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Month: February 2023

McCarthy & Carlson: Threats to Capitol security

Published by Tom Sullivan on February 21, 2023

Coming soon to a RW propaganda outlet near you

So, “House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has given Fox News’ Tucker Carlson exclusive access to 41,000 hours of Capitol surveillance footage from the Jan. 6 riot,” Axios reported Monday.

Yes, the same Carlson who Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit filings last week showed described then-President Donald Trump as ”a demonic force, a destroyer” off the air. Carlson demanded a Fox fact-checker be fired because she was bad for Fox’s stock price. God bless America.

You won’t have to guess what the co-producer of the “completely off the rails,” three-part series, “Patriot Purge,” will do with all that security footage. Carlson’s documentary reinterpreted the history of Jan. 6 into a false-flag operation by deep-state opponents of Donald J. Trump.

As The Atlantic‘s Anne Applebaum panned it, “Good people, honest people, true Americans, patriots, people just like you, are being cheated. Sinister forces inside the American government arranged all of this bad imagery in order to oppress you, to remove you, to eliminate you.”

Now Carlson will have Jan. 6 footage from every camera in the Capitol complex to edit and present to reinforce the narrative of “Patriot Purge.” Courtesy of Speaker of the House and empty suit, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R) of California.

Some of the footage is sensitive because along with camera locations it reveals exit routes officials used to escape to safety from Jan. 6 rioters. It could provide “a roadmap for 2024 insurrection,” tweeted Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat.

“It’s hard to overstate the potential security risks if this material were to be used irresponsibly,” House Homeland Security Committee ranking Democrat Bennie Thompson (Miss.) said in a Monday statement.

Tim Mulvey, a former January 6 committee spokesman, told CNN:

“When the January 6th Select Committee obtained access to US Capitol Police video footage, it was treated with great sensitivity given concerns about the security of lawmakers, staff, and the Capitol complex,” Mulvey said. “Access was limited to members and a small handful of investigators and senior staff, and the public use of any footage was coordinated in advance with Capitol Police.”

If McCarthy as indeed granted that access to Carlson, said Thompson, he “owes the American people an explanation of why he has done so and what steps he has taken to address the significant security concerns at stake.”

“Once the capabilities of a U.S. Capitol interior surveillance camera, including its position and whether it pans, tilts or zooms, is disclosed to the public via the release of a single video from that camera, the cat is out of the bag,” Justice Department prosecutors wrote in a July 2021 court filing.

Carlson has shown us who he is. Repeatedly. We know to what lengths he will go to promote antidemocratic authoritarians such as Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orban, and Donald Trump.

Now Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, the weakest speaker in the republic’s history, has shown himself equally debased. McCarthy is willing to risk the security of the Capitol complex to placate the rabid MAGA base he cut deals with to secure his dream job two steps away from the presidency.

No national security concerns are as important to faux-patriot Carlson as maintaining Fox’s stock price. What are the chances that former Project Veritas selective film editor, James O’Keefe, just tossed out on his ear, will find a new gig helping Carlson turn those hours of security footage into a masterwork of speculative MAGA fiction?

Defenders of democracy had better get ahead of their narrative the way President Joe Biden just got ahead of Putin’s spring Ukraine offensive. We know what’s coming.

It’s still his party

Published by digby on February 20, 2023

Michael Tomasky at the New Republic on the GOP and Trump today:

Still think the Republican base is done with Donald Trump? Take a look at what happened in Michigan over the weekend. The state GOP chose as its new chair one Kristina Karamo, an extremist election denier who refused to concede a defeat in last year’s secretary of state race—even though she lost by 14 points.

Yes, Trump endorsed a different candidate in the 10-person field to run Michigan’s GOP. But that doesn’t really matter. What matters, along with Karamo’s Trumpy election denialism, is the fact that all 10 candidates hugged Trump. One of them told The Washington Post that Trump’s endorsement was resented because “he don’t live here,” but this person still said, “We love Donald Trump.”

Remember: This is a state where the Democrats have literally taken over just about everything. All four statewide elected officials are Democrats, starting with Governor Gretchen Whitmer. Democrats control both chambers of the state legislature. This happened in no small part because Republicans have nominated unapologetic extremists for so many offices. It’s also a state that, as it happens, is reeling this week from another hideous mass shooting, and where Republicans have blocked gun reform laws that enjoy overwhelming support.

And what do Michigan Republicans do? Go even more extreme. If anything, Karamo was to the right of Trump’s candidate. A far-right religious zealot, she talked in her speech about, wait for it, demons (“and so if we’re not operating as though the spirit realities of the world exist, we’re going to fail every time”).

That’s only the latest evidence that Trumpism still rules the GOP.

Take a look at the recent polls asking about the 2024 Republican presidential primary. The media tends to hype the polls showing Ron DeSantis ahead of or close to Trump, because that’s bigger news. But I’m sitting here looking over the 10 most recent multicandidate GOP primary polls at FiveThirtyEight that feature Trump, DeSantis, and others. Want to hazard a guess as to Trump’s lead over DeSantis (routinely second in these surveys)? It averages 16.4 points.

And finally, take a look at what DeSantis is doing, which can only be described as trying to out-Trump Trump. Last week came news that, in his ongoing war with the College Board’s A.P. classes and tests, he is directing officials to explore using an alternative to the standard SAT that emphasizes the “great classical and Christian tradition.”

Trump is running what we could politely call a laconic campaign. Do a Google News search for “Trump campaign.” You won’t find that he’s doing much of anything. The top stories returned are those noting the sentencing to an 18-month prison term for Jesse Benton, an operative who concealed the Russian nationality of a large donor to Trump’s 2016 campaign (in its statement, the Justice Department said the Trump campaign was unaware of the donor’s true nationality).

He’s also getting hammered in the news every day. Special prosecutor Jack Smith has issued subpoena after subpoena of people in Trump’s inner circle. In Atlanta, District Attorney Fani Willis is still moving forward, as are cases in New York. With each passing week, the sense grows that sooner or later, some arm of the law or another is likely to catch up with him; that he may finally have tempted fate one time too many, and that even the protective carapace of the presidency can’t shield him. In fact, that it is precisely because he became president that the system finally is rising up to hold him to some kind of account (we hope).

And yet, none of it matters. Cable news spends hours wondering about this, but it’s pretty obvious why. Trump has energized a neofascist, white ethnonationalist segment of the population that will stay with him through virtually anything because he has identified and given voice to their resentments.

He offers three possibilities that could theoretically change this dynamic: the Christian Right rallies around an alternative (DeSantis’ ploy), all the other candidates get together and decide to back one of them, an indictment that freaks out the Trumpers. These are all possible, but as Tomasky acknowledges, unlikely:

[T]hese people aren’t leaders, they’re followers. They’re afraid of Trump’s voters, and they’re afraid of Trump himself—of the chaos he could create either with a third-party candidacy or just by attacking the GOP nominee and the whole nominating process as corrupt.

And I can’t imagine any indictment that wouldn’t rally the MAGAs behind him. Like Tomasky, I suspect Trump will lose in a general election. But as he points out:

[I]t’s sobering to know that he remains so popular—that this neofascist strain in our political life, awakened by Trump, is here for a good long while at least. We’re locked in a fight that I can’t see ending in my lifetime.

And it’s getting weirder every day.

On Wisconsin

Published by digby on February 20, 2023

“This is for all the marbles”

There’s an election coming up in what is arguably the most important swing state in the country. And the stakes couldn’t be higher.

Abortion. Union rights. Gerrymandering. Fair elections.

Democrats and Republicans don’t agree on much in Wisconsin, the nation’s most important and arguably its most polarized swing state. But they agree that their state’s ongoing Supreme Court election is the most important in a generation.

“The Supreme Court race is for all the marbles,” Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Ben Wikler told VICE News.

Conservatives concur. They’re even using the same description.

“This is for all the marbles,” Brandon Scholz, a veteran Wisconsin Republican strategist and lobbyist who has managed previous supreme court races, told VICE News.

The April 4 election will determine whether liberals or conservatives have a majority on the state Supreme Court.

That balance of power couldn’t be more important. The court will soon decide whether abortion is legal for the state’s 6 million people. It will likely reconsider whether the aggressively gerrymandered maps that have kept Republicans mostly in control of the swing state for more than a decade will remain in place through 2030. And it will play a crucial arbiter of how the state’s elections are run in 2024, when Wisconsin could once again decide who wins the presidency.

Early voting has already begun for the February 21 nonpartisan primary, and the top two vote-winners will advance to an April 4 runoff election.

The race has centered heavily around abortion. When the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the constitutional right to an abortion last year, an 1849 law banning abortion in Wisconsin went back into effect (it was written just one year after Wisconsin became a state, and more than a half-century before women gained the right to vote). Wisconsin Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul is challenging the law, and whoever wins this race will likely be deciding vote on how that case goes.

Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Judge Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal who is expected to advance to the general election, has campaigned hard on abortion rights and told VICE News that “a woman should have a right to choose.” Her two conservative opponents, former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly and Waukesha County Circuit Judge Jennifer Dorow, have been slightly less explicit about the issue—but both have endorsements from Wisconsin Right to Life, the state’s largest anti-abortion rights group.

But abortion isn’t the only crucial issue at stake in this race.

Wisconsin was the tipping-point state in both the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, has been ground zero for fights over gerrymandering and fair elections in recent years. Its makeup will be crucial in future democracy fights.

“The Wisconsin Supreme Court race will shape the future of American democracy,” said Wikler.

Conservatives have had a majority on Wisconsin’s highest court for more than a decade, and during that time have largely sided with Republicans on a bevy of hot-button issues. 

Before the 2022 election the court banned absentee ballot drop boxes; in 2014 it upheld a Republican-crafted voter identification law that studies indicate has suppressed the Black vote; and in 2011 it allowed Republicans’ deeply controversial law that gutted public-sector unions. 

The justices narrowly ruled 4-3 against considering a Trump lawsuit that aimed to overturn his 2020 election loss in Wisconsin—but in most other cases the court has sided with the GOP. That includes a decision that ended Wisconsin Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ COVID-19 emergency order early in the pandemic, as well as decisions that stripped him of other powers. 

And voting rights will continue to come up. A conservative group is suing to ban mobile and alternate voting facilities in order to limit access to voting; the Democratic National Committee intervened in the lawsuit this Monday in a case that will likely wind up decided by the Wisconsin Supreme Court, and will likely hinge on who wins this race.

But conservative Justice Patience Roggensack’s decision to retire has given liberals their best chance in a generation to win back control.

“Everything is at stake, and I mean everything: Women’s reproductive rights, the maps, drop boxes, safe communities, clean water,” Protasiewicz told VICE News. “Everything is on the line.” 

Read the whole thing for the details. It’s an astonishing race considering how much this could affect all of is.

If you read nothing else about this important election, read this about Everett Mitchell, one of the progressive judges running for the Wisconsin Supreme Court. What an inspiring story. Any high court would be lucky to have someone with a life story like his on the bench.

Age isn’t everything

Published by digby on February 20, 2023

Ezra Klein takes up the subject of Biden’s age and makes a good point, with which I have to agree.

One reason for my hesitance to declare Biden too old to run in 2024 is that I thought his age was a problem in 2020, too. Everything people say about his age now was true then. He was halting on the stump. He fumbled words and phrases. But I’d argue the problem was worse then.

The linguistic stumbles were paired with an aging outlook. Biden reminisced fondly about his relationships with segregationist senators and seemed to think the bipartisanship of yesteryear was recoverable in the present. He wielded his connection to Barack Obama as both spear and shield — it was the case for his candidacy and his all-purpose defense against attacks. But Biden wasn’t Obama and the Senate of the 1970s is long gone. Biden’s problem in 2020, in other words, wasn’t just his age. It was that he seemed stuck in the past.

But Biden proved — and keeps proving — doubters like me wrong. He won the Democratic primary, even though voters had no shortage of fresher faces to choose from. He won the general election handily, despite Donald Trump’s vaunted talents as an insult comic and a social media force. Voters seemed perfectly happy with Biden as a communicator.

Campaigns are a (lengthy) sprint. But governing is a marathon. Last year, as Biden’s agenda languished, I found myself worried about his vigor again. Perhaps a younger, more energetic Biden would’ve proved better at managing relationships in the Senate. But then he passed a flurry of major bills — the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS and Science Act — that amounted to a remarkable legislative record given the narrowness of Democrats’ congressional majorities. His party defied expectations in the midterm elections, gaining a bit more power in the Senate and holding losses down in the House. His State of the Union address was widely regarded as a success. At some point, those of us who keep declaring Biden too old to do the job need to reckon with what they’ve missed until now and might still be missing.

So let me give it a try: Members of my profession have built our lives around our mastery of words, and so we overestimate the importance of eloquence. We like politicians who speak as if Aaron Sorkin is cranking out their dialogue. But voters don’t see malapropisms and run-on sentences and unfinished thoughts and occasional fabulism as the disqualifiers that we do. Ronald Reagan proved that, and George W. Bush proved it again; then Trump tried to teach us the same lesson, and now Biden is taking his turn.

And Biden’s age has carried some quiet benefits. One is that he has deftly bridged Democrats’ generational and demographic gaps. The Democratic Party has in recent years become younger, more liberal, more educated and more online. Biden’s politics were formed in a past era, when blue-collar workers were still a core constituency and liberal was often an epithet.

When Biden was younger and more combative, he might have sought to vanquish the left wing of his own party. Instead, he’s welcomed them in and run an administration that has achieved something of a synthesis. Much of Biden’s staff comes from the party’s younger, more liberal wing. His core group of senior advisers is made up of longtime loyalists, forged in the same era he was.

The result has been a policy agenda that reflects today’s Democratic Party married to a political style that is more of a throwback. It would be best if Democrats had the kind of political talent that could transcend their party’s current divisions, but in the absence of that figure, a leader who can bridge them is no small thing. Biden is perhaps alone, at this moment, in being that leader.

Age has also brought Biden, perhaps out of necessity, a sense of restraint. He does not delight in the sound of his own voice as he once did. He leaves space for others — in particular Republicans — to reveal themselves to voters. We are used to politicians who always want to be the center of attention. But that carries costs. Frances Lee, a political scientist at Princeton, has shown that when presidents take strong positions on issues, they generate enormous backlash to the positions they take. Biden’s relative quiet is perhaps why his policy agenda has remained more popular than he is, and why there was so much room for voters to focus on the dangers of Republicans in the midterms.

Then there is what Biden will have in 2024 that he did not have in 2020: a record of his own. He has passed the largest infrastructure, climate, science and technology investments in a generation. Unemployment is 3.4 percent — its lowest level since 1969. Inflation is coming down. (I think Biden’s 2024 chances will revolve around whether the labor market remains tight as inflation ebbs more than they will revolve around his age.) He has rallied a steady coalition against Russia and helped Ukraine keep its resistance alive. He has turned Trump’s inchoate anger toward China into a suite of policies to make America and its allies less dependent on Chinese manufacturing and to actively slow China’s technological progress. Biden hasn’t gotten any younger, but he has a purchase on the present and an argument about the future that he didn’t have in 2020, and one which no other Democrat (or Republican) has now.

Typically, columns end on a point of certainty. Let me instead end on a point of uncertainty. Age or accident could fell Biden tomorrow. I could say that this is true for any of us, and it is, but the actuarial tables darken in one’s mid-80s, and there is no sense pretending otherwise. I too worry about how Biden will match up against a younger, more vigorous Republican than Trump. But there is a strength and purpose and substance to the re-election campaign he could run in 2024 that was absent in 2020. And I have underestimated Biden before. Age matters, but so, as Biden keeps showing, does much else.

I think there’s an element of YOLO at work too. A lot of people his age develop that trait. He doesn’t have any offspring that will follow in his footsteps so he doesn’t have to be as cautious about his “legacy” a he would have if Beau had lived. And certainly, as Ezra points out, the ego that defined him as a younger man (it really was outsized) is no longer leading him to be a showboater. He’s in a position in his life to just make the effort to do what he knows is right.

As a person who is getting older very quickly (they don’t tell you how much faster time passes as you age) and I feel keenly the minuses, particularly the physical degradation. But there are some pluses, more than I anticipated and one of the big ones is that I feel a greater sense of calm — zen, if you will. I don’t know if this applies to everyone but I’m finding the emotional changes of age are actually quite positive. Maybe Biden does too.

Marge calls for secession on President’s Day

Published by digby on February 20, 2023

Isn’t that special?

In late 2021, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene briefly referenced “a National Divorce scenario” that seemed to allude to the dissolution of the United States. About a year later, the Georgia Republican seemed to predict a “national divorce” in response to the CDC adding Covid shots to its list of recommended vaccine schedules.

This morning, as some elected officials released statements recognizing the Presidents’ Day holiday, the right-wing congresswoman published a message to Twitter that steered clear of traditional American patriotism. ..

At face value, this isn’t especially surprising. Greene has earned a reputation as one of the most radical members of Congress in recent memory. She’s expressed support for violence against Democratic elected officials, and a year ago, the Georgia Republican appeared at a white-nationalist event. The fact that the congresswoman has endorsed a vision in which Americans “separate by red states and blue states” is entirely in line with everything we know about her.

But let’s not lose sight of the larger context: House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and GOP leaders recently rewarded Greene with committee assignments, including a slot on the House Homeland Security Committee. Are Republicans prepared to defend a member of the House Homeland Security Committee openly endorsing the dissolution of the United States?

That’s not a rhetorical question. GOP leaders should let the public know whether they’re comfortable with such a dynamic — and what they’re prepared to do in response if they’re not comfortable with such a dynamic.

Indeed, that’s ultimately what matters most in response to so many of the controversies Greene creates. Her extremism is routine to the point that’s become background noise. Basic American patriotism generally prevents elected officials from endorsing the dissolution of the United States, but we’ve reached the point in our collective history at which members of Congress can publish such messages — which would’ve sparked a genuine scandal in the not-too-distant past — and much of the political world shrugs, seeing it as somehow routine.

With this in mind, it seems as if the focus should be on McCarthy. Her extremism has become predictable, but his responses to her radical vision are still relevant. How comfortable is the House speaker with one of his prominent allies calling for the breaking up of our country? What is he prepared to do about it? Can we feel confident in the work of the House Homeland Security Committee knowing that Greene is on it — and she no longer wants to live in the same nation as many Americans?

“I will never leave that woman,” McCarthy reportedly told a friend, referring to Greene, after his hard-fought struggle to win the speaker’s gavel. “I will always take care of her.”

Does that sentiment have a limit?

No:

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has given Fox News’ Tucker Carlson exclusive access to 41,000 hours of Capitol surveillance footage from the Jan. 6 riot, McCarthy sources tell me.

Carlson TV producers were on Capitol Hill last week to begin digging through the trove, which includes multiple camera angles from all over Capitol grounds. Excerpts will begin airing in the coming weeks.

Why it matters: Carlson has repeatedly questioned official accounts of 1/6, downplaying the insurrection as “vandalism.”

Now his shows — “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Fox News, and “Tucker Carlson Today” and “Tucker Carlson Originals” on the streaming service Fox Nation — have a massive trove of raw material.

Carlson told me: “[T]here was never any legitimate reason for this footage to remain secret.”

“If there was ever a question that’s in the public’s interest to know, it’s what actually happened on January 6. By definition, this video will reveal it. It’s impossible for me to understand why any honest person would be bothered by that.”

Reality check: The Jan. 6 committee played numerous excerpts of the footage at last year’s captivating hearings. (See the committee’s archive.)

Between the lines: The process with Carlson started in early February, according to a communication between the show and a McCarthy representative that I was shown.

The archive was previously reported to be 14,000 hours. I’m told it’s now much more.

Flashback: McCarthy told reporters in Statuary Hall last month that he thinks “the American public should actually see all [that] happened instead of a report that’s written [on] a political basis.”

Pushing for the release of the footage, Carlson argued on his show last month that Washington has “a regime of secrecy and deceit.”

Carlson last year called the attack an “outbreak of mob violence, a forgettably minor outbreak by recent standards.”

McCarthy is doing this just days after it was revealed that Tucker Carlson and Fox news lied repeatedly about the 2020 election, knowing full well that Trump didn’t win the election, it wasn’t stolen and all the lawyers who were insisting he did were nuttier than 10 year old fruitcakes.

I don’t know why but I find this more disturbing than anything I’ve seen recently. McCarthy is the Speaker of the House and he’s exclusively releasing footage of J6 to … Tucker Carlson? Has he really gone that far down the rabbit hole? This feels like an escalation in the crazy to me and that’s saying something. I can’t imagine any previous Speaker doing something like this.

“This trip took guts”

Published by digby on February 20, 2023

This is in the …. National Review?

President Biden’s secret visit to wartime Kyiv is an example of America in its finest tradition.

The New York Times reports that after a “trans-Atlantic flight to Poland, Mr. Biden crossed the border by train, traveling for nearly 10 hours to Kyiv as other American officials have in recent months.”

This trip took guts.

Mr. Biden arrived unannounced early Monday morning to meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky, and the two stepped out into the streets of Kyiv even as an air-raid siren sounded, a dramatic moment captured on video that underscored the investment the United States has made in Ukraine’s independence.

“One year later, Kyiv stands,” Mr. Biden declared at Mr. Zelensky’s side in Mariinsky Palace. “And Ukraine stands. Democracy stands.”

“Thank you so much for coming, Mr. President, at a huge moment for Ukraine,” Mr. Zelensky said.

The Times reports that Biden “slipped out of Washington in the dark of night without notice” in the early hours of Sunday morning on the East Coast: “Just a few reporters sworn to secrecy and deprived of their telephones were brought with him, along with Jake Sullivan, the president’s national security adviser; Jen O’Malley Dillon, his deputy chief of staff; and Annie Tomasini, the director of Oval Office operations.”

The moment reminds me not so much of Presidents Bush, Obama, and Trump flying unannounced to Iraq or Afghanistan, but of President Roosevelt’s wartime travels across the Atlantic. Make no mistake, there was risk involved in this trip. Traveling to the capital of a nation fighting a shooting war with a great power, the U.S. had no way to choreograph with exactitude the circumstances of his travel or arrival. Neither the U.S. nor Ukraine has total control of the airspace. Neither the U.S. nor Ukraine could guarantee Biden’s security on the ground.

The president of the United States was inside the Russian WEZ — the weapons engagement zone — the entire trip. For that Joe Biden should receive credit.

Americans are allowed to disagree in good faith about what comes next — should the U.S. stand for a Ukraine whole and free no matter how long it takes to eject the Kremlin’s army, or is it in the American interest to urge the Ukrainians to accept a peace that doesn’t include all of its antebellum territory? — but no one should be under any illusion about the power of an American president going into a war zone to extend a hand to a beleaguered people and offer “unwavering support.”

Symbolism and morale matter to a nation at war. Indeed, as Napoleon said, “the moral is to the physical as three to one.”

At home, it may often feel like our republic is irretrievably fractured. Abroad, mistakes and wrong turns have tarnished our reputation for competence and steadfastness. But America is still, for all its faults, seen in dark and terrible places as the last best hope. Beyond our shores, people still react to our presidents with hope.

We should remember that.

Here’s a reminder for you from 2018:

During President Donald Trump’s unannounced visit to troops in Iraq on Wednesday—his first trip to troops deployed to a combat zone since he was elected—he admitted he had been concerned about making the trip.

The president said blacked-out windows inside the plane and unspecified concerns for first lady Melania Trump—who made the trip as well—had left him wary.

“I had concerns about the institution of the presidency,” Trump said in response to a question about the subject while in Iraq, via a pool report. “Not for myself personally. I had concerns for the first lady, I will tell you. But if you would have see what we had to go through in the darkened plane with all window closed with no light anywhere. Pitch black. I’ve been on many airplanes. All types and shapes and sizes.… So did I have a concern? Yes, I had a concern.”

Meanwhile, today…

Why Fox must lose

Published by Tom Sullivan on February 20, 2023

Truthiness must not prevail

Adam Serwer considers the implications of Fox fending off the Dominion voting machine defamation lawsuit (The Atlantic):

Fox News executives understood the election-fraud allegations were nonsense, and they also understood their audience wanted to hear them. Misinformation and propaganda are not novel problems, but modern technology renders the incentives to lie to an audience particularly clear, and the means to reach that audience particularly easy to access. There will always be a potentially profitable demand for self-flattering lies; ethical people and institutions resist supplying them. The ability of individual hustlers to amass an audience of sycophants by feeding them conspiracies puts pressure on more mainstream outlets to gently appease conspiracism, if not to fully capitulate to it.

Isn’t that an authoritarian’s wet dream? SLAPP suits would proliferate. Investigative journalism would dry up. The Biggest Brother could shape what the public knows.

The network may ultimately prevail; that’s what all those fancy lawyers get paid for. But if consciously lying to your audience about election fraud in order to keep them watching your network doesn’t meet the standard for actual malice, it’s difficult to imagine what a powerful media company could do that would. And even if Fox News ultimately loses the Dominion lawsuit, I would not expect its audience to abandon it. After all, the network remains willing to tell them what they know to be true—even if it isn’t.

Hard and brittle

People pay good money for the fun of being deceived. Fox, Newsmax and One America viewers want their conspiracy theories and prejudices validated, not challenged, much less threatened. People watch to be sheletered from things not dreamt of in their philosophy.

On that, this morning, NPR ran a story about transgender kids in Florida. The state’s new rules ban gender-affirming care:

Sandi’s son River (we’re using his middle name, as he’s not out yet to all of their extended family) started saying he was a boy, and presenting as a boy, when he was about 3 years old.

“It was like a light switch went off,” Sandi recalls.

River is now 12, a 7th-grader who loves rock-climbing, math and fishing, and is a whiz with a Rubik’s puzzle.

Sandi says she’s seen her son flourish in the past year since he started on puberty blockers. “I have this glorious picture right after he got his first puberty blocker shot where he is literally, like, ear to ear smiling,” she says. “He’s glowing. I felt like he could finally put his shoulders down, like, relax.”

In the current climate, she worries about what she calls “the constant invalidation” of who River is. “Constantly seeing that who you are is a political debate, [or] an agenda item on anyone’s list,” she says, “makes you feel less than human.”

People dislike having their neat categories jostled. They are hostile to it, even. Rigid minds are both hard and brittle. In fundamentalist communities that cast of mind is taught as a defense against dark spiritual forces and as a way of enforcing in-group conformance. The concept of transgender persons is unsettling.

So God created man in his own image … male and female created he them

I’m reminded of a discussion from 2012 on Scrutiny Hooligans (my old site, now offline). It involves one of the most useful reads from my teen years from Ursula Le Guin. I commented:

Marriage is a rather foundational concept, and those don’t bend easily. It’s like demanding that “up” (which also has a positive connotation) be expanded to also include “sideways” and “down” so as not to be discriminatory. Husband and wife are like that too.

I still recall the first time (20 yrs ago) a woman at a club kept talking to me (and a woman friend) about her “partner.” It made our eyes roll into the backs of our heads. Is this a business partner? A life partner? What?

When we found out the partner was a boyfriend, gravity was restored and we were back on solid ground. We had a familiar point of reference. There are all kinds of terms for opposite-sex human pairing. There’s monogamy, polyandry, polygyny, polygamy, and good-old, garden-variety marriage. I argued for years that accepting same-sex bondings would be easier for the public if there were unique names (for man-man and woman-woman) that weren’t as confusing to people as trying to make marriage fit, but people told me that nothing less than marriage would keep them from being second-class citizens.

Le Guin addressed that feeling of unease. “What is the first question we ask about a newborn baby?” asked Ursula Le Guin in “The Left Hand of Darkness”:

The Gethenians do not see one another as men or women. This is almost impossible for our imaginations to accept. After all, what is the first question we ask about a newborn baby? ….there is no division of humanity into strong and weak halves, protected/protective. One is respected and judged only as a human being. You cannot cast a Gethnian in the role of Man or Woman, while adopting towards ‘him’ a corresponding role dependant on your expetations of the interactions between persons of the same or oppositve sex. It is an appalling experience for a Terran.

Some are having that experience now trying to wrap their brains around “transgender.” It makes them angry. They’d rather have their accepted categories reinforced, their preferred reality validated. Through lies, if necessary.

Commercial interests willingly oblige.

Biden visits Kyiv

Published by Tom Sullivan on February 20, 2023

Not quite the “valley of Death,” but still

Image capture via The Independent.

“Someone who needs a lot of security appears to be visiting Kyiv…..” tweeted Anne Applebaum just before 4 a.m. ET.

https://twitter.com/PierreDBorrelli/status/1627570443665154049?s=20

Associated Press about 7:10 a.m. (Note: The spelling of Zelensky’s name varies with news outlet):

President Joe Biden made an unannounced visit to Ukraine on Monday to meet with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a striking gesture of solidarity that comes days before the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of the country.

Biden spent more than five hours in the Ukrainian capital, meeting Zelenskyy at Mariinsky Palace, honoring the country’s fallen soldiers and meeting with U.S. embassy staff in the war-torn country. In his remarks with Zelenskyy, Biden recalled the fears nearly a year ago that Russia’s invasion forces might quickly take city. “One year later, Kyiv stands,” Biden said, jamming his finger for emphasis on his podium decorated with the U.S. and Ukrainian flags. “And Ukraine stands. Democracy stands. The Americans stand with you, and the world stands with you.”

The Washington Post’s landing page: “The high-risk visit to Kyiv signaled continued commitment from the United States, the largest financial and military backer of Ukraine’s effort to repel Russian invaders from its territory.”

Amidst air raid sirens no less.

“American presidents have gone to war zones in the past,” reports NBC’s Richard Engel, “but generally when they went to Iraq or Afghanistan, they were going to places that had a large U.S. military presence, often just staying on military bases. That didn’t happen today.”

The New York Times reports that Biden made a nearly 10-hour train trip from the border with Poland to pledge “unwavering support” to Ukraine and meet with Zelensky.

Further details are sketchy. Biden has left Kyiv but has not yet arrived back in Poland (as of 8:08 a.m. ET). NBC’s Josh Lederman reports from Warsaw that the White House put Moscow on notice that Biden would be visiting Kyiv a few hours ahead of his arrival.

“Thank you so much for coming, Mr. President, at a huge moment for Ukraine,” Mr. Zelensky said:

Mr. Biden promised to release another $500 million in military aid in coming days, mentioning artillery ammunition, Javelin missiles and Howitzers, but he did not talk about the advanced arms that Ukraine has sought. Mr. Zelensky told reporters that he and the president spoke about “long range weapons and the weapons that may still be supplied to Ukraine even though it wasn’t supplied before.”

Mr. Biden joined Mr. Zelensky for a visit to St. Michael’s monastery in downtown Kyiv, where the sun glittered off the golden domes as the air-raid alarm wailed. Trailing two soldiers bearing a wreath, the two leaders walked along the Wall of Remembrance, where portraits are on display of more than 4,500 soldiers who have died since Russia illegally annexed Crimea in 2014 and first fomented a rebellion in eastern Ukraine.

The air-raid alarm had stopped by the time Mr. Biden got back into his motorcade and departed the monastery. The alarms sound almost daily in Kyiv, but the blare of the siren added to the bristling tension of the moment. Ukrainian officials have been warning that Russia was planning a large-scale missile bombardment to be timed to the one-year anniversary of the war.

Zelensky’s media operation has been good from the start. They were ready to go.

No comment from the Kremlin this morning.

Putin cannot afford to lose. The West cannot afford him to win. Donald Trump could resolve this overnight, of course.

Trump’s acting Defense Secretary doesn’t know if he was installed to delay the response on January 6th

Published by digby on February 19, 2023

What????

Former acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller said he is not sure if President Donald Trump installed him to slow the response to the Capitol attack on Jan. 6.

During a Sunday discussion on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal program, a caller confronted Miller about his role in the Jan. 6 attack.

“What do you say to all the people that believe that you, Kash Patel, Chad Wolf, Charles Lamb all were installed for one reason, and that’s to delay the response on Jan. 6?” a caller named David asked. “They were only deployed after the coup had failed. They failed because [then-Vice President Mike Pence] wouldn’t leave the building.”

“I think it’s complete bull—you know what,” Miller shot back. “I think the investigation has revealed that that did not happen, that there was not some sort of cabal or some sort of conspiracy to delay the response to Capitol Hill.”

The former Defense official argued military “should never be used for domestic law enforcement, meaning doing police work, except when civil society and civil order has collapsed.”

“So this whole narrative that somehow Wolf and Patel and me and everybody else was installed [for Jan. 6] — you’d have to ask President Trump,” he added. “I don’t know. I don’t think that was the case.”

You would think that anyone in that position would feel confident that he wasn’t given the job to carry out a coup but I guess with Trump nobody ever really knows. Still, I would expect there to be some level of concern that he isn’t sure.

Miller has a new book out and has been making the rounds. He’s a real piece of work.