I don’t know…but I do know that this argument will drive Trump crazy
Lol!!!
"what digby sez..."
Month: October 2022
I’m in beautiful downtown Asheville North Carolina. Mrs. Spocko & I had a vegan pizza & a great conversation with fellow Hullabaloo blogger Tom Sullivan & his wife.
We talked about what was happening & I described the various actions by activists I was following. My big focus now is on current harm being done by the right & what can be done. I had lot of pent up talking and some “You know what you should do… ‘ thoughts. I said that I found this clip from Ben Collins very interesting.
Ben starts with how bad information about the assassination attempt on Nancy Pelosi got distorted by the right and then a false story got spread from the top rapidly.
His comment starts with “If we don’t cut this out right now, * instantly my inner Sam Seder popped up.
PAUSE IT! Who is we? What does cut this out right now mean?”
When I talk to people about threats and intimidation online, via email, social media or RW media I have suggestions on what to do. Some are accepted, “Make them pay a financial price. Use the market against them. Convince advertisers to stop associatiomg their brand with this threatening violent rhetoric.”
But other suggestions to stop harm are met with lots of “Yes but…” and “If you try to do that, then…” what I want to do is get people to acknowledge the reality that harm is caused and that we need to do something about it.
I suggest people read the first four pages of this piece from The Center For Countering Digital Hate.
One of the things that has to be made clear as said on pages 4-5, self regulation is no regulation. The social media companies know harm is happening & choose to ignore for profit. They need to be regulated. (I can hear the “Yes, but…” from here in Asheville! But read the rest of the article first.)
As we watch Musk’s sophomoric view of ‘free speech’ lead to new harm, people will keep asking “what can be done? ” based on their Disinformation Dozen research & follow up report the answer that will be given is, “Nothing, people are just going to have to keep being harmed.”People in the media can see disinfo, racism, & antisemitism lead to harm and that something needs to be done. BUT THEY feel they can’t change things.
They aren’t activists. We are.
Since for the tech companies the harm they amplify leads to more profit, they aren’t going to change things. . But we CAN.
Change the equation, change the world.This is a good message, especially for the swing states in the rust belt and upper midwest — including Ohio. In fact, I think it’s what Tim Ryan’s running on and the polling has him doing far better than anyone expected, possibly even pulling out an upset.
It isn’t the Democrats
Ron Brownstein:
All the experts on political violence will say that when you have a tendency toward political violence in a political movement the key to stopping it is a clear and unequivocal statement from the leaders of that political group that violence is unacceptable. And we have seen exactly the opposite really now for years.Really since Trump came down the escalator in 2015. Just in the last few days we’ve seen all sorts of figures on the right — conservative editors at Axios, conservative columnists, Elon Musk, try to obscure the connection between this attacker and his marinating in far right conspiracies. We have seen Republicans leaders and, essentially, the entire Fox lineup say that the problem is crime in San Francisco, not politically inspired violence.
The University of Chicago estimates are that there are 13 million Trump supporters who say both that the election was stolen and that violence is justified to restore him to power. This is not an insignificant potential threat. Obviously not all those people are going to act upon it, but without a much stronger message than we have gotten, and by the way continuing the pattern from the last couple of years of some Republicans trying to normalize and minimize the January 6th attack, this clearly is the future that we are headed for. there’s not reason to think this will stop or diminish without a much clearer statement from leaders of the Republican party and, if anything, we are getting as good as a wink and a nod and a kind of condoning.
Alice Stewart responds:
It happens on both sides and I think it’s really important for us to remember that you look at Chuck Schumer in March of this year when there were hints of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade, he said that it would unleash a whirlwind and he would hate to see what would happen at that point and who knows what would hit them. Three months later a man was arrested outside of Justice Kavanaugh’s home and was arrested for trying to assassinate a Supreme Court justice. So it’s important to remember that this happens on both sides of the aisle and it’s incumbent on Republicans and Democrats to lower the temperature.
Yeah, well aside from the fact that the Republicans have an entire highly funded billion dollar disinformation industry including their own violence-inciting TV and social media networks, and the fact that the guy who showed up in Kavanaugh’s neighborhood called the police on himself before he got near Kavanaugh’s house, this is a perfect comparison. But yeah, Chuck Schumer’s incitement was no doubt the real motivation.
CNN allowing this false equivalency on their air by having partisan hacks like her on with reporters, experts and analysts who actually know what they’re talking about. It’s grotesque. Luckily Victor Caldwell did point out that it’s the Republicans who a re pushing these conspiracy theories and lies that are calling these nut to violence.
Meanwhile, I thought you might like to see how a decent political leader reacts to something as awful as the attack on Paul Pelosi. Here’s Nancy Pelosi after the attack on Steve Scalise:
We are called for a purpose to this body. It’s a great thing. And we know what it means to each of us to serve and we recognize that in others.
And we also recognize that you have your constituents, we have ours. And we respect you and your constituents who sent you here – all worthy of respect.
But we do have our differences. And so I pray, my prayer is that we can resolve our differences in a way that furthers the preamble to the constitution, takes us closer to e pluribus unum.
Today, again, it’s in the family. It’s an injury in the family. For the staff and for our colleague and for his leadership.
As I mentioned a minute ago, in the fuller thing, sports are a wonderful thing in our country. Probably one of the most unifying – I think the arts, we like to say music or plays or whatever. But sports really bring us together in our cities. You see people have the biggest differences of opinion on politics and yet when their team is on the field, people come together. People come together.
When this team was on the field practicing, with such comradery and such brotherhood – I don’t know if you have any sisters on your team – we have two on our team.
For this person to take this action was so cowardly, so cowardly, we all learn more about motivation and the rest of that, but it seems particularly sad, although any violent death, of course, is sad, but particularly sad that at a time when people want us to come together, and we were prepared to come together tomorrow night, that this assault would be made.
We cannot let that be a victory for the assailant or anyone who would think that way. So tomorrow we’ll go out on the field, we’ll root for our team, and want everyone to do his or her very best, and we will use this occasion as one that brings us together and not separates us further.
With that, again, I want to thank the Speaker for bringing us together and again with endless gratitude to our Capitol Police and particular today to Krystal Griner, David Bailey. But never out of our prayers, Detective John Gibson and Officer Jacob Chestnut. Thank you for the opportunity to share thoughts with you on this sad day.
Steve [Scalise] and others, you are deeply in our prayers. We count the minutes until you return. Please convey that to him, Mr. Speaker. Thank you all.
Bernie Sanders:
This is an important piece with some amazing quotes:
One exchange:
Mark Finchem on September 22, 2022: We have, for example, in Yuma County ballot harvesting and votes. I mean, we’ve got people who were indicted for the very thing that we are talking about right now who pled guilty. And frankly, those votes altered the outcome of Yuma County.
Mark Finchem: Yuma County we’ve actually had indictments and people that have pled guilty to ballot trafficking.
Scott Pelley: How many ballots were involved?
Mark Finchem: I don’t know off the top of my head.
Scott Pelley: It’s four.
Mark Finchem: ‘Kay. Whether it’s four or 4,000, doesn’t matter.
Scott Pelley: It wasn’t the presidential election; it was a primary.
Mark Finchem: Doesn’t matter. It’s a defect in the system.
A miniscule defect. Two women in Yuma County pleaded guilty to collecting four ballots and dropping them in a ballot box. It’s against state law to deposit a ballot that isn’t yours or your family’s.
Scott Pelley: It’s four ballots in a primary.
Mark Finchem: In that instance. In that instance.
Scott Pelley: You have a bigger one?
Mark Finchem: Well, we’ve got information that’s been turned over to the attorney general’s office and you say that there was nothing there. OK. Then I’m gonna have to live with that. But do I know for a fact that there were other ballot trafficking operations around the country and some in Arizona? Yeah, I do.
Scott Pelley: Name one.
Mark Finchem: Yuma County, 25,000 ballots.
Scott Pelley: What happened?
Mark Finchem: Same fingerprints on those ballots for five individuals. So where’d that go? Where’s that evidence? I know it’s been turned over to the attorney general’s office. I know that the FBI field office actually did the prints.
That’s false according to the FBI. Yuma County told us that no one in law enforcement fingerprinted 25,000 ballots. Finchem often says that evidence is with Attorney General Brnovich, implying that something big is coming.
Mark Finchem: In fact, he has a mountain of evidence that’s sitting in his office.
But Brnovich told us his investigation is essentially over.
Mark Brnovich: We, as prosecutors, deal in facts and evidence. And I’m not like the clowns that throw stuff against the wall and see what sticks.
Scott Pelley: Clowns?
Mark Brnovich: Clowns. Did I say that? Yes, I think that there are a lot of clowns out there that– they saw what they wanted to see. What is that Simon and Garfunkel line that– “A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest”? There’s a lotta that going on.
It’s going on in the top Arizona races where the Republican for governor is a denier.
Kari Lake on June 27, 2022: We had a fraudulent election, a corrupt election, and we have an illegitimate president sitting in the White House.
Mark Brnovich: It’s like a giant grift in some ways.
Scott Pelley: A grift, a swindle, is what you’re saying?
Mark Brnovich: Yes.
Scott Pelley: All of these accusations, the case in Yuma—scaremongering. The Brian Watson email—scaremongering. You called Arizona the epicenter of fraud, it’s scaremongering. It’s not the fraud that is breaking people’s faith in our elections, it’s people like you.
Mark Finchem: So you say. But when we look at the violations of state statute, this is the epicenter of the problem.
Nationwide, 190 election deniers are running for the U.S. House and 14 for the U.S. Senate, according to the Brookings Institution. Mark Brnovich lost his primary to a denier and so did Rusty Bowers, which may come as a relief.
Post-election, Trump supporters and conspiracy spinners laid siege to Bowers’ home up to three times a week. He had to fend them off—a man with a pistol—demonstrators in their own armored car.
And at the state capitol, on January 6, 2021, they came with rifles and a guillotine. In Arizona, when belief in the vote eroded, this is what filled the void.
Watch the whole thing if you have the chance.
I totally accept that there would likely always be a fair number of the population that would believe anything coming from their team. But this guy Finchem and Kari Lake are leading in the polls. A majority of Arizona either believe the lies or simply don’t care about what these people are trying to do. It’s disturbing.
Drug dealers are giving away their product for Halloween for some reason
*sigh*
And it isn’t the left
We’ve heard a lot about “gaslighting” over the past few years, and often the term doesn’t really apply to whatever phenomenon is being discussed. But this past weekend we saw a perfect example, with Republicans and their media allies working overtime to convince Americans that political violence is found on “both sides” of the partisan divide. In the final week of a hard-fought midterm campaign, one might wish be generous and excuse them for bending the truth or being hyperbolic. But this wasn’t an ordinary weekend.
In the wee hours of Friday morning, a man wielding a hammer broke into the San Francisco home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and confronted her 82-year-old husband, Paul, repeatedly asking, “Where’s Nancy?” and threatening to tie up Paul Pelosi and wait for the speaker to return home. (She was thousands of miles away in Washington.) Pelosi covertly alerted police and when they arrived, the assailant hit Pelosi in the head with the hammer, fracturing his skull and seriously injuring his arm and hand.
It’s obvious to all rational people that the assailant intended to abduct, injure or kill Nancy Pelosi, based on those facts alone. (CNN reported on Sunday night that the attacker was carrying zip ties in a plastic bag.) It’s also reasonable to suspect the man had a political motive, since he was echoing the chants that rang through the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as Trump’s rampaging headed for Pelosi’s office. It also turns out, unsurprisingly, that the alleged attacker, 42-year-old man David DePape, also left a long social media trail of unhinged right-wing conspiracy theories, racist and antisemitic rants, incel complaints, QAnon lunacy and more. (CBS News reported Monday morning that DePape had a list of other possible targets. We don’t know who else was on it.)
This story is still unfolding and we certainly don’t know all the facts yet. But it’s pretty clear that yet another right-wing kook committed calculated political violence, and this time the target’s spouse took the hit. Imagine how people on the right’s hit list must have felt when they heard about this. Their families are in danger.
Honestly, that’s nothing new. Last August, Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., shared a chilling recording on Twitter:
As it happens, on Friday a different man pleaded guilty to threatening to kill Swalwell. Apparently, he called the congressman’s office and told him he had an AR-15 and was coming after him. Last Wednesday, three men were found guilty for their involvement in the plot to kidnap against Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat who has been a particular target of right-wing rage.
All of that happened in the span of just three days, and that’s the tip of the iceberg. The country is awash in right-wing violence, from overt threats and assaults against Democratic lawmakers to threats and intimidation directed against election workers and voters themselves.
It’s almost miraculous that something hasn’t happened to Nancy Pelosi before now. She has been the most demonized political figure in America for many years, with the possible exception of Hillary Clinton, her fellow target of right-wing misogyny. Every election cycle, but particularly during the midterms, those who hate her trot out depraved attacks that will turn your stomach. The memes are the stuff of nightmares.
According to the Capitol Police, threats against Pelosi have proliferated in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack. One vicious creep was sentenced to a year and half in jail earlier this year for threatening to behead both Pelosi and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.
Max Boot at the Washington Post elaborates:
The New America think tank found last year that, since Sept. 11, 2001, far-right terrorists had killed 122 people in the United States, compared with only one killed by far-leftists. A study from the Center for Strategic and International Studies last year found that, since 2015, right-wing extremists had been involved in 267 plots or attacks, compared with 66 for left-wing extremists. A Washington Post-University of Maryland survey released in January found that 40 percent of Republicans said violence against the government can be justified, compared with only 23 percent of Democrats.
But let’s not put the blame only on the delusional malcontents who are deep down the MAGA rabbit hole. How do we explain the cowardly behavior of the Republican leadership? Yes, we expect the fever swamp avatars to push disinformation. (Apparently the new boss of Twitter will also do that, as he did on Sunday.) We can certainly expect the prime-time stars of Fox News to have a fully-formed alternate-universe theory of the Pelosi assault. (The seeds are already planted.) But once upon a time you might have expected more from actual elected officials, if only because they might feel some self-interested empathy for their fellow politicians: There but for the grace of God…
But Republicans believe they don’t have to worry about this kind of stuff. They know the current spate of violence isn’t aimed at them, don’t they? (It’s like Donald Trump telling the Secret Service at the Jan. 6 rally to let armed people in: “They’re not here to hurt me.”) The response of prominent Republicans has been nothing short of stunning. Oh, sure: Mitch McConnell said the attack was “disgusting” and Kevin McCarthy said that “violence or threat of violence has no place in our society.” And quite a few others sent the usual pro forma thoughts and prayers. But that’s about it.
Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel, last seen mocking John Fetterman, the Democratic Senate nominee in Pennsylvania, for his stroke-related disability, has protested that it’s deeply unfair to suggest that Republicans’ irresponsible rhetoric is somehow to blame. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who may yearn to be Trump’s 2024 running mate, came right out of the gate with a crude campaign message, saying, “There’s no room for violence anywhere, but we’re going to send her back to be with him in California. That’s what we’re gonna go do.” Another member of the so-called Team Normal weighed in with this fatuous false equivalency:
No, street protests — even if they include looting and property damage — are not equivalent to violent assaults on lawmakers and their families. They are very different forms of political behavior. The first represents a long-standing and legal form of political expression, which is punishable by law if and when it veers into violence. Political assassination is another order of magnitude altogether, aimed at disrupting political order through lethal and unpredictable acts of violence. In historical terms it’s certainly not confined to the right, but in recent years in America, only the right has been reaping political profits from it. We are fortunate that so far no prominent political figure has literally been killed, but the intimidation factor is having an effect all over the political system.
The Republican base is highly motivated by the Big Lie and its ongoing hatred for what they perceive as the forces that are destroying American culture — immigrants, Black people, “cosmopolitan” city dwellers (often meaning Jewish people), feminists, liberals (aka “communists”), LGBTQ people and so on. The proliferation of crazy conspiracy theories feeds this hate and leads to the kind of violent attack that severely injured Paul Pelosi on Friday, as well as the ongoing threats against Democrats and civil servants. Republican officials, by and large, cannot quite bring themselves to condemn this. If anything, they wink and nod and suggest that it’s all part of the game: Democrats deserve this at least a little, they are prepared to win by any means necessary and, anyway, both sides do it too. No, not really. In fact, not at all. And on the vanishingly rare occasions when that may happen. Democrats step up and strongly condemn any such actions.
To this point, Donald Trump has not said one word, which is probably for the best. I shudder to think what he would say. His eldest son reposted an utterly vile Instagram meme, and you just know Dad is itching to top that.
Preacher not buying what the GA GOP is selling
Something to put a scare into the GOP this Halloween.
“[Republicans] thought that we were so slow, that we were so stupid, that we would elect the lowest caricature of a sterotypical, broken black man …”
Pastor Jamal Bryant on fire.
Bryant wasn’t the only one on fire over the weekend. Have a look at Margaret Brennan of “Face the Nation.”
Bad faith is the only kind they have left
Once upon a time, Republicans sought only to suppress the vote of black and brown people. From Operation Eagle Eye forward, they flogged the notion that those people were cheating. In numbers. Undetected.
See: Nice, decent white people wake up on Election Day, shower, dress, eat breakfast, then go the polls to do their patriotic duty by casting their votes. OTHERS — Poors numbering in the invisible millions — are not like US. They go instead to commit felonies punishable by five years in prison and a $10,000 fine for each offense just to add a single extra vote to their team’s total.
Republicans tried changing the voting rules to make it harder to vote. They shortchanged voting equipment in minority neighborhoods to lengthen voting lines. They promoted the notion that dead people were voting in droves. They passed photo ID laws knowing the people least likely to have proper credentials were not Republican voters. When they lost nonpartisan judicial races here in North Carolina, they changed them to partisan races. Whatever works. And when that stops working, they’ll try something else.
Then, Republicans tried bypassing voters to skew election outcomes. They manipulated representation in Congress and in state legislatures by gerrymandering. Then, they sought to undercount minority voters in congressional districts by attempting to rig the census and by not counting noncitizens at all.
Finally, MAGA Republicans gave up on democracy altogether except as window dressing. Heads, they win. Tails, you lose. No proof of election funny business required. It’s argument by unsupported assertions, by debunked ones, and by rumor, innuendo, urban legend and QAnon conpiracy. The only legitimate elections are those Republicans win. If they lose, they were cheated. By definition. Lack of faith in American institutions is now a cornerstone of faith among those cloaking themselves as true believers. Bad faith is the only kind they have left.
Election denial is “a giant grift,” Arizona’s Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich tells “60 Minutes.” All perpetrated by “clowns that throw stuff against the wall and see what sticks.” In essence, bullshit.
“Nationwide, 190 election deniers are running for the U.S. House and 14 for the U.S. Senate, according to the Brookings Institution,” Scott Pelley reports.
Now it’s gone mainstream
Those of you who read this blog know where you heard it first. But here’s the Daily Beast getting it too:
After almost two years of being called “election deniers” for aiding and abetting Donald Trump’s failed coup attempt, supporting his “Big Lie” that the 2020 election was stolen, and chiseling away at the democratic process by insinuating that any election they lose is automatically suspect—Republicans have finally come up with a snappy comeback.
It’s essentially the juvenile clapback, “I know you are, but what am I”—best known as Pee Wee Herman’s 1980s-era go-to retort.
Yep:
Sen. Ted Cruz brought it to the mainstream this week during an appearance on The View, when he read some quotes from Hillary Clinton and other Democrats calling their past election defeats illegitimate. The hosts took the bait, replying that at least Dems didn’t set out to murder the Republican vice president and sack the Capitol at the behest of the President of the United States.
That, predictably, led to a prepared Cruz riposte about “antifa riots,” and the whole segment quickly devolved into a screaming shitshow.
A viral clip from the Republican National Committee showing “10 Minutes of Democrats Denying Election Results” also continues to be widely shared by the right-wing Pee Wee Hermans of Twitter.
The montage mostly consists of Clinton and others talking about Russian interference in the 2016 election, which they said makes Trump an “illegitimate president.” There’s also a smattering of Dems talking about possible vote-counting malfeasances in Ohio in 2004. Appearing near the end are some even dustier clips of liberals saying that George W. Bush in 2000 was “appointed” by the Supreme Court, rather than “elected.”
And of course, there’s Stacey Abrams’ repeated claims that her defeat to Brian Kemp in the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election was illegitimate. She has long alleged that Kemp, in his then role as secretary of state, suppressed the vote by wrongly canceling over a million voter registrations and closing hundreds of polling sites during his tenure in office. But as USA Today’s fact checker noted, “those actions can be explained as routine under state and federal law, and an expert explained there’s not much empirical evidence supporting the assertion that Kemp either suppressed the vote or ‘stole’ the election from Abrams.”
Abrams never officially conceded her defeat, which Republicans have fairly used as evidence that she’s an “election denier.”
Ok, so what?
Is the point that Abrams and Clinton are sour grapes losers, therefore Trump’s coup attempt, ongoing Republican efforts across the country to seize control of election processes, and widespread intimidation efforts—all stemming from a demonstrably false theory that the 2020 election was stolen in a multi-state conspiracy (that supposedly included Republican elected officials)—are fair play?
Here’s the thing. Al Gore conceded the 2000 election after the Supreme Court halted the Florida recount. John Kerry conceded the 2004 election the very next day, and objections to the certification of Bush’s reelection were quickly batted down by Democratic leadership. And Clinton, for all her subsequent “illegitimate president” talk, also conceded the next day.
None of them pushed a lie—and this is not debatable, it is a lie—that makes every U.S. election for the foreseeable future a potential civil war flashpoint. Trump will never concede, and directed a violent mob toward the U.S. Capitol to take over Congress and overturn our election. Spot the difference?
Here’s a very small sample of things we know for a fact, in large part thanks to the Jan. 6 Committee hearings (which mostly featured testimony from Trump administration officials, MAGA diehards, and police officers).
“Is the point that Abrams and Clinton are sour grapes losers, therefore Trump’s coup attempt [and] ongoing Republican efforts across the country to seize control of election processes…are fair play?”
There was coordination in the high echelons of Trump’s inner circle with the neo-fascist groups who tried to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory. Trump nakedly abused his power by leaning on local officials after the election to “find votes” for him to win—a request that, under any other presidency, would have been, and should have been, treated as an impeachable offense. And numerous people in his administration—from his loyal attack dog attorney general, Bill Barr, to his own daughter, Ivanka—tried to make the president listen to reason, face the unimpeachable facts, and accept that he lost a thoroughly vetted, free, and fair election.
Trump, a loser of the sorest kind, would do no such thing. And now he has inspired a movement hellbent on salting the earth.
It’s perfectly in keeping with the essentially juvenile nature of Trumpism. They are suffering from a mass case of arrested development. Just watch a Trump rally if you don’t believe me.