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Month: October 2021

“Life simply went on”

Published by digby on October 29, 2021

Well, except for all the dead people…

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Florida has had almost 60,000 deaths (probably more — the reporting has been dicey.) California, with similarly warm weather and diverse population has had 71,000 deaths. I’m sure the right wingers will all say that proves what a good job Florida has done.

I suppose they might be right if it weren’t for the fact that California has almost double the population:

The economy is rebounding smartly in California too despite its biggest metro areas imposing mandates and all kinds of public health measures.

The right is just lying when it says DeSantis is a COVID hero. He is a menace to his people.

Update: Recall that DeSantis said this in his infamous interview with Maria Bartiromo that ‘Most cops” had already had COVID so they didn’t need to get vaccinated. Well:

Unvaccinated people who had survived a previous COVID-19 infection were more than five times more likely to be reinfected with the virus compared to those who were fully vaccinated with the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, according to a new study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The finding comes from data published Friday in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, examining records of adults hospitalized with COVID-19 symptoms in the agency’s “VISION Network” of hospitals spanning nine states.

The study’s authors said their findings showed “vaccine-induced immunity was more protective than infection-induced immunity” among patients who had their first bout of the disease or were vaccinated three to six months earlier.

“We now have additional evidence that reaffirms the importance of COVID-19 vaccines, even if you have had prior infection. This study adds more to the body of knowledge demonstrating the protection of vaccines against severe disease from COVID-19,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said in a statement.

Build Back Quicker

Published by digby on October 29, 2021

Joe Biden was scheduled to fly off to the United Nations Climate Change conference on Thursday morning but delayed the trip long enough to go up to Capitol Hill to tell the House Democrats that an agreement had been reached on a “framework” for his big Build Back Better bill. He told Democrats on the Hill, “I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that the House and Senate majorities and my Presidency will be determined by what happens in the next week.” No pressure there. But he’s right. You would think they already know that, but apparently, it had to be said.

Biden reportedly got a standing ovation from the caucus and he no doubt got on Air Force One feeling very optimistic that his pitch of a 1.75 trillion dollar “framework” had been accepted and the legislation would be waiting on his desk when he returned. The deal was immediately hailed as a major achievement with people such as Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen saying, “any one of the proposals contained in this framework — childcare, climate change investments, universal pre-K — would be a remarkable achievement, but together, they represent something truly historic: a new period of investment in economic growth for all Americans across the country.” Former President Barack Obama weighed in with some sage words about the process, tweeting, “in a country as large and diverse as ours, progress can often feel frustrating and slow, with small victories accompanied by frequent setbacks. But once in a while, it’s still possible to take a giant leap forward. That’s what the Build Back Better framework represents.”

Climate journalist David Roberts tweeted:

Unfortunately, it appears that the president should have also made a stopover at the Senate to ensure that the two Senate prima donnas, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, both Democrats, were still on board.

Air Force One hadn’t even left the tarmac before both Sinema and Manchin issued vague, non-committal statements implying they hadn’t signed on to the framework at all. As usual, they didn’t really spell out any objections, just imperiously threw their weight around. If one didn’t know better one might think they are just obstructing for the sheer joy of driving everyone crazy.

That is not to say they aren’t highly regarded among their peers for what they are doing:

No doubt Mitch McConnell toasted both Sinema and Manchin with a fine Kentucky bourbon as well. The more this continues, the greater his chances of being back in the chief obstructionist office come 2023.

After it became clear that the Diva twins were still preening, the House progressives naturally felt a little bit stung. The “framework” is obviously still up in the air and until those two say they agree, progressives in the House are not going to vote for the infrastructure bill that’s already passed the Senate. It’s all they’ve got to ensure Manchin or Sinema don’t wake up on the wrong side of the bed and decide to blow up the whole thing. And even with that, it’s unclear whether either of them care about passing anything (Manchin was reported to have told Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders that he would be “comfortable” with zero spending so …)

Pelosi asked House progressives not to embarrass the president by refusing to vote for the infrastructure bill while he is overseas on an important trip and his credibility with foreign leaders is on the line. It’s hard, however, for him to claim that America is operating normally and he will deliver on his promises when two recalcitrant members of his own party are destroying his domestic agenda. The progressives weren’t moved, and Pelosi had to delay the vote until next week.

It’s not the end of the world, however.

There does seem to have been substantial progress and they are all going to spend the next few days looking at the details of the framework that is finally being presented. No doubt there will be many questions and complaints but there will at least be something concrete to argue about. Basically, what we are seeing are which remnants of the original proposal are left after the two high-handed senators cut out whatever they didn’t like for reasons that we may never fully understand.

The two senators nixed the tax increases on the wealthy, for instance. Manchin couldn’t even go along with taxing billionaires because it’s not fair to demonize such wonderful “job creators.” Biden’s proposed capital gains tax and end to stepped-up basis are gone as well and they won’t even be allowed to bolster the IRS so that it can crackdown on tax cheats. I guess they’re job creators too. In fact, Donald Trump’s only legislative achievement will have been secured by the Democrats — his massive tax cuts for the rich will pretty much remain intact. No doubt McConnell raised a glass of that sweet Kentucky bourbon over that as well.

The saddest and most foolish of all, from both a policy and a political standpoint, is the jettisoning of paid family leave, Medicare benefits expansion and negotiating prescription drug prices, a promise the Democrats have failed to deliver since they ran and won the majority on that issue back in 2006. These are programs with constituencies that will fight to retain those benefits when the Republicans try to repeal them in the future. What a missed political opportunity. And what a shame that the American people will be denied such vital necessities in order to salve the egos of two Senators.

There are some very good things in what’s left in the bill, however:

  • The largest expansion of public education in a hundred years with universal Pre-K
  • Extension of the child tax credit, a massive anti-poverty measure
  • $555 Billion for climate change, which represents barely any reduction from the original proposal.
  • A major expansion of health care coverage to people who live in states that refused to expand Medicaid and lower premiums through the ACA exchanges.
  • Subsidized child care, home care for seniors, free school meals, affordable housing funding and more.
  • Higher taxes on billion-dollar corporations

When you add that on to the 1.9 trillion in the American Rescue Plan and the big infrastructure plan, you are looking at a successful progressive agenda under quite difficult circumstances. That’s if they manage to pass it.

The good news is that the players seem to be more upbeat about the possibility than I’ve seen for some time. Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz tweeted this at the end of the day on Thursday:

When asked why he felt that, he said he couldn’t reveal it. Let’s hope that optimism isn’t misplaced. It’s time to get it done. 

Cowards and crazies and Trump. Oh, my!

Published by Tom Sullivan on October 29, 2021
Casanova Frankenstein: It’s so easy to get the best of people when they care about each other. Which is why evil will always have the edge. You good guys are always so bound by the rules (throws switch & electrocutes the Frat Boys). You see, I kill my own men. And lucky me…I get the girl. (Mystery Men, 1999.)

The slow devolution of the Republican Party into the Cult of Trump can be summed up in the trajectory of Ala. Gov. Kay Ivey (R), writes Paul Krugman. The woman who once urged her citizens to get vaccinated against Covid-19 and declared that the unvaccinated are “letting us down,” months later ordered state agencies not to cooperate with federal vaccination mandates. Her journey tracks her party’s path on multiple issues, as Krugman sees it:

When we talk about the G.O.P.’s moral descent, we tend to focus on the obvious extremists, like the conspiracy theorists who claim that climate change is a hoax and Jan. 6 was a false flag operation. But the crazies wouldn’t be driving the Republican agenda so completely if it weren’t for the cowards, Republicans who clearly know better but reliably swallow their misgivings and go along with the party line. And at this point crazies and cowards essentially make up the party’s entire elected wing.

Consider, for example, the claim that tax cuts pay for themselves. In 1980 George H.W. Bush, running against Ronald Reagan for the Republican presidential nomination, called that assertion “voodoo economic policy.” Everything we’ve seen since then says that he was right. But Bush soon climbed down, and by 2017 even supposed “moderates” like Susan Collins accepted claims that the Trump tax cut would reduce, not increase, the budget deficit. (It increased the deficit.)

Or consider climate change. As recently as 2008 John McCain campaigned for president in part on a proposal to put a cap on U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. But at this point Republicans in Congress are united in their opposition to any substantive action to limit global warming, with 30 G.O.P. senators outright denying the overwhelming scientific evidence that human activities are causing climate change.

The falsehoods that are poisoning America’s politics tend to share similar life histories. They begin in cynicism, spread through disinformation and culminate in capitulation, as Republicans who know the truth decide to acquiesce in lies.

“Flexibility is the first principle of politics,” Richard Nixon once told a new staffer.

Whether the Big Lie or small ones of the kind spread via Facebook or a blizzard of Donald Trump’s spread “without corrections or fact checks” via the Wall Street Journal, lies told repeatedly and with apparent conviction are good enough for the ne’er-do-well heirs of the Enlightenment in the Cult of Trump. And more useful even than flexibility for advancing a program of political sabotage that affects the death of their own supporters.

And true to form, elected Republicans like Governor Ivey who initially spoke in favor of vaccines have folded and surrendered to the extremists, even though they must know that in so doing they will cause many deaths.

I’m not sure exactly why cowardice has become the norm among elected Republicans who aren’t dedicated extremists. But if you want to understand how the G.O.P. became such a threat to everything America should stand for, the cowards are at least as important a factor as the crazies.

Among the unelected are the believers lining up to drink the kool-aid and make death threats against heretics.

We have met the enemy….

Published by Tom Sullivan on October 29, 2021

Veteran journalist Albert Hunt typed up a commentary for The Hill that sums up the sorry state of our democracy in about 800 words. But it’s other people’s words that do the work.

“Not too long ago,” Hunt begins, “anyone who seriously worried about the future of democracy would have been written off as a fringe figure or paranoiac.”

Not just our democracy, but others’. In Eastern Europe, Turkey, Brazil, the Philippines, and other places see authoritarianism rising, Hunt notes.

Just decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, I’d add. The end of the Cold War was thought a victory for democracy and international stability. That was then. Before the Sept. 11 attacks. Before the Great Recession. Before Americans elected a black man president and, in a backlash to that, an unstable, racist, white-nationalist con man who even now plots to overturn his election loss from November 2020.

Hunt adds the United States to the list above:

Alarmingly, democracy also is under genuine assault in the United States. This grows out of Donald Trump‘s massive attempts to overturn last November’s election outcome. This is based on his claim that he actually won the election. That has been conclusively rejected in every court test and every state recount, including those crafted by Republicans.

Yet it has become sine qua non among many major Republican politicians and most of the party’s rank and file. Egged on by Trump, they are determined to do something about it wherever they control the election machinery: throw out votes they deem flawed and/or replace local election officials. Georgia and more than a dozen other Republican-led states have moved this year to more partisan oversight of elections.

Richard Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine, law school warns that the assault on the integrity of elections — specifically the belief they are “rigged” or unfair — “is the greatest political threat this country faces.”

Looking around the globe, Tony Blair says, “if several years ago someone raised the possibility of democracy declining, I would have replied, ‘For God’s sake, don’t worry, it’ll sort itself out.’” Now, he said on the Politics WarRoom podcast, “When people say to me ‘I think Western Democracy could be seriously disrupted and undermined,’ I’m no longer dismissive.”

In America, there is no more sober-minded historian than [Michael] Beschloss. He told me, pointedly, “American democracy is facing the most dangerous threats from within since the time of the Civil War.”

Princeton University’s Sean Wilentz, in an essay in Liberties Journal, writes of the “unsettling similarities” between the Trump-inspired Jan. 6 mob assault on the Capitol to overturn the presidential election and the events leading to the Southern secession causing the Civil War. He writes, “The secessionists committed treason by repudiating the democratic Union; but the Trump Republicans committed something akin to treason by repudiating democracy itself.” 

Earlier, more than 100 scholars of the American political system signed a statement that “our entire democracy is at risk” unless Congress thwarts these anti-democratic measures. A month ago, Robert Kagan, a leading neo-conservative, wrote that due to Trump’s contempt for the democratic process, there’s “a reasonable chance over the next three or four years of incidents of mass violence, a breakdown of federal authority, and the division of the county into red and blue enclaves.”

This isn’t just speculation.

Trump, his co-conspirators, and the Republican Party have repudiated democracy itself.

They plotted a coup, set up a war room (several, actually) and planned rallies intended to prevent certification of election results by Congress. They pressured state officials to ignore or overturn election results. They pressured the Department of Justice (unsuccessfully) to declare the election results corrupt. The Jan. 6 rallies they planned ended in a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters that led to multiple deaths and assaults resulting in injuries to nearly 150 police officers.

Even out of office, Trump’s continues to foment unrest and spread lies that the election was stolen. He retains a cult-leader’s hold both on his party and, if nothing approaching a majority, a significant percent of the electorate. With a string of election suppression measures passed in Republican-controlled states since the election, Trump loyalists (or is it royalists?) are positioning themselves for the ascension of Trump the Second.

There are apologists who say Republican voter suppression efforts are simply efforts to revert to pre-COVID election rules and that voters usually overcome these impediments. Even some Biden advisers have said the key is just to out-organize the Republicans.

You can’t overcome obstacles or out-organize if those in charge subvert the efforts. In the next close race in Georgia, the state legislators could legally decide to award the state’s presidential electors to their guy — Trump or someone like him — despite the results.

The success of the Trump phony fraud claims is seen in Ann Selzer’s Grinnell College national poll last week. More than three-quarters of Trump supporters say American democracy is under a major threat.

They are right but for the wrong reasons.

They have met the enemy and he is them.

Hunt’s focus on Trump misses a key fact. Trump is not the source of peril to our democracy. He is its expression. Trump embodies the anti-democratic sentiments of the American right that swelled like a boil for years, only to burst on Jan. 6. Only the pressures behind Trumpism have not subsided.

The Sept. 11 attacks were a gut-kick to American exceptionalism still extant after the collapse of the Soviet Union. After decades of wage stagnation, the Great Recession threw millions of Americans overboard and, as they floundered, they watched the financial elite cruise by in their yachts. The election of Barack Obama signaled a sea change in American politics that told Trumpists-to-be that they and people like them were no longer at the top of the political pyramid, or they would not be there for much longer. Thus was born the Koch-funded T-party, the “taxed enough already” movement that was never about taxes. Trump saw his opening and took it.

Trump’s deep insecurities allowed him to tap into the social and economic insecurities of his overwhelmingly white supporters. Any democracy without them firmly and permanently in charge is not worth having, their patriotic affectations notwithstanding. Democracy is in peril because for them it was always disposable. A flag-hugging strong man will do.

There is no bottom

Published by digby on October 28, 2021

It’s now a total alternative reality. The election was riddled with fraud denying Trump his legitimate landslide victory. And January 6th was a false flag operation by the deep state to enable the jackbooted thugs to silence patriotic Americans.

That’s where we are. And it is not a joke:

Tucker Carlson, the most popular voice in conservative media, drew condemnation Thursday for the trailer of a new series he plans to debut next week promising to “tell the true story” of the Jan. 6 insurrection, in which one subject appears to float a baseless conspiracy theory that the Capitol riotwas covertly orchestrated by the government.

“False flags have happened in this country,” an unidentified female speaker is heard to say in the clip of “Patriot Purge” aired on Carlson’s Fox News show Wednesday night, “one of which may have been January 6.”

Carlson said the three-part series will air as a “Tucker Carlson Original” on the streaming service Fox Nation starting Monday. “We believe that it answers a lot of the remaining questions from that day,” he said, arguing that the U.S. government has “launched a new war” on American citizens by prosecuting participants in the insurrection who ransacked the building and attacked law enforcement officers.

If Carlson endeavored to trigger a ferocious backlash with the trailer, he succeeded.

That outrage came from Republicans as well as from Democrats, and even included a member of the Fox News family. “’False flags!?’ Bull—-,” wrote Geraldo Rivera, a 20-year veteran of the network who serves as a roaming correspondent at large.

Two prominent Republican members of Congress called out the clip on Thursday morning. Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) both serve on the U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol.

“It appears that @FoxNews is giving @TuckerCarlson a platform to spread the same type of lies that provoked violence on January 6,” Cheney wrote on Twitter. “As @FoxNews knows, the election wasn’t stolen and January 6 was not a ‘false flag’ operation.” She tagged four company heavyweights in her post, including Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch, Fox News C.E.O. Suzanne Scott, Fox News president Jay Wallace and former House speaker Paul D. Ryan, who serves on the board of network parent company Fox Corp.

“Anyone working for @FoxNews must speak out,” Kinzinger wrote. “This is disgusting. It appears @foxnews isn’t even pretending anymore.” He also thanked Rivera for his post.

Asked about the criticisms from Cheney, Kinzinger and Rivera, Fox News representatives did not respond. A Twitter spokesperson confirmed that Carlson’s tweet containing the trailer did not violate the platform’s civic integrity policy.

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), who also serves on the Jan. 6 committee, condemned the series in a statement to The Post. “There is no lie too big or conspiracy theory too dangerous for Tucker Carlson to propagate,” he said. “His latest salvo is nothing less than an invitation to violence. By airing it, Fox News demonstrates yet again a willingness to profit from tearing the country down.”

Vaccines are safe fergawdsakes

Published by digby on October 28, 2021

Get a load of this disinformation and propaganda on Fox News about vaccines.

Shannon Bream: Doctor, parents who have any doubts for them to hear this doctor vote and say “were never going to learn how safe it is until we start giving it,” that not going to reassure a lot of people.

Dr. Makary: Well, that’s exactly right and he’s correct. That’s why we’ve got to respect parents who are not comfortable with the risks of vaccines on their kids, there is a risk of death that does happen, kids do die after the vaccine.

Now, statistically more kids — kids are more likely to die of COVID than the vaccine. But we can’t brush under the rug some of these complications, some parents are not going to be comfortable with them.

There are no known cases of kids dying from vaccines. None. Zero. Zip. That doctor is lying.

Politifact addressed this lie earlier:

As of Sept. 30, 2021, 520 children died from COVID-19 based on reporting from 45 states, according to a report from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association. That’s a death rate of 0.01% per case.

And there is no CDC data showing a vaccine death rate higher than a COVID-19 death rate.

In vaccine trials, zero deaths were reported among the 1,131 adolescents age 12 to 15 who received the Pfizer vaccine, according to an April 2021 FDA document. Zero deaths also were reported among 2,489 people ages 12 to 17 who received the Moderna vaccine, according to an August 2021 medical journal article. 

In July 2021, the CDC reported there were 14 deaths among 8.9 million people age 12 to 17 who received Pfizer vaccinations. None of the deaths were determined to be related to the vaccines, said Dr. Sonja Rasmussen, professor in pediatrics and epidemiology at the University of Florida.

They were not responding to this doctor but rather a lie that has been travelling through social media. It’s out there. And it’s going to result in some people endangering their own children because they refuse to get vaccines and their kids will get sick and possibly die.

They all worry about the “long term” effects of the vaccines but don’t seem to realize that the long term effects of virus are already manifesting in millions of people. The enemy here is the virus, not the vaccines. After three quarters of a million corpses, you would think people could see that. Of course, they are being fed a steady diet of propaganda so I guess it’s not surprising. But still, the real information is out there. When it comes to life and death — especially for their children — you would think people would seek it out.

An economy on the brink

Published by digby on October 28, 2021

… of improvement. A quick read of the latest economic data from Dean Baker:

GDP Slows Sharply in Third Quarter Due to Supply Chain Pressures

GDP grew at just a 2.0 percent annual rate in the third quarter as supply chain issues hampered growth in several key areas. Durable goods consumption contracted at a 26.2 percent annual rate, knocking 2.7 percentage points off the quarter’s growth. Equipment investment fell at a 3.2 percent annual rate, while housing construction dropped at a 7.7 percent annual rate, knocking 0.18 pp and 0.38 pp off the quarter’s growth, respectively.

Even with Third Quarter Declines Vehicle Consumption Is Still Far Above Pre-Pandemic Levels

The drop in third quarter car sales accounted for 2.39 pp of the hit to GDP from durables. However, car sales are still 4.3 percent above the year-round average for 2020. This means that the supply chain problems are stemming from extraordinary demand, which will fade in the quarters ahead, not an inability to supply a normal quantity of vehicles.

Housing Is Also Above Pre-Pandemic Levels, In Spite of Third Quarter Decline

Even with the 7.7 percent drop in housing construction, which followed a drop of 11.7 percent in the second quarter, output in the sector was still more than 10 percent above the 2019 average. It will likely remain somewhere near the current level in future quarters, after jumping sharply due to low interest rates at the start of the pandemic.

Consumption of Services Grew at a 7.9 Percent Annual Rate in the Quarter

In spite of concerns about the spread of the Delta variant, services grew at a solid 7.9 percent annual rate following growth of 11.3 percent in the second quarter. However, service consumption is still 1.6 percent below its pre-pandemic level. Recreation services and transportation, which is largely commuting expenses, account for the bulk of this drop. The category of food services and accommodations rose at 12.4 percent annual rate in the quarter (in spite of Delta) adding 0.54 pp to growth. Real restaurant sales are actually above pre-pandemic levels.

Inventories Added 2.07 PP to GDP in the Third Quarter

This was all due to growth in non-farm inventories which added 2.14 pp to growth, farm inventories continued a fall that began in the third quarter of 2015 growth in non-farm inventories. The drop in non-farm inventories presumably is the result of both relatively low prices over this period and weather conditions. It is important to realize that inventories still declined at a $77.7 billion annual rate in the third quarter, but this was still a positive for GDP since it was much slower than the $168.5 billion rate of decline in the second quarter. As inventories stop shrinking, and start to rebuild, they will be a big positive for growth in future quarters.

Non-Residential Investment Grew at a 1.8 Percent Annual Rate

Declines in equipment investment and structures largely offset an increase of 12.2 percent in investment in intellectual products. The rise in investment in intellectual products was the fourth consecutive double-digit increase. The 3.2 percent decline in equipment investment is likely due to supply chain problems, as it had been growing at double digit rates for the last four quarters and orders remain high. The drop in structure investment is due to less demand for office and retail space, which is likely to be a permanent feature of the post-pandemic world.

Trade Deficit Subtracts 1.14 Percentage Points from Growth

A rise in the trade deficit, due to a 2.5 percent drop in exports and a 6.1 percent rise in imports, slowed growth by 1.14 pp in the quarter. The rise in imports was all on the service side, which rose at a 44.1 percent annual rate. This was largely U.S. travel abroad which up more than 50 percent from second quarter rate, but still less than 60 percent of pre-pandemic level. Foreign travel in the U.S. fell slightly in the quarter and is still just over 30 percent of pre-pandemic levels.

Saving Rate Remains Above Pre-Pandemic Levels

The saving rate was 8.9 percent in the quarter, which is well above the 7.5 percent average for the three years before the pandemic. This means that we are still not seeing the story, pushed by inflation hawks, that people would be spending down the savings they had accumulated during the period where large sectors of the economy were shut down, and they were getting the pandemic checks from the government.

Inflation and the Path Forward

The core PCE rose at 4.5 percent annual rate in Q3 down from 6.1 percent in Q2. We are likely to see further slowing inflation as the supply chain problems get resolved in the quarters ahead. Shipping costs will be leveling off, so they will no longer be adding to inflation and then dropping. It is important to recognize that the profit share of income rose sharply in the last two quarters, which means that rising prices have not been driven by higher labor costs.

Service consumption rose at a 7.9 percent rate, in spite of Delta.

I don’t know about you, but all that looks to me as if we are in a temporary situation. If the Dems manage to get their behemoth bill finally done and COVID and the supply chain issue clears up, they will recover. If Joe Biden has any luck it will be soon enough to keep the congress.

However, it must be acknowledged that the public often the thinks the economy is doing badly for quite a while after it recovers. I think the chances are pretty good that if things go well, they’ll catch up by the time 2024 rolls around. Getting there before 2022 is a heavy lift. The job market is good so it’s always possible. But I am not super optimistic on that count.

Even more crazy

Published by digby on October 28, 2021

There was a time when I would have thought this would end up being of benefit to the Democrats because these people are so batshit. But I never make that assumption these days. The crazy is powerful and nearly half the country wallows in it.

Here’s the latest:

A coalition of right-wing MAGA candidates, including multiple Trump-backed figures, are seeking to take control of elections in states across the U.S.—and one says they’re formally working with a group of conspiracy theorists, as well as with a QAnon influencer who some in the conspiracy movement believe in John F. Kennedy Jr. in disguise.

The group consists of five GOP candidates running for the key election position of secretary of state in Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Georgia, and California, as well as one Pennsylvania lawmaker who may run for governor, which in Pennsylvania appoints the secretary of state.

The reported coalition is just the latest example of how extreme QAnon-inspired conspiracy theories about election fraud and vote rigging have become pervasive in the Republican Party, and how those conspiracies are now driving this group to seek to take control of key election positions across the country ahead of the 2024 election.  

The existence of the group, which doesn’t appear to have a name, was revealed by Nevada secretary of state candidate Jim Marchant at the “For God & Country: Patriot Double Down” conference that took place in Las Vegas over the weekend.

Marchant, a former Nevada state legislator who lost a hotly contested race for Congress in 2020, told the crowd that the genesis for the coalition began on November 4 last year, the day after he lost out to Rep. Steven Hosford in the race for a House seat. Like Trump, Marchant claims the election was stolen from him, and so, in his words, he “got to work.”

“I got a suite in the Venetian hotel across the hall from the Trump attorneys and the Trump people that came in to start investigating the election fraud here in Nevada,” Marchant said Monday. “And guess who showed up at my suite? Juan O Savin.”

Savin is the alias for an anonymous QAnon influencer and author who until this weekend never showed his face in public and was best known because some QAnon followers believed he was John F. Kennedy Jr. in disguise.

“We need to take back the secretaries of state offices around the country. So not only did they ask me to run, they asked me to put together a coalition,” Marchant claimed.

It is unclear how Marchant knew Savin but “for the next three to five months we worked on trying to expose the election, the fraudulent election here in Nevada and everywhere actually.”

And on May 1, according to Marchant, the coalition held its inaugural meeting in Las Vegas. Marchant said he and Savin were joined by MyPillow CEO and renowned election fraud conspiracist Mike Lindell, and Overstock.com founder Patrick Byrne, who pushed Trump to declare martial law to stay in power at a White House meeting late in his presidency and has since spent millions of dollars investigating election fraud conspiracies. Marchant added that founder of the conspiracy website the Gateway Pundit, Jim Hoft, and his twin brother Joe Hoft, “zoomed into” the inaugural meeting. Brian Kennedy, a senior fellow and former president of the right-wing think tank the Claremont Institute, also attended, according to Marchant. 

“That was our inaugural meeting to start strategizing for the coalition. I can’t stress enough how important the secretary of state offices are. I think they are the most important elections in our country in 2022. And why is that? We control the election system,” Marchant said after recounting the meeting’s attendees. “In 2022 we’re going to take back our country.”

Marchant was light on details about exactly what form this “coalition” will take, not mentioning what legal structure it will have, what its specific goals will be past getting hardline Trump acolytes into powerful positions to run the 2024 elections, and whether there will be serious money behind the efforts. Marchant, Lindell, Byrne, Kennedy, and all the candidates Marchant said are involved didn’t reply to requests for comment. But both Lindell and Byrne have deep pockets, and could fund a major effort to back these candidates. 

The coalition already includes three candidates backed by former President Donald Trump. 

These include Kristina Karamo, a GOP activist running for Michigan secretary of state who has Trump’s endorsement. Karamo spoke immediately after Marchant at the same QAnon conference, and thanked him for putting together the effort. 

“I want to thank Jim Marchant for putting the coalition together. We owe him so much,” Karamo said before calling the incumbent, Democratic Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, “evil” and claiming there was widespread voting fraud in Michigan despite piles of evidence to the contrary.

Also in the coalition is Rep. Jody Hice, a sitting congressman from Georgia. Hice is the strong favorite to win the GOP nomination for secretary of state—Trump has endorsed him and is seeking payback against Republican Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger for refusing his attempts to flip his loss. He may have the edge in the general election too; Georgia is a GOP-leaning swing state and 2022 will be a tough election environment for Democrats.

Mark Finchem, a sitting Arizona state lawmaker, also has Trump’s endorsement for the secretary of state position, and likely starts off with the edge in a crowded primary field, though even by the standards of this crowd he’s controversial.

Another member of the coalition is Pennsylvania lawmaker Doug Mastriano, who has been pushing hard for a Maricopa-style recount in his own state.

Mastriano, who has discussed election issues with Trump, is eyeing a run for governor, and if he were to win, he’d have the power to appoint the secretary of state in Pennsylvania. 

Mastriano hasn’t officially jumped into the race—he’s said he’s looking for a sign from God that he’ll raise enough money—but has previously said that Trump asked him to run for governor, a sign the former President is likely to endorse should Mastriano jump in. Former Pennsylvania Rep. Lou Barletta, a strong Trump backer who lost a 2018 run for Senate, is currently the front-runner in that race.

Marchant doesn’t have Trump’s endorsement—yet—and faces a crowded field for the GOP nomination, including former Las Vegas news anchor Gerard Ramalho, former judge Richard Scotti, and Sparks Councilman Kristopher Dahir. The general election could be a tight one in the swing state, where Republicans usually do quite well in the midterms. Democratic attorney Cisco Aguilar, a one-time staffer for former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, is the early favorite to be the Democratic nominee.

The final member of the coalition is California’s Rachel Hamm—but Republicans have almost zero chance of winning that race in the deep blue state.

Marchant said he is close to getting another candidate in Colorado to sign up for the coalition, but he didn’t want to name them yet.

Karamo, Hamm, and Finchem all appeared alongside Marchant at the QAnon conference, discussing their plans for undermining election integrity during a panel discussion on Monday.

During the panel discussion Marchant laid out the coalition’s priorities should they get any of their candidates elected. These include advocating for voter ID laws, getting rid of Dominion voting machines, limiting voting to a single day, eradicating all mail-in ballots, “cleaning up” voter rolls, and allowing the public in to watch vote counting.

Another aspect of their plan is to introduce what Marchant called “anti-counterfeitable” ballots. In fact, the coalition members visited a company in Texas recently that Marchant said that makes paper that is difficult to tamper with. 

Those measures include the use of hologram labels and are made of proprietary material that can only be read by special machines.

“No more ballots from China,” Marchant told the crowd, winking at a QAnon conspiracy theory that boxes stuffed with ballots from Asia were used to swing the election in Maricopa County in favor of President Joe Biden.

Who is Juan Savin?

It is unclear how Savin came into contact with Marchant, but as one QAnon researcher put it on Twitter: “I cannot emphasize enough how much you’d have to be Q-pilled to know anything about Juan O Savin. Prior to this event, Juan had never even broadcast his face. You’d HAVE to be deep into the movement to see him as a famous person.”

Until this weekend, Savin was only known by those deeply read into the QAnon world and he has protected his identity by never appearing on camera during podcasts and other interviews, preferring to show only his cowboy boots.

Savin’s real name is not widely known, but a biography on the book catalog website Goodreads lists a book written by Savin with the following blurb:

“This book is a four chapter transcript of speeches by Wayne Willott, using his nom de plume Juan O Savin. Wayne is a major player in the Conspiracy movement having established for himself excellent credibility as a QAnon.”

Goodreads did not immediately respond to VICE News’ question about who wrote the blurb.

Last weekend Savin stepped into the spotlight, appearing on stage for the first time, though he continued to use only his alias.

During several appearances on stage, Savin spouted his typical mixture of conspiracies about everything from COVID-19 to the Oklahoma City bombing. At one point he showed off a dress he claims was the one being worn by Melania Trump when the former first lady departed the White House for the last time. 

Savin claimed the patterned dress actually included a message hidden in “the language of semaphore.”

Another notable aspect of Savin’s mythos within the QAnon community is that many people believe that he is actually John F. Kennedy Jr. in disguise. Savin has never disabused people of this in any public statement and during the weekend, many QAnon supporters once again compared the pair.

I just can’t …

Influencers

Published by digby on October 28, 2021

A leaked oath keeper membership list shows how members say they found out about the militia before joining:


facebook (cited by ~1,000)
infowars (900)
youtube (800)
fox / fox news (500)
glenn beck (300)
bill o’reilly (300)
gun shows (180)
survivalist preppers podcast (130)

Via Mother Jones:

How does one come to join a militia? When members of right-wing paramilitary groups explain their motivations to the public, they usually give a set of similar, flattering answers—to protect the constitution, to preserve freedom, or defend their community. But a leaked spreadsheet of Oath Keeper members obtained by Mother Jones sheds some light on what they say when they’re just talking to each other. “I was rejected by the Army.”

The document contains details on 25,000 people who joined the organization between 2009 and 2015, including their location, contact information and 18,000 self-submitted entries reflecting how they learned of the group or decided to join. Oath Keepers was founded in 2009, just after Obama took office, by Stewart Rhodes, who touts an organizational commitment to protecting the constitution. The Oath Keepers are a conspiratorially minded militia who work in the service of right-wing politics. Members of the group brought rifles to the Washington area ahead of January 6, when Congress met to formalize President Joe Biden’s election victory. Sixteen members and associates of the group face felony conspiracy charges linked to attempts to halt that day’s proceedings.

Some of the explanations offered in the database are absurd: “Old man in Jarome, AZ at a little bar rocking some reggae,” reads one. Others are concerning: “An ICE agent,” another says. Some are both: “Funny story, I stopped a speeding truck driver, who had your decal on the side of his truck, I asked about it, he went on and on, I said, Damn I’m all about this. looked up online and here I am. I’m a poor broke cop. But, I’m TRUE BLUE/ AMERICAN,” reads an accounting from an Illinois-based police officer.

The most frequently cited means of discovering the Oath Keepers is Facebook, with variants of the platform’s name mentioned in almost 1,000 entries. YouTube and related terms were cited roughly 800 times. The entries usually don’t provide details about what content served by the platforms motivated the signups.

TRUE BLUE/AMERICANS are gullible, online fools.