The man Trump calls “My Kevin” isn’t helping him
by digby
Not that McCarthy’s voters will see this, but it’s worth noting for everyone else.
Here’s Steny Hoyer destroying Kevin McCarthy’s weak anti-impeachment talking points immediately after McCarthy pushed them on Face the Nation pic.twitter.com/FD0GDdGrQE— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 3, 2019
Hoyer’s often wrong about things, but not this time.
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The Trump spawn are doing business overseas as we speak
by digby
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| Don Jr pimping Trump Towers Pune in India |
Congratulations to our extraordinary @TrumpScotland team! Minutes ago, we received full & total approval for a new phase of development to include 500 homes, 50 cottages, sports center, retail & more. We also received approval to build a 2nd golf course! Very proud of them! pic.twitter.com/odVxomGdmf— Eric Trump (@EricTrump) September 26, 2019
I mentioned below that “over half of Republicans (53 percent) say it is generally okay for the president to ask foreign leaders for help in going after his rivals, while slightly more (55 percent) think it is inappropriate for the children of political leaders to have business dealings in other countries.”
The daftness of that view is obvious. They are very confused and brainwashed people. They watch Fox and they don’t know about this:
President Donald Trump’s business is back in the spotlight. Less than a week after the President reversed course on his plan to host next year’s G-7 at his Trump National Doral Miami in Florida, reports surfaced that his company plans to sell its DC Hotel, which has been the subject of several lawsuits alleging the President is profiting from it in violation of the Constitution.
Trump’s defense is that he says he’s put his business “stuff” in a trust and that his family runs it. As of 2018, the President held more than $130 million in foreign assets in this trust, according to an analysis compiled by Open Secrets.
As a trustee, Trump’s eldest son Donald Trump Jr., who is also executive vice president of The Trump Organization, is responsible for looking after the beneficiary (the President) and the business’s bottom line. This arrangement has raised concerns that Trump and his family could use the presidency to profit personally.
Since the 2016 election, Trump and his family members have defended the decision, claiming there is nothing improper about their business operations.The recent controversy surrounding former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter and his international business ties has added a new layer to conversations about the ethics around business done by the families of powerful politicians while they’re in office. It’s also spurred the President’s family to attempt to defend their own holdings.
In a recent Fox News interview, Eric, discussing Hunter’s dealings, noted that “the difference between us and Hunter is when my father became commander-in-chief of this country, we got out of all international business, right?”
Not quite. Jordan Libowitz, communications director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a non-profit government watchdog group, told CNN that Eric’s claim was the “worst lie I’ve heard in a while.”
Facts First: President Trump’s three oldest children have all been involved with international business in some manner since his election. Furthermore, the President has made millions of dollars from foreign assets associated with the Trump Organization in 2017 and 2018, according to his public financial disclosure reports.
The Trump Organization also continues to market, promote and expand Trump-branded properties all over the world, as recently as last month.
International footprint
On October 10, The Trump Organization firm TIGL Ireland Enterprises received approval for a new development that the Irish Times reports will double the size of the Trump International Golf Links and Hotel in Doonbeg, Ireland.
Per The Trump Organization’s website, the Trump brand is associated with an estate in Scotland, residential property in India, Indonesia, South Korea, Turkey, the Philippines and Uruguay, and public golf courses in Scotland, Ireland, Dubai, Bali and Indonesia. The golf courses in Ireland and Scotland have accompanying Trump hotels. There’s also a Trump International Hotel & Tower in Vancouver, British Columbia which formally opened in February 2017.
As executive vice presidents of The Trump Organization, Trump’s eldest sons have continued to conduct international deals for the family company, despite the President’s initial promise to the contrary.
In February 2017, Eric went to the resort island of Cap Cana in the Dominican Republic, where The Trump Organization has had ties since 2007. After the visit, the president and vice president of Cap Cana’s Council said the relationship between the two organizations “remains incredibly strong, especially with Eric, who has led the project since its inception,” adding that “we are excited to be working with the Trump Organization in the future phases of the project.”
Licensing agreementsEric Trump delivers a speech during a ceremony for the official opening of the Trump International Tower and Hotel on February 28, 2017 in Vancouver, Canada.
While the Trump International Hotel & Tower in Vancouver was the first property to open with the Trump name after President Trump was sworn in, it was not the last. The month after their father’s inauguration, the Trump sons attended the grand opening of a Trump-branded golf course in Dubai. While The Trump Organization did not itself develop the course, the Trump brand is associated with the property as part of a licensing agreement.
The following year, Trump Jr. visited India to promote Trump-branded apartments for several development projects in Pune, Mumbai, Kolkata and around New Delhi. In June 2018, a few months after Trump Jr.’s visit, construction on the Trump Towers outside New Delhi broke ground. The website for Trump Towers Delhi features a section dedicated to Trump, where Donald Jr. is quoted as saying “we are excited to extend the Trump brand.” All the Trump Towers in India denote on their websites that the properties are not owned, developed or sold by The Trump Organization and that they’re licensing the “Trump” name.
These developments represent the same kind of international business that Trump was engaging in before his election. For years, a majority of The Trump Organization’s international business has come from licensing the Trump name.This August, Trump Jr. was in Jakarta, Indonesia, to promote Trump Residences Bali and Trump Residences Lido at a private event for potential buyers and tenants. Although The Trump Organization signed a contract for the two properties in 2015, The New York Times reported they were not yet built as of Trump Jr.’s visit. According to the President’s 2016 financial disclosure form, he received between $2-10 million for the two properties.
The article goes on to lay out Ivanka’s trademarks with China for the clothing company from which she withdrew in 2018. Let’s not kid ourselves though. Ivanka may not be personally profiting from her clothing line while she’s in office. But her global gallivanting is clearly in service of some major cashing in after this whole nightmare is over.
The article doesn’t even touch the various diety dealings of Jared Kushner, who is simultaneously flogging his family business as he serves as Trump’s top global adviser.
Apparently, nobody cares about their rampant, overwhelming personal corruption even as the pathetic Hunter Biden story becomes a national headline. I’m sure they will get away with all of it and will continue to profit handsomely. The only good news is that they are such inept business people that they will likely end up broke after all is said and done.
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Republicans are fine with selling out the country
by digby
New polling today. Per Ron Brownstein on twitter:
Trump’s highest vote share vs any Democrat in either the new Fox or NBC/WSJ polls is 42%. In both polls, + ABC/WP earlier this week, 49% support the extraordinary step of removing him from office. R Senate can prevent impeachment, sure; can Trump win back voters who want him out?
Many #impeachment details in @FoxNews poll should trouble WH. 49% now say impeach & remove. But including those who say impeach but don’t remove, 53% want him impeached (just 41% don’t). 1/3 of those who now oppose removal say new info could change their mind. (more)
Nearly 2/3 say it’s inappropriate to ask a foreign leader to investigate a rival. Asked what should happen next if House impeaches 42% say Senate should remove + 9% say he should resign. That’s a combined majority that says: go. Just 43% say leave it to voters in 2020 to decide.
Apparently, a large number of our fellow Americans believe that the president using the power of the US government to extort a foreign leader to smear his political opponent isn’t a big deal while the children of political leaders should not have business in foreign countries. (I guess nobody told them about Don Jr, Eric and Ivanka’s foreign business ties.)
In addition, over half of Republicans (53 percent) say it is generally okay for the president to ask foreign leaders for help in going after his rivals, while slightly more (55 percent) think it is inappropriate for the children of political leaders to have business dealings in other countries.
I would bet that nearly every last one of those people were screeching like harpies about Bill Clinton and the “rule ‘o law” back in 1998.
They are hopeless and so are the Republicans leaders who know very well that Trump is an imbecile and a criminal. One has to wonder if this might be true:
“As long as Republican leaders remain united behind the president, it’s unlikely his overall support will drop much below 40 percent,” says Republican pollster Daron Shaw, who conducts the Fox News Poll with Democratic counterpart Chris Anderson. “One major difference between the Nixon and Clinton impeachment proceedings is the behavior of partisan elites. Basically, it’s only when GOP elites jump ship that Republican voters will follow suit.”
I don’t think we’ll ever know. Donald Trump petrifies Republican politicians. They are the worst cowards in American life. So I’d expect this stalemate to continue unless Trump loses in 2020. And, of course, they cheat in elections so there’s no guarantee that even a huge landslide will result in his defeat. We are on a knife’s edge.
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Smells like victory
by Tom Sullivan
Still image from Apocalypse Now (1979).
Democrats’ lack of permanent infrastructure has launched too many listserv gripe sessions for me to count. “Infrastructure,” however it’s defined, is tagged as a principle reason Democrats have lost ground to Republicans in state after state. Election-cycle thinking is to blame, in part. Focus on winning the presidency is another culprit. Lack of stable funding year to year is yet another.
A series of interviews last week with journalist Meaghan Winter, author of “All Politics Is Local: Why Progressives Must Fight for the States,” examined the roots of the left’s struggle to compete.
Winter tells New York magazine’s Sarah Jones:
“One of the things that I heard, over and over again, from longtime progressive organizers and various movement leaders is they have had a lot of trouble getting big donors or institutional donors to sustain long-term organizing at the state and local level. So on the left, there’s just not the money to sustain a 10-year, 20-year program the way there is on the right.”
“People like Tom Steyer don’t have an incentive to give money to a bunch of people who are now disenfranchised and who, if they actually had power, would change his tax code and take away a lot of his social status,” Winter explains.
But Steyer will spend vast sums in a single election cycle on winning himself the big prize: the White House. He’s spent $43.5 million so far on ads since he began his campaign.
Conservative donors think in terms of investment for the long haul. They expect a return, Winter says. Liberal donors tend to be socially liberal but economically conservative. They tend to contribute to interest groups rather than to movement-building efforts. Plus, she said in an interview with KALW “Public Radio Remix,” liberal donors like to shop each year for fresh, new groups to support rather than sticking with a single effort with a years-long planning arc. Tax laws have some influence here, but liberal foundations tend to steer clear of overtly advocacy or political organizations while conservatives are unashamed about supporting groups with longer-term, society-changing, government-changing agendas.
Plus, “Republican, conservative, and libertarian strategists have chosen to exert power through state-houses because they can do so in obscurity,” Winter told the Gotham Gazette. At the start of 2019, Republicans controlled 31 of 50 state legislatures. This focus on the states has allowed conservatives near-free rein to gain ground incrementally, law by law, on issues conservatives support, including sample legislation distributed by corporate-funded national organizations.
The left is more big-campaign focused. Winter told KALW, “The Democratic party also will build up these giant presidential, or sometimes Senate, races. And then, the moment the election’s over, win or lose, they pack up and fold up and go home.” It’s a boom-and-bust cycle that leaves behind no permanent infrastructure.
“So the idea being the left — Democrats, progressives all of those people — need to build long-term institutions, long-term organizations. And that can only happen, one, if we all show up long-term, and two, if … the owners are willing to fund organizing groups on the ground all of the time. And if we transition from these look short-term bursts of interest in electoral work right before the election.”
Winter told WAMC’s “Milk Street Radio” people need to commit beyond the boom-bust thinking of presidential campaigns:
“The best thing people can do is commit to year-round organizing around issues — showing up going to council meetings going to the legislature working on campaigns for state candidates and city council candidates where you can make a huge difference just by showing up. Because these campaigns are run on a shoestring and you can really help. And if by changing, by showing up constantly, you may not win that year, but you change the cultural narrative, and you change what’s acceptable and you show people that things are possible. And that it’s not just these crazy Democrats who live in New York or California. You kind of destigmatize some of the messaging because you’re neighbors, and you can talk in a way that is more resonant to people who live near you than someone coming through the TV screen.”
All of that is true. Not having read the book, I cannot say if Winter notes how showing up constantly, building infrastructure locally from what is at hand obviates the need for large donors to air-drop large donations before infrastructure-building can happen. The spurious Goethe quotation that “boldness has genius, power, and magic in it” has truth in it as well.
In “For The Win” webinars, I encourage county committees not to wait for fundraising to fuel their organizing efforts. Rather, planning and building Get Out The Vote programs from free and cheap resources will attract donations. What local Democrats need is not boom-and-bust organizing imported from national organizations or national campaigns. They can build longer-term themselves. (I show them how.) As for sustaining donations, if you build it, they will come. I suggest committees begin with countywide GOTV programs during election years because that is when non-activists (and donors) are paying the most attention.
Having a visible GOTV program will attract higher-caliber candidates, inspire volunteers and bring them back again and again. It will fuel fundraising efforts when donors see yours is an organization that’s got “game” and deserves their support.
I tell audiences this story.
You all know these guys. They show up every presidential election. You’ve never seen them, don’t know their names. All they want is a yard sign. But if at your storefront they see volunteers arriving for a phone bank, signs bundled and staged to go out, people with clipboards headed out to canvass? I’ve seen this multiple times: People who are never going to knock a door or pick up a phone get their signs and – unprompted – pull out a checkbook and ask, “Who do I make the check out to?” And leave $100.
Because they can see with their own eyes your team has got it going on. And they don’t even know what It is, but it smells like … victory. And they want a piece of it.
Saturday Night at the Movies
The filth and the funny: Dolemite Is My Name (***½)
By Dennis Hartley
When I was in the 6 th Grade at Ft. Wainwright Junior High in Alaska, everyone in class was assigned to choose, memorize and recite a Robert Service poem (I’m assuming this is a uniquely Alaskan rite of passage…although I can’t speak for public school traditions in the Yukon Territories). As most Robert Service poems go on longer than the Old Testament, this is not a casual assignment. My choice…“The Shooting of Dan McGrew”.
Then his lips went in in a kind of grin, and he spoke, and his voice was calm,
And “Boys,” says he, “you don’t know me, and none of you care a damn;
But I want to state, and my words are straight, and I’ll bet my poke they’re true,
That one of you is a hound of hell…and that one is Dan McGrew.”
There’s a lot more to it, involving a gal named Lou and how this miner dude (“fresh from the creeks, dog-dirty, and loaded for bear”) gallivants into the local saloon like Rocky Racoon lookin’ for trouble but I think I probably chose it because it gave me an opportunity to work “blue” in front of the class without being admonished by the teacher.
Flash-forward to my junior year of high school. Specifically, that is when I bought an LP called “Dolemite for President” completely on a whim (OK…the somewhat prurient nature of the album cover and the fact that they kept it behind the counter may have initially piqued my interest). I was also really into comedy albums at the time, and the record store clerk assured me that this obscure comic Rudy Ray Moore was a laugh riot.
I had absolutely no idea what to expect. I smuggled it home (I definitely did not want my parents to see the album cover, and intuitively figured it would be wise to listen with headphones). The track list was intriguing; with cuts like “Dance of the Freaks”, “Farting Contest”, “Long Island Duck”, “Sit in Your Mama’s Lap” (you can uh…Google the rest).
Side 1 opens with Moore in character as presidential hopeful “Dolemite”, who gives an expletive-laden campaign speech touting his (very!) progressive platform (inspiration for Bullworth?) From a stylistic standpoint it was a fairly standard-issue standup monologue.
But the next cut, “Stack-A-Lee”, was…poetry.
Billy said “Stack? You’re takin’ my money, so get on your knees and pray
With your life…you’re gonna have to pay.”
Stack said “Billy…are you for real? I want you to listen, and listen well
I’m the bad motherfucker that blows the devil out of hell!”
I wasn’t able to contextualize “why” at the time, but it somehow reminded me of “The Shooting of Dan McGrew” (although, the miner loaded for bear didn’t refer to himself as “the bad motherfucker that blows the devil out of hell” while calling out Dan Mcgrew).
Most bits on the album turned out to be in rhymes. Filthy, dirty rhymes. I laughed and laughed and became a Rudy Ray Moore fan. He was fresh and original; and his incorporation of long-form verse was more developed than “There once was a girl from Nantucket…” Like Redd Foxx meets The Last Poets (or Robert Service with Tourette’s).
Flash-forward 47 years (jeezus) and I’m doing background research for my review of the 2019 Moore biopic, Dolemite Is My Name. I was surprised to learn from the film that Moore’s rhyming style was not 100% “original”, after all. Rather, it was rooted in an African-American oral tradition called “toasting” (not to be confused with “Here’s to your health!”). I came across this enlightening 2004 University at Buffalo news release:
“Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me: Narrative Poetry From Black Oral Tradition,” a book collected and compiled by SUNY Distinguished Professor Bruce Jackson of the University at Buffalo, is back for a second go ’round. […]
The book collects a popular form of African-American literature and folk poetry known as “toasts.” For 30 years, it carried the reputation of a “stone cold classic,” mightily praised by critics, cultural historians, musicians, poets and general-interest readers alike. The book includes a new CD of Jackson’s original field recording of the toasts in the book.
“Toasts are just one aspect of a rich tradition of verbal arts in black culture,” Jackson says. “Public performance of rhyming verse has ancient African roots. And we see it now in rap and hip-hop, which are a mix of African American, Caribbean and several other traditions.
“Toasts are the starting point for rap,” he says, “both in the poetry itself and the way it was used and performed in public situations. As the novelist and former Buffalonian Ishmael Reed says, if you want to understand rap and hip-hop, you’ve got to understand toasts.”
The toasts featured in the book, says Jackson, come from various sources, including street corners, barber shops, bars and jails — “places young men hang around without much to do.”
Although Jackson says the stories told in these works can be personal and intimate — and he has heard blues lyrics and Robert Service poems recited as toasts — they generally celebrate a number of folkloric figures from African-American culture like “Stackolee,” the famed bad man said to have murdered a guy over a Stetson hat […]
Hmm. After reading that, I dug deeper. The first documented reference to a song called “Stack-a-Lee” (by “Prof. Charlie Lee, the piano-thumper”) was in the Kansas City Leavenworth Herald in 1897. Robert Service published “The Shooting of Dan McGrew” in 1907. I don’t hold a degree in ethnomusicology or poetry, but it does raise a tantalizing possibility that Service, like Rudy Ray Moore, could have been inspired by traditional African-American toasts (all I have to do is tell the truth …and no one ever believes me).
Not that the subject of Robert Service (or his poems) ever arises in Dolemite Is My Name (running concurrently in theaters and on Netflix), but the film does impart everything you ever wanted to know (but were afraid to ask) about the late cult comedian and filmmaker.
The film was a labor of love for producer/star Eddie Murphy, who has been pitching a Moore biopic to studios for decades. Repeatedly thwarted by the reticence of studio execs to green-light a project about a relatively obscure entertainer, Murphy persisted until Netflix gave a nod. This adds nice symmetry to the film; as it mirrors Moore’s own perseverance.
Directed by Craig Brewer ( Hustle & Flow, Black Snake Moan) and co-written by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, the film depicts how Moore (Murphy), a struggling middle-aged musician and standup eking out a living working at a Hollywood record store and moonlighting as a nightclub MC, found the “hook” that brought him notoriety.
Circa 1970, Moore begins to take “professional” interest in the storytelling skills of Ricco (Ron Cephus Jones) a wino who habitually panhandles at the record store. Ricco regales anyone who has change jangling in their pockets with the raunchy misadventures of a fictional pimp/badass named “Dolemite”. Ricco delivers his tales in the form of rhymes.
This gives Moore an epiphany; he dry-runs the “Dolemite” persona on stage one night, replete with pimp regalia, street attitude, and nasty toasts, and to his delight the audience eats it up. Word-of-mouth spreads, and the new-and-improved act makes him a local hit.
To capitalize on the unexpected career surge, Moore next sets sights on making “party records” that would surpass even the bawdiness of Redd Foxx, who at the time was one of the most popular “blue” acts that was releasing “adults only” comedy albums (although it’s not mentioned in the film, Moore had already released three traditional comedy LPs between 1959 and 1964). As he was still a relative unknown quantity outside of the African-American community, Moore initially had to go the D.I.Y. route.
Once he was able to gain a wider fan base from his records, Moore decided to take it to the next logical step…the movies. The final two-thirds of Dolemite Is My Name focuses on the making of Moore’s first independent film, which was called (wait for it) Dolemite.
Bereft of studio backing or deep-pocketed investors, Moore finagles an abandoned L.A. hotel as a sound stage. He assembles a mostly amateur cast, hires some UCLA film students as crew, enlists a black consciousness-woke playwright (Keegan-Michael Key) as screenwriter, and sweet-talks an actor with some Hollywood credits named D’Urville Martin to be his director (played by a scenery-chewing Wesley Snipes). Moore casts himself as the film’s eponymous hero, a kung-fu fighting badass pimp (this was the peak of the “blaxploitation” era, in case you hadn’t picked up on that) and his stage act partner/comedy foil Lady Reed (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) as his leading lady (made on a shoestring in 1975, every bit of Dolemite’s lack of funding and/or film-making prowess showed on the screen; nonetheless it did find an audience and became a surprise cult hit).
I was getting a strong whiff of Tim Burton’s Ed Wood while watching Brewer’s film. It immediately became clear as to “why” when I looked up Alexander and Karaszewski’s screenwriting credits and discovered Ed Wood to be among them (I’m a little slow sometimes-but I’m nothing if not intuitive). While it doesn’t tell the complete story of Moore’s life, Dolemite Is My Name captures the essence of what he was about; mostly thanks to Murphy’s committed performance, which is the best work he has done in years.
While I wouldn’t file it under “good clean family fun”, Dolemite Is My Name is an entertaining, upbeat, and affectionate portrait you won’t need to hide from your parents.
Previous posts with related themes:
The Weird World of Blowfly
Can We Take a Joke?
More reviews at Den of Cinema
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—Dennis Hartley
Barr’s global gallivanting is much more bizarre than we knew
by digby
I have to believe Barr is doing this in furtherance of his life-long project to ensure that the president of the United States is immune from the rule of law. But since it’s obvious that his brain has been thoroughly rotted by Fox News, he clearly doesn’t believe that the Intelligence agencies of Barack Obama’s administration had the right to look into the infiltration of the election in 2016:
[O]vershadowed by the publicity around the impeachment, is the ever-broadening investigation by William Barr, the attorney general, which the White House sees as a game-changer. An investigation which is seeking nothing less than to overturn the conclusion of the US intelligence services and special counsel Robert Mueller that Russia interfered in the last US presidential election.
This has now been designated a criminal investigation with power of subpoena and the possibility of prison sentences for those who have been allegedly involved in criminal actions, although exactly what these criminal actions entail remains unclear.
It may also seem odd that Trump, having repeatedly claimed that the Mueller report was a “complete and total exoneration” of him over Russiagate, is now going to such lengths to try and discredit it.
Ukraine is a common factor in both the impeachment hearings and the Barr investigation. The House is looking at claims that Trump withheld military aid to Kiev to force the Zelensky government to reopen investigations into unproven allegations, with Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani playing a leading part in this campaign.
The attorney general is focusing on the theory, aired on far-right conspiracy sites, and raised by Trump and Giuliani, that Ukraine framed Vladimir Putin over the US election in a complex triple-cross operation by impersonating Russian hackers.
Trump and Barr have also been asking other foreign governments for help in investigating the FBI, CIA and Mueller investigators. The US president has called on the Australian prime minister Scott Morrison for assistance, while the attorney general has been on similar missions to the UK and Italy.
And the information being requested has left allies astonished. One British official with knowledge of Barr’s wish list presented to London commented that “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 services”.
The article is worth reading if you’re confused about the various conspiracy theories.
The Attorney General is going around the world asking foreign allies to discredit the Mueller Report and advance the cockamamie theory that Ukraine framed Russia for the hacking and interference in 2016 on behalf of Hillary Clinton. I still can’t quite wrap my mind around this.
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Indoctrinating the next generation of racists and xenophobes
by digby
They can’t even be decent, normal human beings on a kids holiday:
A Halloween party on Oct. 25 at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building featured candy, paper airplanes and — concerning for some attendees — a station where children were encouraged to help “Build the Wall” with their own personalized bricks.
Photos of the children’s mural with the paper wall were provided to Yahoo News.
The party, which took place inside the office building used by White House staff, included the families of executive-branch employees and VIP guests inside and outside government. Even though many of the attendees were members of President Trump’s administration, not everyone thought the Halloween game was a treat.
“Horrified. We were horrified,” said a person who was there and requested anonymity to avoid professional retaliation.
The Eisenhower Executive Office Building stands across from the White House and houses a large portion of the West Wing support staff and is home to the vice president’s ceremonial office. The “Build the Wall” mural was on the first floor, outside the speechwriter’s office and next to the office of digital strategy and featured red paper bricks, each bearing the name of a child.
Large letters on the display spelled out “Build the Wall.” Kids dressed as superheroes and ninjas were given brick-colored paper cards and told to write their name with a marker and tape them to the wall…
Earlier in the week offices inside the EEOB had been instructed to put together kid-friendly displays for trick-or-treaters. The displays were supposed to be interactive and inspiring, and all were supposed to address the party’s theme: “When I grow up I want to be…”
They didn’t have to make this political. Most people would not have. But they are so obsessed with Dear Leader that they literally couldn’t think of anything else. Check out this Trump-centric display for the kids:
Now that I think about it, there is something very right about Trump being the star of Halloween.
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Tucker’s twisted fantasy life
by digby
This is the decadent, unhinged fantasy of a very twisted mind. And millions of people in this country apparently love it:
CARLSON: It was a nearly perfect party line vote, every single Republican voted against it, all but two Democrats voted in favor of it.
Adam Schiff, meanwhile, the congressman from Burbank, was ecstatic. Schiff has spent years obsessing over impeachment like it was a young Jodie Foster. Colleagues say he has pictures of impeachment taped to the walls of his bedroom. He’s believed to have written in steamy, unhinged letters with his own body fluids. So, for Schiff, today’s vote was thrilling, in ways that only a court-appointed psychiatrist could fully appreciate.
He thinks he’s being cute, of course, because Schiff gave the mobster version of Trump’s Zelensky call.
But this twisted fantasy says a lot more about Tucker Carlson than it does about Schiff. A lot more. But then he’s known for that sort of thing:
SCARBOROUGH: Wait, hold on a second. Dan, hold on a second. I don’t mean to take over, but have you been bothered in public restrooms, Dan? Because I know I haven’t.
CARLSON: I have. I’ve been bothered in Georgetown Park. When I was in high school.
ABRAMS: Really?
CARLSON: Yes.
SCARBOROUGH: Wow.
CARLSON: And let me just say, I think —
SCARBOROUGH: That’s something.
CARLSON: — people should knock that off. I’m not anti-gay in the slightest, but that’s really common, and the gay rights groups ought to disavow that kind of crap because, you know, that actually does bother people who didn’t ask for being bothered. So yeah, I think it’s outrageous that he did that.SCARBOROUGH: Hey, Tucker?
CARLSON: You know what I mean? It’s insane!
SCARBOROUGH: Was he the guy in Georgetown, Tucker?
CARLSON: No, actually. I got that — my point is — let me just say —
ABRAMS: Tucker, what did you do, by the way? What did you do when he did that? We got to know.
CARLSON: I went back with someone I knew and grabbed the guy by the — you know, and grabbed him, and — and —
ABRAMS: And did what?
CARLSON: Hit him against the stall with his head, actually!
[laughter]
CARLSON: And then the cops came and arrested him. But let me say that I’m the least anti-gay right-winger you’ll ever meet —
[laughter]
CARLSON: — but I do think doing this in men’s rooms appears to be common. It’s totally wrong, and they should knock it off. I mean that. I think it’s — I can’t bring my son to the men’s room at the park where he plays soccer because of all these creepy guys hanging around in there. I actually think it’s a problem. I’m sorry.
That was back in 2007 when Carlson was still on MSNBC. I would bet a million dollars if I had it that the head-bashing incident never happened.
He’s recently developed an even more oleaginous style, adopting the neofascist POV of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. But he’s always had a very active, weirdly sexualized, imagination. This latest is more gross than usual — but then, so is he.
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This is why the Democrats should not run from the argument for fundamental change
by digby
I think the biggest schism in the Democratic party is between those who think that Trump is such an anomaly (he is but not in the way they think) that once he’s gone we can just “go back to normal” — and those who believe the fact that such a person became president is more evidence that the system must be fundamentally reformed. There are, of course, arguments within those ideas but essentially it comes down to whether or not you think that the Republicans are so batshit insane that they are a danger to the world and the Democrats have shown themselves to be incapable of meeting that threat, or whether you believe this is all the result of two fluky candidates in 2016 or some policies that just need tweaking to entice the folks in Pennsylvania diners to vote the right way.
If you read me, I think you know where I am in that argument. And, by the way, I’ve been there ever since New Gingrich came on the scene. He’s as batshit as Trump in his own obnoxious way.
Anyway, this piece by University of Baltimore Professor of constitutional law Garret Epps in The Atlantic is pertinent:
In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1835 short story “Young Goodman Brown,” an upright citizen of 17th-century Salem journeys into a New England forest on a dark night and finds himself among fellow Puritans—“faces that would be seen next day at the council board of the province, and others which, Sabbath after Sabbath, looked devoutly heavenward, and benignantly over the crowded pews, from the holiest pulpits in the land”—who are summoning Satan himself to bless their revels.
When the Prince of Darkness appears, he tells Brown that he will at last learn the truth about his neighbors:
how hoary-bearded elders of the church have whispered wanton words to the young maids of their households; how many a woman, eager for widows’ weeds, has given her husband a drink at bedtime and let him sleep his last sleep in her bosom; how beardless youths have made haste to inherit their fathers’ wealth; and how fair damsels—blush not, sweet ones—have dug little graves in the garden, and bidden me, the sole guest to an infant’s funeral … It shall be yours to penetrate, in every bosom, the deep mystery of sin, the fountain of all wicked arts, and which inexhaustibly supplies more evil impulses than human power—than my power at its utmost—can make manifest in deeds. And now, my children, look upon each other.
Brown’s wife, Faith, is led to Satan’s altar. Brown cries out in despair, “Faith! Faith! … look up to heaven and resist the evil one!”
Brown wakes to find himself alone in the woods. But from that day forward, he is never sure whether the demonic sabbath was an evil dream, or whether the placid and pious life of his neighbors is merely a pretense.
Hawthorne is appropriate Halloween reading, and especially this year: American society is living through its Goodman Brown moment, a moment when many of the norms we have been taught to admire have been revealed as a shell game for suckers. As Trumpism took hold in the nation in 2015, it was regarded as a kind of temporary madness. But time has revealed that this vulgar spirit is no aberration. It was there all along; the goodly veneer was the lie.
Consider the devolution of Bill Barr, from an “institutionalist” who would protect the Department of Justice to a servant of Donald Trump. Consider the two dozen House Republicans who used physical force to disrupt their own body rather than allow government officials to testify to what they know about President Trump—because to follow the rules of the House, and the strictures of national security, would threaten their party’s grasp on power. Consider the white evangelical leaders who prated to the nation for a generation about character and chastity and “Judeo-Christian morality,” but who now bless Trump as a leader. Consider, if more evidence is needed, the unforgettable moment at the Capitol on September 27, 2018, when Brett Kavanaugh dropped forever the mask of the “independent judge” to stand proudly forth as a partisan figure promising vengeance against his enemies.
The last incident, I think, sums up the horror of what the nation has learned about many of its leaders. It seems likely that Kavanaugh’s self-abasement was not the impulse of a desperate man, but a conscious choice made because, unless he showed himself willing to fight back viciously, he risked losing the support of the president. That choice had the desired effect. Trump embraced Kavanaugh, and used his tirade to move supporters to the polls that November.
This is the point. These are not victims crazed by “polarization” or “partisanship” or “gridlock” but cool-headed political actors who see the chance to win long-sought goals—dictatorial power in the White House, partisan control of the federal bench, an end to legal abortion and the re-subordination of women, destruction of the government’s regulatory apparatus, an end to voting rights that might threaten minority-party control, a return to pre-civil-rights racial norms. The historical moment finds them on a mountaintop; all the kingdoms they have sought are laid out before them, and a voice says, “All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.”
One by one, they have bent the knee.
This episode, as all things must, will someday end. It may even do so without the erection of a full-blown autocracy on the grave of the American republic. Trumpism may be rejected in a fair national vote, and Trump may in fact leave office. A semblance of rule of law may be preserved.
What then? Like young Goodman Brown, can Americans unsee the lawless bacchanal of the past three years? Can they pretend it did not happen, and that the fellow citizens who so readily discarded law and honesty never did so?
Trump has, one way or another, changed our national life irrevocably. When one side of a political struggle has shown itself willing to commit crimes, collaborate with foreign powers, destroy institutions, and lie brazenly about facts readily ascertainable to anyone, should the other side—can the other side—then pretend these things did not happen?
Some Democratic leaders are proclaiming that we can go back to the world before Trump—and before Brett Kavanaugh and Mitch McConnell, before Bill Barr and Rudy Giuliani, before an invasion of a secure facility at the Capitol, before babies were torn from their mothers and caged, before racist rhetoric from the White House and massacres at a synagogue and an El Paso Walmart—to a world of political cooperation, respect for norms, and nonpolitical courts.
How?
Assume new national leadership in 2021. What leader worth voting for would negotiate with Mitch McConnell or Kevin McCarthy and believe either will keep his word; what sane president would turn over sensitive documents to Republican-led committees; what Democratic president would simply accept that the federal courts are now the property of the opposition, and submit issues of national policy to them, in the confidence of receiving a fair shake? After this night in the forest, can I, or any sane person, ever believe in these people and institutions again?
For Hawthorne’s young Goodman Brown, the vision in the woods came to define his life. “And when he had lived long, and was borne to his grave a hoary corpse, followed by Faith, an aged woman, and children and grandchildren, a goodly procession, besides neighbors not a few, they carved no hopeful verse upon his tombstone, for his dying hour was gloom.”
Our republic may not be in its dying hour, but if it awakes from its nightmare, the knowledge Americans will have gleaned from these years is gloomy indeed.
I have never thought this was specifically about ideology or that it could be fixed by enacting some excellent economic policies. There’s something much more fundamental about the divide in American politics and it’s always been there. Trump is actually the cartoon version of a politician making the divide more vivid and obvious. But we’ve been fighting this battle from the beginning and I am not sure it will ever end. Right now the reactionaries have lost all sense of shame or limits — the culture seems to be more tolerant of their ugliness than it’s been in a while. The country needs to battle this back and it’s not just to gain victory over Donald Trump the bone spur fake wrestling champ. It’s necessary for the planet’s survival to fight the forces that made it possible for such a person to win the White Hous in the first place.
Trump is the perfect embodiment of the dark side of American culture from its ignorance and racism, the hypocrisy of its religious leadership to its shallow materialism and money worship. But he didn’t build that.
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Oh Lindsey. Let me count the ways.
by digby
Let Chris Hayes count the ways:
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