed three pieces by ourselves. The concert went very well. Afterward our director invited us to her home for supper.

That meant I went to bed early Friday night and was rather tired on Saturday night, so no writing on either night. I’m glad I had the extra hour of sleep (and actually used it for sleeping).



So catching up on news…

Meteor Blades wrote a pundit roundup for Daily Kos. He included an excerpt from an article written by George Goehl in the New York Times titled If Progressives Don’t Try to Win Over Rural Areas, Guess Who Will.

Short answer by Goehl:

I’ve been organizing for 20 years in rural communities and have never seen this level of public activity by white supremacist groups.

Joan McCarter of Daily Kos notes it appears that the nasty guy and his BFF Moscow Mitch have made a deal that the articles of impeachment from the House will be “dead on arrival in the Senate.”



Twitter user umairh tweeted:

The Dems need to put American collapse in a global frame and point out hard right economics led America to become a poor country. But they don’t do that. They buy into the idea they have to justify things to the right, not that the right has to justify things to reality.

Sarah Kendzior responded:

The majority of Americans have spent their entire life in a dead economic fantasy. Or to be more accurate, a murderous fantasy, one that already took a toll on the post-boomer generations and will take its greatest toll on today's children.

Replygubbe added:

Capitalism played an important role in making communism fail. Now it seems to be a tool in the hand of forces trying to break down democracy.

Jacob Ward tweeted a link to a new report in Nature that says scientists have been underestimating the effects of flooding related to climate change. The software that made flooding estimates confused the tops of trees and buildings with ground level. Estimates of flooding were based on treetops. Corrected estimates are really scary. Mumbai, Jakarta, and Bangkok are flooding at high tide. Projections for 2050 show 150 million people will be displaced. Most of the flooding will be felt in Asia. But …

Enormous climate pressure in densely packed places destabilizes everybody everywhere, as those people struggle to find a new home. Added to other volatile ingredients like nationalism and poverty, the cocktail is explosive.

Ward quotes Cass Sunstein, who wrote in the *Columbia Law Review*:

The United States is unlikely to take significant steps to reduce greenhouse gases unless the perceived costs of risk reduction are decreased, an available incident triggers fear of significant are relatively imminent harm, sustained analysis or influential leaders suggest that Americans face serious risks, or all three.

It seems Attorney General William Barr has been investigating the investigation by seeking to overturn the conclusion of US intelligence services and the Mueller Report that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election. The nasty guy has reportedly requested help from intelligence officials in Britain towards that goal. Olga Lautman tweeted:

This is extremely dangerous Barr/Trump requesting info from our allies to take down our agencies. British official: "it is like nothing we have come across before, they are basically asking, in quite robust terms, for help in doing a hatchet job on their own intelligence agencies."

All to prove that Russia didn't attack us in 2016. How is Barr not being stopped? This is dangerous for our national security now because Russia has been ramping up their efforts to attack our next elections. It is also dangerous because our allies will not share critical intel.

Of course, Russians are the good guys

Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post reports that U.S. Intelligence says Russian military spies hacked several hundred computers used at the PyeongChang Olympics. The Russians tried to make it look like the attack came from North Korea. One consequence was that attendees of the Opening Ceremonies were unable to print tickets, leaving seats empty. The attack was apparently in response to Russia being banned from the games due to doping violations.



Heidi Moore is a news columnist and an advisor to newsrooms. In a Twitter thread she discusses the possibility of collusion between the nasty guy and Russia. She took on this task because of so many people refusing to believe collusion is possible. Here’s her conclusion:

My theory is this: For many in the media to accept that Trump colluded (and that Bernie Sanders had Russian help from the Internet Research Agency, as Mueller suggests in his indictment of Friday) means that Trump was a bad candidate who achieved the presidency illegally. This is hard to accept as a baseline: That we allowed an illegitimate president to take over.

More importantly, to believe Trump colluded makes it *impossible to believe* that Hillary Clinton was a bad candidate. And many in media made their names in 2016 saying she was.

… To believe that Trump colluded means accepting that Hillary Clinton was not the primary mover of some evil Clinton scheme to take over the White House through email servers, but that she was absolutely screwed by outside forces. … hating Clinton was also the last acceptable outlet for open misogyny in political media. … So, IMO, that is what "skepticism," of Trump's collusion, in this case, is really code for: "We don't want to admit we were wrong all along about Hillary Clinton's candidacy."

This is scary:

There is such a thing as a U.S. Cyber Command that (I guess) is part of the military and investigates and works to prevent cyber attacks on America. The nasty guy, as commander in chief, has not authorized the Cyber Command from attempting to stop Russian influence on this year’s elections. This news came out in a hearing at the Senate Armed Service Committee.

Matt Masterson is, or was, the cyber-security expert commissioner on the Elections Assistance Commission. House Speaker Paul Ryan decided not to extend Masterson’s tenure on the Commission as cyber-security is becoming a top priority.

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville says:

Nothing to see here. Just the president refusing to issue Cyber Command to take action over Russian meddling in our elections and the Speaker of the House refusing to extend the tenure of an Election Commissioner whose expertise is cyber-security.

Please let me have just a peek

Jared Kushner, son-in-law of the nasty guy and White House “senior advisor” (though I would be mighty suspect of advice from him) can’t get a regular security clearance and has been working on a temporary clearance.

Kushner’s already dubious clearance has now been downgraded.

This was part of a process of downgrading the clearance of lots of White House aides in the aftermath of the Rob Porter mess. Porter recently left the White House because he was handling sensitive documents and didn’t have permanent clearance.

Couple points about Kushner:

The Kushner family company is in a financial mess. Might Jared be selling state secrets? Reportedly several countries are ready to deal.

Sarah Kendzior tweeted:

Oh sure. I totally believe that when Jared or Ivanka hit up Trump for intel the answer will be "Sorry, kids, but that's beyond your clearance level, and you know I'm a stickler for protocol!"

And…

There are laws about nepotism. Laws about lying on clearance forms. Laws about emoluments and divestment. Laws about giving classified intel to hostile states. They broke these laws. Nothing happened. They'll break more.

Who needs national security?

Rob Porter is still in the news, even after a week. He’s the deputy White House paper shuffler who resigned when both ex-wives accused him of domestic violence. What is keeping his story in the news is that he was working with classified documents with temporary security clearance because he hadn’t yet (and probably couldn’t have) gotten permanent clearance. A wife-beater could be blackmailed.

Another part of the story is the huge number of top-level staffers without adequate clearance. One may wonder why that’s an issue when the nasty guy, the one at the top, is so indiscreet.

So a lot of ex-staffers who have seen a great deal of classified material, even though they shouldn’t have, know stuff of great interest to lots of foreign governments and sinister actors. And some of those ex-staffers have already shown their disdain for the country. Every one a walking national security threat. But since the guy at the top has no respect for security, this problem won’t get fixed.

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville adds that the nasty guy is an insecure braggart and to someone like that the only purpose of information is to prop up his ego – and can only do that when he spills it.

There is one solution: Get rid of him. But the only people who can have refused.

And can afford

A few items to share with you as I get back to resisting the national mess.

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville reports and comments on a disturbing incident. Rachel Maddow received a document supposedly top secret. Maddow did what a good reporter is supposed to do and concluded the document was fake. The fraud appears to be designed to trick Maddow and other news outlets into reporting something false, to give a bit of truth to the nasty guy’s claim of fake news. The scam would have discredited Maddow, MSNBC, mainstream media generally, and investigations into the nasty guy. All news outlets should verify what they receive because somebody is trying to discredit them. And for us news consumers, scrutinize everything. Our nation is facing new threats.



Of course, GOP Congresscritters are lying about the healthcare bill. We knew that all along. The latest is the talking point that 22 million people aren’t “losing” health insurance, they’re “choosing” to go without. Senator John Cornyn explained, “People will buy what they value.”

He left off an important phrase of that sentence: “… and can afford.”

McEwan adds:

Never mind that Cornyn and his reprehensible cronies are responsible for undercutting labor laws, empowering corporate greed, busting unions, and ignoring the cost to workers of automation for decades, which has made jobs with livable wages ever more scarce.

I’ve been reporting that the Commission on Election Integrity asked each Secretary of State to send in their voter rolls. Sources said that 41 (now 44) states refused that request. McEwan reports:

There are plenty of states, especially Republican-led states, who are making lots of grunty noises and outraged gestures about this request, but are, as [Commission leader Kris] Kobach says, complying with him as much as their laws allow.
…
If states legitimately refuse to comply, the commission will seek to procure the information in some other way. That means if you live in a Democratically-led state whose elected officials are protecting your privacy as you elected them to do, the federal government will try to do an end-run around them.

Commenter speedbudget adds:

Even Kansas said they won't do it. And Kobach is still Secretary of State here.

The nasty guy apparently had a productive meeting with his puppetmaster. So productive that Russian (!) Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced that Moscow and Washington will set up a joint working group on cybersecurity.

Sarah Kendzior (who studies authoritarian regimes) tweeted:

This is the cybersecurity version of the voter fraud commission. It will commit the act it pretends to prevent.

The “working group” will merely formalize what has been happening all along -- the passing of US intel to the Kremlin through Trump team

Is any foreign gov’t going to share intelligence with us ever again?

School choice for a black man

From a week ago, at the end of Black History Month: The nasty guy met with presidents of Historically Black Colleges and Universities. From what I’ve heard of the visit the schedule was fudged so that the nasty guy got a photo op out of it (see who is supporting me!) and no actual discussion happened.

The visit prompted Betsy DeVos to make a statement about how these colleges represent her dream of school choice.

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville puts that into perspective:

When black Mississippian James Meredith chose the “option” of enrolling at the University of Mississippi in 1962, a massive white mob formed on the campus; two people were shot to death and hundreds injured in the ensuing battle/riot, during which federal marshals came under heavy gunfire, requiring the ultimate intervention of 20,000 U.S. soldiers and thousands more National Guardsmen.

School choice? Not for Meredith.

McEwan quotes Carlton Waterhouse, law professor at Indiana University:

Busing, magnet schools, theme schools, home schooling and now vouchers and charter schools have largely been embraced because so many white parents find educational environments with too many African-American and Latino students unsuitable for their children. This unspoken belief that African-American and Latino children threaten the moral and intellectual development of other children has a strong emotional power that drives public education in America.

DeVos is “praising” the HCBUs as she is pushing policies to further segregate our schools, so that white parents have the choice of not educating their children with black children. And the choices of black parents?



McEwan links to an article by Jeremy Herb and Bryan Bender of Politico saying the nasty guy will fund his efforts of hiring lots more ICE agents to deport all those illegal immigrants by making deep cuts to the Coast Guard and airport and rail security. This defies logic when the nasty guy speaks of safety in every other breath. McEwan notes: “That's because the objective isn't actually safety. It's white supremacy.”

Diplomatic solution

Leah McElrath of Shareblue notes there are 118 positions in the State Department that require Senate confirmation. The nasty guy has nominated someone for only 7 of those positions.

McElrath also notes the nasty guy has asked for an additional $54 billion for the Defense Department.

Nahal Toosi of Politico reports that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson appears to be missing. He is doing very little of the public tasks that a Sec. State normally does. Toosi also notes that the boost for the Defense budget will mean a 37% cut to the combined budget of State and US Agency for International Development.

Julia Ioffe of The Atlantic offers a look into the State Department. There is supposed to be a daily briefing so that other gov’t departments and ambassadors around the world know diplomatic priorities. These aren’t happening and diplomats are getting very little guidance. Career staffers, the ones not politically appointed, usually spend their days coordinating with other federal departments. They used to think leaving by 10 pm was a good day. Now they leave by 5:30 pm after doing very little all day. Want a meeting? How about now?

One reason is it seems the nasty guy is relying on his son-in-law Jared Kushner for all international dealings. A State employee remarks that it looks like several developing countries where the ruling family knows everything and the official equivalent of the State Department knows nothing.

Ioffe also notes Tillerson isn’t sharing much administration news with those under him. They wonder if he has been cut off from the White House. Tillerson doesn’t appear to be eager to hear from those under him. Too much paperwork?

McElrath points to this conclusion from Bruce Bartlett: The nasty guy is doing this so that when an international incident arises he is unable to have a diplomatic solution and must use the military.

A race

We’ve heard a lot in the news about Michael Flynn leaving the job of National Security Adviser under strange circumstances (you can find details elsewhere) and the job being offered to Robert Howard. But Howard turned down the job, saying the nasty guy wouldn’t let Howard pick his own staff.

Which leads to the important question: Why does the White House want control over what the National Security organizations have to say?

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville suggests that the intelligence community, as part of doing its job, is closing in on the nasty guy’s foreign business partners and his entanglements with them, perhaps the kind that make him choose between national security and protecting his wealth. The nasty guy may want to install his own people in the intelligence community to keep his business dealings secret.

We’re now in a race between the intelligence community trying to expose the corruption of the nasty guy and the nasty guy purging the intelligence community trying to shut down their investigation of him. Which leaves the question: How effective will a purged intelligence community be? Will his attempts to keep his entanglements secret allow him to miss coming attacks on Americans? Keep in mind he is waiting for an attack to allow him to shut down his political opponents.