Month: September 2023

You’ve probably already heard about the Ukraine/Russia controversy surrounding Walter Isaacson’s new book about Elon Musk. (If not, you can click this link.) But there’s a lot more in the book apparently, which is discussed here in this piece by Matt Pearce in the LA Times:

Musk is already one of the most well-known and extensively covered leaders in American corporate life (and one of its most unavoidable figures on the service he has renamed X). Isaacson’s biography is a Musk agonistes: a portrait of a (largely) self-made, emotionally volatile entrepreneur from South Africa who has a tortured relationship with his father and an addiction to crises of the self-inflicted variety.

Musk is tormented, erratic and rude, over and over again

Musk’s moods are variously described as cycling through “light and dark, intense and goofy, detached and emotional, with occasional plunges into what people around him call ‘demon mode’”; he’s “childlike, almost stunted,” “a drama magnet,” “not bred for domestic tranquility”; he has “a craving for storm and drama” and “erratic emotional oscillations.” Multiple people describe him as having undiagnosed Asperger’s. At one point, Musk calls himself bipolar. His volatile emotional states are the biggest constant in a book that zigzags from cars to rockets, tunneling to AI, solar energy to neural implants.

Isaacson repeatedly likens Musk to his estranged father, Errol Musk, also reportedly prone to volatile moods, abrasive behavior, credit-grubbing, flimflammery and conspiracy theories. Elon’s mother, Maye, said Errol “hit her” before the pair divorced, something that Errol denied. Musk cut off his father after Errol had a child with a woman Elon considered his half-sister — Jana — whom Errol had raised as his stepdaughter since she was 4. In an email Errol wrote to Elon for Father’s Day in 2022, he called Joe Biden a “freak, criminal, pedophile president” and that in South Africa, “with no Whites here, the Blacks will go back to the trees.”

Nothing Elon Musk says in the book is as jarring as his own father’s sometimes bizarre and racist comments. But elsewhere, Elon’s own frequent lack of empathy is bolstered by ample evidence. During the first dance at his wedding with his first wife, Justine, he whispered to her, “I am the alpha in this relationship.” In 2016, he accused journalists of “killing people” (by discrediting self-driving technology) after they asked questions about the first drivers to die in Tesla Autopilot accidents. He was briefly estranged from his brother, Kimbal, after the latter — who once helped rescue Tesla financially — asked for help with his own restaurants. Elon replied that they were doomed, and “I think they should die.”

It’s natural for a reader to wonder whether trying to decarbonize the auto industry or avoid humanity’s extinction justifies the chaos, the bullying, the poor labor standards — the trouble. Isaacson weighs in on the subject only at the end of his book: “Do the audaciousness and hubris that drive him to attempt epic feats excuse his bad behavior, his callousness, his recklessness? The times he’s an a—? The answer is no, of course not.”

Then, a few paragraphs later, the needle on Isaacson’s moral compass wobbles: “But would a restrained Musk accomplish as much as a Musk unbound? … Sometimes great innovators are risk-seeking man-children who resist potty training. They can be reckless, cringeworthy, sometimes even toxic. They can also be crazy. Crazy enough to think they can change the world.”

And they can be incredibly destructive too, as Musk is showing himself to be. Please…

The two Elon Musks, before and after 2018’s Tesla ‘production hell’ (or Amber Heard, or his daughter’s transition)

The year 2018 was an inflection point in the perception of Musk as a public figure, one that foreshadowed his pandemic evolution in 2020 from moderate Democrat to trolling conservative. When a group of children were trapped in a cave in Thailand, Musk tweeted that one rescue diver who dismissed his offer to build a submersible was a “pedo guy.” (Musk later apologized, but not easily.) On Joe Rogan’s podcast, he smoked marijuana, risking his status as a U.S. government contractor. He shot a Tesla Roadster into space.

Behind the scenes, the summer of 2017 through the fall of 2018 encompassed the most “hellacious” period of Musk’s life, Isaacson writes: “Musk went through periods when he oscillated between depression, stupor, giddiness, and manic energy.” Isaacson traces Musk’s tailspin to the news of his father’s relationship with his stepdaughter — as well as his own stormy relationship with the actor Amber Heard, who had recently gone through a tumultuous divorce with the actor Johnny Depp.

Heard “drew [Musk] into a dark vortex” around 2017, Isaacson writes, “that lasted more than a year and produced a deep-seated pain that lingers to this day. … His brother and friends hated her with a passion.”

There were plenty of other stressors that didn’t involve a public figure who’s already taken enough public bludgeoning after the Depp-Heard defamation trial. One of the biggest was the “production hell” at Tesla in 2018, when the survival of the company (and Musk’s reputation) hinged on meeting a seemingly impossible production target for the Tesla Model 3. Musk prowled the factory in a “frenzy of insanity,” he recalled later, “getting four or five hours’ sleep, often on the floor. I remember thinking, I’m like on the ragged edge of sanity.”

What gave his turmoil a political bent was his daughter Jenna’s gender transition around 2020, followed by her decision to cut ties with him. Musk blamed this on her becoming “a full communist” as a result of her progressive education at a Los Angeles private school, Crossroads. This is around the time “woke mind virus” worked its way into his vocabulary.

There’s more and it all points to Elon Musk being a very, very unstable, fucked up human being who has no business having any power over our politics (much less national security.) At this point I’m just hoping for a total breakdown — which may be imminent.

Krugman discusses why people people believe things that just aren’t true:

Remember “American carnage?” Donald Trump’s 2017 inaugural address was peculiar in many ways, but one of the most striking oddities was his obsession with a problem — urban crime — that had greatly diminished over the past generation. For reasons we still don’t fully understand, violent crime in America fell rapidly from around 1990 to the mid-2010s:

True, there was a crime surge after the pandemic, which now seems to be ebbing. But that lay in the future. Trump talked as if crime was running rampant as he spoke.

Yet if Trump had false beliefs about trends in crime, he had plenty of company. Gallup polls Americans about crime every year, and all through the great decline in violent crime a majority of Americans said that crime was increasing:

Were the crime statistics misleading? Homicide numbers are pretty solid. And people behaved as if crime were falling; notably, there was a wave of gentrification as affluent Americans moved into newly safe central cities. But all the same, people told pollsters that they believed crime was rising.

Why am I talking about public perceptions of crime? Well, last week, I wrote about the gap between public perceptions of a terrible economy and the reality of an economy that is doing very well by normal standards. I also noted that Americans seem relatively upbeat about their own financial circumstances; they just think that bad things are happening to other people.

Not surprisingly, I got a lot of pushback. That’s OK; after all these years writing for The Times I have a pretty thick skin, although I have to admit to being annoyed at pundits who try to cut off discussion by asserting that anyone who questions widely held beliefs is an “elitist” who thinks Americans are stupid. For the record, I don’t think Americans are stupid. I think they have jobs to do and children to raise and lives to live. They don’t have time to study policy issues, so most of them get their sense of what’s happening to the country from what they see on TV or hear from politicians. Unfortunately, some of what they’re told isn’t true.

But in any case, I thought it might be useful to draw parallels with the discourse on crime, where there is a similar disconnect between what people tell pollsters they believe is happening and what the available facts say. In fact, the resemblance between how people talk about crime and how they talk about the economy is eerily strong.

Many of those talking about a disconnect on views about the economy cite, among other sources, Federal Reserve data that compares household views of their own financial situation with their views of the economy (highlighting added):

Notice that the survey also asks people about the state of their local economy, where they are likely to have at least some personal experience of what’s going on; these views are much more favorable than their views of the national economy. Now look back at that chart on perceptions of crime. Gallup also asks Americans about crime “in your area,” and sure enough, people’s perceptions of local crime were much more favorable than what they said about the nation as a whole.

Wait, there’s more: Perceptions of crime, like perceptions about the economy, have become strongly partisan, with people becoming more pessimistic when the party they don’t support holds the White House:

And there are huge partisan gaps in assessments of how safe cities are:

As it happens, the Republican perception of Los Angeles and New York as unsafe compared with southern cities is wildly off base. Both have low homicide rates — half as high as Miami’s — and New York City is overall one of the safest places in America.

What does all this tell us, besides the fact that Americans are very confused about crime? It shows that on an important public issue, people can hold beliefs about what is happening to other people — people who live in other places, or in the nation as a whole — that are not just false but also at odds with their personal experience.

Why should this kind of disconnect be restricted to crime? There are, in fact, strong reasons to believe that there’s a similar disconnect when it comes to the economy. And we shouldn’t be afraid to say that out of fear that we’ll be considered elitist.

He doesn’t mention the media in this but they play a huge part. If you are watching local TV in the morning as you get ready for work to see the traffic or the weather, all you see is the old “if it bleeds it leads” and doom and gloom about the economy. If you follow the right wing media or have people on social media who feed you that stuff you’ll get the same thing. For a lot of busy people the idea that the country is falling apart from crime and recession is just conventional wisdom.

By the way, Trump has an instinct for this. Steve Benen writes:

During Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, the Republican faced a dilemma. On the one hand, the economy was relatively healthy at the time, and the unemployment rate was steadily improving in the runup to Election Day. On the other hand, Trump wanted voters to believe the United States was in the midst of an economic disaster, which only he could fix.

The GOP nominee settled on a specific rhetorical strategy to resolve the tension: Trump would simply peddle nonsense and tell the public to believe him, instead of reality. As we discussed at the time, at different points during the campaign, the Republican publicly argued, for example, that the unemployment rate was 20% — or possibly 42% — even as reality pointed to a rate below 5%.

After the election, at a pre-inaugural press conference, Trump declared there are “96 million really wanting a job and they can’t get,” which was ridiculous, even for him. Around the same time, the then-president-elect declared that the unemployment rate was “totally fiction.”

Soon after, as Trump settled into the White House, and the economic conditions he inherited continued to improve, the then-president decided he believed economic data after all.

That was nearly seven years ago. Now, wouldn’t you know it, the Republican has re-embraced the same outlandish rhetorical tactics he used during his successful candidacy in 2016. At a campaign event in South Dakota on Friday night, for example, Trump told attendees, in reference to economic data on employment:

“Now you’re given phony numbers — because far fewer people are looking for jobs. … They throw around 3.5%, 3.6%, 3.7%, but it’s a different group of people. … So it’s a fake number.”

He went on to describe the unemployment rate as “crooked,” before declaring, “During Biden’s first 30 months in office, just 2.1 million new jobs have been created.” As part of the harangue, the former president concluded, “The fact is, we’re probably heading into a Great Depression.”

So, a few things.

First, the unemployment rate is not “phony,” “fake,” or “crooked.” Yes, it fluctuates based on people looking for work and exiting the workforce, but that was true during Trump’s term, too, and it didn’t stop him from touting the data when he saw encouraging jobs reports.

Second, during the first 30 months of Joe Biden’s presidency, the U.S. economy created 13.6 million jobs, not 2.1 million. (If we start the count in February 2021, instead of January 2021, economy created 13.5 million jobs over Biden’s first 30 months.) Trump and some of his allies apparently want the public to believe that the rapid economic recovery that began after Trump left office led to job growth that doesn’t really count, but that’s not a serious argument.

Third, there is literally zero evidence of the domestic economy “heading into a Great Depression.”

But as relevant as these details are, let’s also not forget that the incumbent Democratic president has recently taken some rhetorical shots at his predecessor’s weak record on job creation. On Friday night, Trump was apparently eager to return fire.

The problem, of course, was that the Republican, unable to rely on facts, was firing imaginary bullets.

In his newsletter today, Dan Pfeiffer looks at the bizarre phenomenon of a presidential candidate getting much more popular after he’s indicted four times:

A number of theories surfaced to explain this unexpected and deeply concerning outcome — Republicans are a cult, Ron DeSantis sucks, etc. Elections are dynamic enterprises. There are a lot of interrelated factors that lead to an outcome. It’s not as simple as “Ron DeSantis sucks,” even if he is one of the most maladroit candidates in modern political history. Here are X findings from recent polls that help explain why Republican voters are flocking to Trump as his likelihood of spending the rest of his life in prison skyrockets:

1. Republicans Trust Trump Over Everyone Else

Donald Trump is one of the most prolific and obvious liars the world has ever known. Here’s how the Washington Post fact checker summarized Trump’s presidency:

Over time, Trump unleashed his falsehoods with increasing frequency and ferocity, often by the scores in a single campaign speech or tweetstorm. What began as a relative trickle of misrepresentations, including 10 on his first day and five on the second, built into a torrent through Trump’s final days as he frenetically spread wild theories that the coronavirus pandemic would disappear “like a miracle” and that the presidential election had been stolen — the claim that inspired Trump supporters to attack Congress on Jan. 6 and prompted his second impeachment. The final tally of Trump’s presidency: 30,573 false or misleading claims — with nearly half coming in his final year.

Trump’s dishonesty is so blatant that most Americans find it disqualifying, but Trump’s voters see only qualifications. They do not believe he is dishonest. They think he is the only honest man in public life. A CBS News/YouGov poll asked Trump voters who they feel tells them the truth. Trump was seen as more truthful than friends and family or religious leaders.

This finding helps explain why all of this damaging information about Trump from the various indictments, not to mention the January 6th committee or the media, keeps voters in Trump’s corner — they trust Trump more. If Jack Smith or Fani Willis says Trump did all these bad things and Trump says (or Truths) “I’m innocent” it’s clear who they will believe. Trump isn’t their most trusted source of information, he is their only trusted source of information.

2. A Hermetically Sealed Information Bubble

In addition to not believing the negative information about Trump, many Republican voters simply aren’t getting the other side. If they do encounter news about Trump’s crimes, it’s refracted through the lens of the Right Wing media.

In August, a New York Times/Sienna poll asked Republican voters which news source they trusted most:

Fox News 26%

Social Media 12%

National Broadcast TV 11%

Conservative News Sites 6%

Local Broadcast News 6%

Newsmax 5%

The Republican base lives in a hermetically sealed information bubble that protects Trump from the damaging revelations that have undone so many other political figures.

3. Republicans Think Trump Can’t Lose

If you have spent any time recently on Twitter or in group chats with politically active Democrats, you’ve witnessed their mild panic about the 2024 election. Poll after poll show an alarmingly close race, which has sent Democratic blood pressures skyrocketing. Even though these very same polls have Trump tied with Biden, Republican voters are not concerned. According to a CBS News/YouGov poll, 61% of Republican voters think Trump would DEFINITELY beat Biden.

The level of confidence is delusional given two facts. One, Trump is in grave legal jeopardy; and two, Biden beat Trump less than three years ago. This delusion is fueled by the Right Wing media’s caricature of Biden’s age and competence, but also explains why Republicans are sticking with Trump — they believe to their core that he is the best chance to beat Biden.

DeSantis’s pitch that he is Trump without the baggage falls flat because GOP voters simply don’t believe Trump has baggage.

They also don’t believe Trump really lost in 2020. They think he’s a proven winner against Biden.

4. GOP Voters are Nonplussed by the Charges

There is a possibility that Donald Trump will be sentenced to prison before the 2024 election. Presidential primary voters support candidates for two reasons — they think a candidate can win and if that candidate wins, they will be a president who effectively implements their vision. On paper, at least, it would seem that campaigning in prison would pose a real obstacle to one’s success and a functional presidency. Even if you believed to your core that Trump was innocent — as most Republican voters do — the circumstances of his indictments should give you some pause about his ability to win and govern.

For whatever reason, Republicans are not in the least worried about the logistical or political impact of the indictments. A recent CNN poll found that majorities of Republicans are not at all concerned about the political or substantive impact of the charges.

Nearly seven in ten Republicans are unconcerned about 91 felony counts that could lead to decades of prison time. They don’t believe it will impact Trump’s efficacy as president. This is the whole story of the GOP primary contest that is barely a contest.

That’s crazy. But they think he has magical powers apparently and will be able to function as president even though he’s a convicted felon looking at jail time. The only explanation for this is that these people are cult followers or they are so cynical they just don’t care and are willing to say anything because they want to win. It’s ridiculous.

Keep in mind that this is probably the biggest cult in world history. Over 50 million people are participating to one degree or another.

But he did it anyway

McCarthy doesn’t take questions. He told Breitbart 11 days ago he wouldn’t launch an impeachment inquiry without a House vote. Opening one now unilaterally is a major reversal for the speaker. It comes as he doesn’t appear to have the votes to proceed. pic.twitter.com/H0rSVvqLlt

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) September 12, 2023

McCarthy pulled the trigger as we knew he would. He didn’t have the votes for a real inquiry, however, which means that the new rules they say they need will have to be litigated because a full vote of the House is required. So, this may end up being yet another performance art project which the extremists hope will make voters assume there must be something to it and write off Trump’s corruptions and criminality because “both sides do it.”

It’s ridiculous but we expected nothing less. Now let’s see if McCarthy bought himself at least an extension to get the government funded. I won’t be surprised if they say, “that’s nice, but we also need to have the DOJ and the “woke” Pentagon de-funded. McCarthy will try to do whatever they want but at some point he’s going to have to put something to a vote and he doesn’t have them. The whole thing is a farce.

Designed-in countermajoritarian features contribute to minority rule

Michelle Goldberg speaks with Harvard government professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. The authors of “How Democracies Die” (2018) released “Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point” this morning. What shocked them since 2018 was how swiflty the GOP slid sown the behavioral sink into insurrection. They did not consider the Republican Party an authoritarian party in 2018, and “did not expect it to transform so quickly and so thoroughly.”

Goldberg writes:

“Tyranny of the Minority” is their attempt to make sense of how American democracy eroded so fast. “Societal diversity, cultural backlash and extreme-right parties are ubiquitous across established Western democracies,” they write. But in recent years, only in America has a defeated leader attempted a coup. And only in America is the coup leader likely to once again be the nominee of a major party. “Why did America, alone among rich established democracies, come to the brink?” they ask.

A disturbing part of the answer, Levitsky and Ziblatt conclude, lies in our Constitution, the very document Americans rely on to defend us from autocracy. “Designed in a predemocratic era, the U.S. Constitution allows partisan minorities to routinely thwart majorities, and sometimes even govern them,” they write. The Constitution’s countermajoritarian provisions, combined with profound geographic polarization, have locked us into a crisis of minority rule.

These features have enabled Republicans to chalk up three Electoral College wins despite having won a majority of presidential votes “in only one out of the last eight presidential elections.” Add in their post-2010, RedMap gerrymandering and Republicans “don’t need to win over the majority of voters.” As their base has become more radical, so have elected Republicans.

All liberal democracies have some countermajoritarian institutions to stop popular passions from running roughshod over minority rights. But as “Tyranny of the Minority” shows, our system is unique in the way it empowers a minority ideological faction at the expense of everyone else. And while conservatives like to pretend that their structural advantages arise from the judicious wisdom of the founders, Levitsky and Ziblatt demonstrate how many of the least democratic aspects of American governance are the result of accident, contingency and, not least, capitulation to the slaveholding South.

“The poor you will always have with you,” Jesus said. And the legacy of slavery, the country’s original sin?

Levitsky and Ziblatt think it is unavoidable that reformers “engage in the glacial slog of constitutional reform,” and naive to think things will just work out if the country keeps on as it is.

More consolidation of population in cities in blue states will simply exacerbate the antimajoritarian lean of the Senate and of state legislatures if Democrats keep ceding the countryside.

Goldberg concludes:

“I think the United States faces a high risk of serious and repeated constitutional crisis, what I would call regime instability, quite possibly accompanied by some violence,” said Levitsky. “I’m not as worried about the consolidation of autocracy, Hungary or Russia-style. I think that the opposition forces, civil society forces, are probably too strong for that.” Let’s hope that this time he’s not being too optimistic.

I did not think Americans were dumb enough or crazy enough to elect Donald Trump in 2016. Now reading David Dayen’s pre-insurrection “Monopolized: Life in the Age of Corporate Power” (2020). It’s enough to make me crawl into a hole. I’m not sure which will end us first, metastasized capitalism or allied autocracy.

They’re making every effort to prove it

First thing this morning, up pops a Kaitlan Collins CNN interview with Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.). Collins posts:

Rep. Nancy Mace says she supports a House impeachment inquiry. Asked isn’t it supposed to be the evidence that leads you to pursue an impeachment inquiry, Mace responds, “That’s what the inquiry is for, to get more evidence.”

Marcy Wheeler (@emptywheel from Ireland) responds:

BREAKING: @NancyMace admits, 1) She hasn’t read Biden’s tax releases, which unlike Trump, Biden releases 2) she’s willing to engage in a constitutional abomination of impeaching BECAUSE there’s no evidence of wrongdoing.

Trump wants his retribution NOW

Let’s cut to the chase. Digby summarized what’s behind this nonsense on Monday:

It’s absolutely the case that they are doing this for Trump because he has demanded it. That goes without saying. But since they are all bent on destroying democracy and the constitutional order, de-legitimizing the impeachment process is a no brainer. If they have the power (meaning a 2/3 Senate majority) they will remove any Democratic president for whatever trumped up charges they come up with. If they don’t have the power they will use it as yet another of their patented performance art projects. Impeachment will be devalued so that even if Democrats have the evidence and the power to remove, it will be seen as illegitimate. Win win for the bad guys.

For further proof, it is not just Republicans inside the Beltway pursuing an “if you can’t beat ’em, impeach ’em agenda.” * Wisconsin Republicans, secure in their heavily gerrymandered districts and with a supermajority in the state legislature, intend to engineer the suspension (via impeachus interruptus) of the newly elected state Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz. Earlier this year, Jamelle Bouie reminds us, the Milwaukee liberal won her seat on the court by double digits in a special election with record turnout, ending the partisan advantage held by Republicans.

What has Protasiewicz done so soon to merit impeachment? Nothing, yet. So what? (Bouie):

Wisconsin Republicans can’t strip a judicial officer of her power. But they can remove her, which is what they intend to do. “Republicans in Wisconsin are coalescing around the prospect of impeaching a newly seated liberal justice on the state’s Supreme Court,” my newsroom colleague Reid J. Epstein reports. “The push, just five weeks after Justice Janet Protasiewicz joined the court and before she has heard a single case, serves as a last-ditch effort to stop the new 4-to-3 liberal majority from throwing out Republican-drawn state legislative maps and legalizing abortion in Wisconsin.”

Republicans have more than enough votes in the Wisconsin State Assembly to impeach Justice Protasiewicz and just enough votes in the State Senate — a two-thirds majority — to remove her. But removal would allow Governor Evers to appoint another liberal jurist, which is why Republicans don’t plan to convict and remove Protasiewicz. If, instead, the Republican-led State Senate chooses not to act on impeachment, Justice Protasiewicz is suspended but not removed. The court would then revert to a 3-3 deadlock, very likely preserving the Republican gerrymander and keeping a 19th-century abortion law, which bans the procedure, on the books.

If successful, Wisconsin Republicans will have created, in effect, an unbreakable hold on state government. With their gerrymander in place, they have an almost permanent grip on the State Legislature, with supermajorities in both chambers. With these majorities, they can limit the reach and power of any Democrat elected to statewide office and remove — or neutralize — any justice who might rule against the gerrymander.

Or Protasiewicz could rule to overturn the state’s 19th-century abortion law. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow provided a primer Monday night, calling the maneuver “a nice trick”) :

Republicans in this swing state also plan to fire Wisconsin Elections Commission administrator Meagan Wolfe. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that “the Democratic Attorney General and the Legislature’s nonpartisan attorneys concluded earlier this month” that the Senate technically has no power to remove Wolfe. So what?

Evidence not required

Regarding the Republican threat to impeach Biden, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D) of Maryland, Ranking Member of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability, rebuked Chairman James Comer (R) of Kentucky in a letter for promoting debunked claims and second-hand allegations.

In a statement, Raskin denounced the committee’s efforts as:

… a transparent effort to boost Donald Trump’s campaign by establishing a false moral equivalency between Trump—the four time-indicted former president now facing 91 federal and state criminal charges, based on a mountain of damning evidence for a shocking range of felonies, including lying to the FBI, endangering national security by illegally keeping classified documents, and conspiring to subvert the U.S. Constitution—and President Biden, against whom there is precisely zero evidence of any wrongdoing whatsoever.  To the contrary, Chairman Comer’s investigation has conclusively disproven the Republican allegations against President Biden.

Raskin provides receipts:

Not only does this voluminous evidence fail to even suggest any wrongdoing by President Biden, it in fact proves the opposite.  Specifically:

• None of the bank records Comer has released shows any payments to President Biden. 
• None of the SARs the Committee reviewed alleges, or even suggests, any potential misconduct by President Biden, nor do the SARs show any involvement by President Biden in Hunter Biden’s financial or business relationships. 
• Not one of the witness accounts provided to the Committee has shown any evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden, including accounts from two IRS agents and a former FBI Supervisory Special Agent, who were involved in the DOJ’s investigation of Hunter Biden. 
• Former business associates of Hunter Biden who have been interviewed by the Committee—Eric Schwerin and Devon Archer—explicitly stated that they have no reason to believe President Biden had any involvement in Hunter Biden’s business deals, much less any reason to believe President Biden took any official action on behalf of his son’s business ventures.
• Mr. Schwerin, who performed bookkeeping and other administrative tasks for then Vice-President Biden and therefore had access to his bank records, stated that he was not aware of any involvement by President Biden in the financial conduct of his relatives’ businesses, much less any transactions into or out of the then-Vice President’s bank account related to business conducted by any Biden family member.
• Two IRS agents who testified before the Committee affirmed that they do not have any evidence of political interference by President Biden or Attorney General Merrick Garland. 
• The Former FBI Supervisory Special Agent interviewed by the Committee rejected Republicans’ claims that prosecutorial decisions by U.S. Attorney David Weiss or his team were the result of any political interference. 

So what? Dear Leader wants his revenge and he wants it now. And a compliant press is abetting the GOP by reporting the faux controversy over “bribery” and repeating “too old” stories about Biden in their accustomed “but her emails” style.

Really, the GOP should have to turn in their pocket Constitutions, American flags, and red-white-and-blue trinkets. There’s little American left of them but the branding. Just like Brand Trump.

* Before reminding me of Donald Trump’s two impeachments by Democrats, reference Donald Trump’s 91 criminal charges across four jurisdictions with more likely to come.

** For some reason, ‘X’ embeds are not working this morning.

Think again

A children’s book about a lion raised by two men has been banned in Florida because right-wing activists suspect the men might be gay – despite nothing in the book suggesting they have any romantic relationship, according to a report.

The Florida Department of Education released new information about books that were banned or temporarily removed pending investigation in various county school systems as part of the state’s new laws making it easier to challenge material in a school library, reported the Tallahassee Democrat. One of the books was “Christian, the Hugging Lion.”

According to the report, schools in Manatee County, a conservative community just south of Tampa, withdrew the book that’s based on the true story about a pair of men who raise a lion in their London apartment, then are lovingly remembered by the animal when they go to Africa to see him years later.

Nothing in the book indicates the two men are in a same-sex relationship — but activists speculated that they might be, which was enough for a complaint about the book.

As the report notes, “Christian, the Hugging Lion” was written by the same authors who wrote “And Tango Makes Three,” a book about a pair of male penguins who raise a family. That book is also restricted in some Florida schools, and the authors have filed a federal lawsuit against Florida and a county school board.

This is only the latest in a series of bans and restrictions on content in schools being pushed in Florida. Last month, state laws prompted a school system in Hillsborough County to heavily redact the works of William Shakespeare, teaching only excerpts of his plays.

I don’t understand why anyone would think people this obsessed wouldn’t work to overturn gay marriage. They don’t even want their kids contemplating that two people of the same sex might live together much less be married. Watch out room mates! They’re coming for you too!

Seriously, thinking little kids must be protected from the true story that two men who raised a lion and set it free is just sick. All the kids would see is two nice men who loved an animal and an animal who loved them back. The horror.

This is bad:

This, on the other hand, is fine:

The looming impeachment has a grander purpose

Noah Berlatsky writes:

Republicans have openly admitted that their efforts to impeach President Joe Biden — which will begin in earnest this week as House members return to DC from summer break — are in bad faith. They don’t just want to tarnish Biden. They want to tarnish the impeachment process itself.

As the GOP has become increasingly authoritarian and anti-democracy, Republicans have become increasingly committed to undermining and mocking forms of democratic accountability. A nakedly partisan and clownish impeachment is useful because it signals to voters that all impeachments are clown shows, and all impeachments are partisan. That exculpates former President Donald Trump and delegitimizes resistance to him should he win the presidency again.

It’s absolutely the case that they are doing this for Trump because he has demanded it. That goes without saying. But since they are all bent on destroying democracy and the constitutional order, de-legitimizing the impeachment process is a no brainer. If they have the power (meaning a 2/3 Senate majority) they will remove any Democratic president for whatever trumped up charges they come up with. If they don’t have the power they will use it as yet another of their patented performance art projects. Impeachment will be devalued so that even if Democrats have the evidence and the power to remove, it will be seen as illegitimate. Win win for the bad guys.

STEVE HILTON (FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR): I mean, of course it’s laughable, the Biden aspect. Almost everything with Biden is laughable. But it’s really serious, it’s really infuriating, Harris. Because we never had what I and many others called for, which is a completely objective, independent assessment of the COVID policies that were implemented to see what worked and didn’t. We never had that. And so as a result we are now back to these absurd, preposterous kind of witchcraft and voodoo masquerading as public health from these tin-pot fascists and their authoritarianism, exactly as Rand Paul was talking about. We have to resist this. We have to resist it at every level, as J.D. Vance is doing at the federal level, we have to resist this at the state level, the local level, the individual level. We cannot let them go back to this madness.

Here’s more:

Uhm, toddlers can have total hysterics when you try to put their pants on or wash their hands. They’re toddlers. So are these right wingers who are still having tantrums over wearing masks.

And they are wrong about the efficacy of wearing them. This from the NY Times provides the current thinking on mask wearing:

“I tend to say, if you’re going to go out, make sure you have a mask in your car, a couple masks at home or at work, so you always have something available to put on,” said Andrew Pekosz, a professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Here’s a refresher on where, when and how to mask.

When should you wear a mask inside?

Everyone’s risk tolerance varies, Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, said. But particularly if you are 65 or older, have an underlying condition that makes you more vulnerable to severe disease or are pregnant, he recommends wearing a mask whenever you are in a relatively confined, crowded indoor space. That can include stores, offices and public transportation.

“Certainly every time you add another person to the room, particularly people who are within three to five feet of you, that increases your chance of getting infected, exponentially,” Dr. Pekosz added.

Time matters, too: Darting in and out of a packed grocery store is less risky than working all day in a busy office, for example. Ten minutes is a good marker to keep in mind, Dr. Pekosz said. If you’re headed somewhere indoors for longer than that, you may want to consider putting on a mask beforehand.

Which type of mask should you wear?

Dr. Marr recommends N95, KN95 or KF94 masks, all of which filter out over 90 percent of virus particles, she said, making them far more effective than surgical or cloth masks at reducing your chance of getting infected with Covid. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a list of resources for where to find free N95s.

The experts said that a mask should fit snugly across your face and cover both your nose and mouth; wearing a mask below your nose will do very little to shield you from the virus.

A high-quality mask “does wonders in terms of protecting you from getting infected, but you have to wear it the right way,” Dr. Pekosz said. “If you don’t crimp the metal thing around your nose, if it’s loose around you, then you’re probably breathing around the mask, not through the mask. And that is not going to protect you.”

Some experts estimate that you can use a mask for a total of about 40 hours before it’s time to replace it. If you notice fraying, creases, new holes or dirt on your mask, you should replace it before then, Dr. Marr said. If your mask is uncomfortable, or if you feel like it’s moving too much across your face, Dr. Marr recommends trying different brands to find the best fit.

Do you need to mask after being exposed?

If you get the dreaded text that someone you recently spent time with has tested positive for Covid, the C.D.C. recommends putting on a high-quality mask as soon as possible, and keeping it on for 10 full days when you’re around other people. Even if you test negative, the agency says you should still wear a mask in public indoor settings. It can take several days for people to develop symptoms, Dr. Pekosz said, and testing too early can lead to false negatives.

Is one-way masking effective?

Even if you’re the only person wearing one on the subway or in your office, a high-quality mask can still meaningfully reduce your risk of getting infected. “You’re going to be pretty well protected,” said Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, a professor of global health and infectious diseases at Stanford Medicine, because you’re guarding your face from the particles around you.

There are additional ways to build up your defenses against the virus: sanitizing your hands before touching your face, social distancing from others and getting an updated booster shot when the new vaccines are available.

While many people are exhausted by this long pandemic, Dr. Maldonado stressed it’s important to remember that we have tools to reduce our risk. “Masks work, period,” she said. “Whether you choose to use them or not is a different matter. But they definitely work.”

Of course they do. And since we are now in “every man for himself” territory, all we can do is try to protect ourselves and our loved ones. If we had a healthy society we’d gratefully embrace the idea that we have the means to protect all vulnerable people but that’s not who we are so we just have to do what we can.

Trump “memorializes” 9/11

He is currently in business with Saudi Arabia’s LIV golf, happy to whitewash their past as he did when he proclaimed MBS innocent of ordering the death and dismemberment of Jamaal Kashoggi. His first trip as president was to genuflect to their king. And his son-in-law delivered so much to the Saudi government while he was in the White House that they gave him 2 billion dollars in thanks immediately upon leaving office.

Also this, when he called in to a radio station on the morning of 9/11 and bragged about how he now had the tallest building in Manhattan, which was, naturally, a lie:

 “I mean, 40 Wall Street actually was the second-tallest building in downtown Manhattan. And it was actually – before the World Trade Center – was the tallest. And then when they built the World Trade Center, it became known as the second-tallest, and now it’s the tallest.”

As multiple fact checks later pointed out, this was not true. The Wall Street building had not been the tallest building in lower Manhattan in the 1970s, when the Twin Towers were constructed, nor was it the tallest in the area after 2001.

By the time of Mr Trump’s interview, both buildings of the World Trade Center had collapsed after planes hijacked by Al Qaeda terrorists had smashed into them. Two other planes had also crashed into the Pentagon in Washington, DC, and into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, killing everyone onboard. In total, nearly 3,000 people died in the attacks.

But Mr Trump’s attention was elsewhere. Later in the interview, he complained about the closing of the New York Stock Exchange.

“I was so disappointed when they closed the stock exchange, but of course, at some point, you have no choice,” the real estate mogul said. “You want to just say, ‘The hell with it, you’re going forward, nothing’s gonna change.’ But the fact is, something has changed very dramatically.”

He’s the last person who should ever talk about 9/11. It’s offensive.