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Month: December 2019

He’s doing it. He’s campaigning with the war criminals

He’s actually campaigning with the war criminals 

by digby

He did it. This time it was at a “secret” super rich fundraiser but I’d guess it won’t be the last time:

President Donald Trump, speaking during a closed-door speech to Republican Party of Florida donors at the state party’s annual Statesman’s Dinner, was in “rare form” Saturday night.

The dinner, which raised $3.5 million for the state party, was met with unusual secrecy. The 1,000 attendees were required to check their cell phones into individual locked cases before they entered the unmarked ballroom at the south end of the resort. Reporters were not allowed to attend.

But the secrecy was key to Trump’s performance, which attendees called “hilarious.”

Riding the high of the successful event turnout — and without the pressure of press or cell phones — Trump transformed into a “total comedian,” according to six people who attended the event and spoke afterward to the Miami Herald.

He also pulled an unusual move, bringing on stage Army 1st Lt. Clint Lorance and Maj. Mathew Golsteyn, who Trump pardoned last month for cases involving war crimes. Lorance was serving a 19-year sentence for ordering his soldiers shoot at unarmed men in Afghanistan, and Golsteyn was to stand trial for the 2010 extrajudicial killing of a suspected bomb maker.

A little reminder that a member of the Saudi Arabian military, in the US for aviation training, shot up a Pensacola, Florida classroom late last week and all the president has done is sing the praises of the Saudi Royals for agreeing to write some checks to the victims families (for some reason.)

He’s doing that as he’s campaigning with members of the US Military convicted and accused of murdering unarmed Afghans.

What the hell is going on here? Is it the official policy of the Republican Party now that anyone in uniform who shoots innocent people, whether in Afghanistan or the United States of America, is just “doing his job?”

You have to wonder. This is beyond bizarre.

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Politicizing the Ledes by tristero

Politicizing the Ledes

by tristero

Buried deep inside the print edition of the Times (page 26) is the announcement of the House Judiciary Committee report on the impeachment of Donald Trump. The headline is different than the one online. It says “House Report Offers Legal Case for Impeachment.” And here is the first sentence:

House Democrats released a report on Saturday intended to lay out the legal and historical underpinnings of their case for impeaching President Trump while also countering Republican accusations that the investigation of the president’s conduct in office has been unfair and illegitimate.

In other words, for the Times, the Judiciary report is not about facts but instead, it’s a partisan political document. A “Democratic report” — not a “House report,” not a “House Judiciary report,” but

Similar language was used by the same reporters when the House Intelligence Committee report was released:

House Democrats on Tuesday asserted that President Trump abused his power by pressuring Ukraine to help him in the 2020 presidential election, releasing an impeachment report that found the president “placed his own personal and political interests above the national interests of the United States.”

The Times has the story fundamentally wrong. By any stretch of the imagination, both reports are simply an objective detailing of the known facts. They point only in one direction:

Donald Trump, the president of the United States, betrayed his oath of office. Trump used bribery, extortion, and other criminal means to pressure a foreign government to manufacture dirt on a political opponent. He wasn’t acting in America’s interest. He was acting in his own — and in Putin’s.

That is the story. The Times’s coverage of impeachment is dangerously misguided. It provides Trump the perfect excuse to dismiss the clear evidence of criminal misconduct as merely politics as usual.

This is not politics as usual. Trump is an existenial threat to any semblance of democratic governance. And the Times needs to report that in a consistent manner. Trump’s impeachment is not a political fight but a fight against an authoritarian demagogue who has no legitimate right to continue in office.

What’s the deal with Trump and Saudi Arabia anyway?

What’s the deal with Trump and Saudi Arabia?

by digby





This New York Times headline is amazing:

For Trump, Instinct After Florida Killings Is Simple: Protect Saudis

Before issuing his own condolences, the president channeled the Saudi king’s, and avoided any discussion of the hard questions about why the U.S. is training Saudi officers.



President Trump’s first instinct was to tamp down any suggestion that the Saudi government needed to be held accountable for any misdeeds.

Here’s the story:

When a Saudi Air Force officer opened fire on his classmates at a naval base in Pensacola, Fla., on Friday, he killed three, wounded eight and exposed anew the strange dynamic between President Trump and the Saudi leadership: The president’s first instinct was to tamp down any suggestion that the Saudi government needed to be held to account.

Hours later, Mr. Trump announced on Twitter that he had received a condolence call from King Salman of Saudi Arabia, who clearly sought to ensure that the episode did not further fracture their relationship. On Saturday, leaving the White House for a trip here for a Republican fund-raiser and a speech on Israeli-American relations, Mr. Trump told reporters that “they are devastated in Saudi Arabia,” noting that “the king will be involved in taking care of families and loved ones.” He never used the word “terrorism.”

What was missing was any assurance that the Saudis would aid in the investigation, help identify the suspect’s motives, or answer the many questions about the vetting process for a coveted slot at one of the country’s premier schools for training allied officers. Or, more broadly, why the United States continues to train members of the Saudi military even as that same military faces credible accusations of repeated human rights abuses in Yemen, including the dropping of munitions that maximize civilian casualties.

“The attack is a disaster for an already deeply strained relationship,” Bruce Riedel, a scholar at the Brookings Institution and a former C.I.A. officer who has dealt with generations of Saudi leaders, said on Saturday. It “focuses attention on Americans training Saudi Air Force officers who are engaged in numerous bombings of innocents in Yemen, which is the worst humanitarian catastrophe in the world,” he said, noting that the Trump administration had long been fighting Congress as it seeks to end American support for that war.

I don’t think Trump (and Pompeo’s) sucking up had anything to do with Yemen do you? There’s something else going on between Trump and Saudi Arabia.

This  reaction is very, very unusual for Trump. As the Washington Post pointed out in this article lasr summer, this is how he normally reacts when attacks appear to have been committed by Muslims:

Nov. 15, 2015: Several terrorists carried out a coordinated attack in Paris that killed 130 people. Trump tweeted about the attacks on the same day, offering the victims his prayers. The next day, he criticized former president Barack Obama for having said shortly before the attack occurred that the Islamic State militant group, which claimed responsibility for the Paris killings, had continued to shrink.

A few days later, Trump pointed to the attack as a validation of his policies.

Everyone is now saying how right I was with illegal immigration & the wall. After Paris, they’re all on the bandwagon.

Dec. 2, 2015: When a husband and wife murdered 14 people at a Christmas party in San Bernardino, Calif., Trump tweeted about the attack even before the perpetrators had been identified, though without linking it to Muslims. He did, however, continue to defend his untrue claims that he’d seen Muslims in New Jersey celebrating after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks by retweeting a defender.

Several days after the attack, Trump made a policy proposal.

“Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on,” he read from a statement at a rally. The husband in the San Bernardino shooting was born in the United States.

May 19, 2016: After a plane en route to Egypt disappeared, Trump quickly tweeted that it looked “like yet another terrorist attack.”

At a fundraiser, he went further.

“What just happened 12 hours ago? A plane got blown out of the sky,” Trump said. “And if anyone doesn’t think it was blown out of the sky, you’re 100 percent wrong.”

The working theory for the crash is that a fire in the cockpit brought the plane down.

June 12, 2016: A man claiming allegiance to the Islamic State murdered 49 people at a nightclub in Orlando.

Trump offered his thoughts in a string of tweets. The first said he was “[p]raying for all the victims & their families,” then asked, “When will this stop? When will we get tough, smart & vigilant?”

He followed that up with a widely criticized tweet praising his own foresight.

Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I don’t want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart!

He later wrote that the Orlando attacker had yelled “Allah hu Akbar” as he carried out the attack and offered an ominous warning about another man arrested near a pride parade in Los Angeles. That man was from Indiana.

“What has happened in Orlando is just the beginning,” Trump wrote later that day. “Our leadership is weak and ineffective. I called it and asked for the ban. Must be tough.”

Dec. 19, 2016: Trump, as president-elect, released a statement tied to an attack at a Christmas market in Germany within hours of the incident.

The Islamic State, the statement read, “and other Islamist terrorists continually slaughter Christians in their communities and places of worship as part of their global jihad. These terrorists and their regional and worldwide networks must be eradicated from the face of the earth.”

The statement didn’t note that most victims of Islamic State violence have been Muslims killed by attacks in the Middle East.

He also tweeted a broader message about terrorism.

Today there were terror attacks in Turkey, Switzerland and Germany – and it is only getting worse. The civilized world must change thinking!

As the Guardian noted at the time, it wasn’t clear whether Trump knew that the attack in Switzerland targeted Muslims at an Islamic center. Nor was it known at the time of Trump’s tweet who had carried out the attack in Germany.

Jan. 31, 2017: A convert to Islam claiming allegiance to the Islamic State fatally shot a security guard in Colorado. Trump didn’t comment.

Feb. 3, 2017: A man armed with a machete attacked soldiers near the Louvre in Paris. He’d expressed sympathy for the Islamic State in posts published online. Trump offered a response on Twitter.

“A new radical Islamic terrorist has just attacked in Louvre Museum in Paris,” he wrote. “Tourists were locked down. France on edge again. GET SMART U.S.”

One soldier was wounded in the attack.

March 22, 2017: Pedestrians on a bridge in London were struck by a car driven by a man who was allegedly inspired by the Islamic State. He then got out and stabbed a police officer. Trump tweeted his support for the British prime minister on the same day.

It was later revealed that the attacker had complained about the “racism and rudeness” of Trump, as well as his frustration with British Prime Minister Theresa May.

April 9, 2017: Two Christian churches in Egypt were targeted by suicide bombers on Palm Sunday, killing 47 people. Trump tweeted about it on the same day.

“So sad to hear of the terrorist attack in Egypt,” he wrote. “U.S. strongly condemns. I have great confidence that President Al Sisi will handle situation properly.”

May 22, 2017: A bomb exploded outside an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester. The next day, Trump offered his condolences to the victims and declared that “terrorists and extremists, and those who give them aid and comfort, must be driven out from our society forever.”

June 2, 2017: Before announcing that he was withdrawing the United States from an international climate agreement, Trump took a moment to lament what he said was a terrorist attack in the Philippines. It was, he said, “pretty sad what is going on throughout the world with terror.”

That attack was later identified as a robbery.

June 3, 2017: Another attack on a bridge in London, after which attackers got out of the van they were driving and began stabbing people nearby. Eight people were killed.

Before the attack even ended, Trump retweeted Drudge Report speculation about a terrorist attack killing 20 people. He followed it up with a pitch for his travel ban.

We need to be smart, vigilant and tough. We need the courts to give us back our rights. We need the Travel Ban as an extra level of safety!

June 21, 2017: An immigrant from Tunisia wounded a security officer at an airport in Michigan, blaming American policy in the Middle East. No comment from Trump.

Aug. 17, 2017: Two attacks carried out by terrorists linked to the Islamic State left 16 people dead in Barcelona. Trump tweeted his support the same day.

Sept. 15, 2017: A man who claimed to have been trained by the Islamic State attempted to detonate a bomb on a subway in London. It didn’t completely detonate.

“Another attack in London by a loser terrorist. These are sick and demented people who were in the sights of Scotland Yard. Must be proactive!” Trump wrote shortly after the attempted attack. “Loser terrorists must be dealt with in a much tougher manner. The internet is their main recruitment tool which we must cut off & use better!”

British authorities, including May, criticized Trump for speculating about the motivation of the attacker before details had been determined.

Oct. 31, 2017: An immigrant drove a truck onto a bike path in Lower Manhattan, killing eight people. That same day, Trump offered a statement, expressing condolences and then speaking more broadly.

“I have just ordered homeland security to step up our already extreme vetting program. Being politically correct is fine, but not for this!” he wrote, then adding, “We must not allow [the Islamic State] to return, or enter, our country after defeating them in the Middle East and elsewhere. Enough!”

He made this attack a staple of his speeches over the next year, repeatedly claiming, without evidence, that the attacker had helped more than a dozen relatives immigrate to the United States. He would amplify the damage done by the man, pointing out that the 11 people injured would endure long recuperation periods. During his State of the Union address in January 2018, he referred to the attack.

“In recent weeks, two terrorist attacks in New York were made possible by the visa lottery and chain migration,” he said. “In the age of terrorism, these programs present risks we can just no longer afford.”

Nov. 24, 2017: Gunmen believed to be linked to the Islamic State opened fire at a mosque on Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, killing 311 people.

Trump again used the incident as support for his ban on migration from several Muslim-majority companies.

“The world cannot tolerate terrorism, we must defeat them militarily and discredit the extremist ideology that forms the basis of their existence!” he wrote. “Will be calling the President of Egypt in a short while to discuss the tragic terrorist attack, with so much loss of life. We have to get TOUGHER AND SMARTER than ever before, and we will. Need the WALL, need the BAN! God bless the people of Egypt.”

Dec. 11, 2017: The second New York attack referenced by Trump during his speech to Congress was an attempt by a green-card holder to detonate an explosive in a tunnel in New York’s subway system. Five people were wounded. The same day, Trump offered a response.

“America must fix its lax immigration system,” he wrote, “which allows far too many dangerous, inadequately vetted people to access our country.”

March 19, 2018: A teenager who claimed to have converted to Islam stabbed three people during a sleepover, killing one. Trump didn’t respond.

March 23, 2018: A man linked to the Islamic State took hostages at a supermarket in France, killing several people, including a police officer.

Trump offered his thoughts the next day.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims of the horrible attack in France yesterday, and we grieve the nation’s loss,” he wrote on Twitter. “We also condemn the violent actions of the attacker and anyone who would provide him support.”

May 12, 2018: After a French citizen born in Chechnya attacked pedestrians with a knife in Paris, the Islamic State claimed credit. One person died. The next day, Trump offered thoughts.

“At some point countries will have to open their eyes & see what is really going on,” he wrote. “This kind of sickness & hatred is not compatible with a loving, peaceful, & successful country! Changes to our thought process on terror must be made.”

Aug. 14, 2018: A Sudanese refugee drove his car into pedestrians near Parliament in London, wounding three people.

“Another terrorist attack in London,” Trump wrote the same day. “These animals are crazy and must be dealt with through toughness and strength!”

When attacks appear to have targeted Muslims

June 29, 2016: A man in Minneapolis shot two Muslim men near a mosque, allegedly while shouting anti-Muslim epithets.

Trump didn’t offer any comment.

Aug. 13, 2016: An imam at a New York City mosque and an associate were fatally shot after afternoon prayers. Trump didn’t offer any comment.

Jan. 29, 2017: A student entered a mosque in Quebec City and murdered six worshipers. He claimed to have been motivated by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s welcoming refugees following Trump’s initial effort to ban Muslims from entering the United States. In a selfie, the shooter was pictured wearing a red “Make America great again” hat.

Then-White House press secretary Sean Spicer claimed that the attack was a reason to support Trump’s ban.

“It’s a terrible reminder of why we must remain vigilant,” Spicer said. “And why the president is taking steps to be proactive, not reactive.”

Feb. 24, 2017: Two engineers from India were accosted by a man at a bar in Kansas, apparently because the man believed they were Iranian. The man was kicked out of the bar but then came back and murdered one of the engineers.

Trump responded four days later, after having failed to address that incident or a number of anti-Semitic incidents that had recently occurred. He mentioned both during his first address to Congress.

“Recent threats targeting Jewish community centers and vandalism of Jewish cemeteries, as well as last week’s shooting in Kansas City,” he said, “remind us that while we may be a nation divided on policies, we are a country that stands united in condemning hate and evil in all its forms.”

Trump did not identify the motivation in the Kansas attack.

May 26, 2017: A man harassing two teenagers on a train in Portland, including one in traditional Muslim attire, stabbed two men to death when they attempted to intervene.

The White House offered a response on Trump’s official Twitter account three days later.

“The violent attacks in Portland on Friday are unacceptable,” the tweet read. “The victims were standing up to hate and intolerance. Our prayers are w/ them.”

The motivation of the killer wasn’t mentioned.

June 19, 2017: A man drove a van into a crowd near a mosque in north London, killing one. The White House offers no response.

August 5, 2017: A mosque in Minnesota was the target of a bombing. No one was injured. One of the men indicted in the attack had, through his company, submitted a bid to build the wall Trump wants on the border with Mexico.

Trump offered no comment. At the time, White House adviser Seb Gorka dismissed the initial reports.

“There’s a great rule: All initial reports are false,” he said, claiming that a number of alleged hate crimes “turned out to actually have been propagated by the left.”

March 15, 2019: A man in New Zealand murders 50 people.

The next morning, Trump tweets his support for the country.

My warmest sympathy and best wishes goes out to the people of New Zealand after the horrible massacre in the Mosques. 49 innocent people have so senselessly died, with so many more seriously injured. The U.S. stands by New Zealand for anything we can do. God bless all!

He doesn’t mention the motivation for the attack.

Later, he’s asked whether he’s concerned about an increase in white nationalism globally.

“I don’t really,” Trump replied. “I think it’s a small group of people that have very, very serious problems.”

In other words, if it’s someone Trump sees as an ally it’s fine. And Trump sees the Saudi royal family as an ally.  I wonder why?

Update: There is some possible evidence that this was al Qaeda inspired,which makes sense since al Qaeda was originally a Saudi terrorist group.

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Structural change, indeed by @BloggersRUs

Structural change, indeed
by Tom Sullivan

Every now and again one drives onto a stretch of fresh pavement. Road noise drops many decibels. There is a satisfying “A-h-h-h” feeling to it. Because what you were driving on a second before was cracked and potholed and much, much louder.

That feeling is rarer these days. What with the financialization of every American experience, we are too busy extracting value from what’s here to build new infrastructure or even maintain what our forebears built.

Jill Lepore watched Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s impeachment announcement this week during a snowy train ride to Maine. She ponders how we got to this divided place where we’ve not only given up on building but, seemingly, on democracy itself.

“The train stopped under a stone bridge, a beautiful arch, it looked like a New Deal bridge, built by masons working for the W.P.A., now not much short of a century ago,” Lepore thinks, looking out the window. “It stands in need of repair. It is a terrible thing to watch a nation and a people fall apart.”

It was cold on the train. The heat was not working.

America’s roads and bridges are a mess. The Eisenhower-era interstate highway system is in decay. (Yes, Republicans built things once, as did FDR before Ike.) Today, 47,000 bridges are “structurally deficient.” Repairs have slowed to a crawl.

A priest friend jokes, in America you are expected to have faith. Not faith in anything in particular, just faith. In a similar vein, politicians peddle abstractions like freedom. Not freedom for anything in particular. Just freedom.

Choice is like that, Sarah Jones observes. People want choice in health care, the health care industry insists. It’s just that,
having it, people don’t use it. Research shows that by shopping around people could save as much as $2000 per year on what is one of many families’ largest annual expenses. They don’t. It’s too much work and too complicated. That complication works for the industry, just not for patients.

Jones writes:

The gap between what Americans say they want, and what they actually do, sets up a series of important questions for opponents and skeptics of Medicare for All. If it’s too difficult and too expensive for most people to exercise the choices they technically have, why is the private market so preferable to a government-run alternative? How much can the government really do to make private insurance less complicated and more affordable to use? And why should the government prioritize that project over one that guarantees an equal level of health-care coverage to everyone?

Opponents of Medicare for All should answer these questions. They haven’t …

While conservatives rail about government waste, fraud, and abuse, medical billing in the private sector might be considered all three, Elisabeth Rosenthal explains in the New York Times. The country’s health care system (if that’s what it is) is as decrepit as its roads and bridges. But we are too cold and shivering in our rail cars trying to get somewhere to think about it or to exercise our precious choices. We’re just along for the ride, or being taken for one.

The mid-twentieth century was a time of expansion. The latter part of that century and this one is a time of retrenchment. We have room in the budget for tax giveaways, but not for big structural change of a kind even more concrete than what Sen. Elizabeth Warren proposes. Where once we dreamed big, now we invest small. Even as ocean levels rise and cities like Miami sink slowly beneath the sea.

But the last century’s solutions and systems have grown long in the tooth. Duct tape and bailing wire won’t sustain them for much longer. As uncomfortable and expensive as big structural changes are, last century’s investments in them carried us forward for decades. They made the U.S. the envy of the world. Now we just look like a fading empire like those before ours. The real choice facing us today is to revisit that sun on the back of the chair in Independence Hall and to decide, as Benjamin Franklin once did, whether it is rising or setting.

Frankly, I’d pay good money for a little more “A-h-h-h.”

Bloody hell…not another holiday mixtape?!

Bloody hell…not another holiday mixtape?!

By Dennis Hartley

Don’t panic. Christmas comes but once a year; this too shall soon pass. I’m guessing you’ve already had it up to “here” with holly jolly Burl Ives and Rudolph with his frigging red nose so bright wafting out of every elevator in sight. I promise I am not about to torture you with the obvious and overplayed. Rather, I have assembled 12 fine selections that aren’t flogged to death every year; some deeper cuts for your Xmas creel:


All I Want For Christmas – The Bobs

The Bobs have been stalking me. They formed in the early 80s, in San Francisco. I was living in San Francisco in the early 80s; I recall catching them as an opening act for The Plimsouls (I think…or maybe Greg Kihn) at The Keystone in Berkeley. I remember having my mind blown by their a cappella renditions of “Psycho Killer” and “Helter Skelter”. Later, I resettled in Seattle. Later, they resettled in Seattle. I wish they’d quit following me! Anyway, this is a lovely number from their 1996 album Too Many Santas.






Ave Maria – Stevie Wonder

There are songs that you do not tackle if you don’t have the pipes (unless you want to be jeered offstage, or out of the ball park). “The Star Spangled Banner” comes to mind; as does “Nessun dorma”. “Ave Maria” is right up there too. Not only does Stevie nail the vocal, but he whips out the most sublime harmonica solo this side of Toots Thielemans.

Christmas at the Airport – Nick Lowe

As wry and tuneful as ever at age 70, veteran pub-rocker/power-popper/balladeer Nick Lowe continues to compose, produce, record and tour. This is from his 2013 Christmas album, Quality Street. I think a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nomination is way overdue.

Christmas in Suburbia – Martin Newell

Despite the fact that he has an ability to write hooky, jangly Beatle-esque pop gems in his sleep, and has been doing so for five decades, endearingly eccentric singer-musician-songwriter-poet Martin Newell remains a selfishly-guarded secret by many cultish admirers (of which I am one). But since it is the holidays, I’m feeling magnanimous-so I will share him with you now (you’re welcome). This is from his 1993 album The Greatest Living Englishman, which he did in collaboration with XTC’s Andy Partridge.

Christmas Wish – NRBQ

NRBQ has been toiling in relative obscurity since 1966, despite nearly 50 albums and a rep for high-energy, crowd-pleasing live shows. I think they’ve fallen through the cracks because they are tough to pigeonhole; they’re equally at home with power-pop, blues, rock, jazz, R&B, country or goofy covers. This one is from their eponymous 2007 album.

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Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring – Leo Kottke

In 1969, an LP entitled 6- and 12-String Guitar quietly slid into record stores. The cover had a painting of an armadillo, with “Leo Kottke” emblazoned above (no photo). In the 50 years since, “the armadillo album” has become a touchstone for aspiring guitarists everywhere, introducing the world to a gifted player with a uniquely syncopated, expressive fingerpicking technique. Kottke’s lovely take on a Bach classic is a highlight.

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River – Joni Mitchell

Not exactly a jolly “laughing all the way” singalong; but this is my list, and I’m sticking to it. Besides, Joni opens with a “Jingle Bells” piano quote, and her lyrics are stuffed with Christmas references. An oft-covered song, but it doesn’t make a lot of holiday playlists.

Santa – Lightnin’ Hopkins

Best Christmas blues ever, by the poet laureate of the Delta.

Wow, and I happened to see these old people learning the young ones,

Yeah just learning them exactly what to do.

So sweet, it’s so sweet to see these old people,

Learning they old children just what to do.

Mother said a million-year-ago Santa Claus come to me,

Now this year he gone come to you.


My little sister said take your stocking now,

Hang it up on the head of the bed.

Talkin’ to her friend she said take your stocking,

And please hang it up on head of the bed.

And she said know we all God’s saint children,

In the morning Ol’ Santa Claus gone see that we all is fed.




Santa Claus – The Sonics

“I wanna brand new car / a twangy guitar”. These proto-punkers are local legends in my neck of the woods. Hailing from Tacoma in the early 60s, The Sonics are now generally acknowledged as major forefathers for the Seattle grunge scene of the late 80s-early 90s.

Stoned Soul Christmas – Binky Griptite

“Man, what’s the matter with you…don’t you know it’s Christmas?!” A funky sleigh ride down to the stoned soul Christmas with guitarist/former DJ Binky Griptite (ex-member of The Dap Kings). A clever reworking of Laura Nyro’s classic “Stoned Soul Picnic.” Nice.

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A Winter’s Tale – Jade Warrior

Not a Christmas song per se, but it suggests a cozy holiday scenario right from Verse 1:

Ivy tapping on my window, wine and candle glow,

Skies that promise snow have gathered overhead.

Buttered toast and creamy coffee, table laid for two,

Lovely having you to share a smile with me.



A beautiful and evocative track from a woefully underappreciated UK prog-rock outfit.

‘Zat You, Santa Claus? – Louis Armstrong

The great jazz growler queries a night prowler who may or may not be the jolly old elf.

Previous posts with related themes:
The top 10 Xmas songs for cynics
Hey, Santa! Pass us that bottle, will ya? (A mix tape)

More reviews at Den of Cinema
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— Dennis Hartley

Look at all the corrupt pols and criminals feeding Rudy “good information” over in Ukraine

Trump hears Rudy got “a lot of good information” over there in Ukraine

by digby

Please read this article at the Daily Beast about what Rudy is up to. You’re going to need to understand it because the Republicans are talking about throwing this whole ridiculous mess into the Senate trial so they can acquit Trump and further smear Biden.

The witnesses stand, with their right hands raised, as if being sworn in for, well, an impeachment hearing. Only this is not in Congress. The cast of obscure Ukrainians—a group seen at home as odious and discredited—are appearing in a television show with President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani, in what he casts as an investigation that parallels the process in Congress.

It would only be credible in a parallel world.

Andrii Telizhenko, a former Ukrainian diplomat, has been helping Giuliani produce the show for OAN, the One America News Network, a conservative channel now favored by Trump. OAN is publicizing the two-part broadcast this weekend, promising “witnesses who destroy [House Intelligence Committee Chairman] Adam Schiff’s baseless impeachment case against President Trump.”

“Watch top Ukrainian officials testify under oath the side of the story Schiff doesn’t want you to hear,” proclaims the YouTube promo for the broadcast.

But “top officials” they definitely are not. Indeed, Giuliani’s choice of guest stars in his would-be reality show, and his wider cast of sources, caused shock among many in Kyiv’s establishment who know their questionable backgrounds in considerable detail.

What Giuliani’s collaborators have in common is their willingness to testify in his parallel proceedings—or possibly the impeachment trial in the Senate, in the improbable event they are called—or contribute in other ways to Trump’s cause. Some of them have been doing so for years in Ukraine.

Their testimony won’t accommodate President Donald Trump’s “favor” requested during the infamous July 25 phone conversation with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky. Trump and his representatives made it clear they wanted an announcement by Zelensky of a Biden investigation, and that has not happened. But will Giuliani’s machinations help put pressure on Zelensky finally to come around? That remains an open question. Those working with Giuliani include a member of Ukraine’s parliament, the Rada, who is in Zelensky’s party.

Trump asked Zelensky for two things: to investigate the Bidens and explore the debunked theory that Ukraine meddled significantly in the 2016 election. He asked Zelensky to find the “hidden DNC server” mentioned in Russian propaganda in order to discredit Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report indicting 12 members of Russian military intelligence, the GRU, for hacking the Democratic National Committee.

“The server, they say Ukraine has it,” Trump told Zelensky. But Ukrainian independent corruption and hacking experts share doubts about Giuliani’s sources’ intentions and the so-called evidence against Joe Biden and his son. They also see no substantiation of Russia’s aggressively propagated conspiracy theory.

Trump also asked Zelensky to work with Giuliani.

These requests, coming at a time when vital military support for Ukraine was frozen and no date was set for a promised White House meeting—pending Zelensky’s cooperation—are what triggered impeachment proceedings against Trump for abuse of power. He is accused of using the authority of the United States government to further his own personal political agenda.

None of the requests has been fulfilled and there is a strong belief among Ukraine’s independent corruption fighters that President Zelensky is not going to take Trump’s side in the impeachment process. Last week, Zelensky studiously avoided Giuliani.

On the way to Kyiv, Giuliani met with Ukraine’s ex-prosecutor general, Yuriy Lutsenko, in Budapest, but so far as we can tell from the promotional video, Lutsenko does not appear on the panel in the OAN show.

In an interview with the BBC in September, Lutsenko said he was ready to testify in the impeachment hearings, that he was “not afraid of anything” other than Ukraine falling victim to the storm around the American scandal. But of course it is one thing to say you are not afraid to testify and a completely different thing to make statements under oath in front of Congress and thereby open yourself up to prosecution. (Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, is now in prison for doing that.)

Lutsenko last September, facing nothing more than a BBC camera, sounded meek when pressed to say if he had evidence to back up the Republicans’ argument that Joe Biden supported the energy company, Burisma, that had appointed his son to its board. “It’s not my jurisdiction,” Lutsenko said. “I cannot do anything that is not connected with Ukrainian law.”

The most knowledgeable source of the multiple probes opened into Burisma Holding, but never completed, are two former prosecutors, Viktor Shokin and Kostiantyn Kulyk.

Some of Trump’s obsession with the Biden issue can be traced to interviews that Giuliani conducted with Lutsenko and Shokin back in January with the help of Ukrainian businessmen Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas, both of whom have since been indicted by the U.S. Justice Department for illegal campaign contributions.

The memos of Giuliani’s January interviews were delivered to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s office in a manila envelope with the return address listed as “The White House.” They (and the envelope) are among about 100 pages obtained last month through the Freedom of Information Act by the watchdog organization American .

“Of all the people Giuliani met with in Kyiv, ex-prosecutor-general Shokin would most probably take the risk and testify at the upcoming hearing in the Senate,” Ukrainian politician Borislav Bereza told The Daily Beast. Shokin was removed from his position in 2016 partly as a result of pressure from the United States government, including Biden, who was the Obama administration’s point man on Ukraine. Extensive testimony in Congress by U.S. diplomats supports the conclusion that Shokin’s dismissal was the result of the prosecutor’s own alleged corruption.

“Giuliani and his company wanted Zelensky to interfere in the upcoming U.S. presidential elections. It didn’t work out well.”
— Ukraine’s leading corruption fighter, Daria Kaleniuk

The co-founder of Hromadske TV, Natalia Gumenyuk, sees another role for the former prosecutor in the reality-show hearings: his service to the Kremlin-connected billionaire Dmytro Firtash, who’s awaiting extradition from his villa in Vienna to the United States. “Shokin helps Firtash develop the conspiracy of Ukraine’s interference with the U.S. election in 2016, so once behind bars in the U.S. Firtash could claim he was a victim of political injustice.”

It seems that everybody in Giuliani’s Ukrainian camp has his own agenda…

Read on for the rest of this. As I said, it’s important. I think we have to gird ourselves for the possibility that McConnell will not be able to contain the circus in the Senate and the president’s henchmen will be  unleashed to run this “parallel” impeachment of Joe Biden.

This is the Trump administration. How can we possibly assume that this won’t turn into the most surreal political event we’ve ever seen? Every political event is the most surreal political event we’ve ever seen.

It could happen.

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Pearl Harbor Day 78 years on

Pearl Harbor Day 78 years on

by digby

Important to remember: 2,403 Americans were killed and 1,143 were wounded in that early morning surprise attack. The war with Japan began that day. Four days later Hitler decalred war on the United States:

My father, who would have been 97 this year was on the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise that morning which rolled into port the day after. He would choke up in his later years describing the scene:

Enterprise was at sea on the morning of 7 December 1941 and received a radio message from Pearl Harbor, reporting that the base was under attack. The next evening, Enterprise, screened by six of her Grumman F4F Wildcat fighters, pulled into Pearl Harbor for fuel and supplies. VADM Halsey ordered every able bodied man on board to help rearm and refuel Enterprise; the entire 24-hour process took only 7 hours.The aircraft were fired on by anti-aircraft defenses, and one pilot radioed in, reporting that his aircraft was an American aircraft. She sailed early the next morning to patrol against possible additional attacks in the Hawaiian Islands.

I grew up in the shadow of the war, as did all people born in the couple of decades that followed. Popular culture was saturated with it, our sense of ourselves as Americans was formed by it. Vietnam and Watergate changed that for many of us and we’ve been skeptics of all that ever since.

But as I look at it now I honestly can’t imagine what it was like in the months and years that followed. That war truly was an existential threat, nothing theoretical about it. And in many ways we are still unraveling the consequences of it.

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Passing through the barrier of fear

Passing through the barrier of fear


by digby

If anyone wonders why women are getting so… fed … up, this incredible piece by Dalia Lithwick says it all:

Speak “truth to power”—this is how most people standing up to the constant disinformation and bullying of the Trump administration may have once reasonably described their task. Increasingly, though, that work is being honed and refined into something a bit more complicated: speaking truth to nonsense. It’s not so much holding up a mirror so that power can see what it’s become; it’s simply the job of creating a record, for history if nothing else, of what is actually happening.

It’s not, by any means, that the power imbalance is irrelevant anymore. If anything, the power differential between President Donald Trump and those seeking to hold him to account is more chilling than ever: Trump has pressed the entire Justice Department (including new threats of abusing its policing powers) into service to protect his interests above those of the nation, the White House counsel currently serves as his personal lawyer, the foreign service and the military are being purged of experts and patriots, and Senate Republicans have debased themselves to the point that they are openly peddling debunked Russian propaganda in his service. Congress cannot stop him, and the courts will likely be timed out in constraining him. The lopsidedness of his power is now axiomatic.

Also axiomatic is the fact that, frequently, it is women who have come forward, in droves, to speak truth to that power, or to nonsense, or, perhaps most accurately, to the nonsense that feeds his power. From Sally Yates to E. Jean Carroll to April Ryan to Greta Thunberg to Fiona Hill to the undocumented housekeepers who used to work at his properties, it is often women who have stood up to say “No” to this president. As Sandra Diaz, one of those two undocumented cleaners, explained her decision to finally speak up even though everyone around her warned her not to: “How can you know something so big, how someone—who goes on national television and says something—and you know it’s not true … whether it’s the president or not, you have the responsibility to say no. To pass through this barrier of fear and say no.” Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch described, in real time, at a public Intelligence Committee hearing last month, what it feels like to pass through that same barrier of fear: As Trump tweeted threats at her midhearing, she was asked how she was experiencing it. “It’s very intimidating,” Yovanovitch quietly confessed to the members of the Intelligence Committee. “I can’t speak to what the president is trying to do, but I think the effect is to be intimidating.” Lisa Page similarly passed through the barrier of fear this past week, when she told the truth about Trump’s relentless attacks on her and defended her record in the face of his lies.

On Wednesday, professor Pamela Karlan was the only woman testifying before the House Judiciary Committee’s panel on the constitutional framework for impeachment. (Disclosure: Karlan is a friend.) Her presentation was so effective and so crystal clear that House Republicans, of whom all but two were men, were too afraid to question her on history or doctrine, opting for personal threats and shouting instead. Ranking member Rep. Doug Collins suggested in his opening remarks that she hadn’t read the witness transcripts (she had). Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., shouted at her about her campaign donations as well as a joke she made on a podcast. When she attempted to respond to his claims that she was “mean,” he shouted, “Excuse me, you don’t get to interrupt me on this time.” When Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., asked all of the constitutional law professors whom they had voted for in the 2016 election, it was Karlan who shot back that Americans still enjoy the right to a secret ballot. Rep. Jim Jordan just used his time to scream.

But everyone really agreed to melt down when Karlan referenced the name of the president’s youngest son, Barron, to make a point about the difference between monarchs and presidents. Yes, she used it in a bit of wordplay, and yes, people laughed, but, no, it was not a targeted attack on a child—it was a targeted attack on claims of monarchic powers. But let’s be honest. Whether Karlan had done a joke about the British nobility, or Ninja Turtles, or diet soda, the rage machine at the White House would have singled her out for vivisection, just as it did with Hill, who didn’t make a joke, or Yovanovitch, who also didn’t make a joke. (The hate machine largely left the male law professors alone, by the way.) These women’s words themselves, the substance of them, the truth of them, were never the issue. Do you even recall what they said? Sometimes, they weren’t even permitted to speak, or respond. The rage machine, in coordination with the White House spokeswoman (who does not do press conferences) and Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, finds their rabid talking point and repeats it and tweets it until there’s nothing left, until absolutely no fact, or statistic, or idea, can cut through the dry-ice fog it creates. (Tucker Carlson started Wednesday night’s news show with “This lady needs a shrink” and “What a moron.”) In the end, Karlan apologized for her pun, because Republicans, who put children in freezing cages at the border and leave them to die, told her she was the one being mean to children.

These women all know they’re being catapulted into the epistemological wood chipper.

It is worth recalling that Karlan—like Fiona Hill before her, and Yovanovitch before her, and Thunberg, and Carroll, and Karen McDougal, and Christine Blasey Ford, and Debbie Ramirez, and Sandra Diaz, and Lisa Page, and all the other women who have subjected themselves to the raging Trump campaign of abuse—was simply speaking the truth. In the face of lies, imaginary conspiracies, smear campaigns, and disinformation, each was simply relating the facts as she knew them.

The truth does not really have a place in this administration. Attorney General Bill Barr’s pretend investigation into his conviction that federal agencies were illegally “spying” (his words) on the Trump campaign will be a bust. Never mind, they will refocus the umbrage on some attenuated fact about the Steele dossier. The evidence that Donald Trump has, on several occasions, conditioned foreign aid on domestic political favors is now so unequivocal that Republicans have advanced three dozen alternate defenses for it, without even attempting to coordinate a theory beyond the Russian propaganda line upon which they now seem to have settled. Any attempts to pierce the logic of that illogic is pointless, which is why House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has no option other than to keep seeking and speaking truth into the factual void. Doug Collins somehow kept up his refrain on Wednesday that nobody in the room could agree on the most elementary facts, even as every single fact witness (including those selected by the GOP) and every single legal expert (including one selected by the GOP) agrees substantially on all of the material facts surrounding the Ukraine transaction.

Michelle Goldberg, in response to Collins’ repeated claim that “there are no set facts here,” described all this as “epistemological nihilism.” Which is why it’s all the more important to understand what these women are doing when they stride into these hearings, and into their press conferences, and into their lawsuits, to tell the truth in the face of disingenuous Republican tears about incivility and partisanship. These women all know they’re being catapulted into the epistemological wood chipper, and that, if they’re lucky, the death threats and the violence directed at them and their families will eventually subside. But this is about much more than speaking truth to power—in its own way, speaking truth to nonsense is even more important. Power is immune to truth-tellers these days, but history may not be. And women have had centuries of experience in what happens when you let the gaslighters win.

There’s more. It’s all devastating.

It’s getting tiring having to submit to this reality. Let’s hope that people in the future will be in a position to look back on this in shock and wonderment that in 2019, over half the population was still treated this way.
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The new alt-right on Fox

The new alt-right on Fox


by digby

I had a long conversation with a friend yesterday about the future of the Republican Party. While we both agreed that the core of the party is aging out quickly and they have lost all semblance of a coherent political ideology, I was left a little bit unsettled at the idea that they were just going to fade away. Maybe. Or maybe they’ll reform themselves into something legitimate and respectable again. It’s hard to imagine that right now with their blind loyalty to the monster in the White House.

But then I came home and saw this and realized that it’s probably a mistake to think there aren’t young right wingers ready to take the reins:

The piece in the Washington Post, linked above, looks at this movement.  These are the people who are protesting Republicans like Donald Trump Jr and Dan Crenshaw.

I don’t know how many of them there are. They seem like typical young bullies who find expression in politics. They exist on all sides of the spectrum and they are always around in some form or another. But the fact that the White Nationalist Tucker Carlson is eagerly inviting them on to his show and laundering their toxic terroristic ideology to his audience is not a good sign. I guess we have to hope that the elderly Fox News viewers  can’t really hear what they are saying — and the young ones are too busy wanking in their online cells.

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A referendum on Trump

A referendum on Trump

 by digby

 That’s what this is all about:

The November Gallup poll asked the open-ended question: what’s the most important problem facing the country? Here’s what came back:

•The government/poor leadership: 33%
•Economic issues: 13% (this is an amalgam of issues mentioned: jobs, overall economy, budget deficits, inequality, wages, taxes)
*Immigration: 11%
•Health care: 6%
•Race relations/racism: 5%
•Unifying the country: 5%
•Poverty/hunger/homelessness: 4%

This was the lowest number of mentions for the economy in this century and the lowest since 2007, when it was 16%. In 2009, it was 86%.

Second term presidential elections are always a referendum on the president. I think that goes doubly in this one.

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