May 15, 2023
Afternoon Update:
Your Tax Dollars Going Down Rabbit Holes. Charlie Savage, et al., of the New York Times:"John Durham, the Trump-era special counsel who for four years has pursued a politically fraught investigation into the Russia inquiry, accused the F.B.I. of a 'lack of analytical rigor' in a final report made public on Monday that examined the bureau's investigation into whether the 2016 Trump campaign was conspiring with Moscow. Mr. Durham's 306-page report appeared to show little substantial new information about the F.B.I.'s handling of the Russia investigation..., and it failed to produce the kinds of blockbuster revelations impugning the bureau that ... Donald J. Trump and his allies had once suggested that Mr. Durham would find. Instead, the report -- released without substantive comment or redactions by Attorney General Merrick B. Garland -- repeated previously exposed flaws in the inquiry, including from a 2019 inspector general report, while concluding that the F.B.I. suffered from a confirmation bias as it pursued leads about Mr. Trump's ties to Russia." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Read on. The Durham "report" sounds less like a report than a documented conspiracy theory that -- after four years of "investigating" -- couldn't find any facts to support it. ~~~
~~~ Politico's report is here. The so-called Durham report, via the DOJ, is here.
Luke Broadwater & Remy Tumin of the New York Times: "A man armed with a baseball bat and demanding to see Representative Gerald E. Connolly, Democrat of Virginia, attacked and injured two staff aides ... with what appeared to be a metal baseball bat ... in a destructive rampage inside the congressman's Fairfax, Va., office, the latest episode in a surge of political violence across the country. Xuan Kha Tran Pham, 49, of Fairfax, was facing charges for one count of felony aggravated malicious wounding and one count of malicious wounding, according to the Fairfax City Police Department. He was being held without bond. Police said they had not yet identified a motive, and Capitol Police said in a statement that the suspect was not known to them.... The two aides [were] taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries."
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Miriam Jordan of the New York Times: "Relative quiet has prevailed along the southern U.S. border since Friday, despite widespread fears that ending a pandemic-era policy to immediately expel most migrants, even asylum seekers, would set off a stampede from Mexico. A surge in migrants did in fact happen, in the run-up to the expiration of the pandemic-era expulsion policy, known as Title 42. Uncertain of the impact of new deterrent measures, migrants braved turbulent rivers, cut through concertina wire and scaled the steel border wall to reach the United States and turn themselves in to U.S. Border Patrol agents. On some days last week, apprehensions reached about 11,000, among the highest recorded. Alejandro Mayorkas, Homeland Security secretary, said on Sunday that agents apprehended only 6,300 migrants on Friday and 4,200 on Saturday."
~~~ Marie: They "scaled the steel border wall"? Unpossible!
Paul Kane of the Washington Post: "Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) sees the military in a dramatic leftward lurch that has hurt recruiting and combat readiness. The third-year senator believes Pentagon leaders are forcing troops to read liberal books. That they are helping provide abortion services. And, in new remarks the past few days, that they are inappropriately driving 'white nationalists' out of the service. 'They're politicizing the military so much, they're ruining our military,' Tuberville told reporters on Thursday, noting that the Army missed its 2022 recruiting goal by 25 percent. 'Something's going wrong in our military.' These positions have placed Tuberville -- whose military background consists of using war metaphors to inspire his teams during three decades coaching college football -- in the spotlight as the leading conservative antagonist to the Defense Department.... Tuberville made things more complicated when he gave an interview to his local public radio station on Wednesday that criticized Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for trying 'to get out the white extremists, the white nationalists' from the military." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Probably worth at least skimming the whole article so you can catch the nuances of Sen. Potatohead's racism, nuances which seem to have eluded him, of course. A commentator on MSNBC noted that before becoming a U.S. senator, Coach Potatohead enjoyed an entire career as the master of a Black slave plantation system known as college football. You know, where the strong Black kids do all the grueling work for no pay and the master orders them around & berates them? ~~~
~~~ Nice to know the Senate Republican caucus is an equal-opportunity racist outfit: ~~~
~~~ Ramon Vargas of the Guardian: "Mexicans 'would be eating cat food out of a can and living in a tent behind an Outback' Steakhouse restaurant if it were not for their nation's proximity to the US, and their country should be invaded because of the presence of drug cartels there, the US senator John Neely Kennedy said. The Louisiana Republican's racist remarks drew a strong condemnation from Mexico's foreign affairs secretary, Marcelo Ebrard, who called Kennedy 'a profoundly ignorant man'. Mexico's president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, meanwhile, urged the 37 million Americans of Mexican descent -- along with other Latinos in the US -- 'not to vote for people with this very arrogant, very offensive and very foolish mentality' in the future."
The Spy Who Went Out in the Cold. David Edwards of the Raw Story: "Rep. James Comer (R-KY) revealed on Sunday that Republicans had lost track of a top witness in the investigation of President Joe Biden and his family.... 'Well, unfortunately, we can't track down the informant," Comer [told conspiracy-credulous Fox 'News' star Maria Bartiromo].... Comer ... explain[ed] the informant was in the 'spy business' and 'they don't make a habit of being seen a lot.'" MB: Comer & Jungle Gym Jordan have been "investigating" Joe Biden's supposed rampant corruption for months. Despite their promises of blockbuster revelations, their show hearings have showed nothing. So now they're resorting to dog-ate-my-homework excuses.
Hunter Walker of TPM: “The ChickenRight persona was a unique figure in the [white-supremacist] Groyper movement. [Nick] Fuentes' core audience is made up of young, alienated 'Zoomers' who watch his hours-long streams, in which he rails against minorities and gays.... TPM has uncovered an extensive digital trail of interconnected Groyper social media pages using variations of the 'ChickenRight' and 'Chikken' handles that can be linked to Wade Searle, who works as the digital director for Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), one of the most extreme, far-right members of Congress.... 'The Groypers are essentially the equivalent of neo-Nazis,' said [historian Nicole] Hemmer.... Gosar has his own direct links to Fuentes."
Oh why oh why are so many right-wingers corrupt? ~~~
~~~ David Fahrenthold & Tiff Fehr of the New York Times: "A group of conservative operatives using sophisticated robocalls raised millions of dollars from donors using pro-police and pro-veteran messages. But instead of using the money to promote issues and candidates, an analysis by The New York Times shows, nearly all the money went to pay the firms making the calls and the operatives themselves, highlighting a flaw in the regulation of political nonprofits.... A group of five linked nonprofits ... have exploited thousands of donors in ways that have been hidden until now by a blizzard of filings, lax oversight and a blind spot in the campaign finance system.... Just 1 percent of the money they raised was used to help candidates.... The groups ... paid $2.8 million, or 3 percent of the money raised, to three Republican political consultants from Wisconsin who were the hidden force behind all five nonprofits...."
Talmon Smith of the New York Times: "An intergenerational transfer of wealth is in motion in America -- and it will dwarf any of the past.... Born in midcentury as U.S. birthrates surged in tandem with an enormous leap in prosperity after the Depression and World War II, [baby] boomers are now beginning to die in larger numbers, along with Americans over 80.... The wealthiest 10 percent of households will be giving and receiving a majority of the riches. Within that range, the top 1 percent -- which holds about as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent, and is predominantly white -- will dictate the broadest share of the money flow.... The scale of the transfer is made possible in part by the U.S. tax code. Individuals can transmit up to $12.9 million to heirs, during life or at death, without federal estate tax (and $26 million for married couples).... Legally approved forms of tax avoidance are the major tool of wealth preservation."
Julia Mueller of the Hill: "Former President Trump has said he'll bring back his former national security adviser Michael Flynn if he wins another four years in the White House in 2024. 'I will say, General Flynn, he's some general. He's some man. He took abuse like nobody could have handled, and he came out bigger, better, stronger than ever before,' Trump said via phone to the 'ReAwaken America' rally at Trump National Doral Miami, according to a Rolling Stone report.... [Flynn] has been tied to QAnon and backed Trump's claims of widespread election fraud." ~~~
~~~ The AP & Frontline describe the ReAwaken America tour, which Michael Flynn co-founded after January 6, 2021, "as a traveling roadshow and recruiting tool for an ascendant Christian nationalist movement that's wrapped itself in God, patriotism and politics and has grown in power and influence inside the Republican Party." ~~~
~~~ Alex Deluca of the Miami News Times (May 11): "Scott McKay and Charlie Ward, two purveyors of anti-Semitic and occult conspiracy theories, have been removed from the scheduled list of speakers for the ReAwaken America tour stop at the Trump National Doral Miami resort on May 12-13. Prominent attorney and Trump family confidant Alan Dershowitz said on his podcast on the Rumble platform that Eric Trump, one of the event headliners, confirmed McKay would not be allowed on the Trump property."
Ramon Vargas of the Guardian: "The US rental car giant Hertz has apologized and pledged to retrain its staff after an employee denied a Puerto Rican customer a prepaid vehicle on the mistaken belief that he was from a foreign country and needed a passport. During the encounter with the customer at New Orleans's Louis Armstrong international airport, the Hertz employee also waved over a law enforcement officer who allegedly threatened to turn the man over to immigration authorities even though Puerto Rico has been a US territory since 1898 and has a representative in Congress as well, according to a stunning report which CBS correspondent David Begnaud published on Twitter and Instagram late Saturday."
Beyond the Beltway
Florida. Ed Pilkington of the Guardian: "A Florida teacher under investigation because she showed her class the Disney animated movie Strange World which features a gay character has defended herself on social media, insisting the film related to the curriculum and warning that state investigators were traumatizing her 10- and 11-year-old students. Jenna Barbee, a teacher at Winding Waters school in Hernando county, Florida, released a six-minute TikTok video in which she gave her side of the story. She said she had been reported to the local school board by one of her students' mother, who sits on the board and was on a 'rampage to get rid of every form of representation out of our schools', Barbee alleged.... On Sunday, the Tallahassee Democrat named the parent and board member who had reported Barbee as Shannon Rodriguez. A member of the rightwing group Moms for Liberty, Rodriguez has been a leader of demands to have books she describes as 'smut' and 'porn' taken off library and school shelves." ~~~
~~~ Marie: You call this smut? What about Donald Duck doesn't wear pants?
Way Beyond
Thailand. Sui-Lee Wee & Muktita Suhartono of the New York Times: "Voters in Thailand overwhelmingly sought to end nearly a decade of military rule on Sunday, casting ballots in favor of two opposition parties that have pledged to curtail the power of the country's powerful conservative institutions: the military and the monarchy. With 97 percent of the votes counted early Monday morning, the progressive Move Forward Party was neck and neck with the populist Pheu Thai Party. Move Forward had won 151 seats to Pheu Thai's 141 in the 500-seat House of Representatives. In most parliamentary systems, the two parties would form a new governing coalition and choose a prime minister. But under the rules of the current Thai system, written by the military after its 2014 coup, the junta will still play kingmaker."
Turkey. Ben Hubbard & Gulsin Harman of the New York Times: "Turkey's presidential election appeared on Sunday to be headed for a runoff after the incumbent, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, failed to win a majority of the vote, a result that left the longtime leader struggling to stave off the toughest political challenge of his career. The outcome of the vote set the stage for a two-week battle between Mr. Erdogan and Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the opposition leader, to secure victory in a May 28 runoff that may reshape Turkey's political landscape. With the unofficial count nearly completed, Mr. Erdogan received 49.4 percent of the vote to Mr. Kilicdaroglu's 44.8 percent, according to the state-run Anadolu news agency. But both sides claimed to be ahead."
Ukraine, et al. The New York Times' live updates of developments Monday in Russia's war on Ukraine are here. The Guardian's live updates for Monday are here. The Guardian's summary report is here. ~~~
~~~ The Washington Post's live briefing for Monday is here: "Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived in the United Kingdom Monday morning, the latest stop on a tour of Western European countries aimed at securing new aid commitments for the war and maintaining the support of Kyiv's allies. Zelensky previously secured fresh commitments from Berlin and Paris for military aid and support during weekend visits to those cities.... Zelensky will meet with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at his official countryside retreat, Chequers, for talks about the war, the prime minister's office said in a statement.... Chinese envoy Li Hui arrives in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, on Monday. He will be the highest-ranking Chinese diplomat to visit since the start of the war.... The head of the Russian mercenary organization Wagner Group offered to give Russian troop locations to Ukraine if Ukraine's commanders withdrew their soldiers from the area around Bakhmut, leaked intelligence documents reveal. Wagner mercenaries are taking heavy losses in the beleaguered Ukrainian city."
News Lede
New York Times: "An 18-year-old gunman fired indiscriminately while roaming a residential street in Farmington, N.M., on Monday morning, killing three people before the police arrived and killed the suspect, the authorities said. Six other people, including two officers, were injured.... Chief Steve Hebbe of the Farmington Police Department said in a video statement released on Monday night ... that the rampage appeared to be 'purely random.' Chief Hebbe said that the gunman, whom he did not name, had used at least three different weapons, including an 'AR-style rifle,' a gun commonly used in mass shootings, as he roamed through the neighborhood, randomly firing 'at whatever entered his head to shoot at' including at least six houses and three cars."
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Reader Comments (12)
And here we are on the Ides of May.
Spent the weekend in grandchildren, the eight year old edition of whom was very interested in the Roman Empire and could have used a little Akhilleus tutelage, had an interesting reaction to an old Tarzan book we were reading together.
I was a bit concerned about how he would react to the clearly racist depiction of the African characters Burroughs concocted. I admit I was feeling a little discomfort. Some (many?) of the books I read with pleasure as a kid are downright embarrassing by today's standards...
Would he feel shamed, guilty or be somehow uncomfortable? I wondered.
Naw, at one point he just casually volunteered "that's racist," and on we went to the next scene...
Maybe it's not the kids that conservative snowflakes are worried about..
On money and the intergenerational wealth transfer:
The NYTimes story linked above is built around some eye-popping numbers and certainly worth attention, but for perspective it was interesting for this Boomer to remember what wealth meant in 1956, when today's 13,000,000 was a mere 1.7 or so million and when today's gas prices would translate to about 37 cents/gallon.
“ Black kids do all the grueling work for no pay and the master orders them around & berates them?”…and makes a ton of money as his slaves work out in the fields.
Big time college football coaches (and Auburn, where Potatohead coached, is one of the biggest) make a lot of money. Alabama coach Nick Saban made $11m last year. Potatohead is worth over $20m, almost all stemming from football.
“Go make me rich!”
“Yes, massa!”
Ken,
My brother and I devoured the Tarzan novels as they were reprinted by Ballantine Books back in the mid to late 60’s. As kids we loved the old Johnny Weismuller Tarzan movies on Saturday morning TV. It was a surprise, reading the novels a few years later, that Tarzan wasn’t the barely literate, half naked chap in the movies. He was an British nobleman (of course he was) who spoke English and French perfectly.
The racism (white baby grows up by himself in the jungle, raised by apes, and lords it over everyone, animals and native tribes included) was pretty obvious but, as you say, we were more enthralled by the action storylines than outraged by the bigotry. Another character we enjoyed was a comic strip, The Phantom, another white guy in the jungle. The racism there was even more startling (natives routinely said said things like “Uggg! Phan-tom! Ghost who walks!”, enough so that even as kids we made fun of it.
No doubt the anti-woke crowd would be unhappy to discover that your grandson immediately recognizes the disconnect between fiction written 100 years ago and the real world. This is why they don’t want actual history taught in schools. They would probably see the Burroughs novels as documentary non-fiction.
Speaking of the Romans, it bears remembering that while the social structures of the Republic’s days weren’t exactly woke, the automatic knee jerk hatred and fear of immigrants we see in our own country (2,000 and some years later!!) was not the staple then that it has become in our time. As Rome grew in power and influence, its leaders understood that native born Roman citizens couldn’t possibly handle all the necessary jobs and functions required to keep such an enormous enterprise going. Roman citizenship was a prized achievement and many immigrants were granted its benefits. There were levels, of course. Some became full citizens, some landed somewhere just south of that, and some remained slaves (so yeah, not completely woke).
But unlike our “leaders”, at least the ones on the right, immigrants didn’t immediately cause Romans to soil their togas, and demand draconian punishments for crossing its borders.
@Ken Winkes: Can't figure out how it happened that I read all those racist books as a child -- "Little Black Sambo" and "A Child's History of the World," etc. -- and I didn't turn out to be a white nationalist. When I was three, my great aunts gave me a "pickaninny" rag doll -- that's what they called it -- along with a Raggedy Ann doll. That didn't make me racist, either. I played with both of the dolls.
I suppose it's my parents' fault. They didn't teach me to look down on people whose skin was less subject to sunburn & cancer than mine.
Thanks for the Leonard Cohen song. I always think of Cohen as one of those touchstone poets whose work always seems brand new, heart and mind exploding, no matter how many times you hear it.
You can read bits of Wordsworth’s “Preludes”, Stevens’ “Idea of Order at Key West”, Plath’s “Daddy”, or Keats’s “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” a hundred times and on the 101st reading, you still go “Wow!”
Cohen’s stuff is like that.
“Everybody knows the dice is loaded”. Ain’t it the truth?
But here’s the catch. Poetry only works, only survives translation into the prosaic latitudes if you pay attention:
“Everybody knows the captain lied”
“Everybody knows the plague is coming”
Everybody knows Trump is a dangerous maniac.
Everybody knows he’s a racist authoritarian. He says it all right out loud. He’s telling us who and what he is.
I read somewhere that Leonard Cohen took years to get the right words and phrasing to his masterpiece, “Hallelujah”. It sounds so effortless, but like most poets, he sweats the small stuff. Wordsworth as an old man was re-writing lines written years earlier.
Trump’s songs of hatred and greed have been growing and developing, being rewritten and reworked for decades. He keeps the poison fresh. But it’s still poison.
Everybody knows.
Marie: Looks like you and I were being subjected to the same children's books––I loved "Little Black Sambo" especially the end when the tigers turn into butter. I also had both a black-rag doll and a Raggedy Ann. But the fact that my mother called filberts (nuts) "Nigger toes" tells me there was an underlying message in that household of yore that I in-jested but never digested.
@P.D., that's what my mom called Brazil nuts.
A sporadic outbreak of sanity?
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/05/14/democrats-religion-census-secular-00095858
Everybody knows…unless you watch Fox
As title 42 expired, the gleefully anticipated (by the usual suspects) CHAOS AT THE BORDER disappeared faster than Jim Comer’s homework, or his super secret witness to Biden crimes.
Yes, another hoped for disaster they planned to use to make the nation worse off than it was an hour ago has failed to materialize. But only if you live in the real world.
NYT: Crowds but no chaos
Reuters: Chaos avoided
Dozens of other outlets: Chaos averted
Fox: CHAOS ON THE BORDER! Aieee!
Both sides have been lambasting Biden over the border situation. Democrats say he’s not doing enough. Traitors say “Open borders! They’re inviting murderers and drug dealers!”
The truth is, as it often is, more complicated. To an extent. The fact is that the president can only do so much. Humanitarian crises bring out the best and the worst in people. Recall, if you will, the horror with which many Americans viewed allowing Jewish refugees attempting to escape torture and certain death during the last years of WWII to enter the country. Appeals to humanity go only so far. FDR, who in many ways was in a much stronger situation than Biden, found that he could only do so much.
The immigration problem is not going away. Economic and social situations in many countries compel thousands of families and individuals to make the dangerous and treacherous journey north to the border to find some semblance of a decent life (however if they think they’re escaping gun violence by leaving their homes and going to Texas…).
No president cam fix this problem by fiat. Trump tried to do it the other way, and like most Trump plans, it was a disaster.
Congress is the only entity that can properly address this crisis. But there we run into another crisis. One of the two parties WANTS the chaos to continue. The last thing they want is immigration reform. Immigration, and the mishmash surrounding it, is manna from hell for the Traitors.
They offer only two things: fear and tax cuts for the Harlan Crows of the country. They have no policy platforms to speak of, no solutions, no ideas to make the country a better place.
But like the bullying little kid on the beach who takes great pleasure in kicking over sand castles others have spent hours building, they realize that it’s much easier (and quicker) to tear down than to build up. So that’s what they do. They knock shit over then sit on the sidelines and complain about others trying in good faith to address serious problems.
Immigration is a tough issue. There’s no perfect solution. But even an imperfect solution would be light years beyond where we are now.
But we can’t do it with one entire party set against effective, decent, humanitarian solutions.
Everybody knows this. Unless you watch Fox. Or vote for these monsters. They need chaos. They love it. The most chaotic day in recent memory was Jan. 6. Trump called it “a beautiful day”.
QED.
The grandkids allowed me enough time to write a Sunday Sermon on Sunday, but the revisions had to wait until this morning.
Call it a Monday Sermon...which I'll send to the paper on Tuesday.
"Recent news reminds me of family car trips to North Dakota in the 1950’s with my sister and me together in the back seat. When one of us crossed the invisible line that divided the back seat into our decreed territories, words escalated to a poke, maybe a shove, then often to an eruption our parents could no longer ignore. When the angry voices from the front seat asked, I said my sister caused the problem. She said I did. We knew that from where they sat, it was hard for our parents to know who started the fight. For both of us, our chaos was our camouflage.
That’s a lesson from childhood Republicans learned long ago. If you keep it noisy and chaotic, it’s hard to tell who’s responsible.
A problem with debt, with immigration, or the economy? Republicans would rather stage a noisy fight than fix any of them.
The economic chaos threatened by the debt “crisis” distracts from Republican policies that line the pockets of the rich at the expense of the rest. Though employment remains high amidst moderating inflation and bank failures (bloomburg.com), the overall economy is still skewed to the one percent, who control over one third of the nation’s wealth (businessinsider.com).
Despite good news about employment and inflation, the majority rightly feels the economy is bad because it’s still bad for them (adamspg.com).
And as the Covid-era Title 42 restrictions on immigration ended, Republicans have deliberately produced even more noise and distraction, decrying an “open border” that doesn’t and won’t exist (verifythis.com) and passing an unrealistic and deliberately contentious immigration bill in the Republican-dominated House (apnews.com).
Sitting in the nation’s back seat, gleefully spreading their chaos, Republicans hope no one will notice they caused the problems they rush to blame on someone else."
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Ken wrote:
“…gleefully spreading their chaos, Republicans hope no one will notice they caused the problems they rush to blame on someone else."
Their modus operandi. For many years now.
Much Ado...6.5 million dollars worth...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/05/15/durham-special-counsel-trump-report/