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Month: August 2023

A martyr is born

Published by digby on August 12, 2023

You knew it would happen:

“FBI is now killing all online critics of Biden,” Ali Alexander, organizer of “Stop the Steal” protests that fueled the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, announced on his Telegram account on Wednesday. “This is all by design.”

This alarming claim was prompted by the death of Craig Deleeuw Robertson, 75, in an FBI raid on his Provo, Utah residence early that morning. According to a criminal complaint from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Robertson was to be charged with interstate threats, impeding federal law enforcement officers by threat, and making threats against the president — all on the social media platforms Truth Social and Facebook. But Robertson was reportedly armed when agents showed up on his doorstep with arrest and search warrants, according to law enforcement sources who spoke to the Associated Press, and was killed by gunfire.

“The FBI is reviewing an agent-involved shooting which occurred around 6:15 a.m. on Wednesday,” the agency said in a statement shared with Rolling Stone, noting that the subject of their warrants was deceased. “In accordance with FBI policy, the shooting incident is under review by the FBI’s Inspection Division.”

In the aftermath of the raid, plenty of media attention focused on the nature of Robertson’s alleged threats, which broadly targeted Democrats and perceived enemies of Donald Trump. According to the charging documents, agents had tried to speak to him in person in March about a Truth Social post in which he related a violent fantasy about murdering New York County District Attorney Alvin Bragg — who indicted Trump in April on many counts of falsifying business records. (Truth Social itself reportedly tipped the FBI off about the post.) After rebuffing agents in that encounter, according to charging documents, Robertson allegedly posted on Facebook that they had come close to “violent eradication.” This month, upon learning that Biden was to visit Utah, Robertson allegedly stated on Facebook that he was “cleaning the dust off” of an M24 sniper rifle. Based on other social media content, including photos of his many guns, investigators believed he owned such a weapon.

However, given Robertson’s age and apparent mobility issues (neighbors say he walked with a cane and would even drive the 200-yard distance to his church), the FBI now faces serious questions about its tactical response to his online activity.

Whether he was a real threat or not, Trump supporters and other right-wingers have seized on his death to imply or claim that Robertson was executed for his political views — turning him into a martyr for free speech. “Hating Biden is enough to get you dead,” as one widely followed conservative put it on Twitter.

Far-right conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec said on his podcast that the raid “looks like a message being sent” from the government: “Threaten us, and we’ll show up at your home at 6:15 in the morning and take you out.” On Friday, he posted to Truth Social, “The Left wants what happened to Craig Robertson and Ashli Babbitt to happen to every Trump supporter,” referring to the MAGA rioter killed by a police officer during the Jan. 6 Capitol attack as she attempted to breach the barricaded Speaker’s Lobby. Fellow conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich tweeted Thursday, “This hit was executed on [Robertson] to make Americans afraid.”

Conservative radio host Glenn Beck, meanwhile, tweeted that he had “never seen the FBI gun anybody down” over threats against the president in “40+ years of broadcasting.” And Laura Loomer, an extremist banned from various platforms over the years for hate speech and misinformation, referred to the agency as a “Gestapo” in one tweet about Robertson’s death, later alleging that they murdered him “in cold blood because he criticized Joe Biden online.”

On Telegram, a channel for the QAnon-linked group “The Patriot Voice,” which has more than 50,000 subscribers, shared a link to an article about Robertson’s death. The message added scare quotes around the word “threats” when describing his social media posts. “What do you think,” the author wrote, “does the FBI have a right to KILL someone during a search warrant just because of some statement made online?” One commenter chimed in to say, “It sounds like Biden used the FBI to do his dirty work.”

It was inevitable. Cults thrive on martyrs.

I understand the FBI is investigating what happened, as they should. The authorities may have overstepped their bounds. They often do. This man was a fanatic who threatened all kinds of people. He fantasized on his Facebook page about killing Merrick Garland in a parking garage and standing over his dead body admiring the hole he put in his head. He had posted that he was “Digging out my old ghillie suit and cleaning the dust off the M24 sniper rifle” when he heard that Biden was coming to Utah. From what we understand, he was armed and I assume he failed to comply with the police which is usually a big no-no among the pro-police crowd.

I also can’t help but be reminded of this:

President Donald Trump on Thursday gloated over the September killing of Portland, Oregon, murder suspect Michael Reinoehl by law enforcement officers who had been deputized as US Marshals.

A task force involving federal, state and local law enforcement officers had been trying to arrest Reinoehl in connection with the August 29 fatal shooting of a supporter of a right-wing group in Portland, a killing that happened during clashes between pro-Trump groups and left-wing protesters.

“We sent in the US Marshals,” Trump said during a campaign rally in North Carolina, adding that it “took 15 minutes (and) it was over.”

The President immediately followed that statement by appearing to indicate that authorities had no intention of ever taking Reinoehl alive.

“They knew who he was; they didn’t want to arrest him, and in 15 minutes that ended,” Trump said. It was unclear what information he was basing his assertion on.

That action was cheered by the right wingers. It turned out that Reinoehl wasn’t armed when they shot him down but whatevs. He was supposedly “antifa” so that’s all that matters.

It’s fair to be suspicious of this shooting because he was an old man who used a cane. On the other hand, that doesn’t mean he couldn’t have sat himself down somewhere with his sniper rifle and tried to kill the president. When you issue threats like that after already having been visited by the Secret Service it’s not surprising that the FBI would issue a search warrant. What happened next is up for grabs but let’s just say it wouldn’t be surprising if that man had a gun and pointed it at the cops. We all know what happens next, especially the right wing which cheers whenever the police gun down a Black person because they failed to comply.

Republicans have no interest in persuasion

Published by digby on August 12, 2023

JV Last:

The other day on Threads, Bulwark contributor and all-around great writer 

Nicholas Grossman asked the following question:

What he’s getting at is one of the political and ideological asymmetries we talk about here often:

One side of our political divide routinely castigates itself for being in a bubble. One side expends a lot of energy trying to figure out how to appeal to people who don’t vote for them. One side talks a lot about persuasion and understanding the people across from them.

Not coincidentally, that side is the same side that can no longer wield executive power nationally without winning a sizable popular majority.

The other side does not seem to worry about the media bubble it lives in.

This side does not expend much energy trying to understand the 51 percent of the country which votes against it.

Systems engineering is one of those disciplines that, once you start looking at it, shapes your perception of everything around you. (Reminder: The Logic of Failure is a classic and accessible book on the subject and is worth your time.)

In our case, I think it is not an accident that the Republican party became an authoritarian institution at the same moment that it realized minority rule was a viable pathway.

The incentives for majority rule are expansive: Try to be as open to as many voters as possible without losing your base. The incentives for minority rule are propulsive: Try to maximize your base while turning off as few swing voters as possible.

Majority rule as a system selects for moderation while minority rule pushes a party to become an ouroboros.

This asks why conservatives aren’t asking this question and the answer is, I think, correct. They’ve decided that their only path is through sheer power politics. They prefer that anyway,

But here’s another question: why does the mainstream media do exactly the same thing? They are still obsessed with the Trump voter as they have been for the last eight years. There’s been a tiny bit of interest in the effects of the Roe being overturned but I have still not read many profiles of Biden voters or even Democratic voters beyond that specific issue. They have zero interest in the thoughts of the majority. It’s one reason why Trump remains so close. If you didn’t know better you would think that most people in this country are for him.

Canceling Shakespeare

Published by digby on August 12, 2023

This was inevitable:

Students in a Florida school district will be reading only excerpts from William Shakespeare’s plays for class rather than the full texts under redesigned curriculum guides developed, in part, to take into consideration the state’s new laws that restrict classroom materials whose content can be deemed sexual.

The changes to the Hillsborough County Public Schools’ curriculum guides were made with Florida’s new legislation limiting classroom materials that “contain pornography or obscene depictions of sexual conduct” in mind. Other reasons included revised state standards and an effort to get students to read a wide variety of books for new state exams, the school district said in an emailed statement on Tuesday.

Several Shakespeare plays use suggestive puns and innuendo, and it is implied that the protagonists have had premarital sex in “Romeo and Juliet.” Shakespeare’s books will be available for checkout at media centers at schools, said the district, which covers the Tampa area.

“First and foremost, we have not excluded Shakespeare from our high school curriculum. Students will still have the physical books to read excerpts in class,” the statement said. “Curriculum guides are continually reviewed and refined throughout the year to align with state standards and current law.”

The decision in Tampa is the latest fallout from laws passed by Florida’s Republican-controlled Legislature and championed by GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis over the past two years. The first law, dubbed “Don’t Say Gay” by critics, was passed last year and prohibited classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in lower grades.

The second law passed this year extended the prohibition on gender and sexual orientation discussion to other grades. It also prevents students and teachers from being required to use pronouns that don’t correspond to someone’s biological sex and strengthens the system in which people can lodge challenges against school books. Republican lawmakers said at the time that the bill was intended to shield children from sexualized content.

Underscoring the confusion over what is allowed in schools, Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz on Tuesday put “Romeo and Juliet” on his list of books he is recommending that students read in August.

“This month’s book recommendations provide a variety of reading materials that students will find uplifting and will spark a love for literacy,” Diaz said in a statement.

Florida is fast becoming an intellectual black hole. Check this out:

Yes, they have abolished gender studies at the state liberal arts school that was turned over to hardcore right wing zealots led by this crackpot “intellectual” leader Chris Rufo. That he couches this autocratic assault on academic freedom as “democratic means” is enough to give you a headache. Nobody elected Chris Rufo to anything.

Who’s next for comeuppance?

Published by Tom Sullivan on August 12, 2023

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried ordered to jail

Does this make your day?

Daily Beast:

The luck ran out for FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried on Friday, when a New York judge ordered that he be confined to jail in advance of his October trial.

The former billionaire had repeatedly angered both prosecutors and the court while out on bail following his arrest in December. Most recently, he leaked documents to The New York Times about his former lover Caroline Ellison, who once ran Bankman-Fried’s hedge fund and is likely to be a witness in his trial.

Prosecutors framed the leaks as a possible attempt at witness tampering, both by intimidating Ellison and influencing public perception of her in the media. An assistant U.S. attorney argued in court last month that there was “no set of conditions short of detention to ensure the safety of the community.”

Judge Lewis Kaplan agreed that defendant Bankman-Fried has a right to try and repair his reputation. “But I find that there is a practical possibility [leaking documents] was intended to have [witnesses] back off.”

Who else wants to play chicken with the courts? Specifically, with Judge Tanya Chutkan, the judge assigned to Donald Trump’s Jan. 6 case?

On Friday, Chutkan issued a protective order following a hearing that special counsel Jack Smith requested a week ago after Trump “posted a message to his social media platform, Truth Social, saying, ‘IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!'” ABC News reports.

Trump famously, perhaps reflexively, tries to delay, delay, delay his way out of legal trouble. Chutkan on Friday threw his words back in his face, perhaps more politely than in the graphic above. She did not threaten prison if Trump disobeyed her order, but perhaps something worse: a speedier trial.

“The more a party makes inflammatory statements about this case which could taint the jury pool or intimidate potential witnesses, the greater the urgency will be that we proceed to trial to ensure a jury pool from which we can select an impartial jury,” Chutkan told Trump’s attorneys on Friday.

Is the ever-petulant, 77-year-old former president playing chicken with the wrong judge? Will Bankman-Fried’s jailing make any impression on a teetotaler so drunk on himself, he’s bulletproof?

To Be Continued.

Do not underestimate Gen Z

Published by Tom Sullivan on August 12, 2023

Plenty needs fixing

David Hogg at the far end on the left, along with other GenZ activists at Netroots Nation-Chicago. Including Leaders We Deserve board members TN state Rep. Justin Jones, FL Congressman Maxwell Frost (1st and 2nd on left), and NC Democratic state chair Anderson Clayton (4th on right).

As Greg Sargent tells it:

Young people have delivered unmistakable political surprises lately. They have proved decidedly progressive on many big issues. They voted at outsize rates in the last three national elections. They are fueling population growth in swing-state college towns, making Republicans nervously rethink their strategy.

Now, if a group of Gen Z political operatives has its way, young people might surprise us in another fashion: by getting involved in those sleepy, unglamorous, decidedly uncool contests known as state legislative races.

This week, David Hogg, the 23-year-old gun-control activist driven into politics by the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Fla., launched a political action committee called Leaders We Deserve, which is devoted to recruiting young candidates for state legislative seats — largely in red states.

“That’s where the worst bills are coming from,” Hogg says.

I’m forever telling friends less engaged in day-to-day organizing to stop obsessing over the presidential race. Yes, Democrats need to regain control of the Supreme Court, etc., but the real damage is being done at the state legislative level — largely in red states. Did you not see what the GOP just tried to pull in Ohio? What DeSantis is doing with education and his culture wars in Florida?

I spent 2016 telling progressives President Hillary can’t solve my legislature problem; President Bernie can’t either. WE have to solve that problem. Here.

Gen Zers get that more than many of my Boomer friends.

“The challenge we face is, what are we going to do to undo the harmful legacy left behind by extreme right Republicans and the 50-year chess game they’ve been playing,” Hogg told me.

The importance of legislatures is sometimes lost on Democrats. When Republicans captured many statehouses across the country in the 2010 midterm blowout, it caught Democrats napping. We are still suffering the consequences: GOP legislatures gerrymandered legislative districts (and congressional maps) and passed voter suppression laws, deepening their hold on power.

But there are serious barriers to entry. State legislators are typically very poorly paid. It’s a part-time job best suited to people already well off or with spouses back home who can share the financial burdens. One might even say the system is rigged to keep out younger legislators. Hogg wants to fix that. But it will have to happen from the inside.

On Hogg’s list is North Carolina Democrats’ state chair Anderson Clayton, 25, as well as more seasoned officials. I was probably the only person over 35 on her campaign Slack channel when she ran for the office in January-February. With that behind-the scenes vantage, I was super impressed with the team she assembled and the grassroots campaign she ran. Clayton defeated the incumbent endorsed by the governor, attorney general, and all of the state’s Democratic members of Congress.

The challenge now is to use their newfound celebrity to turn out more younger voters. While celebrated for youth turnout increasing over the last several cycles, they still lag far behind the voting rate of us old farts. Below, 44% of all NC voters 45 and under (to the left of the white vertical line) are registered independents (unaffiliated in NC). Democrats’ targeting of them for voter turnout efforts, in a word, stinks.

Michah L. Sifry commented on the recent “The Experience of Grassroots Leaders Working with the Democratic Party.” One complaint that jumped out at me involves Democrats’ targeting being too narrow (something I’d already concluded about unaffiliated voters):

Most volunteer leaders see their state Democratic party’s efforts to organize outreach as “too little, too late.” One in four call their party unresponsive. A majority of respondents said the party does a terrible job targeting voters, saying that its lists are far too narrow.

The question I ask is are those younger voters not turning out like their elders because they are unengaged, or because they are not being engaged? By Democrats.

Now to fix it.

Friday Night Soother

Published by digby on August 11, 2023

Hero puppy!

No more woke Jesus

Published by digby on August 11, 2023

He’s just not manly enough for the MAGA cult

An evangelical leader is warning that conservative Christians are now rejecting the teachings of Jesus as “liberal talking points.”

Russell Moore, former top official for the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) who is now the editor-in-chief of Christianity Today, said during an interview aired on NPR’s All Things Considered this week that Christianity is in a “crisis” due to the current state of right-wing politics.

Moore has found himself at odds with other evangelical leaders due to his frequent criticism of former President Donald Trump. He resigned his position with the SBC in 2021 following friction over his views on Trump and a sex abuse crisis among Southern Baptist clergy.

In his NPR interview, Moore suggested that Trump had transformed the political landscape in the U.S. to the point where some Christian conservatives are openly denouncing a central doctrine of their religion as being too “weak” and “liberal” for their liking.

“Multiple pastors tell me, essentially, the same story about quoting the Sermon on the Mount, parenthetically, in their preaching—’turn the other cheek’—[and] to have someone come up after to say, ‘Where did you get those liberal talking points?'” Moore said.

“When the pastor would say, ‘I’m literally quoting Jesus Christ’ … The response would be, ‘Yes, but that doesn’t work anymore. That’s weak,” he added. “When we get to the point where the teachings of Jesus himself are seen as subversive to us, then we’re in a crisis.”

Moore went to to say that he did not think it would be possible to “fix” Christianity by “fighting a war for the soul of evangelicalism,” urging his concerned brethren to instead fight “small and local” battles like refusing to go along with the current “church culture.”

Good luck with that.

Is it just possible that these people never really believed in Jesus’ teachings in the first place? Just asking …

A GOP moderate

Published by digby on August 11, 2023

That’s what they call “Iowa nice.”

More Iowa nice:

A man in a Boston Red Sox hat in Iowa caused quite an uproar at Mike Pence’s event today, which was captured by local journalists with Iowa Starting Line.

“Why did you commit treason on J6 and not certify President Trump’s win?”

A Pence supporter (yes, they exist), stood up and fired back at the man, “That’s it buddy. Shut your mouth!”

Lies, lies, lies

Published by digby on August 11, 2023

Republican: “The election was stolen.”

Democrat: “That’s a lie!”

Democrat: “Trump tried to steal the election after he lost.”

Republican:”That’s a lie!”

Republican:

Democrat: “You’re lying, he didn’t do any of that!”

Average American who doesn’t follow politics: “They’re all a bunch of crooks and liars.”

This is a huge problem. The Republican lies are overwhelming at this point and people are probably making the calculation that they are telling the truth at least half the time.

This is what an autocrat looks like

Published by digby on August 11, 2023

She was a duly elected district attorney. And he just removed her from her post as he did another DA who said he didn’t approve of one of DeSantis’ policies.

Sincle Florida is pretty much a one-party state there’s not much she can do about it:

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida suspended the top state prosecutor in Orlando on Wednesday, accusing her of incompetence and neglect of duty for what he characterized as lenience against violent criminals. The move was the governor’s latest aggressive use of executive power against local officials of the opposing political party.

Mr. DeSantis suspended Monique H. Worrell, the elected state attorney of Florida’s Ninth Judicial Circuit, which includes Orange and Osceola Counties, and cited as reasons her handling of three cases and a low overall incarceration rate, among other things. One of the three cases involved a man who shot and injured two Orlando police officers over the weekend.

It is the second time in a year that Mr. DeSantis, a Republican running for president, has taken the drastic and exceedingly rare step of removing an elected state attorney. Both have been Democrats.

Mr. DeSantis’s presidential campaign, with its focus on cultural issues, has struggled to gain traction among likely Republican primary voters, who said in a recent New York Times/Siena College poll that they would be more likely to support a candidate “who focuses on restoring law and order” over one “who focuses on defeating radical ‘woke’ ideology.” Mr. DeSantis replaced his campaign manager on Tuesday.

The governor was heavily criticized in August 2022 when he removed Andrew H. Warren, the top prosecutor in Tampa, who had signed a statement along with 90 other elected prosecutors across the country vowing not to prosecute people who seek or provide abortions. Critics blasted the ouster as politically motivated. But Mr. Warren remains out of office — and Mr. DeSantis mentions his removal in just about every campaign speech.

Mr. DeSantis said on Wednesday that Ms. Worrell’s office had charged cases in ways that would avoid mandatory minimum sentences for gun and drug trafficking crimes; allowed juveniles to avoid serious charges or incarceration; found ways to avoid seeking more serious sentences when they were available; limited charges for child pornography; and inappropriately allowed some offenders to avoid having a criminal conviction on their records.

“Prosecutors do have a certain amount of discretion about which cases to bring and which not,” Mr. DeSantis, a former federal and military prosecutor, said. “But what this state attorney has done is abuse that discretion and has effectively nullified certain laws in the state of Florida.”

The governor appointed Andrew A. Bain, a judge from the same judicial circuit, to take Ms. Worrell’s place. Ms. Worrell may appeal her suspension to the Republican-controlled State Senate, or try to get the Florida Supreme Court, where a majority of justices were appointed by Mr. DeSantis, to hear her case.

And yes, she is a Black woman. No surprise there.

At this point it’s pretty clear that he’s not doing any of this just because he’s running for president. He really is that guy — that Viktor Orban guy.