Month: April 2022

Something Howie posted minutes ago got me thinking about what the post-2008 election period has done to people. Charlie Pierce once regularly called it … well, let him tell it:

The Republican Party is in the last throes of the prion disease it contracted when Reagan fed it the monkey brains.

After an inquiry this week, I asked a knowlegeable friend about a one-time government whistle-blower from the aughts who has fallen off the map. Where is he at today? Post-2016, does he have his head on straight? The answer was a blunt no.

Back in his Unclaimed Territory days (again in the aughts), Glenn Greenwald drew a following as an analyst of “intelligence policy, civil liberties, media criticism, and national security,” Sean Wilents wrote in 2014. “Over the coming years, he would win enthusiastic praise from, among others, Christopher Hayes, Michael Moore, and Rachel Maddow, who dubbed him ‘the American left’s most fearless political commentator.’”

That was then, before Greenwald’s Fox News days. This is now:

This is what a Musky Twitter would smell like: https://t.co/nRUOMRvB2b

— Jeff (Gutenberg Parenthesis) Jarvis (@jeffjarvis) April 14, 2022

Howie looks at recent comments from playwright David Mamet. He titles his post Did David Mamet Lose His Mind? Or Just His Soul?:

In 2011 a budding actor friend of mine played the role of Charlie Fox in a college production of David Mamet’s 1988 play Speed-the-Plow. Mamet, worth $20 million today, came to the college and watched the play and told my friend he had great stage presence. That was some praise since Ron Silver had played the role in the Broadway production and won a Tony for Best Actor. I was general manager of Sire Records at the time of the Broadway production and Madonna was our biggest artist. She played the role of Karen in the play but I had an undefined creepy feeling about Mamet and didn’t go to any of the 279 performances.

That intuitive feeling of mine about it predated the infamous piece he wrote for the Village Voice 20 years later Why I Am No Longer A ‘Brain-Dead Liberal’. Already a rabid anti-Palestinian extremist, he gradually turned into a shrill and sociopathic right-wing nut who seems to be laboring under the delusion that Trump was a “great president.” He’s bought in on all of the crazy now– from anti-gun control, anti-Colin Kaepernick to insisting, in his badly-written lunatic fringe book, Recessional: The Death of Free Speech and the Cost of a Free Lunch, that Trump was cheated out of reelection.

On Monday, Deadline reported that “With the high-profile, starry revival of his American Buffalo opening Thursday on Broadway, playwright David Mamet seems to be doing his best– or worst– to make headlines. The latest: The conservative Mamet told Fox News’ Mark Levin on Sunday night that ‘teachers are inclined, particularly men because men are predators, to pedophilia.’ The offensive take comes just a few days after Mamet’s appearance on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, in which the playwright offered a muddled retraction of a claim made in his new book Recessional: The Death of Free Speech and the Cost of a Free Lunch. When asked by Maher about his statement in the book that the left attempted a coup during the last presidential election, Mamet conceded that he ‘misspoke.’ But his appearance on Fox News’ Life, Liberty & Levin— again, to promote the book, not the play– wasn’t so conciliatory. Speaking on the hot-button topic of community and parental control in schools, Mamet said: ‘We have to take back control. If there’s no community control of the schools, what we have is kids being not only indoctrinated but groomed in a very real sense by people who are– whether they know it or not– sexual predators. Are they abusing the kids physically? No, I don’t think so, but they are abusing them mentally and using sex to do so. This has always been the problem with education, is that teachers are inclined, particularly men because men are predators, to pedophilia. And that’s why there were strict community strictures about it, thank God. And this started to break down when the schools said, You know what? We have to teach the kids about sex. Why? Because what if they don’t do it at home?'”

At a time of increasing threats to gay people, David Mamet has chosen to ally himself with the purveyors of a vicious, ugly slander that will endanger teachers and LGBT Americans. It's inexcusable. https://t.co/nevD0X38uL

— Mark Harris (@MarkHarrisNYC) April 11, 2022

Aside from a few of his plays and movies, I know little about Mamet. Or Greenwald (never met him). Or a host of others who over the last decade(s) have gone down the rabbit hole of no return. Trump didn’t start this. QAnon grew out of “this,” whatever this is. People have lost fathers to Fox News. People who once seemed sane or progressive(ish) have gone full-on, Jack D. Ripper fluoridization-happy. Conspiracy theories have become a way of life for them.

Maybe it was just a latent gene waiting for the right trigger to manifest itself. I don’t know.

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New book details Trump trying to enlist McConnell in the coup

CNN reports:

In the weeks after he lost the 2020 election, then-President Donald Trump had a plan to stay in office — and he wanted Mitch McConnell to know about it.If Trump could successfully pressure Republican Gov. Brian Kemp to de-certify Biden’s narrow win in Georgia, that would lead to a domino effect: Officials in Pennsylvania and Michigan would follow suit and overturn Biden’s electoral victory, Trump believed, a stunning reversal that could keep him in the White House for a second term.

And Trump was certain he could subvert the election outcome, telling McConnell, then the Senate majority leader, and other top Republicans that he had personally been on the phone with officials in Pennsylvania and Michigan — and they told him they would move to keep him in power, despite the results showing Biden had won their states.

“I’ve been calling folks in those states and they’re with us,” Trump is reported to have told the Senate GOP leaders in a private December 2020 phone call, according to a soon-to-be-released book by New York Times political reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns, both CNN political analysts.

The book, “This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future,” offers insight into the former President’s mindset in the weeks after the election, a topic of high interest to House investigators now probing the roots of the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection. While Trump’s plan was never successful, the private pressure campaign showcases the length he was willing to go to stay in office, even as election officials in both parties certified Biden’s victory and courts across the country turned away dozens of Trump-inspired lawsuits.

Seriously, is this guy really going to be the Republican nominee in 2024? Oh, what am I saying? This probably makes him more likely to win. Sigh.

The phone call was one of the final conversations McConnell had with Trump. Their ​relationship that effectively ended after McConnell went to the Senate floor on December 15, 2020, and acknowledged Biden’s victory following states’ certification of the electoral results. The two haven’t spoken since, the GOP leader’s aides have told CNN, and the tension has only grown since McConnell pointedly blamed Trump for the Capitol attack, even as he voted to acquit the former President in his second impeachment trial last year.

But in the days before the mid-December speech, McConnell avoided any criticism of Trump’s “stolen” and “rigged” election claims, even as he was privately scoffing at the then-President.Speaking to reporters in an ornate room just off the Senate floor on December 1, 2020, McConnell was asked by CNN why he had been quiet about Trump’s claims given the GOP leader’s long-standing concerns over electoral integrity.

McConnell punted.”As I’ve said repeatedly we have this government for the next three weeks for sure,” he said. “And what I’m focusing on is trying to accomplish as much as we can during this three-week period, which requires dealing with the government that we have right now. The future will take care of itself. As I’ve said repeatedly, we’re going to go through these processes. The Electoral College is going to meet December 14, there’ll be an inauguration on January 20.”But privately, McConnell was far more candid about his views.

According to the book, McConnell was worried that if he said anything to anger Trump, the President would take out his fury and effectively derail the runoff campaigns of then-Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, the two Republicans battling to hang on to the Georgia seats. In the December call, Trump had told McConnell and GOP senators that Georgia voters would not tolerate Kemp’s assurance that the November election was safe and secure — and contended that Perdue and Loeffler shouldn’t tolerate it either or otherwise they’d lose their races — as the GOP leader stayed quiet on the call.

In an interview with the two reporters in December 2020, McConnell said Trump was looking for a scapegoat ahead of the crucial Georgia runoffs.”What it looks to me like he’s doing is setting this up so he can blame the governor and the secretary of state if we lose,” McConnell said. “He’s always setting up somebody to blame it on.”

And McConnell didn’t mince words to the reporters about some in Trump’s inner orbit — such as attorneys Sidney Powell and Lin Wood — who were advancing far-fetched conspiracies about the election.”Everybody around him, except for clowns like Sidney Powell and Lin Wood, are trying to get him to do the right thing,” he said in the interview, referring to the effort to get Trump to accept the fact that he lost and concede the race.Efforts to reach Powell and Wood for comment were unsuccessful.

But McConnell and his wife, Elaine Chao, who served as Trump’s transportation secretary until she resigned in the immediate aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack, were at a loss with how to deal with Trump after the elections.”Every day the leader and I wake up saying, ‘How do we manage the president?'” Chao told a friend in December 2020, according to the book.

Please. They didn’t manage him at all and really didn’t try. All McConnell cares about is maintaining control of the Senate and packing the courts. From there he can assure the right wing agenda is protected and advanced. The problem with Trump was that he was unpredictable and might interfere with McConnell’s agenda.

Vlad had his number

Earlier tonight, Mike Pence said:
“I’ve also met Vladimir Putin. I stood toe to toe with him and told him things he didn’t want to hear…”

Well, I went back and looked.
So here’s Mike standing “toe to toe” with Putin.
Looks as if the only thing he said was “ok”.
Like 6 times. pic.twitter.com/K4aQX9vOrV

— Jo (@JoJoFromJerz) April 13, 2022

The idea that Mike Pence of all people thinks he can thread the needle and win the presidency is kind of hilarious. There was no greater Trump sycophant until the day he refused to overthrow the election on his behalf. This makes him loathed by anyone who doesn’t worship Trump and loathed by everyone who does worship him. What’s his constituency?

Missouri: laboratory of democracy

Originally tweeted by Lindsey Simmons (@LynzforCongress) on April 13, 2022:

If states are the laboratories of democracy, then the experiment in Missouri has failed.

Pure democracy–one person one vote + majority rules–is under attack. And the will of the people is constantly undermined by rising autocrats.

Today it’s Medicaid Expansion.

Missouri voters had the opportunity to make their voices heard on Medicaid Expansion on August 4, 2020.

The decision to expand Medicaid was left to voters through our initiative petition process. And it was expected to pass.

Medicaid Expansion had many supporters.

A Wash U study found that Missouri would save $39M in its first year due to (i) the federal government paying for 90% of it and (ii) cost savings in behavioral services/criminal justice system.

They predicted $1.0B in savings by 2026.

And a separate study found that because of its implementation, Missouri would see an increase in the size of the state economy of $2.5 billion in economic output and $1.6 billion in gross domestic product, and rise in state personal income of $1.1 billion

This was good news in rural areas because Missouri had repeated rural hospital closures and needed Medicaid Expansion to help stay afloat.

Knowing it was about to pass, about two weeks before election day Republian Autocrats in Missouri started pushing the lie that voters had to choose between expanding Medicaid and funding their kids’ schools.

Here is a Facebook post from a Missouri State Senator–frightening voters into believing that $15M would have to be cut from their kids’ school.

This was an outright lie.

But it came from a sitting State Senator.

But despite the best efforts of the rising autocrats in Missouri, Medicaid Expansion passed by 53% and healthcare became available to over 275,000 hard-working Missourians and their families.

On top of that, we were in a better place to fund rural hospitals wrecked by COVID.

Section 36(c) of the Missouri Constitution mandated that by July 1, 2021 all who qualified for the expansion were to receive assistance.

But in March 2021, Republicans voted against funding the program–and instead chose to ignore the will of Missouri voters.

In refusing to fund Medicaid Expansion, the rising autocrats were simultaneously rejecting Governor Parson’s budget which *did* fund it.

This won’t be surprising to folks because the autocrats love to reject their own Republican Governor’s calls for how to fund the state.

By May 2021, Governor Parson declined to extend Medicaid because the autocrats refused to fund it.

And yup. If you guessed that we ended up in court a year after passing expansion in the first place, you’d be right.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/13/politics/missouri-medicaid-expansion/index.html

In fact, Medicaid Expansion made it all the way to the Missouri Supreme Court last summer–where the court *unanimously* found that Medicaid Expansion does not violate the MO Constitution.

And thus, MO had to make Medicaid expansion happen.

https://www.news-leader.com/story/news/politics/2021/07/22/missouri-supreme-court-rules-favor-medicaid-expansion-health-insurance-mo-healthnet-dss/8058784002/

October 1, 2021 is the first date that Missouri began accepting applications under Medicaid Expansion–a full three months after the date voters approved.

The expectation was that 275,000 people would now have healthcare.

‘Not out of the woods yet’: Missouri finally expanded Medicaid, but hard work remains

But by December 2021 Missouri had only registered 20,000–only 7% of those eligible.

Why?

Because the rising autocrats who control our state government did the bare minimum to inform working people that they could now enroll.

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2021-12-03/missouris-slow-moving-medicaid-expansion-sparks-criticism

On top of many Missourians not knowing they qualify, the state can’t efficiently approve the applications that it does receive.

Federal law says applications must be processed in 45 days.

But as of January, it was taking Missouri an average of 70 days.

https://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article257658623.html

And now? Going on two years since voters expressed their desire to expand Medicaid, save rural hospitals, and provide working families with healthcare?

Welp.

The rising autocrats want to put it back on the ballot to repeal Medicaid Expansion.

https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/missouri-senate-poised-for-yet-another-showdown-over-medicaid-expansion/article_a6038ff2-046d-5514-8df2-61b11d706c8e.html

HJR 117 passed the Missouri House of Representatives and today was voted out of Senate Committee. Next, it will be voted on by the full Senate.

This would change the current program by allowing the Missouri Legislature to decide, year-to-year, whether to and how to fund Medicaid. That means uncertainty about healthcare coverage not only for folks covered by expansion–but everyone.

Moreover, the rising autocrats only want to reimburse providers *IF* an appropriation for that service or type of provider is specifically made for every single fiscal year. Meaning they won’t cover folks from out of state.

And if they aren’t getting reimbursed by the government as Medicaid is set up to do–that cost is going to be passed onto you. Or, as has happened in many impoverished areas of the state, those healthcare providers will close, althogether. Limiting healthcare access for everyone.

And if you are between the ages of 19 and 65 you must spend 80 hours a month meeting “work and community engagement” requirements.

This isn’t a good faith effort meant to help people find work–but a disgusting obstacle meant to keep people from affording healthcare.

Two years later.

53% of Missourians told the autocrats what they wanted–but it was defunded to the point it couldn’t function and now they seek to amend the constitution to remove it.

This is what it looks like to have democracy vanish before your eyes.

So what can you do?

Call your State Senator. Tell them to vote against HJR 117. Even if you think they’re going to vote no–call them anyway. They need to hear that their constituent supports their actions.

A list of every State Senator and their phone number is below.

As a reminder–the autocrats are working to change this ballot initiative process. If they have their way, this will be the last year that a 50% vote amends the Constitution.

It could go up to 67%. And if that happens amending the constitution again will be very difficult.

As we all know, the rising autocrats lie and intentionally mislead their voters when it comes to these ballot initiatives.

For a full explanation, see the below thread.

Meanwhile, in Missouri, the rising autocrats have decided to try and dismantle yet another feature of our democracy–the initiative petition process.

Why?

Too many working people stood up and demanded better jobs, healthcare + pay.

🧵

— Lindsey Simmons (@Lynz_Simmons) April 13, 2022

They’re trying it all out there in laboratories of democracy. And it’s leading to right wing tyranny.

This infighting is getting interesting

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller called on Gov. Greg Abbott to halt his recent policy of additional commercial inspections at the border, calling the measure “political theater” and predicting it will leave grocery store shelves empty within weeks.

In an open letter addressed to the governor Tuesday, Miller said Abbott’s “economy killing action” is exacerbating already strained supply chains and causing massive produce shortages resulting in “untold losses” for Texas businesses.

“Your inspection protocol is not stopping illegal immigration,” Miller said in his letter. “It is stopping food from getting to grocery store shelves and in many cases causing food to rot in trucks — many of which are owned by Texas and other American companies. … The people of Texas deserve better!”

Abbott announced last week that state troopers would conduct inspections of northbound commercial vehicles in addition to those performed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents at ports of entry between Texas and Mexico.

“Officials with the United States Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protections already conduct extensive inspections of commercial vehicles entering the United States at Texas border crossings. Resources should be placed where illegal crossings take place, not to create a crisis where they do not,” Miller wrote.

Miller is one of the first Republicans in Texas to break with Abbott over the new border policy. The measure is part of Abbott’s response to the Biden administration’s decision to end Title 42, a pandemic-era emergency health order that allowed immigration authorities to turn away migrants at the border, even those seeking asylum.

Following the measure, commercial movement along much of Texas’ southern border slowed to a standstill and Mexican truckers waited in mileslong lines at ports of entry.

On Monday, matters went from bad to worse as truckers at the Pharr-Reynosa International Bridge protested the measure by creating a blockade on the north- and southbound lanes on the Mexican side of the crossing. Commercial traffic at the bridge, the busiest trade crossing in the Rio Grande Valley, has come to a complete halt, and trucks carrying avocados, broccoli, peppers, strawberries and tomatoes have been sitting idle.

A similar protest in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, affecting traffic into and out of El Paso was also reported by Border Report on Monday. So far, more than 20,000 commercial trucks have been backed up on the border, Miller said.

Miller is running for a third term as agriculture commissioner, but was seen as a potential challenger to Abbott because of his vocal criticism of the governor’s handling of COVID-19. Miller is also a close ally of former President Donald Trump.

Abbott’s office did not respond to an immediate request for comment on the letter.

In addition to the increased inspections, Abbott announced other measures in response to the end of Title 42, including busing undocumented immigrants to the nation’s capital.

“The President’s failed border policy does not need to be enhanced by a state policy that does little or nothing to impact illegal immigration,” Miller said.

Don’t mistake Miller for a normal person. He is anything but:

A Texas Tribune analysis of “a portion of Miller’s social media history” from late 2014 to late 2016 identified ten instances in which Miller posted fake news—”demonstrably false, misleading or unsupported information”—to Facebook and Twitter. For example, in March 2015, Miller posted on his Facebook a fake photo of President Obama holding a Che Guevara T-shirt and labeled the president “disgraceful.” In 2018, after learning that a photo Miller shared on Facebook – showing Whoopi Goldberg wearing a shirt depicting Donald Trump shooting himself in the head – was doctored, Miller’s campaign spokesman, Todd Smith, said that “We post hundreds of things a week. We put stuff out there. We’re like Fox News. We report, we let people decide.”

In 2017, Miller posted on his campaign’s Facebook page a story about two Texas hunters supposedly attacked while camping by Mexican illegal immigrants. In fact, a subsequent police investigation determined that the hunters had shot each other and falsely blamed it on border-crossers.Presidio County Sheriff Danny Dominguez, who investigated the shooting, suggested that Miller “needs to do his job and stick to that, and I’ll do my job.”

In 2020, Miller shared George Soros conspiracy theories. Miller falsely claimed that Soros was paying protestors involved in protests over the murder of George Floyd.

Having said all that it is telling that he’s basically saying Abbott is killing the Texas economy. A full-fledged member of the cult saying that is yet another sign of trouble in paradise.

And they are grasping at straws

Chris is citing a study from 2004 for an opinion in 2022.

Also, calling schools “hunting grounds for sexual predators” sounds like the #Pizzagate rhetoric in 2016 that inspired a vigilante to walk into Comet Ping Pong Pizza with an AR-15.

Let’s smarten up our conversations. https://t.co/VzQvhOoeKZ

— Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) April 13, 2022

This is a thing, people. It’s been turbocharged by Pizzagate and QAnon and now it’s gone mainstream as you can see by Tom’s horrific story below. Frank Luntz is very late to the game.

Here’s an excerpt Rufo’s story:

In the wake of the controversy surrounding Florida’s Parental Rights in Education legislation, which prohibits public schools from teaching gender identity and sexual orientation in kindergarten through third grade, the national media has sought to paint conservative opposition as hysterical, anti-LGBTQ, and conspiracy-minded. The New York Times, for example, accused conservatives of having a “freakout” about imaginary “grooming” in public schools, and the Washington Post dismissed concerns about sexual abuse by teachers as a “QAnon conspiracy.”

But whatever the editorialists at the Times and the Post might say, the facts reveal that too many American public schools have been hunting grounds for sexual predators. Parents fearful about abuse in schools are not falling victim to a “moral panic” or “QAnon messaging”; they are using their intuition to assess a real danger to their children. The most comprehensive report about sexual abuse in public schools, published by the Department of Education in 2004, estimates—on the basis of a 2000 survey, conducted by the American Association of University Women, of 2,065 students in grades eight through 11—that nearly 10 percent of K-12 students have been victims of sexual misconduct by a public school employee. Assuming that figure is accurate, this would translate into an approximately 4.5 million children nationwide suffering sexual misconduct by public school employees, with an estimated 3 million suffering physical sexual abuse—a number, according to the author of the study, Hofstra University professor Charol Shakeshaft, more than 100 times greater than the physical abuse committed by Catholic priests, who, at the time the report was published, were undergoing a reckoning for the crimes within their ranks.

Despite these numbers, the story vanished. A few media outlets covered the report and interviewed Professor Shakeshaft, but no national outcry followed. Two years later, CBS News published an article asking whether the media had “ignored sex abuse in schools” altogether. With little public pressure to make changes, the public school system has continued to operate with very low standards of enforcement and accountability. Local newspapers continue to report on teachers who are caught sexually abusing students. Some districts simply move abusers from school to school, where they are able to exploit children again. Today, if the Department of Education statistics still obtain, one could estimate that 5 million students are currently being sexually harassed, manipulated, and abused in America’s public school system.

Parents have good reason, therefore, to fear “grooming” in public schools. Indeed, in 2014, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office published a lengthy report warning that public school employees were “grooming” students “with the intent to perpetrate future sexual abuse or misconduct.” In the GAO research, these educators first exhibit a pattern of “grooming behaviors”—for example, lavishing a target with gifts and extra attention—then move to the “sexual misconduct” and “sexual abuse” phases, in which they begin sexually-charged communication and, in many cases, explicit sexual contact with the child. According to the report, only 15 states had adopted policies to regulate “grooming behaviors” by school employees and only 18 states require “awareness and prevention training on sexual abuse or misconduct by school personnel against students.”

The parents’ movement, which has recently mobilized against critical race theory, should not hesitate to add this issue to its list of concerns.

You can pretend that this is some fringe thing but it’s being deployed as a way to make teachers and the Democrats who defend them evil-doers who must be stopped by any means necessary. It’s very dangerous.

The conservative pedo narrative has to come to this. It could yet come to worse.

As if we haven’t had enough train horror for one week.

So. This is horrifying. But hardly unexpected. I cannot verify this 2:23 AM Twitter tale* from “Robbie Pierce,” but it speaks to where conservatives’ vile pedophile narrative is headed:

Well that didn’t take long. We decided to take a trip on Amtrak with the kids for spring break. 9 hours into a pleasant ride, a man was suddenly standing next to me, shouting across me at my 6yo son, “Remember what I told you. They stole you. They’re pedophiles.” 🧵 

I stood between the stranger and my son, whose life has already been so hard, who carries traumas larger than his whole small, fierce frame. I was immovable. “Get away from my family.” [2/10] 

“Family!? That’s not a family! You’re rapists. You steal black & Asian kids.” My son and my 5yo daughter were both now openly crying, petrified. He yelled right at them, unmoved: “These guys aren’t natural. Homosexuals are an abomination. They steal and rape kids.” [3/10] 

It was suddenly no longer an absurd, abstract attack in an online comments section or a distant legislative session. These horrors were being screamed @ my sweet bewildered son, who’s worked so hard to process his grief & control his feelings, who only wants love & safety. [4/10] 

I grabbed the kids and moved them to another car while my ferocious husband went into papa bear mode and shouted the man away from us. Eventually the conductor arrived and the man lost his focus on us. [5/10] 

The kids cried for almost an hour. We got cookies & processed their emotions while the train waited at a stop for the police. They wanted to be away from windows so they wouldn’t see him again. They wanted to practice screaming loud enough for help to come. I want to scream too. 

This man was clearly angry at an unjust world; we have that in common. He’s clearly not receiving the resources he needs. We’ve dealt with this brand of terrifying homophobic stranger before with our son. But “pedophiles” and “rapists” were new in the mix, at least out loud. 7/10 

We all know where that comes from. So thanks to Fox & Murdoch, JK Rowling & Marjorie Taylor Green, to the senators & priests & everyone else who harms kids & thinks it’s politically expedient to project onto gentle families like mine to stir up their lucrative culture war. [8/10] 

I asked my son if he’d seen the man before. He said the man had confronted him when we let him go to the bathroom alone, which he’d been so proud to do @ 1st but too afraid to do again after. Yet *we’re* the groomers. 😣 I’m livid & ashamed that I didn’t notice something was up. 

They’re asleep now. They asked if we’ll see that man again & I said probably not him, but men just like him. But we’ll be stronger each time. And most people aren’t like that guy. I hope this was true. Please help us protect our families, friends. We feel so outnumbered & tired💔 

To be clear, as much as we need people standing up for us in such moments of confrontation, we need allies to shut down this rhetoric everywhere it rears its ugly head anywhere, especially when we’re not there. Don’t vote for them or support their art or avoid confrontation. 

“I want to scream too.”

Robbie follows up to say the verbal assailant was arrested after refusing to leave the train. (Again, no confirmation.)

Looking at you, Josh, Ted, Tom, Marsha, Marjorie, Lindsey. Who have I forgtotten?

Good God, these people: Pastor Greg Locke tells churchgoers to use 2nd Amendment against ‘propaganda’ and ‘Democrat games’

Because only Hutus would use machetes, you mean?

*BuzzFeed News confirms this evening.

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If it’s genocide, is it Predator time?

President Biden used genocide for the first time Tuesday to describe the actions of Vladimir Putin’s invaders in Ukraine. He was in the middle of talking about gas prices in Iowa (NPR):

“Your family budget, your ability to fill up your tank, none of it should hinge on whether a dictator declares war and commits genocide a half a world away,” Biden said.

Asked later what made him use the word “genocide,” Biden replied, “Yes, I called it genocide. It has become clearer and clearer that Putin is just trying to wipe out the idea of even being — being able to be Ukrainian. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked Biden in a tweet, thanked him for weapons the U.S. has supplied, and asked for heavier weapons still.

True words of a true leader @POTUS. Calling things by their names is essential to stand up to evil. We are grateful for US assistance provided so far and we urgently need more heavy weapons to prevent further Russian atrocities.

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) April 12, 2022

About those heavy weapons. It is clear that fighter jets and a no-fly zone are still a bridge too far for NATO allies. But as the Pentagon broadens its scope of supply, most anything else is on its way, including “howitzer cannons, coastal defense drones and protective suits to safeguard personnel in the event of a chemical, biological or nuclear attack,” reports the Washington Post. The list of what might ship in the next $750 million aid package is not finalized:

Ukrainian defense minister Oleksii Reznikov spoke with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Tuesday, Kirby told reporters during a news briefing at the Pentagon. The discussion was part of a “constant dialogue and conversation” between the two officials and focused in part on the weapons and other assistance being provided to Ukraine. Additional details were not disclosed, but Reznikov wrote on Twitter earlier this week that Ukraine is seeking additional unmanned aircraft, air-defense systems, artillery, armored vehicles, combat aircraft and anti-ship missiles.

Mariupol has been defending itself for 47 days. Situation is difficult, but 🇺🇦 heroes-marines,intelligence officers,police,border guard,national guard,Azov,our brave people are destroying rus occupiers every day
We will win but we need more weapons! #ArmUkraineNow #SaveMariupol pic.twitter.com/NRLg8zDu3k

— Oleksii Reznikov (@oleksiireznikov) April 11, 2022

Ukraine’s U.S. ambassador, Oksana Markarova, met with General Atomics, maker of Reaper and Predator drones, according to a company spokesman.* But that’s likely upbeat, public relations, says Barry Summers, a friend who follows efforts by General Atomics to introduce its surveillance drones into U.S. commercial airspace. General Atomics lost a $1 billion deal with Australia just weeks ago.

Baby diapers or Stingers?

The U.S. prefers smaller, harder-to-target arms shipments. Robert G. Bell, a NATO official at Georgia Tech University, says Russians would need a network of spies to find and destroy them in transit. For their part, Russian officials have declared arms convoys in Ukraine “legitimate targets,” the Associated Press reports:

“It’s not as easy to stop this assistance flow as it might seem,” said Stephen Biddle, a professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University. “Things like ammunition and shoulder-fired missiles can be transported in trucks that look just like any other commercial truck. And the trucks carrying the munitions the Russians want to interdict are just a small part of a much larger flow of goods and commerce moving around in Poland and Ukraine and across the border.

“So the Russians have to find the needle in this very big haystack to destroy the weapons and ammo they’re after and not waste scarce munitions on trucks full of printer paper or baby diapers or who knows what.”

Amazing how little fuss there is about spending billions in U.S. tax dollars on armaments to defend some other country’s freedom when conservatives balk at spending them to support their own countrymen. Nary a peep from conservatives about the moral hazard of Ukraine not pulling itself up by its own bootstraps. Why is that?

The real moral hazard is moral hazardism.

* Flying GA drones from a video monitor is not like piloting fighter aircraft. Transfer to Ukraine would require lengthy specialized training, trained ground crews, and remote piloting facilities. If Gray Eagles suddenly appeared in Ukraine, who knows who would be remotely piloting them and from what country(s)?

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For The Win, 4th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free, countywide get-out-the-vote planning guide for county committees at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.

It’s all of a piece

Marcy Wheeler notes that the 2016 Russian interference has had a serious effect on our politics, going all the way up to January 6th:

Last May, I observed that QAnon had far more evident success in getting its adherents in places to obstruct the vote certification on January 6, 2021 than the organized militias did.

QAnon managed to get far more of their adherents to the Senate floor than either the Proud Boys (Joe Biggs and Arthur Jackman showed up after getting in with the help of people inside) or the Oath Keepers (Kelly Meggs and Joshua James showed up too late). QAnon held a prayer on the dais while the militias were still breaching doors.

While he didn’t make it to the Senate floor, that’s true, in part, because of the fervor with which QAnoner Doug Jensen sprinted up the stairs after Officer Eugene Goodman (though Jensen’s fervor was also one of the things that Goodman exploited to buy time to evacuate the Senate).

According to an FBI interview Jensen did just days after the insurrection (the transcript was released as part of a suppression motion that is unlikely to work), that was his stated intent.

He wanted QAnon to get credit for breaching the Capitol.

I wanted Q to get the attention.

Q. I see.

A. And that was my main intention basically —

Q. Um-hum.

A. — was to use my shirt. I basically intended on being the poster boy, and it really worked out.

The transcript is a tough read. It reveals (as the court filings associated with many of the January 6 defendants do) the urgency with which the US needs to address mental health treatment. It reveals how Trump’s propagandists won the allegiance of a blue collar union member who had previously voted Democratic.

But most vividly, it reveals how Jensen got radicalized into QAnon. And that started — as he repeatedly describes — from the files stolen from John Podesta released by WikiLeaks in advance of the 2016 election. He planned to vote for Hillary (!!!) until he came to believe the misrepresentations he read (pushed, in significant part, by accused Proud Boy leader Joe Biggs) of the Podesta files. When the flow of Podesta files ended, Jensen was left with a void, which Q drops filled shortly thereafter. After that, Jensen came to believe Trump’s lies that he had been shafted by the Deep State, by some guy (Peter Strzok) and his girlfriend whose name he couldn’t remember. Perhaps as a result, Jensen came to believe of Putin that, “this guy don’t seem so bad, you know.”

Also, Q said — Q has said things, okay, so like — and anonymous, okay. I follow that, Mayjan (ph.) and all that stuff, you know, because basically I was not into politics until the Wiki leaks dropped, and then when I realized about Haiti, and the Clinton Foundation, and the kidnappings all through the Clinton Foundation, and then I learned about Epstein Island and then I learned Mike Pence owns an island, right — or not Mike Pence, Joe Biden owns an island next door, and then I find that Hunter Biden and Bris Moldings (ph.) and all that, I knew about that a year or two ago.

[snip]

It all started with all the crap I found out about Hillary Clinton, John Podesta, you know, all of that stuff, and then so right before I was going to vote for Hillary, I was like, whoa, we’ve got to vote Trump in because we can’t have Hillary. And then I start finding things like we were supposed to be dead by now, and if Hillary would have won, we were going to be attacked by North Korea or Iran. We were going to go to war, and we would most likely — half of us wouldn’t be here right now if Trump wouldn’t have won that election is what I got from it.

[snip]

You guys have an FBI thing that you released all that Ben Swan who was on ABC years ago and he tried to expose pizza gate and he got fired that night from ABC, and he works for RT now.

[snip]

I am for America, and I feel like we are being taken over by communist China, you know, and the whole Russian collusion was fake. I don’t know what the deal with Russia is, but I don’t know, Vladimir Putin, he seems to be like a decent person, but I could be crazy, you know. But I think we were taught from a young age to hate Russia and all of this stuff. I’ve researched on Vladimir Putin. I was like this guy don’t seem so bad, you know, but I don’t know, you know.

[snip]

A. And all this information, and Trump’s taking down all these people, you know? And — well, firing them or whatever, you know? Like Brennan, Clapper, you know, that guy that I hate with his girlfriend, I can’t remember their names. Those texting back and forth. But they were all like top, you know, members, they’re high up and stuff.

Q. Yeah.

A. And you saw that they were out to destroy Trump, and they were members of our, you know, Central Intelligence or our FBI, you know?

[snip]

I did not preplan nothing. I am not a leader. I am just a hardcore patriot. I am a diehard — I believe all this stuff to be true, and I feel like Trump’s just got the absolute shaft from everything around, our own government, the media.

[snip]

So I voted both terms for Obama, and during the presidency, I thought he was a great president. The health thing. The health thing didn’t benefit me and my family because I had union health insurance. So I got no benefits from it, but I was happy that all those people got insurance, you know? And so I was happy with him. And then I was going to vote for Hillary because I’ve been a democrat my whole life.

Q. Yeah.

A. And then the WikiLeaks thing happened and I had to start questioning where I was getting my info from. And that’s when I realized, you know, holy cow, I can’t vote for this woman. And then it became — like I started telling everybody I know about WikiLeaks and everything else back then. And then that died off when Trump won. And then I didn’t really have anything. I was happy Trump won, you know? And then all of a sudden Q drops started. And it was just — that’s all I did —

Q. Yeah.

A. — was follow those Q drops. [my emphasis]

This is a narrative of how an information operation started by Russia six years ago continues to poison American politics, up to and including persuading Americans to affiliate with the architect of that information operation.

After that radicalization process — Jensen described to the FBI — he readily responded to the propagandists trying to help Trump steal an election: Lin Wood, Sidney Powell, and Rudy Giuliani, as well as the December 19, 2020 Trump tweet that arose out of their machinations. And so he drove all night from Iowa to answer Trump’s call.

There’s more at the link. It’s a big, big mistake to think that Russia 2016 stuff didn’t matter. It did.

And CNN is falling down on the job

Fox News/Business mentions since Monday morning:

Hunter Biden: 68
Jared Kushner: 0

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 12, 2022

CNN mentions since Monday morning

Hunter Biden: 1
Jared Kushner: 2

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 12, 2022

MSNBC mentions since Monday morning

Hunter Biden: 3
Jared Kushner: 23

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 12, 2022

Here’s the thing: Hunter Biden traded on his father’s name as many sons of privilege do. It’s not a good thing but there is no evidence of any kind of quid pro quo while Biden was in or out of office. The laptop information is of extremely dubious provenance and the fact that itflowed through the hands of Rudy Giuliani should be enough to make any respectable journalist think twice.

On the other hand, while working as a senior adviser with a portfolio of middle east affairs (among others) Jared Kushner secured a huge investment from Qatar to rescue his white elephant of a real estate deal at 666 Fifth Avenue. If you want to see a shocking timeline of a very real corrupt quid pro quo, read all about it here. Then there is the news this week of a $2 billion payoff from Saudi Arabia just months after he was out of the White House.

There is no comparison. More importantly, what Jared did affected our national security and economy (as did this) and we are paying the price for it now.

Fox is pushing propaganda and CNN is ignoring an important story. That’s just the reality.