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Month: August 2023

Another attack on the Atlanta DA

Published by digby on August 21, 2023

He can’t help himself

Mediaite reported:

According to a recent WalletHub report, Atlanta is ranked 11th in the nation for violent crime and has seen an increase in murder rates over the past few years. No doubt Atlanta is not the safest city in the nation, but its problems do not seem materially different than other urban areas in red and blue states.

I wonder if at some point the GOP residents of Georgia will get tired of their state and its leaders being slagged by Donald Trump day in and day out. I suppose most of them are fine with it. He’s their god and can do no wrong. But there must be a few who still have a little pride in their own state. Aren’t there?

All it will take is one deluded MAGA on the jury…

Published by digby on August 21, 2023

Over the weekend Florida Governor Ron DeSantis may have sealed his political fate with one recklessly dumb comment. Failing to learn the lesson that a Trump opponent can say a lot of things but he cannot ever insult Trump supporters he told The Florida Standard:

“The movement has got to be about what are you trying to achieve on behalf of the American people and that’s got to be based in principle, because if you’re not rooted in principle, if all we are is listless vessels that’s just supposed to follow … whatever happens to come down the pike on Truth Social every morning, that’s not going to be a durable movement.”

The so-called “listless vessels” were not amused.

DeSantis and his people scrambled to defend themselves, saying that he was referring to Trump’s congressional supporters not his Real American supporters but referring to members of congress as a “movement” was very sloppy even if he was actually whining about elected officials. He also said:

“I think that we have a stream in our party that views supporting Trump as whether you are a Rino or not. And so you could be the most conservative person since sliced bread, unless you’re kissing his rear end, they will somehow call you a Rino.”

I guess sliced bread isn’t “woke.” What a relief.

DeSantis should have known better than to go there even if he did mean to target members of congress. They’re Trump supporters too and they are very popular with the voters he seems determined to woo. He might as well have called them all deplorable and then dropped out of the campaign. It’s only a matter of time before somebody starts selling coffee mugs and T-shirts that say “Proud to be a listless vessel” on them.

And anyway, if there was ever a group of people, whether in Congress or among the American people who are anything but listless, it’s MAGA followers. They may be “vessels” but they are as energetic and enthusiastic a political faction as we have ever seen. It’s fun!

In fact, they’re having so much fun that they are living in a full-fledged, delusional fantasy that makes “Barbie” look like “The Sorrow and the Pity.” These results from the latest CBS Poll are from another dimension:

Trump far and away leads the GOP field among voters who place top importance on a candidate being “honest and trustworthy.”

61% for Trump to the next candidate, DeSantis, at 17%. And it gets even weirder:

More generally, Trump’s voters hold him as a source of true information, even more so than other sources, including conservative media figures, religious leaders, and even their own friends and family.

This is classic cult follower behavior. And this isn’t some small group, tens of millions of Americans feel that what Donald Trump, one of history’s greatest liars, tells them is true even compared to the clergy.

61% of primary voters also believe that Trump would definitely beat Biden, which the pollsters acknowledge is likely due to the fact that they believe he won the last election and has the advantage of a Bizarro World form of incumbency. They believe his lies that the Trump presidency was the most successful of all time and they want more of it. (His overall record is actually very mixed and his handling of the pandemic, his greatest challenge, was a historic failure.)

77% believe that the indictments against Trump are politically motivated and 62% say they plan to vote for him in the primary. His closest rival is DeSantis at 16%. But according to this article in The Atlantic by Russell Berman, there is some evidence that a change in the way that question is worded challenges the conventional wisdom that Trump is actually being helped by the indictments. But it only adds up to about 1.6% points which is trivial considering his lead.

More relevant is the finding by Sarah Longwell a Republican strategist who holds frequent focus groups, that GOP primary voters in the main just don’t care about them. Almost no Republicans have said the indictments have made them less likely to support him. He is their leader and they believe he’s telling the truth when he says he did none of it. I’m afraid that if any of these trials end up with one or more of these fun-loving Trump followers on the jury it’s going to be very hard to shake them out of their belief that he can literally do no wrong.

Trump responded to this poll on his Truth Social platform:

New CBS POLL, just out, has me leading the field by “legendary” numbers. TRUMP 62%, 46 Points above DeSanctimonious (who is crashing like an ailing bird!), Ramaswamy 7%, Pence 5%, Scott 3%, Haley 2%, Sloppy Chris Christy 2%, “Aida” Hutchinson 1%. The public knows who I am & what a successful Presidency I had, with Energy Independence, Strong Borders and Military, Biggest EVER Tax & Regulation Cuts, No Inflation, Strongest Economy in History & much more. I WILL THEREFORE NOT BE DOING THE DEBATES!

He has instead agreed to do a pre-taped interview with former Fox celebrity Tucker Carlson to be aired on X, formerly twitter, at the same time as the Fox News debate. (He’s miffed at Fox for not reporting his best poll numbers and using the “big orange” pictures of him so this is obviously his idea of a clever slap in the face.)

The fact that it’s pre-taped is interesting for two reasons. If Carlson insisted on it, it may be because he wants to control it instead of letting Trump run off at the mouth as he does in live interviews. If Trump demanded it, it’s possible that he has other plans. Apparently Fox isn’t sure that he won’t just crash the debate anyway so they’ve got plans in place to accommodate him in case he does. It is not beyond the realm of possibility.

It’s also possible that he’ll be sneaking in the back door of the Fulton County Jail to turn himself in for arrest. It’s open 24/7. He’s got to do it sometime before Friday, and if he’s on twitter and the debate’s on Fox perhaps he hopes he can keep his “listless vessels” from seeing it live. But he needn’t worry. As he said before, he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and not lose any votes. For once he wasn’t lying.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/08/trump-indictment-2024-election-republican-primary-polling/675062/

NY T: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/20/us/politics/trump-biden-debates.html

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-poll-indictments-2023-08-20/

Mark Meadows, dancing as fast as he can

Published by Tom Sullivan on August 21, 2023

“A tricky approach” to avoiding conviction

Mark Meadows speaking at the 2018 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland. Photo by Gage Skidmore (CC BY-SA 2.0).

New information in the Trump stolen documents case surfaced over the weekend. ABC News had a scoop on former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows’ testimony to special counsel Jack Smith’s investigators. Marcy Wheeler (emptywheel) this morning summarizes key points:

  • Meadows knew of no standing order to declassify documents
  • He was not involved in packing boxes, didn’t see Trump doing so, and wasn’t aware Trump had taken classified documents
  • Meadows offered to sort through boxes of documents after NARA inquired about them in May 2021, but Trump declined the offer
  • Meadows ultimately backed his ghostwriter’s account that the Iran document that Trump described to Meadows’ ghost-writer was on the couch in front of him at the time of the exchange

Meadows asked that the part about a classified Iran war plan sitting out in plain view be edited out of an early draft of Meadows’ book, “The Chief’s Chief,” ABC reports:

Sources told ABC News that Meadows was questioned by Smith’s investigators about the changes made to the language in the draft, and Meadows claimed, according to the sources, that he personally edited it out because he didn’t believe at the time that Trump would have possessed a document like that at Bedminster.

Meadows also said that if it were true Trump did indeed have such a document, it would be “problematic” and “concerning,” sources familiar with the exchange said. Meadows said his perspective changed on whether his ghostwriter’s recollection could have been accurate, given the later revelations about the classified materials recovered from Mar-a-Lago in the months since his book was published, the sources said.

Significantly, Meadows changed his testimony on the matter, Wheeler notes. Based on his court filing asking to have his Georgia charges dismissed, he’s clearly trying to frame his actions in both the Georgia and documents cases as “just doing his job,” hoping it will help him evade convictions, Wheeler continues:

There’s an arc here. The early acts in both indictments might be deemed legal information gathering. After that, in early December, Meadows takes two actions, one alleged in Georgia and the other federally, both of which put him clearly in the role of a conspirator, neither of which explicitly involves Trump as charged in the Georgia indictment. Meadows:

  • Asks Johnny McEntee for a memo on how to obstruct the vote certification
  • Orders the campaign to ensure someone is coordinating the fake electors

Wheeler explains at length how Meadows is exposed both federally and in Georgia for actions taken arguably outside the scope of his COS duties and with no clear federal policy interest.

Between the overt political nature of three of his actions and the lack of any policy argument, Fani Willis should be able to mount an aggressive challenge to this effort, though the effort is not entirely frivolous and Meadows has very good lawyers even if those lawyers don’t have great facts.

[…]

The degree to which subsequent events, including the Georgia indictment, may discredit Meadows’ federal grand jury testimony likely explains why we’ve gotten the first ever leak as to the substance of Meadows’ testimony, which often serves as a way to telegraph testimony to other witnesses. Several of the things ABC describes him as testifying to — that he had no idea Trump took classified documents and that he offered to sort through everything but Trump refused — seem unlikely. But so long as whoever else could refute that (including Walt Nauta, who helped pack up the boxes) tells the same story, he might get away with improbable testimony.

Wheeler summarizes:

Meadows appears, thus far, to have succeeded with a very tricky approach. He has great lawyers and it may well succeed going forward. But with all the indictments flying, that effort gets far more difficult, particularly given the way the overt acts in the Georgia indictment discredit Meadows’ federal grand jury testimony.

Conclusion: Mark Meadows is dancing as fast as he can.

Hilary today, floods tomorrow

Published by Tom Sullivan on August 21, 2023

“Virtually all rainfall daily records have been broken”

For future reference, on the east coast when it’s overcast and the air feels like warm bathwater, a hurricane is on its way.

Hoping our friends kept dry on Sunday during Hilary’s visit to Palm Springs where the 911 system went down. It’s not as if tropical weather is a regular event there. (One mentioned doing some advance sandbagging.) Weather experts reported “virtually all rainfall daily records have been broken thus far” and warned of “catastrophic and life-threatening flooding.” Plenty of people seem to have insisted on driving flooded streets anyway.

As an aside, a women in Greenville, S.C. once stepped out of her car after she stalled out in a foot of water in a low spot. She got sucked down a storm drain at the curb. They found her body in a river days later. It’s not something you forget. Don’t do that.

Washington Post:

  • Now a post-tropical cyclone, Hilary was traveling north through Nevada early Monday, with maximum sustained winds of 39 mph, the NHC said. “A brief tornado or two will be possible” in southeastern California, northwest Arizona, southern Nevada and southwestern Utah, the NHC said.
  • Up to 10.5 inches of rain fell in Southern California, including around 2 to 3 inches in Los Angeles and San Diego, which set summer records.
  • A man was killed Sunday in Mexico’s Baja California Sur, authorities said, after water swept away his car.
  • A magnitude-5.1 earthquake shook parts of Southern California on Sunday afternoon, triggering an emergency mobile alert to residents in Los Angeles County and surrounding areas. The National Weather Service said a tsunami was not expected.

The Los Angeles Unified School District schools are closed.

The American Hate movement claims another victim

Published by digby on August 20, 2023

A beloved store owner in Lake Arrowhead was shot and killed during a dispute over a Pride flag, officials say.

The shooting happened around 5 p.m. Friday at the Mag Pi clothing store on Hook Creek Road in Cedar Glen.

When deputies arrived, they found 66-year-old Laura Ann Carleton with a gunshot wound. She was pronounced dead on the scene.

According to the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department, the suspect, who has not been identified, “made several disparaging remarks about a rainbow flag that stood outside the store before shooting Carleton.”

Deputies found the suspect near Torrey and Rause Rancho Roads, armed with a handgun.

“When deputies attempted to contact the suspect, a lethal force encounter occurred and the suspect was pronounced deceased,” read an update from the sheriff’s department. No deputies were injured.

The Lake Arrowhead LGBTQ spoke out about the shooting, saying though Carleton didn’t identify as a member of the LGBTQ+ community, she spent her time helping and advocating for everyone in the community.

San Bernardino County Third District Supervisor also spoke out about the shooting, calling it “unthinkable.”

“I stand with my mountain communities as we mourn this incredible loss,” she wrote in an Instagram story. “Everyone deserves to live free of hate and discrimination and practice their constitutional right of freedom of speech. Lauri was a remarkable member of the community and I send my deepest condolences to her family in this time of grief.”

She has nine children.

We don’t know much about the man who killed her yet other than the fact that he was 27 years old. Apparently, people had pulled down the rainbow flag before. It seems it offends them. So someone decided the person who flew it had to die.

Now let’s talk about how MAGAs are losing his freedom of speech some more.

It’s called “pay to play”

Published by digby on August 20, 2023

It’s what Hillary Clinton was (wrongly) accused of doing for her family’s global charity.

GDS actually auctioned off his time to big money donors. He might as well have opened up an Only Fans account:

Florida governor and 2024 Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis was “personally involved” in “efforts to effectively auction off leisure time” to wealthy donors who were seeking to “influence” policies in the Sunshine State — and much of it was recorded in writing by DeSantis staffers, Isaac Arnsdorf and Josh Dawsey reveal in Sunday‘s Washington Post.

After “DeSantis took office in 2019, his political team made a list of the state’s top 40 lobbyists and about 100 of their ‘Suggested Clients to target’ for political contributions, according to a fundraising document reviewed by The Washington Post,” the correspondents write. “Next to the name of each lobbyist was a dollar figure, an ‘ask’ that the DeSantis team hoped they would raise based on their book of clients, whose names were also listed in the document and included large corporations such as Disney and Motorola, as well as sports organizations, billionaires and interest groups with extensive business before the state.”

DeSantis’ “fundraisers,” Arnsdorf and Dawsey explain, “hoped that nine lobbyists would raise at least $1 million each for DeSantis’ political action committee, the state and the Republican Governors Association, according to the document, which was drafted by Heather Barker, a top DeSantis aide and his primary fundraiser, and shared with others.”

DeSantis’ affinity for hitting the links was the bedrock of his team’s plan to woo financial contributors, whom the Post says “envisioned that some golf outings with the governor would net contributions of $75,000 or more, according to other emails among DeSantis’ political advisers.”

Golf, however, was not the only activity with the governor that was dangled in front of DeSantis’ monied supporters.

“The 2019 document detailed other avenues for securing contributions. ‘METHODS FOR FIRMS TO DELIVER SUPPORT: Golf, lunch, meetings, dinner, tours, events, etc. — Each have a threshold (ex. Golf $25k per person, which is a deal),’ reads the document, whose authenticity was confirmed by multiple people with knowledge of it,” per the Post. “Like others interviewed for this story, the people spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.”

Arnsdorf and Dawsey note that while legal experts told them that DeSantis’s actions may not be explicitly illegal, they “undermine his attempt to portray himself as someone who would do a better job taking on special interests than former president Donald Trump, the polling leader in the GOP race. ‘We’e drained the swamp in here,’ he said in a recent Fox News interview about his time as governor in Florida. ‘One of the things he did not do was drain the swamp.'”

He is the swamp. So is Trump. This whole “drain the swamp” thing by Republicans is absurd.

Short but sweet

Published by digby on August 20, 2023

And so right on

Rosalie Silberman Abella is the Samuel and Judith Pisar visiting professor of law at Harvard Law School and is a former justice of the Supreme Court of Canada. This op-ed is adapted from her speech upon receiving the 2023 Ruth Bader Ginsburg Medal of Honor from the World Jurist Association.

The incandescent Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a jurist, a woman and a Jew. It was a defining combination that shaped her vision and her passions, transforming her from distinguished U.S. Supreme Court justice to iconic global metaphor.

When she pursued justice on the Supreme Court, she was a judicial juggernaut who was catapulted into international orbit by two forces: enthusiastic gratitude for her ever-bolder judgments, but also, as time went on, by the vituperative reaction of an increasingly regressive climate in which those progressive judgments were anathema.

Regrettably, that regressive climate is where we find ourselves today, especially about the judiciary. Critics call the good news of an independent judiciary the bad news of judicial autocracy. They call women and minorities seeking the right to be free from discrimination special interest groups seeking to jump the queue. They call efforts to reverse discrimination “reverse discrimination.” They say courts should only interpret, not make, law, thereby ignoring the entire history of common law. They call the advocates for diversity “biased” and defenders of social stagnation “impartial.” They prefer ideology to ideas, replacing the exquisite democratic choreography of checks and balances with the myopic march of majoritarianism.

All this has put us at the edge of a global era unlike any I’ve seen in my lifetime. We’re in a mean-spirited moral free-for-all, a climate polluted by bombastic insensitivity, antisemitism, racism, sexism, islamophobia, homophobia and discrimination generally. Too often, law and justice are in a dysfunctional relationship. Too often, hate kills, truth is homeless and lives don’t matter.

We need to put justice back in charge, and to do that, we need to put compassion back in the service of law and law in the service of humanity. We need the rule of justice, not just the rule of law. Otherwise, what’s the point of law? Or lawyers? What good is the rule of law if there’s no justice? And to make justice happen, we can never forget how the world looks to those who are vulnerable. It’s what I consider to be the law’s majestic purpose and the legal profession’s noble mandate.

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For me, this is not just theory. I was born in a displaced-persons camp in Germany on July 1, 1946. My parents, who got married in Poland on Sept. 3, 1939, spent most of the war in concentration camps. Their 2-year-old son and my father’s whole family were murdered at Treblinka. Miraculously, my parents survived and, after the war, ended up in Stuttgart, where my father, who was a lawyer, taught himself English and was hired by the Americans as counsel for displaced persons in southwestern Germany. When we came to Canada in 1950 as Jewish refugees, he was told he couldn’t practice law because he wasn’t a citizen.

He died a month before I finished law school and never lived to see his inspiration take flight in his daughter or the two grandsons he never met who also became lawyers, but he knew it would turn out all right because he was confident in Canada’s generosity. And how right he was.

A few years ago, my mother gave me some of my father’s papers from Germany. One of the most powerful documents I found was written by my father when he was head of the displaced-persons camp in Stuttgart. It was his introduction of Eleanor Roosevelt when she came to visit our camp in 1948. He said: “We welcome you, Mrs. Roosevelt, as the representative of a great nation, whose victorious army liberated the remnants of European Jewry from death and so highly contributed to their moral and physical rehabilitation. We shall never forget that aid rendered by the American people and army. We are not in a position of showing you many assets. The best we are able to produce are these few children. They alone are our fortune and our sole hope for the future.”

As one of those children, I am here to tell you that the gift of hope is the gift that keeps right on giving, propelling me from a displaced-persons camp in Germany all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada.

My life started in a country where there had been no democracy, no rights, no justice. No one with this history does not feel lucky to be alive and free. No one with this history takes anything for granted. And no one with this history does not feel that we have a particular duty to wear our identities with pride and to promise our children that we will do everything humanly possible to keep the world safer for them than it was for their grandparents, a world where all children, regardless of race, color, religion or gender, can wear their identity with dignity, with pride and in peace.

I am very proud to be a member of the legal profession but I’ll never forget why I joined it.

“Nuff said

Trump’s believing social media propaganda again

Published by digby on August 20, 2023

And this time, it’s a fatal error:

 [A] key focus of the Trump campaign as it looks ahead to a possible rematch with Mr. Biden: getting both men onstage. Mr. Trump has repeatedly said publicly that he wants debates with Mr. Biden, and Mr. Trump’s advisers view face-offs with the incumbent president as vital to Mr. Trump’s chances of winning.

They thought that last time too. It didn’t work out the way they thought it would:

The third debate?

President Donald Trump was rated the most improved performer at Thursday’s debate, but a panel of debate experts said Joe Biden was more effective with his arguments.

The three experts all agreed that the faceoff was more informative than the chaotic first debate in Cleveland last month, but one noted, “That’s a very low bar.”

While Trump’s strategy of interrupting less and letting Biden speak more in hopes of provoking a gaffe was sound strategy, the experts said Biden didn’t make the type of major mistake Trump probably needed to change the race.

Here are their report cards.

Mitchell McKinney

Director of the Political Communication Institute at the University of Missouri

Overall: “It was more relaxed” than the first debate, with fewer interruptions, especially early on, McKinney said. Trump’s relative restraint made sense, but he added, “I don’t think it was as effective in terms of the overall dynamics of the debate.”

On Trump: “Donald Trump seemed at times certainly perturbed, but restrained himself and wasn’t going for the jugular” like he did in the first debate, McKinney said. “He learned his lesson from the polls” after that, McKinney said, but the result put him “in a box.” “He did not appear to be the authentic Donald Trump,” he said.

On Biden: Biden was prepared for Trump’s attacks on him and his family and “didn’t get rattled,” McKinney said. Biden was able to project empathy, and he took an effective page out of the Obama playbook while declaring that he’d be a president of “not red states and blue states but the United States.” Most important, he was “able to avoid any major gaffes or blunders that would have had supporters wringing their hands,” McKinney said.

McKinney’s report card:

Trump’s grade: B-

Biden’s grade: B+

Susan Millsap

Communications professor at Otterbein University in Ohio and adviser to the student debate team

Overall: “It started better than the first one, but it slowly devolved a bit. The last 20 minutes or so, the interruptions were increasing again, and Trump was slowly turning it into a campaign speech,” Millsap said.

“I was like, ‘Oh, no — don’t do it.’ Towards the end, Trump was back on his hyperbole and bombastic style,” she said.

On Trump: Trump was effective in hitting some of the points he wanted to make. Many of his answers were reminiscent of his rally speeches, and he managed to bring answers on a wide range of issues back to his support of businesses.

“He would fall back on businesses and how it would hurt or harm business. Even the race issue he brought back to business,” Millsap said. “If you like that, you like what he’s saying.”

On Biden: Biden presented himself as a man with plans, Millsap said. “He had a definite plan for the Covid, for the economy, health care. For race, he even laid out a plan,” she said. Trump did nail him for sidestepping some questions, painting him as a typical politician, she said, but she didn’t think it was enough to harm him. Biden also allowed Trump to divert him from some of the topics they were discussing.

Millsap’s report card:

Trump’s grade: C-

Biden’s grade: B

Jacob Thompson

Communications professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and director of the debate team

Overall: “It was marked improvement from the first debate,” and moderator Kristen Welker of NBC News “gets an A-plus” for her deft handling of the event. “Both candidates behaved like adults,” he said, but he added, “I don’t think America should get too excited about clearing the lowest bar of civility.”

On Trump: “Relative to expectations, Trump won,” because his performance was so much better than it was in the first debate, Thompson said. He did a good job of reining in his temper, which will result in lower unfavorable ratings, and he was successful in trying “to muddy the waters around questions about Joe Biden’s character.”

“That’s an effective appeal to Trump’s base,” Thompson said.

But Trump failed to reach beyond his base, and his attempts at being empathetic rang hollow. “He needed an unforced error from Biden, and he didn’t get it,” Thompson said, although an answer from Biden about phasing out the oil industry came close.

On Biden: “In substance and style, Biden did better,” improving on his performance from the first debate and in comparison to Trump. “He struck an empathetic tone several different times and went back to portraying himself as a president who would unite the country,” Thompson said. He rebounded on his answer about the oil industry with an explanation of how it was a necessary transition away from fossil fuels that “was cogent enough,” although “not earth-shattering.”

Thompson’s report card:

Trump’s grade: B-

Biden’s grade: B+

Trump did not wipe the floor with Biden in either of their debates and he won’t be able to do it this time either. He certainly didn’t with Hillary:

They are believing their own hype about Biden’s age. But they’re reveling in the exaggerated clips that right wing social media puts on line instead of analyzing Biden’s actual performance before the camera. He looks old and he walks stiffly. But he speaks and sounds the way he always did. And by the way, Trump looks old and walks stiffly but sounds the way he always did too. Nothing has changed. Under those circumstances, I’ll still put my money on Biden because he isn’t a roaring asshole.

They are not serious people

Published by digby on August 20, 2023

What in the hell are we going to do about this? It represents tens of millions of fellow Americans.