December 4, 2022
At any other time in the last century or more, this Washington Post headline would have appeared to be a hoax. One would wonder if a hacker from the Onion planted it. But this is real. ~~~
"White House rebukes Trump's suggestion to suspend Constitution over 2020 election" ~~~
~~~ Karoun Demirjian & Toluse Olorunnipa of the Washington Post: "The White House issued a stern rebuke on Saturday after ... Donald Trump suggested suspending the Constitution in his ongoing crusade to discredit the results of the 2020 election. 'Attacking the Constitution and all it stands for is anathema to the soul of our nation and should be universally condemned,' White House spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement, calling the Constitution a 'sacrosanct document.'... Trump's message on the Truth Social platform reiterated the baseless claims he has made since 2020 that the election was stolen. But he went further by suggesting that the country abandon one of its founding documents. 'A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,' Trump wrote. The post came a day after Twitter's new owner, Elon Musk, claimed he would expose how Twitter engaged in 'free speech suppression' in the run-up to the 2020 election. But his 'Twitter Files' did not show that the tech giant bent to the will of Democrats. 'UNPRECEDENTED FRAUD REQUIRES UNPRECEDENTED CURE!' Trump followed up in another post on Saturday afternoon on Truth Social." CNN's report is here. ~~~
~~~ Marie: Here's the presidential oath of office: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." IMO, Congress should (1) verify that the remarks cited came from Trump himself & not from someone who has obtained access to his social media account; (2) if determined in the affirmative, Congress should immediately pass a law disqualifying Trump from holding any public office. Ever. ~~~
~~~ Cat Zakrzewski & Faiz Siddiqui of the Washington Post: "... Elon Musk, after rifling through his new company's internal files, [announced on Twitter that he] would finally expose how Twitter engaged in 'free speech suppression' in the critical run up to the 2020 election.... But by the time the dust settled Saturday, even some conservatives were grumbling that it was a dud. Musk's Twitter Files produced no smoking gun showing that the tech giant had bent to the will of Democrats. A handful of screenshots from 2020, posted over the course of two hours Friday evening in a disjointed, roughly 40-tweet thread, show the San Francisco company debating a decision to restrict sharing of a controversial New York Post story about the son of then Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.
The Twitter thread, based on internal communications posted by Substack writer Matt Taibbi, showed the company independently decided to limit the spread of the article, without Democratic politicians, the Biden campaign or FBI exerting control over the social media network. In fact, the only input from a sitting politician that Taibbi noted was from Silicon Valley Rep. Ro Khanna (D), who told Twitter executives they should distribute the story.... In the process, Musk took the extraordinary step of promoting the leak of internal company communications to Taibbi, exposing the names of several rank-and-file workers and Khanna's personal email address.:
Julian Mark of the Washington Post explains why railroad employees got stiffed on paid sick leave benefits. It all relates to "the switch in recent years to 'precision scheduled railroading,' a system designed to improve efficiency and cut costs.... From November 2018 to December 2020, the rail industry lost 40,000 jobs, according to a report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The bureau described precision scheduling as possibly the 'most widely accredited reason for the decrease in rail transportation employment,' although the pandemic, uncertainties in trade and a decline U.S. coal usage also hurt the industry." The new systems allows for no room for getting precisely sick. MB: Seems to me the basis for this system is to assume workers are nothing more than cogs in the wheel & not human beings who have the disadvantage of succumbing for to a virus or an impacted wisdom tooth.
Gabriella Killett of the New Orleans Times-Picayune: "After getting forced off an airplane for asking passengers who appeared to her to be Latino whether they were drug mules, a niece of former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie bit, kicked and spit on Jefferson Parish sheriff's deputies trying to detain her on Thanksgiving Day at Louis Armstrong International Airport, authorities said. Shannon Epstein, 25..., asked a family who were near her and whom she perceived to be Latino if they were 'smuggling cocaine,' said Capt. Jason Rivarde, a Sheriff's Office spokesperson. Airline workers requested Epstein be removed from the plane as she became increasingly irate, and the plane, which had started to taxi to the runway, returned to the gate.... When deputies ... tried to arrest her, she became 'extremely combative,' Rivarde said. In the scuffle, she injured six deputies, biting one of the arm and breaking the skin, and kicking another in the groin, Rivarde said." MB: Sounds like a lovely lady.
Beyond the Beltway
Georgia Senate Race. Sahil Kapur of NBC News: "Georgia has set new records for early voting again as the two Senate candidates blitz the state ahead of Tuesday's runoff election. And the contest is drawing new voters, too. More than 1.85 million Georgians have voted early, according to the office of Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, breaking two single-day records in about a week.... Democrats are outpacing Republicans among early in-person and mail votes by a heavy margin of 52% to 39%, according to data provided by TargetSmart."
Way Beyond
Ukraine, et al., The Washington Post's live briefings of developments Sunday in Russia's war on Ukraine are here: "The United States expects the 'reduced tempo' in fighting in Ukraine to continue over the coming months, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said. Her assessment comes as the Washington-based Institute of War said that mud has hindered large vehicles from traversing eastern Ukrainian terrain during much of the past week, though the weather is likely to become more conducive to combat in the winter. Meanwhile, Russia and Ukraine criticized a Western plan to cap the price of Russian oil to $60 a barrel, with Moscow saying it went too far and Kyiv saying it didn't go far enough." ~~~
~~~ The Guardian's live updates for Sunday are here. The Guardian's summary report is here.
China. Emma Graham-Harrison of the Guardian/Observer: "In the face of the most widespread national protests since the bloody crackdown on Tiananmen Square demonstrators in 1989, the Chinese government has abruptly abandoned its flagship zero-Covid policy. In Beijing, people prepared to go into shopping malls or on public transport without a recent negative test. Elsewhere, they were allowed to enter parks and supermarkets without checks, or told they could quarantine at home -- rather than a government facility -- if they had come into contact with a case.... Xi [Jinping] told visiting European Council president Charles Michel that China could look at easing restrictions because [the prevailing] Omicron [variant] is less dangerous than the Delta variant, which was most common before. The problem, epidemiologists warn, is that Beijing's stance does not reflect studies on the impact of Omicron, and the country is ill-prepared for a wave of deadly Covid infections that it may soon face."
News Lede
New York Times: “Bob McGrath, who played the sweater-clad neighborhood music teacher and general advice-giver on 'Sesame Street' for almost half a century, died at his home in New Jersey on Sunday morning. He was 90."
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Reader Comments (18)
Get rid of the Constitution? Okay, sure. Why not?
Let’s start with the Second Amendment. Gone! Gun ownership is now illegal. How you like them apples?
@Akhilleus: Great idea! And I want to get rid of that bit where states with small populations -- Wyoming, say -- have the same number of senators as populous states like New York & California. Oh, there's a lot we could change once we come up with our own constitution.
Who else is tired of all the caterwauling opinion pieces ripping Biden as the “fake pro-labor guy”?
Yes. It sucks for those railroad workers, I agree. But the alternative was/is a strike with the potential to cause an economic avalanche. Had Biden said “Okay, go ahead and call your strike”, these same whiners would be screeching about economic collapse caused by a “too pro-labor” president.
When Trump was president*, the worst in history, his most horrible ideas and actions were met with both sides, namby-pamby equivocation. With Biden, everything he does is met with “Did you see what Biden just did?!?”
A lot of this is the result of years and years of conditioning not to be too hard on confederates, for anything, since they hate any and all criticism and will punch back ferociously. Democrats don’t, so it’s time to act all journalisty and tough with a Democratic administration. You rarely hear “on the other hand” when these people want to go after Democrats.
Biden made a tough decision. The railroad owners are assholes, workers got screwed , again. But this is the nature of the beast. Republicans have no balls, or smarts, about making tough decisions. Better to let someone else do the heavy lifting then scream about it.
Constantly attacking Biden sets the stage for a Trump return, or a DeSantis win in 2024, leading to across the board fascism. Then what happens? The press sez “Oh my! Who could have guessed that would happen? But don’t blame us, we just ‘report the news’”
Marie,
Exactly!
Representation in the Senate will be based on population, same as the House. Red states out west get…let’s see…half a senator. So Idaho and Montana have to share one. New York and California get 12 senators each.
Next time Supreme Court nominees come up for a vote, Nazi originalists can go fuck themselves.
Fatty is getting more and more unhinged by the day. What’s next? Overthrow the government and have himself installed as king?
Oh, wait. Already tried that.
The Washington Post wrote "suspend the Constitution." If trump's
statement is quoted accurately, he says "terminate the Constitution."
Any politician who would make a statement like that should be
deemed a traitor and brought before the Supreme Court.
Oh well, forget it.
#45 violated the oath of office by taking it
Forrest,
With the conservative Court the Pretender and McConnell have given us, the Constitution is more than ever subject to change...and that change will not be equally distributed--as it has already demonstrated-- between left and right.
We can expect less corporate accountability, for instance, as corporations acquire more rights, while at the same time concern for the people's welfare will be further shunted aside.
Corporate and political corruption will become an acceptable norm (after all, it's just a way of doing business) while voting rights and the principle of one man one vote will be forgotten .
And somewhere along the path to fascism conservatives have chosen, those robes the Court likes to wear will be all that remains of the Constitution's Bill of Rights as we thought we knew them.
If Fatty is still alive at that point, he might appear before those empty robes, not as the traitor he is, but to accept their thanks...
NJC,
Quite. And any oath the Fat Fascist takes to do anything faithfully, besides line his own pockets, is moot before the sound of the word assaults the auditory canal of anyone else in the room.
62 and counting: Here's a list of Fatty's farragos that should be pasted on billboards across the nation:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-president-things-you-forgot_n_63890ec3e4b0d17409602b90
Matt Taibbi used to ferret out real scandals.
But then he was looking in all the right places: on the corporate and political Right.
Wonder why he switched hunting grounds?
PD,
“Fatty’s farragoes”sounds like something you might find on the menu at Marred a Lardo. The word does, after all, stem from a Latin root referring to meal or grain.
But I digress…
Good list but I’d take issue with the description of the Fat Fascist’s revelation of top secret intelligence to Russian officials as “accidental”. No accident there. He meant to reveal that information. He wanted to show Putin’s guys that he too was a real, honest to god spymaster who knew all kinds of cool stuff of the highly classified, eyes-only variety.
He’s a feckless, hopeless show-off whose toxic narcissism casts all concerns aside, state secrets, methods and sources, even the lives of operatives, when it comes to being able to brag about himself.
The only accident that day was him being president*.
Ken, re: Taibbi, I’d wager it’s a variant of both-siderism at play. He goes after everyone. And even if there’s no there there, he believes he can balance the Everest of criminality, hatred, ignorance, racism, misogyny, self-dealing, and treason on the right with a breathless tale of emails about Hunter Biden’s laptop.
He’s a jurn-a-list, after all.
@Forrest Morris: Now there's a distinction with a difference. Thanks for pointing it out.
@NJC: Yes, he did. We'd have to look back to find the first time he performed an official act that violated his oath, but I'd guess it was in January 2017.
Since it's Sunday:
“Every life is in many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves.” "Ulysses"
Taibbi might just embody the old saying "if you can't beat them, join them" mentality.
The profits the railroads are making are ridiculous. "2001, leading American freight carriers CSX, KC Southern, Norfolk Southern and Union Pacific earned average operating margins of about 15%. That means that after accounting for all the costs associated with running a railroad (including money spent on compensation & benefits), for every $100 of revenue, investors were left with $15 of profit. Twenty years later that number has skyrocketed to over $41." And could easily afford a few sick days and a responsible number of workers to do the job safely. Biden did what he could, but the Republicans and corporate bosses will do everything in their power to keep the workers from receiving their dues. They always pick money over man, as long as it's someone else paying the price.
Marcy Wheeler has a different take on the Taibbi/Elmo dick pics.