Month: January 2021

This story in the Daily Beast discusses the new Johnson and Johnson vaccine and explains all the pros and cons, most of which you’ve probably already heard. All in all, it’s a welcome addition to the toolbox. However, it doesn’t seem to work very well against some of the variants and frankly, we don’t really know how well the other vaccines work against the current variants either. And the more this spreads the more new variants emerge.

The article concludes with this, which isn’t good news but gives us some idea of what we’re in for:

[T]he diminishing effectiveness of the current vaccines against new strains of the novel coronavirus should give us pause. It’s looking increasingly possible that SARS-CoV-2 could end up being a perennial problem, just like the fast-mutating flu virus.

Instead of vaccinating everyone once and then getting on with our lives, we’d need to bake annual vaccinations into our routines. You should get a flu shot every fall. Start getting comfortable with the idea of getting an annual COVID shot, too.

It would be up to industry to update the COVID vaccines at least annually—if not more frequently. That’s a straightforward process for makers of mRNA vaccines. But to keep rural clinics stocked with jabs, we need a novel coronavirus vaccine that’s both easy to update and easy to store.

It’s unclear yet whether the Johnson and Johnson jab is the one.

Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, raised the prospect of adding a “bivalence” feature to non-mRNA vaccines. “Bivalence would mean, you make a vaccine that is expressing the protein of both the standard viral type, as well as the mutation,” Fauci told The Daily Beast.

If that’s not possible with the Johnson and Johnson shot, it might work on some of the other vaccines that are in development. New non-mRNA vaccines from Novavax and AstraZeneca are also inching toward FDA approval in the United States.

Hopefully, this “Manhattan Project” pace of development is building the knowledge base that will make all this work. But it looks as though it’s not going to be get your shots and then everything will be fine. We’ll be dealing with this in some form for quite some time.

If I had any entrepreneurial scientific chops I’d be working on better PPE. I have a feeling that’s going to be part of our lives going forward.

One of the weirdest videos from January 6th is the one on which the “Shaman” takes over the dais in the Senate and leads the marauding rioters in a prayer. These people seemed like the least “Godly” people on earth:

This piece by Sarah Posner about the Religious Right’s participation in the Insurrection is enlightening:

The Jan. 6 Save America March, where then-President Donald Trump incited a crowd to attack the U.S. Capitol, opened with a prayer. Trump’s longtime spiritual adviser and White House adviser, the Florida televangelist Paula White, called on God to “give us a holy boldness in this hour.” Standing at the same podium where, an hour later, Trump would exhort the crowd to “fight like hell,” White called the election results into question, asking God to let the people “have the assurance of a fair and a just election.” Flanked by a row of American flags, White implored God to “let every adversary against democracy, against freedom, against life, against liberty, against justice, against peace, against righteousness be overturned right now in the name of Jesus.”

Within hours, insurrectionists had surrounded the Capitol, beaten police, battered down barricades and doors, smashed windows and rampaged through the halls of the Capitol, breaching the Senate chamber. In video captured by The New Yorker, men ransacked the room, rifling through senators’ binders and papers, searching for evidence of what they claimed was treason. Then, standing on the rostrum where the president of the Senate presides, the group paused to pray “in Christ’s holy name.”

Men raised their arms in the air as millions of evangelical and charismatic parishioners do every Sunday and thanked God for allowing them “to send a message to all the tyrants, the communists and the globalists, that this is our nation, not theirs.” They thanked God “for allowing the United States of America to be reborn.”

White evangelicals have been Trump’s most dedicated, unwavering base, standing by him through the cavalcade of abuses, failures and scandals that engulfed his campaigns and his presidency – from the “Access Hollywood” tape to his first impeachment to his efforts to overturn the election and incite the Capitol insurrection. This fervent relationship, which has survived the events of Jan. 6, is based on far more than a transactional handshake over judicial appointments and a crackdown on abortion and LGBTQ rights.

Trump’s White evangelical base has come to believe that God anointed him and that Trump’s placement of Christian-right ideologues in critical positions at federal agencies and in federal courts was the fulfillment of a long-sought goal of restoring the United States as a Christian nation. Throughout Trump’s presidency, his political appointees implemented policies that stripped away reproductive and LGBTQ rights and tore down the separation of church and state in the name of protecting unfettered religious freedom for conservative Christians. After Joe Biden won the presidency, Trump administration loyalists launched their own Christian organization to “stop the steal,” in the ultimate act of loyalty to their divine leader.

Since even before Trump took office, his cry of “fake news” was embraced by GOP leaders and leaders on the Christian right, who reinforced their followers’ fealty by seeking to sequester them from reality and training them to dismiss any criticism of Trump as a witch hunt or a hoax. At the 2019 Faith & Freedom Coalition conference, held just months after special counsel Robert Mueller released his report on the Russia investigation, then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell accused the president’s critics of “Trump derangement syndrome,” and Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Republican from Tennessee, urged the audience to disregard mainstream news and turn instead to the “most important name in news” – “you and your circle of friends.”

A few months later, amid Trump’s first impeachment hearings, then-Rep. Mark Meadows, who would go on to become Trump’s chief of staff, encouraged Christian-right activists at a luncheon at the Trump International Hotel in Washington to counteract news reports by retweeting him and other Trump loyalists in Congress. He underlined the power of this alternative information system, claiming that recent tweets from himself and Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio – who would later vote to overturn the results of November’s election – had received 163 million impressions, “more than the viewership of all the networks combined.”

Over the course of 2020, those circles of disinformation became infested with QAnon conspiracy theories about a satanic, child-sex-trafficking “deep state,” priming Trump’s White evangelical shock troops for his ultimate conspiratorial lie: that the election was stolen from him and that Biden’s victory was the result of fraud. As Trump and his legal team fanned out across the country’s courthouses and right-wing airwaves, insisting that they would prove voter fraud and reverse the results of the presidential election, Christian-right leaders and media picked up the rhetoric and ran with it. By Thanksgiving, the lie that the election had been stolen from Trump had become an article of faith.

Coverage of the Capitol insurrection has focused on such far-right instigators as the White supremacist Proud Boys and the Three Percenters, a militia group. But a reconstruction of the weeks leading up Jan. 6 shows how a Christian-right group formed to “stop the steal” worked to foment a bellicose Christian narrative in defense of Trump’s coup attempt and justify a holy war against an illegitimate state.

In late November, two federal workers, Arina Grossu – who had previously worked for the Christian-right advocacy group Family Research Council – and Rob Weaver, formed a new Christian right group, the Jericho March. The new group’s goal, according to a news release announcing its launch, was to “prayerfully protest and call on government officials to cast light on voter fraud, corruption, and suppression of the will of the American people in this election.” In fact, the Jericho March would help lay the groundwork for the insurrection.

There’s much more detail at the link.

The Christian Right’s devotion to Donald Trump says everything about who they really are. Even if you believe that it is a purely transactional relationship in which they got their anti-abortion judges in exchange for supporting him, it’s impossible to respect them as moral leaders. And frankly, I don’t think it had anything to do with judges. That kind of transaction doesn’t inspire the ecstatic support they give him. They are passionate about Donald Trump, the libertine, three-time married, pussy grabbing, profane, corrupt, vengeful monster. They seem to be more than fine with all of that.

This isn’t about Christianity, it’s about something much more primitive.

It is beyond ironic that Rudy Giuliani flogged this Hunter Biden stuff to help Donald Trump sabotage Joe Biden’s campaign — and made a lot of money doing it. He didn’t even try to hide his flagrant corruption Talk about projection.

There was a consistent message from Ukraine’s leadership over everything from the Trump campaign’s dirt digging to Ukraine’s central role in the first impeachment proceedings: No comment.

But now, as the Biden administration settles in, some close allies of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky are opening up about one of the longest-running dramas from the Trump era — the blitz of meetings, messages and public statements in Ukraine by former president Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.

Among the accounts emerging from Ukrainian officials is a July 2019 phone call between Giuliani and Andriy Yermak, formerly one of Zelensky’s top aides and now his chief of staff. Yermak said the conversation was the first direct contact between Giuliani and the Zelensky administration and, until now, was only discussed in general terms.

The new disclosures from Ukraine do not offer any bombshell revelations about Giuliani’s dealings. But they help fill in some blanks on his frantic — and unsuccessful — quest to press Ukraine to make statements seen as potentially helpful to the Trump reelection bid.

Giuliani’s overall goal, according to the accounts, was to have Zelensky’s government validate the Trump campaign’s unsupported claims — including that Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, engaged in corrupt dealings in Ukraine and that then vice president Biden attempted to cover it up.

Giuliani, saying he was acting on President Trump’s behalf, also was promoting a false narrative that the Ukrainian government colluded to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections against Trump — an unproven claim that sought to deflect attention from Russia’s interference in the campaign.

Ukraine’s willingness to discuss Giuliani’s forays also lands at a difficult time for the former New York mayor as he faces mounting personal battles, including a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems over alleged false claims about ballot rigging in the 2020 election.Voting machine company Dominion filed a $1.3 billion lawsuit against former president Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani on Jan. 25. (Reuters)

Giuliani did not respond to a list of questions sent to him, and also through his lawyer. Kurt Volker, the former State Department’s special envoy to Ukraine for peace negotiations, who was also on the call with Yermak, declined to comment.

The Zelensky team’s decision to talk about Giuliani’s tactics coincides with efforts for a reset in relations with President Biden, who dealt closely with Ukraine during his eight years as vice president.

“We’ve gotten through all these trials, despite criticism at home and abroad,” said Yermak. “And today, this feeling that Ukraine — the mention of Ukraine — is associated with various scandals should disappear.”

Giuliani’s tone and actions during his dealings with the Ukrainians were “aggressive and threatening,” said one Zelensky insider, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

But the Ukrainians, he said, steadfastly refused to “play ball.”

The accusations against Biden centered on his son, Hunter, and his previous position on the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, which is under investigation for alleged corrupt dealings. Trump and his allies claimed, without evidence, that Joe Biden, then vice president, used his clout to end the investigations.

Ukrainian investigations into Burisma and its founder, Mykola Zlochevsky, are ongoing. But authorities say that none of the cases involve Hunter Biden. A Senate report in September described the younger Biden’s position at the company as “problematic” but found no wrongdoing by Joe Biden.

Hunter Biden traded on his father’s name to make money. It’s “problematic” among wealthy and powerful people the world over. But for Trump and Giuliani to claim that Biden is corrupt is just too much, considering their own blatant criminality. It’s stunning in its chutzpah:

Giuliani’s pressure began almost from the moment of Zelensky’s election in April 2019. The former New York mayor planned to travel to Ukraine the following month.

But Giuliani canceled at the last moment, claiming that Zelensky was surrounded by “enemies” of Trump. This set off concerns in Zelensky’s inner circle that Giuliani would poison Zelensky’s relations with the White House.

In July 2019, Yermak asked Volker to introduce him to Giuliani in an effort to clear the air.

Ukrainians needed U.S. diplomatic and financial muscle to bolster them in their ongoing battles with Kremlin-backed insurgents in eastern Ukraine, a conflict that has killed more than 13,000 people since 2014.

“Until we were 100 percent certain that Rudy was the go-to guy, and nothing would happen without him, we were trying to avoid him as much as possible,” said Igor Novikov, who served an adviser to Zelensky until August and was a member of the team tasked with responding to U.S. overtures during the Trump administration.

“But then toward the end of June, we realized that we couldn’t achieve anything with Trump without talking to Rudy first,” Novikov said.

To this end, Volker set up an introductory phone call on July 22, 2019 between himself, Yermak and Giuliani, according to Volker’s testimony during the impeachment proceedings. Novikov, unknown to Giuliani and Volker, sat next to Yermak and took notes.

Volker mentioned the phone call briefly in his testimony, saying that it was short and that he did not remember any discussion of Ukraine opening investigations.

Novikov, however, said the call lasted more than 40 minutes, during which Giuliani spelled out what he wanted.

The Giuliani wish list, according to Novikov: Zelensky would publicly announce the launch of investigations into Burisma and allegations that Ukrainian officials conspired to interfere in the 2016 presidential elections.

“Just let these investigations go forward, get someone to investigate them,” Novikov recalled Giuliani saying. Furthermore, Giuliani wanted a public statement from Zelensky “at the right time” saying that he supports the investigations. It would “clear the air really well,” Giuliani said, according to Novikov’s notes.

According to Novikov, Giuliani told the Ukrainians that Zelensky should “be careful” of the people surrounding him or he could find himself “in trouble.”

It goes on.

This was a mob style shakedown, plain and simple. And every elected Republican except for Mitt Romney backed him up just one year ago.

… and other financial documents:

A New York judge on Friday increased pressure on former President Donald J. Trump’s family business and several associates, ordering them to give state investigators documents in a civil inquiry into whether the company misstated assets to get bank loans and tax benefits.

It was the second blow that the judge, Arthur F. Engoron of State Supreme Court in Manhattan, had dealt to Mr. Trump’s company in recent weeks.

In December, he ordered the company, the Trump Organization, to produce records that its lawyers had tried to shield, including some related to a Westchester County, N.Y., property that is among those being scrutinized by the New York State attorney general, Letitia James.

On Friday, Justice Engoron went further, saying that even more documents, as well as communications with a law firm hired by the Trump Organization, had to be handed over to Ms. James’s office. In doing so, he rejected the lawyers’ claim that the documents at issue were covered by attorney-client privilege.

The ruling was a fresh reminder that Mr. Trump — who left office about a week ago under the cloud of impeachment and who is headed for a Senate trial on a charge of “incitement of insurrection” after his supporters stormed the Capitol in a violent rampage — faces significant legal jeopardy as a private citizen.

The most serious threats confronting the former president include a criminal investigation by the Manhattan district attorney and the civil inquiry by the attorney general into possible fraud in Mr. Trump’s business dealings before he was elected.

Ms. James’s investigation began in March 2019, after Michael D. Cohen, the former president’s onetime lawyer, told Congress that Mr. Trump had inflated his assets in financial statements to secure bank loans and had understated them elsewhere to reduce his tax bill.

Investigators in Ms. James’s office have focused their attention on an array of transactions, including a financial restructuring of the Trump International Hotel & Tower in Chicago in 2010 that resulted in the Fortress Credit Corporation forgiving debt worth more than $100 million.

Ms. James’s office has said in court documents that the Trump Organization — Mr. Trump’s main business vehicle — had thwarted efforts to determine how that money was reflected in its tax filings, and whether it was declared as income, as the law typically requires.

An analysis of Mr. Trump’s financial records by The New York Times found that he had avoided federal income tax on almost all of the forgiven debt.

Ms. James’s office is also examining whether the Trump Organization used inflated appraisals when it received large tax breaks after promising to conserve land where its development efforts faltered, including at its Seven Springs estate in Westchester County.

Accusing the Trump Organization of trying to stall the inquiry, lawyers with Ms. James’s office sought a judge’s order in August compelling the company to turn over documents related to the Seven Springs estate and other properties, and requiring the former president’s son Eric Trump, a company vice president, to testify in the inquiry. (Eventually, he did.)

In December, Justice Engoron ordered the Trump Organization to turn over to Ms. James’s office an engineer’s documents related to a conservation easement at the Seven Springs property.

Ms. James’s office is examining whether the easement is legitimate and whether an improper valuation of the estate allowed the Trump Organization to take a $21 million tax deduction it was not entitled to.

Lawyers for the company had tried to keep the engineer’s documents from investigators by claiming the materials were privileged because lawyers for the Trump Organizationrelied on them in valuing the property. Justice Engoron rejected that argument.

In the order issued on Friday, Justice Engoron again found that the Trump Organization lawyers had invoked attorney-client privilege for documents to which it did not apply.

Some communications that had been marked as privileged, he wrote, were “addressing business tasks and decisions, not exchanges soliciting or rendering legal advice.” He also said that communications related to public relations were not of a legal nature and that privilege was waived in some circumstances where third parties were involved in the discussions.

Justice Engoron did not specify in the order which documents were to be provided to Ms. James’s office, but he gave the Trump Organization until Feb. 4 to turn them over.

A spokesman for the attorney general declined to comment. A representative of the Trump Organization did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Seven Springs estate is also now at issue in the long-running inquiry being conducted by the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., as first reported by The Wall Street Journal. Prosecutors involved in the inquiry, the only known active criminal investigation of Mr. Trump, have subpoenaed records related to the Westchester property, according to people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Vance’s investigation has largely been stalled since last fall, when Mr. Trump sued to block a subpoena for his tax returns and other records, sending the bitter dispute to the U.S. Supreme Court for a second time. A ruling is expected soon.

I wish I felt more confident that Donald Trump would face some kind of legal reckoning for all of his corruption. But I’m not. I just don’t see it, especially in light of this:

Donald Trump is no longer president. He no longer has the megaphone of Twitter.But make no mistake: This is still Trump’s Republican Party.You see it in the actions of Republican state and local parties trying to punish those who went against Trump. You see this in a majority of congressional Republicans voting to uphold an objection to Pennsylvania’s electoral votes for President Joe Biden.

And more than that, you see it in the polling, which indicates that Trump’s in a historically strong primary position for an ex-president. Indeed, he’s polling tremendously well among Republicans in the context for any future presidential nominee.

Republican leaders go against Trump at their potential electoral peril. It’s not that other Republicans can’t beat Trump. We’ll have to wait and see on that. Rather, it’s that he could be a very big voice over the next four years.After the US Capitol insurrection on January 6, Trump’s still cruising in a potential 2024 primary. A majority of Republicans (57%) said in an Ipsos KnowledgePanel poll that he should be the 2024 nominee.

Against named opponents, Trump easily leads the field. Among those who either voted for Trump in 2020 or are Republicans, Trump’s averaging about half the primary vote. No one else is even close.Trump pulling in half the vote may seem low given that Trump won over 90% of the vote in the 2020 primaries.His position, though, is extremely unusual for a president who just lost a general election. As I’ve noted previously, ex-presidents usually don’t lead future primary fields. Most party voters are happy to see their presidents glide into the sunset.

As long as he’s politically viable I suspect there will be a lot of pressure brought to bear against holding him legally accountable for anything. Particularly since his cult is so violent. I hope I’m wrong.

Bess Levin at Vanity Fair poders why “Republicans Can’t Believe Democrats Don’t Want to Work With Them Just Because of the Guns and the Death Threats and the Crackpot Conspiracy Theories.” The party of running government like a business finds it acceptable to harbor in its ranks people any sane HR manager would fire. Indeed, many among the Trump Insurrection mob of Jan. 6 returned home to find they had lost their private-sector jobs. Tacit congressional supporters of the insurrection hold onto their federal gigs.

Omar Wasow, Princeton Assistant Professor of Politics, considers that phenomenon in a tweet thread that also looks at how to counter extremism:

What’s the professional price for endorsing violence against your political opponents and calling deadly school shootings ”‘false-flag’ operations”? A seat on the House education committee and continued support from many big donors. https://t.co/Vm7VVVSoeu

— Omar Wasow | @owasow@bsky.social (@owasow) January 30, 2021

Now, there are greater incentives for extremism & fewer costs. ”Donors are cheering on her continued false claims that Trump won, illustrating the perverse incentive facing newer members of Congress who find viral stardom in denying a legitimate election” https://t.co/Vm7VVVSoeu

— Omar Wasow | @owasow@bsky.social (@owasow) January 30, 2021

But viral stardom and crackpot theories are too easy to snicker at until a mob is breaking down the doors of your state or national capitol and calling for your hanging.

David Neiwert (Crooks and Liars, “Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump“) has a longer, more sobering thread on just how dangerous crackpots can be.

2) Dyer’s style was disturbing—combining a skull-mask imposed digitally and his fondness for ‘inspirational,’ anthemic music in the background—but his incendiary, violent rhetoric was especially worrisome. Watch this one to the end: ‘You’re damn right I’m a threat.’ pic.twitter.com/lnPifnqG5x

— David Neiwert (@DavidNeiwert) January 30, 2021

Dyer is now serving 30 years for raping his 6-year-old daughter.

The FBI is still trying to capture the suspect who planted pipe bombs at the Republican and Democratic National Committee headquarters the night before the Trump Insurrection.

I am happy to work with Republicans on this issue where there’s common ground, but you almost had me murdered 3 weeks ago so you can sit this one out.

Happy to work w/ almost any other GOP that aren’t trying to get me killed.

In the meantime if you want to help, you can resign. https://t.co/4mVREbaqqm

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) January 28, 2021

New York Post:

Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy is asking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to intervene and force Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to apologize for tweeting that Sen. Ted Cruz “almost had me murdered” during the Capitol riot.

Perhaps Democrats in Congress don’t want to work with Republicans because they’d rather not have to check under their chairs for bombs every morning. I tell ya, uppity lefties are so unreasonable.

Watching the country elect the dumbest, most unqualified and unprincipled president in its history might have been the high point of the Donald Trump years. (Actually, it was probably the 2017 women’s march.) From there the United States has been on an unbroken descent into dystopia. If life were like the movies, some Republican hitting bottom about now would find a mentor that turns his/her life around. Everyone loves a redemption story.

If only life were like the movies.

But no. Republican members of Congress want to carry sidearms around the recently ransacked Capitol. Videos of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia calling for the heads of her Democratic colleagues, blaming California wildfires on a “Jewish space laser,” and claiming Ruth Bader Ginsburg was replaced with a body double have driven militia-adjacent Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado’s possible involvement with the Capitol attack off the front pages.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy this week pilgrimaged to Florida to make ritual obeisance before Donald Trump, impeached for inciting the Capitol riot. If only the Orange Fairy will take back “my Kevin,” McCarthy might fulfill his dreams of becoming Speaker and a real boy.

This Republican Party “isn’t doomed; it’s dead,” writes Kathleen Parker:

The party’s end was inevitable, foreshadowed in 2008 when little-boy Republican males, dazzled by the pretty, born-again, pro-life Alaska governor, thought Sarah Palin should be a heartbeat away from the presidency. The dumbing down of conservatism, in other words, began its terminal-velocity plunge, with a wink and a pair of shiny red shoes. Palin cast a spell as potent as the poppy fields of Oz, but turned the United States into her own moose-poppin,’ gum-smackin’ reality show.

Forget Kansas. We’re not in America anymore.

It’s not the madness that’s enraging. It’s not the hypocrisy. It’s the pretension to having principles, to having faith in the American Idea. It’s the flag-waving, patriotic marketing for an essentially proto-fascist movement that is the antithesis of that Idea. Trump the flag-hugger makes a perfect front-man for such a movement. All show and no substance.

Before his death, Theodore H. White began drafting “The American Idea,” an essay for the 4th of July 1986:

THE IDEA WAS there at the very beginning, well before Thomas Jefferson put it into words – and the idea rang the call.

Jefferson himself could not have imagined the reach of his call across the world in time to come when he wrote:

”We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

But over the next two centuries the call would reach the potato patches of Ireland, the ghettoes of Europe, the paddyfields of China, stirring farmers to leave their lands and townsmen their trades and thus unsettling all traditional civilizations.

It is the call from Thomas Jefferson, embodied in the great statue that looks down the Narrows of New York Harbor, and in the immigrants who answered the call, that we now celebrate.

That American Idea is near-extinct in Trump Country. Forgotten, twisted and shriveled. Only its trappings remain, thinly disguising white-nationalist isolationism and the will to power.

USA (o͞o´-suh) is an idol whose name the Trump cult spells out in shouted chants: U – S – A! U – S – A! The Idea and its meaning are lost. What remains is weaponized ME-ning.

A memory I cannot shake this week defines the hollowness of the Republican project:

I attended what was decades ago a Baptist university. Drinking on campus was verboten. So, it was a shock one night to see cases of champagne and racks of champagne glasses staged in the dining hall kitchen for a scheduled trustees’ dinner. I removed one bottle from an open case. Dimpled bottom. Wired cork. Foiled top. The label read “Sparkling Catawba.” Nonalcoholic. A fake.

They planned a champagne toast without champagne. All the external form. All the ritual. Even the effervescence. But empty of substance.

So is the Party of Trump.

Two polar bear cubs were born at the Detroit Zoo on November 17, 2020, to 8-year-old mother Suka, and 16-year-old father, Nuka. The cubs, who have not been named yet, are the first polar bears to be born and successfully raised at the Detroit Zoo since 2004.

The cubs were born in a specially-designed, private maternity den away from the other bears. It is equipped with infrared video cameras that allow staff to monitor the mother and cubs without disturbing them. On November 19, it was observed that one of the cubs was becoming inactive and appeared to be weak. The staff allowed Suka out of the den so that the weak cub could be retrieved.

The cub, a female, was taken to the Detroit Zoo’s Ruth Roby Glancy Animal Health Complex where she was examined by veterinarians and given fluids and formula. She has continued to receive around-the-clock care and bottle feeding.

At two days old, she weighed 556 grams (1.2 pounds). Today, she is 5.12 kilograms (11.3 pounds), and she has graduated from an incubator to a “playpen”. She will eventually go back to live in the Arctic Ring of Life habitat. It is not yet known if she can be reunited with her mother and sibling, but eventually she will live with other bears.

Meanwhile, we continue to monitor Suka and the cub she is caring for. She has been a very attentive mom; continuously nursing, grooming and cuddling her cub, with only short water and bathroom breaks.

Both cubs are currently in private, behind-the-scenes areas and are not viewable by guests. However, 16-year-old Nuka, the cubs’ father, and 20-year-old Anana are viewable in the Arctic Ring of Life’s tundra and pack ice habitats. Underwater viewing in the Frederick and Barbara Erb Polar Passage is not open to guests, as part of the Detroit Zoo’s biosafety protocols in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

At birth, polar bear cubs are remarkably small and vulnerable, only 560 grams (1.2 pounds) compared to their mother’s weight of 377 kilograms (830 pounds).

Suka gave birth to cubs in 2018 and 2019, but none survived beyond a few days.

The rare occurrence of twin polar bears being raised separately – one by the mother and one by humans – means that much will be learned through this experience. Both cubs are monitored closely and their developmental milestones tracked. Their eyes are open, their teeth are coming in, and they are both learning to take their first steps.

The births are part of the Association of Zoos & Aquariums (AZA) Polar Bear Species Survival Plan, a cooperative population management and conservation program that helps ensure the sustainability of healthy captive animal populations. Currently there are 56 polar bears in 25 AZA-accredited zoos and aquariums.

Wild polar bears are found in five nations – the U.S., Canada, Russia, Greenland, and Norway – living along the shores of the Arctic Sea in the summer and on sea ice during the winter. Greenhouse gas emissions causing global climate change have led to loss of sea ice, which threatens polar bears’ survival as these marine mammals rely on ice to hunt, breed, and in some cases, den. Polar bears are listed as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act.

Via Zooborns

I don’t think there is literally any conspiracy theory that Marjorie Taylor Greene has not signed on to. She’s QAnon, including the insane “”Frazzledrip” conspiracy and the “Jewish Space lasers” creating massive forest fires for profit.

And then there’s this crazy rubbish:

In early 2019, conspiracy theorists — including QAnon supporters — claimed that Democrats were hiding Ginsburg or covering up that she was dead so they could hold on to her Supreme Court seat. (The conspiracy theory made no sense then and makes no sense now, as Trump eventually placed right-wing judge Amy Coney Barrett in the Supreme Court after Ginsburg’s death.) In one iteration, some people claimed that a body double replaced Ginsburg when she was seen in public.  

Greene is one of those people. 

On February 26, 2019, she appeared on a streaming program for the pro-Trump website UniteAmericaFirst.com. Toward the conclusion of the show, a caller asked Greene if she had seen “the picture” of Ginsburg at “the airport” — an apparent reference to an image of her at National Airport — “walking straight up right like it’s a whole new person” and asked her if she believes “that is Ruth.” Host and Greene ally Will Johnson added, “It’s almost like a body double like Hillary Clinton” (Conspiracy theorists have also claimed that Hillary Clinton has used a body double.) 

Greene responded: “ I do not believe that was Ruth. No. I don’t think so.” 

I doubt she believes any of this stuff, not really. She a nasty, bully troll who gets a lot of attention from the dumbest people in the world for being a horrible human being, just the way they like it. Whatever it takes to get attantion from the wingnuts she will glom onto.

She’s a terrible person and because she’s armed to the teeth she’s dangerous too. But it looks like the Republkicans are embracing her and putting Liz Cheney on an ice floe. That says it all.

Former Young Gun Eric Cantor, once a member of the House leadership who was ousted by a right winger in a 2010 primary for allegedly going off the reservation (he actually didn’t), wrote an op-ed today about how the Republicans are letting the tail wag the dog:

Back in 2013, the expectation was that the Republican-controlled House of Representatives could force the Democratic-controlled Senate to pass — and compel President Barack Obama to sign — a repeal of his signature health-care initiative. This false narrative started with a few outside groups like Heritage Action and Tea Party Express arguing that the barrier to repealing Obamacare wasn’t the president; it was elected Republicans who were unwilling to fight hard enough. These groups purposely ramped up expectations, overpromising, even knowing that the end result would under-deliver.

At first, this was a political headache for me and my colleagues: Few elected Republicans wanted to spend much time or political capital refuting people who were part of the base. But then a small group of lawmakers in the House and the Senate, led by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), started telling the base what they longed to hear: that Republicans could indeed defund Obamacare simply by insisting on it as part of a larger annual government spending bill. These members, and indeed every other elected Republican, knew better, but very few were willing to say so. I had dozens of meetings with individual lawmakers, as well as group sessions, imploring my colleagues to take a different approach, because shutdowns don’t work. Often, these same members would leave the meetings and go on cable TV to talk about how leadership wasn’t fighting hard enough, and only they were. And the shutdown was born.

This pattern repeated itself at a new level around the 2020 election. “Stop the Steal” narratives about widespread fraud, albeit without evidence, sought to undermine the results. Bloggers and certain friendly radio and TV shows didn’t need to worry about providing defensible facts or being confronted with the truth. Soon, President Donald Trump was talking about how the election could be overturned and awarded to the “true” winner — him — if only a secretary of state . . . or a governor . . . or the judges he appointed . . . or congressional Republicans . . . or the vice president would fight like he wanted them to. It was ultimately all political posturing, and I honestly don’t know if the president believed the story or not — but many in the GOP base did. Two-thirds of voters who are Republican or lean Republican have been misled into thinking that there is solid evidence of widespread fraud in the election, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found this month.

To my fellow Republicans who hope that Trump’s departure from office will end this cycle, I would remind them that it started long before he descended the escalator in Trump Tower more than five years ago. And left unconfronted, it will continue long into the future.

He tries to say that Democrats are doing the same thing but that’s absurd. Right now they are in the majority and of course the various factions will be pressing for their agenda. That’s how it works. The proper analogy would be if they would have been going on TV during Donald Trump’s term and convincing Democratic voters that the tax cuts for millionaires could be stopped if only the Democrats fought harder. They didn’t do that because it was ridiculous. And anyway, most Democratic voters aren’t that stupid.

Cantor is right about the dynamic. The Republican Party has been going down that road for a long time and it just picked up speed when they elected a lying, conspiracy theorist, huckster to lead the party. And they aren’t slowing down, unfortunately.

Cantor paid a price for enabling this, mostly because of Fox and talk radio — particularly Laura Ingraham who basically engaged to demonstrate her clout. But he never really did much to stop it. Neither did the other young guns: Paul Ryan and the cowardly sycophant Kevin McCarthy. This is their baby too.

Josh Marshall lays out the case:

What we see most clearly today is the GOP moving quickly to align itself with the instigators of the January 6th insurrection and the coup plotters who laid the groundwork for it. This may seem like hyperbole but it is not. Kevin McCarthy, who earlier this month was saying President Trump bore responsibility for instigating the assault, is now making his pilgrimage to Mar a Lago to meet with the disgraced former President and secure his blessing. The only Republicans who stood clearly against the insurrection – like Liz Cheney – are being purged from the party. Trumpist luminaries like Tucker Carlson are already mocking the fears of representatives who feared they’d be murdered on January 6th. (That’s right out of the rightist troll culture where you’re blamed for the predation against you for “not getting it.”) Senators like Ted Cruz say it’s time to move on from this violent assault that happened a mere three weeks ago and was instigated by a President who left office one week ago.

The GOP has had a series of decision points over recent months, the most recent of which was after the June 6th insurrection. The shock of actually being the targets of the assault in many cases created a moment of hesitation. But that wore off quickly. Axios is now serving as the channel for what amounts to threats of new insurrections and mass violence over the results of the election. Axios quotes Tucker Carlson saying the current situation is “not a sustainable moment” and “something will break.” As Axios (albeit somewhat validating the GOP complaints) puts it aptly: “The calls for calm and rethinking [after the insurrection] among some GOP leaders grew fast into claims of grievance and revolution.”

Each decision not to draw a line on the path of political extremism exerts a concomitant force pulling the GOP still deeper into the politics of extremism and threatened violence. This ratcheting effect is too little appreciated. Each episode of enabling and deflecting draws the institutional GOP deeper into the clutches of insurrectionist politics.

This is the reality that we’re operating with. After early efforts to deflect blame or even blame Antifa for the Capitol insurrection, Republicans are shifting to the view that it was understandable, even justified and may need to happen again to secure Republican ends.

They are fine with the assault on the Capitol. This is a dangerous moment.