Month: December 2022

Here’s a fun look at some delicious MAGA on MAGA combat:

Sean Hannity, once the most important mouthpiece for Donald Trump, seems to be increasingly on the MAGAworld outs. And a new revelation that Hannity doesn’t buy the Big Lie isn’t helping.

In a just-released deposition surrounding Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit, the Fox News star said he’d never believed—not “for one second”—baseless election fraud claims stemming from the 2020 election. That stance, directly at odds with many of his primetime segments and the beliefs of many of his closest allies, has put Hannity in an awkward position.

Among the MAGA all-stars currently upset with Hannity are MyPillow maven Mike Lindell, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, far-right radio host Stew Peters, and even reportedly Trump himself.

[…]

“Sean Hannity is disgusting,” Lindell told The Daily Beast. “He’s a terrible journalist that does not do his job or his diligence” when it comes to “election crime.”

“He doesn’t seem to have any concern over any election problems in the country, and it’s disgusting,” he added.

Asked if he’s expressed such frustration to Hannity, Lindell said he’d “of course” told him, but the right-wing pillow superstar claimed the Fox News host “never got back to me.”

Neither Hannity nor Fox News representatives returned multiple Daily Beast requests for comment.

Other fervent Trump backers, including former Trump administration official Steve Bannon and far-right commentator Jack Posobiec, have also taken jabs at Hannity over the last week.

Bannon wrote that Hannity should face “accountability” for “TERRIBLE advice” to Trump, while Posobiec has taken a series of jabs at the Fox News host, including posting a picture of Hannity alongside CNN host Don Lemon and Michael Avenatti.

Trump superfan Bill Mitchell responded to Hannity’s deposition remarks by writing, “And just like that, Hannity ends his career.”

Hannity’s also been called a “fraud” by conservative commentators. Far-right radio host Stew Peters has labeled the Fox News host a “clown” following his voter fraud boomerang. “He regularly washes and dries Reince Priebus and Sean Spicer’s jock straps,” Peters told The Daily Beast.

Conservative media has also now gone after Hannity over his election fraud comments, suggesting Hannity is part of a “fake patriot grift.”

Others on Telegram, such as far-right “Stop the Steal” activist Ali Alexander, have found an alternative, and oddly specific line of attack—that Hannity allegedly wears a “CIA” lapel pin on his primetime show.

(While it’s true that Hannity wears an assortment of pins, it’s usually unclear what the pins are exactly advocating, though that hasn’t stopped right-wingers, such as failed congressional candidate Kathy Barnette, from claiming they are “FBI” pins.)

And then there’s the Big Kahuna:

Still, Hannity could probably dismiss the dissatisfaction of most of the Island of MAGA Misfit Toys if it weren’t for one problem: According to two sources close to Trump, the former president himself is apparently “mad” at Hannity.

“In terms of direct contact with Sean, I think it’s been a while,” a Trump source said.

While the tension between Trump and Hannity pre-dates this latest revelation, Hannity disclosing that he has never believed that Trump actually won the 2020 election is sure to further complicate their relationship.

“Hannity was his lapdog for years, but just like everyone else who’s been Trump’s bitch at one point or another, the second Trump finds a reason to throw them in the garbage, he takes it,” a Trump adviser told The Daily Beast.

According to three Trumpworld sources, Trump is still upset with Hannity because the Fox News host advocated for Trump to endorse Pennsylvania Senate candidate Mehmet Oz. After Oz fell on his face, Hannity found himself on the outs of Trump’s inner circle.

“A lot of the heartburn stems from the Pennsylvania senate race,” a source close to Trump said.

Instead of placing responsibility on his wife, Melania Trump, who also reportedly advocated for endorsing Oz—or looking inward at his own political acumen—the former president has apparently just decided it’s all Hannity’s fault.

“Hannity gets the blame for Oz because it’s more convenient than blaming Melania, and now he’s been shown to be ‘disloyal’ under oath, so it’s Hannity’s turn to get tossed overboard,” the same Trump adviser said.

While Hannity has found the ire of Trump—along with his most loyal supporters—a fellow Fox News host has played his cards more carefully.

According to a Trump source, Tucker Carlson “isn’t openly hostile to Trump, but anyone who’s paying attention knows he’s not a fan either.”

“Trump is never on the show and rarely gets discussed,” the source added. “Tucker thinks Trump has a lot of the right enemies, but that’s about it.”

Yeah, I don’t know about that:

Praising both Trump and DeSantis, Carlson began with the Florida governor, saying, “I spend a lot of time in Florida. And I think Ron DeSantis has done, like, an unbelievable job.”

Then he turned to Trump – and he laid it on pretty thick. About seven minutes of “thick,” in fact.

“I’m so grateful Donald Trump ran in 2016. Donald Trump completely changed my view of everything. Donald Trump is why I left Washington. And he did it in a really simple way: By asking questions that no one around could answer,” the Fox News host said.

“I should also add — since, why not ?— I actually love Donald Trump as a guy. I know Trump. I’ve known Trump for 20 years ’cause I work in the media, you know? And I just have always gotten along with him. And I think he’s one of the funniest people I’ve ever talked to in my life. I think he’s got this unbelievable life force to him.”

And he went on: “Talking to Trump… especially when it’s not an interview — you don’t actually want to interview Trump. That’s a nightmare ’cause you can’t get him to answer any questions. Because it’s the Trump train. You can get on or off, but you can’t steer it. Yeah, don’t ever interview Trump.”

And on: “But talking to Trump is one of the great joys, one of the great animal joys of life. Because he exudes this kind of animal joy. And I love that.”

And what would a Tucker Carlson moment with a mic be without criticizing the media about how the former president was covered by those not “on the right”?

“I think there are plenty of things to criticize about Trump. He’s a human being,” he said. “But the idea that he’s … personally some monster is absurd. It’s just another lie. They always tell you the opposite of the truth. Trump is totally charming and engaging and fun and interesting.”

Those aren’t the words of someone who’s not a fan.

There’s a lot of competition between the two big Fox stars, so if Hannity is on Trump’s shit-list, you can bet that Carlson is keeping that line of communication open. He wants to be influential.

As far as Hannity is concerned, it once again proves that no good deed goes unpunished in MAGA world. There was no right wing media figure more loyal to Trump throughout his administration and both campaigns. And as pathetic as it seems, he’ll be crawling back begging for access any minute now. If Trump lets him back in, all the others will forgive him as well. Cult dynamics all the way down.

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But the Durham probe goes on…

It was just another expensive pacifier for the big baby. Steve Benen reports:

For those who might benefit from a refresher — you’d be forgiven for thinking, “John Durham’s name sounds familiar, but I can’t remember why I’m supposed to care about him” — let’s revisit our earlier coverage and explain how we arrived at this point.

The original investigation into Donald Trump’s Russia scandal, led by then-special counsel Robert Mueller, led to a series of striking findings: The former president’s political operation in 2016 sought, embraced, capitalized on, and lied about Russian assistance — and then took steps to obstruct the investigation into the foreign interference.

The Trump White House wasn’t pleased with the conclusions, but the Justice Department’s inspector general conducted a lengthy probe of the Mueller investigation, and not surprisingly, the IG’s office found nothing improper.

This, of course, only outraged Trump further, so then-Attorney General Bill Barr tapped a federal prosecutor — U.S. Attorney John Durham — to conduct his own investigation into the investigation. That was more than three years ago.

At this point, Durham’s investigation into the Russia scandal investigation has lasted longer than Mueller’s original probe of the Russia scandal.

After an extended period of apparent inactivity, the prosecutor last year indicted cybersecurity attorney Michael Sussmann for allegedly having lied to the FBI. The case proved to be baseless; Sussmann was acquitted; and one of the jurors publicly mocked Durham’s team for having taken the case to trial.

Five months later, Durham and his team also tried to prosecute Russian analyst Igor Danchenko. That failed too, bringing the probe to an apparent, ignominious end.

The tale of the tape is brutal:

Two trials

Zero convictions

One provocative resignation

A largely meaningless guilty plea from an obscure figure

A $6.5 million price tag

By any fair measure, this is the most misguided and inconsequential special counsel investigation in the modern history of American law enforcement.

But the humiliation is not limited to the prosecutor. Every once in a while, Trump still blurts out Durham’s name, hoping the prosecutor might yet bolster some of the former president’s conspiracy theories. As regular readers may recall, the Republican — who predicted that Durham would uncover “the crime of the century” — has even suggested at times that Durham’s probe could serve as a possible vehicle for retaliating against his perceived enemies.

So much for that idea.

Over the summer, The New York Times’ Charlie Savage wrote a report questioning why the Durham investigation existed. He added, “Mr. Barr’s mandate to Mr. Durham appears to have been to investigate a series of conspiracy theories.”

Those theories, however, lacked merit, which is why the Durham probe is ending with an expensive whimper.

There is a degree of irony to the circumstances: For years, Team Trump insisted that the Russia scandal was pointless but the Durham investigation was real. It now appears these Republicans had it exactly backward: The Russia scandal was real, and the Durham investigation was pointless.

None of this matters to the MAGA faithful, of course. Or to Trump himself. He just tells them that all the charges are proven (“they spied on my campaign!) and they believe him. But there have to be at least a few stray GOP voters who wonder why in the hell Durham hasn’t been able to prove any of it. Right???

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Piston-powered drones fly ahead of cruise missiles

It took a lot of chutzpah for Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to issue an ultimatum to Ukraine late Monday: “The point is simple: fulfil [Russian demands] for your own good. Otherwise, the issue will be decided by the Russian army.”

That’s rich, especially considering The Washington Post’s lead story this morning, headlined, Inside the Ukrainian counteroffensive that shocked Putin and reshaped the war.

It is not that Russia does not still maintain the capacity to inflict damage on Ukraine, the way stinging insects raise painful welts. But Lavrov’s boast about the Russian army appears to be just that.

The Kremlin’s troops are badly depleted. Conscripts are fleeing the country. So much so that a Kazakh chocolate company created a pointed ad about it.

New "Kazakhstan" chocolate advert with a young Russian refugee crossing on foot into the country.

– What is this?
– This is freedom
– Kazakhstan. Feel the taste of freedom pic.twitter.com/BNjW5DycDK

— Max Fras (@maxfras) November 22, 2022

When Moscow diverted troops south to defend the Russian-held regional capital of Kherson, Ukraine advanced toward and retook Kharkiv:

In early September, Ukrainian forces would steamroll across hundreds of square miles, routing the Russians and surprising themselves. The Kharkiv offensive revealed the inability of an undermanned and underequipped Russian force to hold territory across a vast front. It shocked the Kremlin, and it proved to Ukraine’s supporters that they were not wasting billions in weapons and economic aid.

Putin was forced to conscript hundreds of thousands of men, making the costs of war clear to a Russian population that had isolated itself from its leader’s “special military operation.” The mobilization set off unrest but was too late to stop Ukraine’s momentum from spreading south to Kherson, where, after hard combat and significant losses, Kyiv’s forces in November recaptured the only regional capital that Putin had seized since the start of the war.

russian terrorists have been saving one of the most massive missile attacks since the beginning of the full-scale invasion for the last days of the year.
They dream that Ukrainians will celebrate the New Year in darkness and cold.
But they cannot defeat the Ukrainian people.

— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) December 29, 2022

Moscow has not lost all its sting (New York Times):

Explosions rocked towns and cities around Ukraine on Thursday morning and electricity went out in several regions as Russia launched what appeared to be one its biggest strikes to date on the country’s energy grid.

The attack combined a swarm of drones and a volley of cruise missiles, the Ukrainian Air Force said on Facebook. Iranian-made exploding drones, which Russia began acquiring last summer, were launched in a first wave, apparently to bog down air defenses before the cruise missile strikes, it said, adding that its defense forces had shot down 54 of 69 missiles and knocked out drones.

It has been a busy day for Ukraine’s defenders:

Air-raid sirens sounded about 5:30 a.m. throughout most of Ukraine. The Ukrainian military’s southern command said two Russian ships in the Black Sea had shown signs suggesting that they were preparing to launch missiles, setting off the alarms.

As the sun rose on Thursday morning, a puffy contrail could be seen looping across the partially cloudy sky over Kyiv — possibly coming from a missile, a Ukrainian jet scrambled in defense or an air-defense weapon.

Seven or eight explosions followed in the capital. One rattled windows and set off car alarms in the city center. It was not clear whether the blasts echoing in the city were from intercepts or strikes by cruise missiles.

Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said on the Telegram messaging app that Ukrainian air defenses had shot down 16 missiles over the city. At least three people, including a 14-year-old, were injured and two people were pulled from a damaged home, he said.

Kharkiv and Odesa also reported damage from the attacks.

Looking out for Shaheds. pic.twitter.com/Vzkahae75d

— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) December 29, 2022

Many Ukrainians may spend the year-end holiday in the dark. As a safety meaure, Ukraine has shut down power in some regions in anticipation of Russian attacks on power grids on New Year’s Eve. “Last week in Kyiv, there was enough power for only 20 percent of the population,” the Times reports.

And what of the army of which Lavrov boasted?

Booby traps in dead soldiers and mass graves, soft toys and children’s backpacks, in schools, hospitals and apartments…This is a partial list of russia’s violations of Protocol ІІ to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons in 🇺🇦#tribunal4russia
9/13

— Oleksii Reznikov (@oleksiireznikov) December 29, 2022

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George Santos is evidence

Congressman-Elect George Santos, scheduled to be sworn into Congress in days, is under investigation by a New York prosecutor (NBC News):

“The numerous fabrications and inconsistencies associated with Congressman-Elect Santos are nothing short of stunning. The residents of Nassau County and other parts of the third district must have an honest and accountable representative in Congress,” Nassau County District Attorney Anne T. Donnelly said in a statement about her fellow Republican on Wednesday. “No one is above the law and if a crime was committed in this county, we will prosecute it.”

Santos, who made history last month as the first openly LGBTQ non-incumbent Republican to be elected to Congress, was the subject of a bombshell investigation The New York Times published this month, which found much of Santos’ background appeared to have been manufactured, including claims that he had worked for Goldman Sachs and Citigroup and had graduated from Baruch College.

https://twitter.com/CleverTitleTK/status/1608278317047730178?s=20&t=Ensurym8zbo_3ILN7WBSOw

Daily Beast has reporting on the mysterious source of the $700k Santos lent his campaign from his Devolder Organization. Roger Sollenberger and William Bredderman have identified four Santos corporate clients. Remember, candidates may contribute as much as they wish of their own money to their campaigns. But they may not accept corporate donations:

Santos confirmed to The Daily Beast on Wednesday that he withdrew money from the firm to underwrite his campaign. He made the same claim in an interview on Monday, telling WABC radio host and Santos donor John Catsimatidis that the combined $700,000 in loans—scattered in varying increments across a period of more than a year—“was the money I paid myself through the Devolder Organization.” (Santos’ most recent financial disclosure shows a $750,000 salary from the Devolder Organization, along with dividends valued between $1 million and $5 million.)

This guy has to be an op.

My god. pic.twitter.com/QoQjHCaT9U

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) December 29, 2022

Jordan Libowitz, communications director of government watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), tells the Beast, “Two major problems here. One, if it’s the company’s money, it’s not his money. If it were Santos personally doing business as the company—that is, if it were his bank accounts—that’s okay. But this is an actual corporation, and you can’t make a corporation to run money through to your campaign.”

That’s akin to laundering money to finance a political campaign.

“If I wished to illegally fund a campaign and hide it, what I would do is run the money through a dummy corporation, then to a dark money group that supports the campaign. But if I was not that up on things, or a little lazy, I might … set up the dummy corporation, say it’s in the name of the candidate, then have the candidate pay himself the money and give it to the campaign,” Libowitz said. “This isn’t to say that this is clearly an illegal pass-through donation scheme, because we don’t know the full picture yet—but if it were one, this is what it would look like.”

https://twitter.com/patriottakes/status/1608310963849121797?s=20&t=Ensurym8zbo_3ILN7WBSOw

Santos could be looking at criminal charges if he violated campaign finance laws to fund his campaign. The Beast identified several campaign and Santos victory PAC donors who also invested in Devolder:

The Daily Beast has confirmed four Devolder Organization clients: the New York-based Tantillo Auto Group, two organizations tied to the influential Ruiz family in south Florida, and another firm associated with Long Island insurance magnate James C. Metzger. Santos acknowledged all four of these clients on Wednesday.

In 2020, George Santos claimed he attended Horace Mann prep school, but Wayback Machine shows he scrubbed the claim from his bio.

Santos also said he “left 4 months till graduation,” implying Horace Mann didn’t help because “a couple hundred kids going through the same thing.” pic.twitter.com/s2uUfrL5B6

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) December 28, 2022

Here’s where the Santos financing gets interesting:

Florida corporate filings show two Devolder LLC, were created about two weeks apart in January 2022. Their leadership consists of relatives of billionaire Miami attorney John Ruiz, a personal injury and class action lawyer who parlayed his Medicare payor recovery business into a multibillion-dollar IPO that flopped this summer.

In September 2021, Alex Ruiz, then 22, became CEO of Cigarette Racing, a renowned luxury powerboat manufacturer which his family took over in the course of building their multibillion-dollar special purpose acquisition company (SPAC).

A few months later, the Ruiz children created the entities that would retain the Devolder Organization. Mayra Ruiz told The Daily Beast they hired the Devolder Organization in “early” 2022, but did not reply to follow-ups. Notably, in an interview with Semafor on Wednesday, Santos named yacht sales as one of the tasks the Devolder Organization handled for its clients.

It is too early to say whether some of these funds and accounts were, as Libowitz speculates, set up as illegal pass-throughs. But there is little about Santos that appears authentic.

Lost in the “Catch Me If You (Oh, you already did!)” tale of George Santos is what it says about how infected the Republican Party is with Trumpism. Santos may be a pathological liar in his own right, but Trump developed the party faithful’s taste for liars and for shameless lying. That craving will outlast Trump. He’s modified the party’s DNA to match his, and Santos, Kari Lake, Team Kraken, and the rest of MAGA world suggest he’s replicating himself.

Is it any coincidence that Santos named his firm the Devolder Organization just as Donald Trump did with his?

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They finally overturned Roe

2022 marks the year that they finally got the Supremes to overturn Roe vs. Wade. I’ve been following this issue from the very first days of writing this blog. It’s been a depressing trajectory. On the 10th anniversary of this blog, I wrote the following:

My advocacy for a woman’s right to abortion predates this blog by decades. It’s a fundamental struggle for half the population and I’ve very much appreciated the attention and support of my readers over these last 10 years of writing about it.

In this last election rape unexpectedly became a campaign issue.  Oddly enough the concept of “legitimate rape” was something I’d written about some years ago when South Dakota tried to pass a ban on abortion without an exception for rape or incest (pending reversal of Roe vs Wade, of course.)  This was, at the time, an unusual position. It’s much more mainstream in the pro-life community today.  

The Sodomized Virgin Exception 

by digby 

South Dakota:

BILL NAPOLI: A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.  

BILL NAPOLI: A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.

Do you suppose all these elements have to be present for it to be sufficiently psychologically damaging for her to be forced to bear her rapists child, or just some of them? I wonder if it would be ok if the woman wasn’t religious but she was a virgin who had been brutally, savagely raped and “sodomized as bad as you can make it?” Or if she were a virgin and religious but the brutal savage sodomy wasn’t “as bad” as it could have been?  

Certainly, we know that if she wasn’t a virgin, she was asking for it, so she should be punished with forced childbirth. No lazy “convenient” abortion for her, the little whore. It goes without saying that the victim who was saving it for her marriage is a good girl who didn’t ask to be brutally raped and sodomized like the sluts who didn’t hold out. But even that wouldn’t be quite enough by itself. The woman must be sufficiently destroyed psychologically by the savage brutality that the forced childbirth would drive her to suicide (the presumed scenario in which this pregnancy could conceivably “threaten her life.”)  

Someone should ask this man about this. He seems to have given it a good deal of thought. I suspect many hours have been spent luridly contemplating the brutal, savage rape and sodomy (as bad as it can be) of a religious virgin and how terrible it would be for her. It seems quite vivid in his mind. 

I went on to note that there had once more been been quite a discussion during the 2012 election about how much the Democrats should be willing to “compromise” on abortion in order to take the issue “off the table” once and for all. I featured an interview with Lawrence Tribe who had written a book with Barack Obama about abortion in which the two liberal men worked out that we just needed to provide more services to pregnant women, offer better contraception and adoption services and be more compassionate toward those who believe that abortion is wrong. Tribe said they found that they “could find ways of making abortion less necessary, making less people feel desperate enough to feel that they had to end a pregnancy, making contraception more available, making education more widely available, making adoption a more realistic option.”

I wrote:

Notice the assumptions in all that — that abortions are only “necessary” if women feel desperate or are uneducated or simply can’t find a good way to put their children up for adoption. As if the millions and millions of American women who have abortions year after year just need some “services” that will make it so they will be happy to go through pregnancy and childbirth regardless of the circumstances in their own lives at the time or the emotional difficulty of then giving up their own offspring for someone else to raise. (Do these people think that’s easy to do if only you have the right phone numbers?)

This issue will never be “solved” at least not that way. There will always be unintended pregnancies. That is a function of being human. And there will always be abortion. There always has been. Some people do not agree that women should have the right to do that and they will agitate to outlaw it. But it will not prevent it. Because women do own their own bodies and direct their own lives and some of them will go to extreme lengths to maintain that autonomy, even if it means putting their health and lives in danger. We have centuries of data supporting this.

So when a couple of elite males decide that they will find some sweet spot that will make these women happy as well as those who don’t think these women should have the right to make that choice, it’s an infuriating denial of women’s basic human agency.

It is simple. Women are going to have abortions, full stop. The only question is whether or not they are going to be forced to go through hell and possibly die to get them — and whether society is going to admit that it cannot and should not make that decision for them. Once you accept that reality, the rest is just talk. If religious leaders want to counsel their adherents not to do it, fine. If politicians want to lecture the public that it’s wrong, fine. If they want to create programs to help women get access to birth control and afford to raise kids if they want them and all the rest, terrific. If you care about your fellow humans, you should want all of that. But the right to abortion is a fundamental human right and the necessity of it being safe, legal and available is a requirement for a decent society.

The common behavior of everyday women from all walks of life proves that this is a simple question:

I added, “this one doesn’t seem to be going away. One can hope that they’ve reached peaked wingnut in 2012.  But then I’ve thought that before.”

Uhm … they didn’t reach peak wingnut in 2012. And it took the Supreme Court finally making it clear that the anti-abortion movement was not interested in “compromise” before the Democrats finally figured out that this was not an issue that could be negotiated. By that time pregnant 10 year old rape victims had to be smuggled into other states in order to be spared forced childbirth.

The anti-abortion zealots had finally decided there were absolutely no exceptions at all.

If you’ve been reading this blog during these past 20 years, you know how strongly I feel about this issue. Unfortunately, while the high court decision may have galvanized Democrats into finally taking the side of the American people in this debate we now have to fight on the state level all over the country. And the suffering is going to be immense for many years to come.

This is the Republican Party’s fault, of course. Mitch McConnell can take a special bow for packing the Supreme Court. (Failing to get the Senate in 2022 is hardly enough punishment for what he did.) But Democrats spent years and years trying to cajole these people by giving away bits and piece of women’s bodily autonomy even as some of us were screaming that if you give them an inch they will take a mile.

Well, they took a mile. And they will take another one and another one and another one unless the Democrats hold the line and fight back on all fronts. Let’s hope they have finally learned that lesson.

---

If any of this is important to you, I hope you’ll consider supporting this old blog for another year if you haven’t already done so. I don’t delude myself that I have any great influence on anyone important but there are some who follow our work here and you never know. But regardless, I still believe it’s important to push where we can and synthesize what’s happening for people with busy lives.

If you’d like to help you can do so here.. And thank you so much for making the hollandaise so happy this year. I really appreciate it. 🙂

Why are we doing this?

I know why Trump put in place all the draconian policies that have now forced Cubans to try to emigrate to the US in massive numbers. But why are they still in place? This article doesn’t adequately provide an answer, particularly since many of the refugees now assembling at the southern border are Cubans.

Living conditions in Cuba under Communist rule have long been precarious, but today, deepening poverty and hopelessness have set off the largest exodus from the Caribbean island nation since Fidel Castro rose to power over half a century ago.

The country has been hit by a one-two-punch of tighter U.S. sanctions and the Covid-19 pandemic, which eviscerated one of Cuba’s lifelines — the tourism industry. Food has become even more scarce and more expensive, lines at pharmacies with scant supplies begin before dawn and millions of people endure daily hourslong blackouts.

Over the last year, nearly 250,000 Cubans, more than 2 percent of the island’s 11 million population, have migrated to the United States, most of them arriving at the southern border by land, according to U.S. government data.

Even for a nation known for mass exodus, the current wave is remarkable — larger than the 1980 Mariel boatlift and the 1994 Cuban rafter crisis combined, until recently the island’s two biggest migration events.

But while those movements peaked within a year, experts say this migration, which they compare to a wartime exodus, has no end in sight and threatens the stability of a country that already has one of the hemisphere’s oldest populations.

The avalanche of Cubans leaving has also become a challenge for the United States. Now one of the highest sources of migrants after Mexico, Cuba has become a top contributor to the crush of migrants on the U.S.-Mexico border, which has been a major political liability for President Biden and which the administration considers a serious national security issue.

“The numbers for Cuba are historic, and everybody recognizes that,” said a senior State Department official who was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter. “That said, more people are migrating globally now than they ever have been and that trend is certainly bearing out in our hemisphere, too.”

Why did this happen? Wingnuts, of course, specifically Cuban American wingnuts who evidently want Cubans to suffer:

To appeal to Cuban American voters in South Florida, the Trump administration discarded President Barack Obama’s policy of engagement, which included restoring diplomatic relations and increasing travel to the island. President Donald J. Trump replaced it with a “maximum pressure” campaign that ratcheted up sanctions and severely limited how much cash Cubans could receive from their families in the United States, a key source of revenue.

“This is not rocket science: If you devastate a country 90 miles from your border with sanctions, people will come to your border in search of economic opportunity,” said Ben Rhodes, who served as deputy national security adviser under Mr. Obama and was the point person on talks with Cuba.

Apparently, Biden has been moving slowly to repeal this because he’s held hostage by New Jersey’s Robert Menendez, a corrupt Democrat who would not hesitate to tank Biden’s entire agenda is he doesn’t get his way. Menendez is Cuban American and also apparently wants to see Cubans suffer for some reason. This article does not spell out exactly why he is vetoing normalization but whatever it is, it’s causing the border crisis to be worse than it needs to be. Most Cubans would rather stay home — if they can eat.

There has been a tiny bit of rapprochement:

While any significant rollback of sanctions remains off the table, the two governments are engaged in efforts to address the extraordinary migration surge.

Washington recently announced that it would restart consular services in Havana in January and issue at least 20,000 visas to Cubans next year in line with longstanding agreements between the two nations, which officials hope will dissuade some people from trying to make dangerous journeys to the United States.

Havana has agreed to resume accepting flights from the United States of Cubans who are deported, another move to try to discourage migration. The Biden administration has also reversed the cap on money that Cuban Americans are allowed to send to relatives and licensed a U.S. company to process the wire transfers to Cuba.

Cubans migrate to the US because, unlike any other group of refugees, they are fast tracked to residency as political refugees. If they put their feet on US land, they get to stay. I can only assume that this migration is, therefore, supported by Cuban American Republicans because they want these people to come to America. (At least Menendez doesn’t want to build a wall for everyone but Cubans…) The people who push the Great Replacement Theory idea that Democrats want more immigrants because they believe they will vote for Democrats, actually seem to be doing what they accuse the Democrats of doing. Surprise.

Are they really that self-serving? (The answer is obvious.) Evidently, they hate the Cuban regime so much they are willing to make actual Cubans’ lives so miserable that they will completely depopulate the country. How cruel can you get?

The floodgates opened last year, when Nicaragua stopped requiring an entrance visa for Cubans. Tens of thousands of people sold their homes and belongings and flew to Managua, paying smugglers to help them make the 1,700-mile journey by land to the U.S. border.

Katrin Hansing, an anthropologist at the City University of New York who is on sabbatical on the island, noted that the soaring migration figures do not account for the thousands who have left for other countries, including Serbia and Russia.

“This is the biggest quantitative and qualitative brain drain this country has ever had since the revolution,” she said. “It’s the best and the brightest and the ones with the most energy.”

The departure of many younger, working-age Cubans augurs a bleak demographic future for a country where the average life expectancy of 78 is higher than for the rest of the region, experts said. The government already can barely afford the meager pensions the country’s older population relies on.

The hemorrhaging of Cubans from their homeland is nothing short of “devastating,” said Elaine Acosta González, a research associate at Florida International University. “Cuba is depopulating.”

It’s so sad…

Just a few years ago, the country’s future seemed far different. With the Obama administration loosening restrictions on travel to Cuba, American tourists pumped dollars into the island’s fledgling private sector.

I would love to know why this hasn’t blown back on the Republicans in Florida, who have long depended on the Cuban population for its electoral success. Are all the Florida Cuban Americans ok with this? I guess so.

I don’t blame people for leaving Cuba under these circumstances. And I don’t personally have a problem with granting them asylum either, although I would certainly think that others coming from similar circumstances should have an equal claim. But the politics of this whole thing are complicated and frankly inexplicable.

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Stock buy-backs and dividends instead of fixing infrastructure

This is stunning:

As travelers and airline workers reel from mass flight cancellations, a corporate watchdog noted Wednesday that Southwest Airlines spent nearly $6 billion on stock buybacks in the years ahead of the coronavirus pandemic instead of spending that money on technological improvements that unions have been demanding for years.

According to Accountable.US, the crisis Southwest has experienced in recent days amid a massive winter storm was “a problem of its own making,” noting that the airline opted “to spend $5.6 billion on stock buybacks in the three years leading up to the pandemic rather than making investments in infrastructure to be better prepared for extreme weather events like this week.”

The watchdog group added that the company “even reinstated dividends earlier this month, the first major airline to do so after the pandemic.”

“Southwest Airlines made a risky gamble that mass layoffs and spending billions of dollars on handouts to investors rather than fixing infrastructure would pay off with record profits,” Kyle Herrig, the president of Accountable.US, said in a statement. “The airline lost that bet badly and now it’s their customers left paying the price including the thousands stranded in the middle of holiday-season travel.”

Heads should roll over this although I don’t know if they will. This is yet another example of the untrammeled greed that characterizes our economic system in 2021. They are determined to make workers and consumers miserable and dare us to do something about it. Will we?

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Aaron Rupar caught Santos’ appearance on Fox last night with none other than Tulsi Gabbard who was a surprisingly effective interviewer.

Oh boy:

"I am not a fraud. I am not a fake. I didn't materialize from thin air" — George Santos to Tulsi Gabaard

George Santos goes full whataboutism after Tulsi Gabbard asks him, "Have you no shame?"

George Santos: "Everyone wants to nitpick at me"

"These are blatant lies and it draws into question how your constituents and the American people can believe anything you may say on the floor of the House — Tulsi Gabbard actually did an impressive job grilling George Santos, who was clearly flustered

George Santos's Fox News interview was a complete disaster. Check out how it ended.

Here is the entire Tulsi Gabbard-George Santos interview in one video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isv3QJhpdXk

Originally tweeted by Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) on December 28, 2022.

I’m sure he’ll be fine. Pathological lying is perfectly respectable in the new GOP. Just look at their Dear Leader. Why should this guy be held to a different standard?

It’s so hard to choose!

It’s fair to say that the Republican Party of 2022 is a much broader coalition than it used to be. Once upon a time it was defined as the party of Main Street and the country club: white middle-class and upper-middle-class guys in gray flannel suits. But in recent years they’ve opened the doors and invited in a whole bunch of other Americans who don’t fit that mold. Starting in the 1960s they willingly veered into overt racism mantle and with their embrace of the Christian right in the ’80s, all the anti-gay, anti abortion flock began to move their way as well. The new Trump majority within the party captured a chunk of the previously nonvoting public that believes in fringe conspiracy theories and far-right ideologies and worships at the altar of vapid TV celebrity.

That said, the Republican coalition still isn’t very diverse. It’s nearly all white, of course, with only a tiny fraction of racial and ethnic minorities. It’s almost all Christian and most are non-college-educated and rural. And since virtually everyone who now votes Republican is indoctrinated with lies and propaganda, by watching and listening to the same information sources, there isn’t an independent idea to be found anywhere among them. 

Let’s face it: The Republican Party has gone crazy and not in a fun, madcap, “let’s get nuts” way. It has adopted the most extreme attitudes and beliefs of its new adherents and pushed them into mainstream. With that in mind, I thought we could take a look at some of the worst Republicans of 2022. This can’t possibly be a comprehensive list because there are so many awful options. But we can certainly highlight some of the more memorable, in no particular order.

Another rich and famous Republican of even more recent vintage is Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla and other high-tech ventures who became the sole proprietor of Twitter this year. I’m classifying Musk as a Republican not because he urged people to vote GOP in the midterms (ostensibly because he believes in divided government) but because his sole mission with Twitter is apparently to own the libs. He’s in the process of turning the site into yet another propaganda vehicle for every right-wing nutjob on the planet, so no matter how he identifies politically (Elon apparently didn’t even vote) he is objectively pro-Republican. His worst moment so far, and there have been quite a few, was tweeting out rumors to his millions of followers that the vicious attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s 82-year-old husband was the result of a down-low affair while his wife was out of town. 

Another Republican who only recently admitted he was one despite decades devoted to trashing Democrats, is the King of Fox News, Tucker Carlson. He’s been mentioned as a potential GOP presidential candidate (perhaps because he keeps giving speeches in known presidential campaign venues). More important, Carlson is the most influential voice on the most influential right-wing network in the country, an is a uniquely odious human being. The list of his offenses is a mile long and goes back many years, but 2022 has been especially heinous with his relentless flogging of the white supremacist “great replacement” theory. But the absolute worst has been his repulsive assaults on the LGBTQ community, culminating in a final atrocity with this week’s interview with the proprietor of Libs of TikTok, the social media account reportedly responsible for inciting bomb threats against hospitals who provide care to young trans people. Take a look:

Chaya Raichik went on Tucker Carlson and said the "LGBTQ community has become this cult… It's extremely poisonous." She later says "They're just evil people, and they're out to groom kids. They're recruiting."

This is one of the most bigoted interviews I've ever heard. pic.twitter.com/0tVe9WONOH

— Alejandra Caraballo (@Esqueer_) December 27, 2022

It doesn’t get much worse than that. But there are some other definite contenders. How about Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, who asked a state medical board to discipline the doctor who provided an abortion to a 10-year-old rape victim last summer, even though it was legal in the state at the time, claiming that she had “exploited” the victim despite never naming her? He’s an anti-abortion zealot who supports the law banning all abortions in his state (now under litigation) and seeks to revoke the licenses of all Indiana medical providers who perform abortion procedures.

Then there’s the clown car of potential GOP presidential candidates, led by the Cruelty Twins, Govs. Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida. Abbott gets the Grinch award for his despicable decision to send busloads of asylum seekers, including children, to Vice President Kamala Harris’ house to score political points on Christmas Eve. Abbott has been doing this all year, apparently believing that liberal hypocrites will explode with anger at the invasion of foreigners into their cities and demand that Trump’s wall be built immediately. Along with draconian abortion policies that have caused untold suffering to the women of Texas, that makes him one of the very worst Republicans.

But the worst of the worst in 2022, without a doubt, was DeSantis. He not only employed the usual extreme-right rhetoric we’ve come to expect from every popular GOP leader these days, but also deployed the long arm of the state to humiliate and destroy anyone who got in his way. From embarrassing teenagers for wearing masks in public to targeting the state’s largest employer for opposing him to dictating that teachers cannot mention LGBTQ issues to suspending elected officials who speak out against his policies, DeSantis showed that he will use his power to punish his enemies and reward his friends. His latest nihilistic assault is to petition for a grand jury investigation into the development of COVID vaccines, suggesting they are killing mass numbers of people. And he’s doing this for purely political reasons — the only reason he ever does anything. 

In fact, these boldface names and their misdeeds are just the tip of the iceberg. The reality is that the entire Republican Party has gone over to the dark side. All these people are sailing along without even the slightest condemnation from party officials. In fact, with the exception of some whining about Trump having caused them to lose too many seats in 2022, leading Republicans are positively giddy about all of them. This is the Republican Party today — at its worst.

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Wasted days and wasted lives

“This is a foreign language unto itself,” tweeted author Tom Zoellner. He responds to an “I quit” rant by a follower of QAnon. Except QAnon is just an add-on here. The woman is not leaving the QAnon cult. She is just so pissed at “Q” that she’s decided to go culting by herself. Q, it seems, is an ancient alien affiliated with alien “orbs.”

So, the New Age is not as old-hat as I believed. It may have largely dropped out of sight where I live (once nicknamed “the Sedona of the South”), but has not died out. The rant below is confirmation. I don’t speak the language, but some of it is familiar.

QAnon adherent quits in meltdown against QArmy after going 6 years without being acknowledged by Q, Steve Bannon, or Lara Logan. pic.twitter.com/hpvUXsPZc6

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) December 27, 2022

She’s taking down “the ET transmissions” in retaliation for Q’s failure to acknowledge her six years of “disclosure” and for failing to stop the “pandemic of child trafficking.”

“During the sinking of Atlantis, the Archons took over,” she says, “and that’s how long it’s taken you to get back here and do anything at all.”

Atlantis, Archons, alchemy, aliens, angels. “A” is almost as big a deal as “Q” is down this rabbit hole. QAnon is just another ingedient to spice up the alphabet gumbo. This is where East meets West and Right meets Left. Delusion is ecumenical that way.

“Let the record reflect: the American people are a bunch of suckers,” author Ben Fountain wrote in the Guardian in 2016 as the Trump train left the station. I titled my unpublished faux New Age business magazine Mantra-preneur accordingly. From Barnum Was Right! productions.

As disturbing (and persistent) as the Pizzagates and Frazzledrips and deadly Covid misinformation threads are is how deeply sad it is that people lose themselves in the culture of conspiracy. Upon first glance, the New Age stuff from the 1990s appeared quirky and amusing. Harmless even. Another spin of the moral panic wheel, except more benign. Spirituality, human potential, etc. But underneath lies the anxiety of the disempowered, even if objectively they are not:

Posessing secret “truths” gives conspiracy theorists a false sense of power in a world beyond their control. When life feels as if you have awakened locked in the trunk of a car careening down a rutted mountain road, you want to believe – you need to believe – that someone, anyone, is sitting behind the wheel. Even a diabolical someone is better than no one at all.

Decades of conservative talk radio attacks on the press (and science) have slowly dissolved objective reality and destroyed the truth function of facts. But when unreality takes a firm hold, it also erases the boundaries between left and right. What’s left is a human wasteland.