Month: October 2023

And a way out of cynicism

Polling has been bad for years. Traditional models seem to be failing. Too many focus on horse-race politics. But why?

Dan Pfeiffer this morning:

Despite historically high turnout in the last several elections, people are disconnected from politics, angry at politicians, and distrustful that the political process can make an iota of difference in their lives. To be fair, Americans have always had some cynicism about politics and a distrust of government dating back to dumping tea in the Boston Harbor. But the levels of discontent are unprecedented and happening across the political spectrum.

Pfeiffer is commenting on a Pew survey that came out in September. Is it any good? Who knows? But its findings may be instructive for Democrats in 2024, Pfeiffer believes:

• Can Democrats run on saving democracy when people are so down on our political system? The common explanation for our surprising success in 2022 is that Democrats upended expectations by centering the election on the threat Republicans posed to democracy. I think the story is more complicated, but Democrats are planning to make saving democracy a central part of the 2024 campaign. I am not arguing that this is the wrong decision. Democracy is at stake. Still, we must factor the distrust and disillusionment into our messaging — otherwise, we will become the defenders of a broken, corrupt political system.
• How do we talk about Democratic accomplishments? The primary theory for President Biden’s high levels of disapproval on economic issues is that voters are largely unaware of his major accomplishments. And therefore, educating them about those accomplishments is a strategic priority. How we talk about those accomplishments must start from a place that acknowledges the high level of distrust in the federal government. Some of Biden’s biggest accomplishments have yet to go into effect. This distrust creates a hurdle for convincing people that these policies will really deliver for them.
• What’s the best message against Trump? Given the close election, it’s fair to say that the Democrats’ anti-Trump message was not as effective as we thought it would be in 2020. In a moment when the public is livid at politicians, we have to be careful not to inadvertently help Trump with a message that makes him seem even more like an anti-politician.

That last bit is good advice. Trump’s brand is rule-breaking. Even if his instincts are criminal.

But Joe Biden has instincts too. Not for what Americans tell pollsters they believe about this country, but for what they want to believe about it. He may not deliver his message as skillfully as Michael Douglas in Rob Reiner and Aaron Sorkin’s The American President (1995), or as endearingly as Kevin Kline in Ivan Reitman’s Dave (1993), or bring people to tears the way Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid) does singing “La Marseillaise” in Casablanca (1942), but Biden’s throwback, almost corny optimisim about the country he’s spent his life serving feels authentic. When he says he’s not kidding, he’s not kidding.

Americans love a redemption story. They’ll soon be watching Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) and Miracle on 34th Street (1946) and Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (in all its incarnations) for they’ve lost count of how many times. Even at our most cynical, we want to believe things will work out, and that people can change for the better.

Democrats running on redeeming democracy will feel more authentic if Biden is their messenger, and if their message is more aspirational than confrontational, although they need both. Under Trump, under McCarthy, under Jordan, all MAGA Republicans offer America is more fear, decay and hate, chaos and carnage. Republicans cannot lead, do not lead. Look how far Obama got with Hope. Underneath the cynicism, Americans still want to believe. In spite of all he’s suffered, so does Joe.

No, Kevin, Republicans did this

Please append this to Digby’s Tuesday post, The Most Fatuous Spin In World History.

Former speaker Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) spun like a top yesterday after Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) lost his first vote for Speaker of the House by 20 Republican votes one week after Republicans gave McCarthy the boot and stopped the House cold amidst an international crisis.

McCarthy: “Every single Democrat voted to stop one branch of government. They created this mess with eight Republicans. Every single Democrat did this.”

McCarthy was referring to the vote last week that ousted him as speaker.

Um, Short Attention Span Theater, Kevin.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) reminds Republicans that the reason they, McCarthy, Jordan, and the country are in this mess (and why McCarthy is out of a job) dates from a January vote by Republicans only (here). McCarthy himself set the stage for his ouster by caving to his MAGA lunatics’ demand for a rule change that would allow only one member of Congress to bring a “motion to vacate” and force a vote on removing the speaker.

One did. Matt Gaetz did. And here we are.

.@AOC on the GOP blaming Democrats for their own dysfunction: “Democrats tried to save Republicans from themselves. There was this entire rule that allowed for one member of the House to kick out the Speaker… Every single Democrat voted against this rule… They didn’t listen.” pic.twitter.com/fOSSqUeAVA

— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen) October 17, 2023

They think it’s perfectly normal

This is the way wingnuts used to sound back in the dark ages when I was growing up. I guess it’s what they mean by “making American great again.”

In August, reporter Yanqi Xu heard her name called from a stage in Philadelphia for a national award recognizing Our Dirty Water, her series examining Nebraska’s high nitrate levels and their potential connection to childhood cancer.

Weeks later, she published a piece looking at the environmental impact of Pillen Family Farms,  Gov. Jim Pillen’s company. She found that 16 Pillen hog farms have recorded nitrate levels higher than 50 parts per million – five times higher than is considered safe to drink. One farm recorded a reading of 445 parts per million. 

Yanqi combed through hundreds of government records to find that a dozen Pillen operations violated state regulations. Employees at one farm constructed a PVC pipe to drain pig waste into a freshwater channel.

Four days after we published that story, Governor Jim Pillen called into KFAB radio from a trade mission in Japan. He touted Nebraska’s historical support for immigrants, saying “We are the most welcoming state in the country.”

Then the governor was asked to comment on Yanqi’s work.

“Number one, I didn’t read it. And I won’t,” Pillen said. “Number two, all you got to do is look at the author. The author is from communist China. What more do you need to know?”

Clearly, he is a no-nothing bigot. Here’s the rest of the story from her newspaper’s editor:

Yanqi Xu (pronounced “Yen-chee Shu”) did grow up in China, in Guangzhou. She left for Beijing, where she studied English and international journalism. 

She then left everything she had ever known. She moved to the United States. She wanted to pursue American-style journalism. 

She earned her masters degree at my alma mater, the University of Missouri-Columbia. She got a crash course in the power of government transparency while working at the National Freedom of Information Coalition. She anchored for a radio station. She began using data to find and tell revelatory stories at the National Institute for Computer Assisted-Reporting and the Investigative Reporting Workshop. She eventually joined North Carolina Policy Watch, that state’s chapter of States Newsroom, which also launched Nebraska Examiner.

Then she joined us at Flatwater Free Press almost exactly two years ago now, and wasted no time becoming a key reporter – for us, and for Nebraska. 

Her work speaks for itself. 

Yanqi sniffed out the larger story behind a recall effort in Alvo. She examined overtime in the prison system to discover employees doubling their salary by working 100-hour weeks. She analyzed the attendance records of the Nebraska Board of Parole, finding that the full board showed up together to hearings 37 percent of the time. (They started showing up for hearings far more in the year after her story ran.) 

She has done all of this while pursuing a second master’s degree, this time in analytics. And she is far more than even the impressive sum of her stories.

Yanqi loves live music. She hated the Nebraska wind when she moved here, though she said this week that she’s growing used to it. She works late. She didn’t get to see her parents back in China for three years during COVID-19, until she could finally visit last December.

She’s whip smart. She’s pit bull stubborn. She’s a courageous reporter, a remarkable reporter.  

She’s remarkable, period. 

She is the American dream. And this governor is a piece of shit.

Will Mike Pence or Tim Scott drop out first?

Scott’s Super-Pac pulls ads:

The super PAC supporting Tim Scott’s presidential bid is canceling most of its remaining TV spending, reversing course after reserving $40 million in ads for him ahead of the Iowa caucuses.

The retreat from TV is the latest sign of how dire the primary has become for a candidate who once anticipated outside help from big donors — but who is now polling in low single digits and hasn’t yet qualified for the third debate.

Pence reports a dismal fund-raising haul:

Former Vice President Mike Pence is reportedly facing an “existential cash squeeze” that could bring an end to his 2024 run for the White House.

Pence’s campaign told NBC News that filings due at the Federal Election Commission by the end of Sunday will reflect some $620,000 in debt, and that Pence has resorted to putting $150,000 in personal funds to the low-polling effort. While the GOP candidate raised $3.3 million in the third quarter and has $1.2 million cash on hand, NBC notes that taking on debt “has long been a sign of presidential campaigns in trouble—and potentially on the verge of ending.” …

Amid his discouraging fundraising, Pence has decided to skip the GOP-run Nevada caucuses and instead file for the state-run primary—a so-called “beauty contest” that won’t award any delegates involved in selecting the party’s nominee. “We’ll probably have to be a little bit more selective in where we invest resources, and that was the basis of that,” he said on Friday. “But we love Nevada and we look forward to tell our story there in the primary.” 

Scott’Super Pac tells it like it is:

“We are doing what would be obvious in the business world but will mystify politicos — we aren’t going to waste our money when the electorate isn’t focused or ready for a Trump alternative,” wrote Rob Collins, co-chair of the super PAC, who said the “Never-Trump field” is going to be “wasting money this fall” trying to undermine Trump’s current lead.

Haley and DeSantis may make it to Iowa and the gadflies will hang on as long as they can still get attention. But it’s over. In fact, it was over before it began.

Republican voters want this:

Trump on deportations: If you’re a communist, Marxist, or fascist.. other than people who are already here of which many are in the Biden Administration, you’re disqualified. We’d like to get them out too. Maybe we’re work on that next pic.twitter.com/w5LbxkFy4T

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 16, 2023

Paul Krugman thinks we dodged that bullet but nobody’s noticed

Krugman ‘s newsletter today lays out the data:

Until quite recently there was a near consensus among forecasters that the U.S. economy was headed for a recession. In fact, it’s been exactly one year since Bloomberg declared that, according to its models, the probability of a recession by October 2023 — that is, now — was 100 percent.

Oops.

OK, it’s possible — barely — that a recession has begun but isn’t in the data yet. Economists of a certain age remember that for much of 2008 some commentators denied that there was a recession underway, but the official business cycle chronology now says that the worst slump since the 1930s began in December 2007. That said, warning indicators like the Sahm rule, which looks at the unemployment rate compared with its previous low, were flashing red by the summer of 2008, in a way they aren’t now:

And forecasters, most of whom were very gloomy at the beginning of this year, have been backing off, with slightly fewer than half in a recent survey still predicting recession. My visceral reaction on seeing that headline was to say “Uh-oh” — given the track record of economic prediction, an optimistic consensus may be a reason to worry — but the truth is that the case for a soft landing, which I debated with Peter Coy a few weeks ago, keeps getting stronger.

The most important reason for optimism is that an ever-widening range of indicators suggest that the conventional wisdom — that we needed a recession to bring inflation under control — was wrong. Instead, we seem close to returning to the Federal Reserve’s inflation target without paying much of a price at all.

To see what I mean, here’s the Fed’s normal measure of underlying inflation, the “core” personal consumption expenditures deflator (try saying that six times fast) — that is, excluding volatile food and energy prices — measured over the past three and six months:

And since the traditional core inflation measure has seemed inadequate in the highly disrupted post-Covid world, here’s a more elaborate statistical measure from the New York Fed:

These measures suggest that underlying inflation is already most of the way back to the Fed’s target of 2 percent, and falling fast. The war on inflation looks almost over, and we won.

Now, if you say that, you get some hysterical pushback, much of it politically motivated: A key part of the Republican case against President Biden is the claim that he is responsible for runaway inflation, and partisans aren’t willing to let go of that argument. I’ve had some, well, interesting correspondence lately — for example, emails saying that by highlighting data suggesting that the inflation surge is over I’m a worse propagandist than Joseph Goebbels. Whatever.

Anyway, to the extent that there’s a real argument here, it involves the widespread use by economists of measures that attempt to extract underlying trends from the noise. Never mind these fancy numbers, say the critics; the prices real people actually pay are still soaring.

The truth, however, is nearly the opposite. At this point, U.S. inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index is largely driven by prices people don’t pay — owners’ equivalent rent, an “imputed” estimate of what homeowners would be paying if they were renting their houses. An alternative measure, the Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices, which doesn’t include this imputation, shows inflation roughly down to target:

There are many other indicators suggesting that inflation is quickly coming under control. Wage growth is slowing rapidly, reducing fears of a wage-price spiral:

And business expectations of future inflation, which are a much better predictor than consumer expectations, are also way down:

One final point about the inflation news: Earlier this year, many economists, while acknowledging that inflation was falling without any visible cost in higher unemployment, insisted that the last mile — getting inflation from, say, 3 percent to 2 percent — would be much harder. But underlying inflation has by many measures already covered much of that last mile, without the predicted pain.

So fears that we needed a recession to control inflation seem increasingly unfounded.

The question now is whether we’ll get a recession anyway.

The big reason for concern is the fact that the interest rates we think matter most for the real economy have soared since the Fed began hiking to fight inflation:

If you had told me two years ago that interest rates would soar like this, I would have predicted a nasty recession with spiking unemployment. But in fact job growth, and probably G.D.P. growth, have just kept chugging along.

The problem for economic analysts is that there are two possible reasons the recession dog hasn’t barked. One is that we’re seeing fundamental economic change — that new investment opportunities have increased r-star, so that the economy can handle high interest rates indefinitely. The other is that there are, as Milton Friedman claimed, “long and variable lags” in the effects of monetary policy, and high rates will eventually break something major.

Which story is right? Honestly, I have no idea. My inbox is full of analysts inspecting the entrails of business data, seeking omens for the near-term future. Some of them may know what they’re doing, but which ones?

What I think we can say is that because a recession, if it happens, will be a stumble rather than something we actually need, that recession probably won’t be either deep or long.

For the economic news this year has been remarkably good, although many people refuse to believe it.

Nobody does it like MyKev

Kevin McCarthy claims Democrats “created this mess,” prompting even a Fox News reporter to push back pic.twitter.com/mh3hdeUeKr

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 17, 2023

As I write this, Jordan just lost the Speaker vote by 20 Republican votes and he’s planning to go for another one. McCarthy’s insistence that this is all Democrats fault for refusing to vote for a fascist insurrectionist Republican for Speaker when he couldn’t even corral all the Republicans is pathetic. I’m sure he’s convinced millions of MAGA cult members that this is the problem because they have no idea how anything actually works. But please. There has to be at least a few Republicans left out there who realize that this is the stupidest thing he’s ever said. Right?

Let’s say Israel succeeds in taking out Hamas. Then what?

President Biden will be in Israel tomorrow and his trip has likely been planned with an eye toward holding back the Israeli government from the impulsive, grief-driven decision making that can lead to massive errors in judgement. From what we understand, the US and allies have been pushing Israel to take a breath, consider the humanitarian consequences and think about the day after. If anyone knows the folly of acting out of emotion and/or opportunism after a catastrophic terrorist attack it’s the United States. And the stakes are even higher for Israel.

One big demand on the part of the US is apparently that Israel have a plan for a post-Hamas Gaza. It’s unclear that they have one. This piece in the NY Times today by a post-war planner about what needs to be done seems highly relevant:

I headed postwar Iraq planning for the U.S. State Department in 2002 and 2003. Once the White House decided in 2002 to remove Saddam Hussein by force, I cautioned my superiors that there needed to be serious planning for what would follow. The study I led — the Future of Iraq Project, only some of which is now public — gave U.S. leaders an understanding of what postwar Iraq would need.

But before we could put plans into effect, we were thrown out of the Pentagon by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld at Vice President Dick Cheney’s orders in a dispute over what to do in Iraq. As a result, many of the American civilians who went there had little experience and even less knowledge of what Iraq needed to recover from decades of brutal and corrupt rule under Mr. Hussein and his Baath Party. The result contributed to the tragedy for Iraq, the United States and the entire Middle East.

What we’re seeing now in Israel and Gaza gives me the same grave concern so many of us felt 20 years ago: a lot of talk about military plans and the devastation of war and not enough about what will need to come after. I have not written publicly before about the lessons the United States should have learned from what happened to postwar plans for Iraq. With the humility of hard-won experience, I would like to offer those lessons as advice to whoever assumes this role in Israel today: the official in charge of developing a plan for a post-Hamas Gaza.

Your job will be hard, but it’s not hopeless. Reject the cynics’ advice that Israel’s job begins and ends when it defeats Hamas militarily and destroys its ability to harm Israelis again. If you fail to try to build something better in Hamas’s place or try in a halfhearted way, Israel will gain only a few years’ respite. Destruction is easy, but building is hard. That does not mean it is impossible.

The self-defeating mind-set that took hold in the United States not long after Iraq’s occupation was that the decision to invade Iraq was an original sin — something so wrong that it could never have come out better than it did. That mentality is damaging because it cuts off any serious effort to understand what went wrong and why.

The label of forever wars that has been firmly attached to America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan fails to acknowledge that poor planning and scant resources will always fail to secure postwar peace. It astounds me that anyone could be surprised by this. But the lessons of postwar Germany and Japan that led to their prosperous democracies today, including well-resourced physical and political reconstruction and the time to succeed, were utterly misunderstood and misapplied by Washington in 2003 and 2004. Israel has faced its own forever war since 1948. Poor planning and scant resources are also your enemy.

Just as Iraqis rightly told us before the 2003 invasion that Iraq is not Afghanistan, Gaza is neither Iraq nor Afghanistan. Factors unique to Gaza, such as decades of Hamas’s anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish propaganda and Israel’s treatment of Gazan civilians since 1967, will make both physical and political rebuilding especially challenging to Israel and even more challenging than southern Lebanon was to Israel from 1985 to 2000. The deep-seated hatred that many Gazans have for Israel today has no parallel to what U.S. forces faced entering Kabul or Baghdad. Anything Israel touches in a post-Hamas polity in Gaza risks becoming toxic; you must plan for this. Your plans need to understand what Gaza needs and to recognize that the government of Israel may not be the best means to deliver that.

Plan for the length of time you will need to bring about the fundamental changes that will break the cycle of violence Israel and Gaza have inflicted on each other over the past 50-plus years — not the time politicians think you will need. One reason the State Department’s best postwar plan for Iraq, which has still never been made public, was rejected by the White House was that Pentagon officials argued that a three-year timeline was too long. Decision makers opted for the siren song of one year or less and vastly inadequate physical or political reconstruction money, without regard for the reality that fast and cheap was doomed to fail. Instead, the United States expended more in blood and treasure from 2003 to 2011 and ended up strategically worse off than if a better postwar plan had been given the resources and time needed upfront. A repeat of Israel’s 15-year occupation of southern Lebanon is neither realistic nor desirable, but neither is the more recent pattern of quick ground incursions followed by withdrawals, or what’s called mowing the grass.

Finally, remember that military victory is an asset whose power decreases over time. If and when Israel succeeds in defeating Hamas, use that limited time wisely. What you decide to prioritize may be all you get done, so it has to lay the groundwork for constructive steps, not chaos, to follow. Recovery from disastrous decisions at the outset — like the U.S. decisions to disband the Iraqi army and to fire tens of thousands more Baath Party members than necessary from their government jobs, thus largely creating the Sunni insurgency — is almost impossible.

So what should you prioritize at the outset? Consider these six points, however difficult some may seem before a ground war even starts:

1. End Hamas’s culture of economic corruption in Gaza. Corruption is at the heart of what Hamas uses to keep the Gazan people in line. This needs to end. You may have a chance to put in place once-in-a-generation root-and-branch reforms in public integrity in government contracting, civil service hiring and business practices in Gaza.

2. Listen to what Gaza’s residents want. Ordinary Gazans must have a say in their future.

3. Change the educational curriculum. This has been Hamas’s basis for ensuring enduring hatred of Israel. But don’t listen to the equally poisonous voices in Israel that would overplay your hand and undermine lasting educational reforms that would work for Gaza. There are many experts today in the Middle East and outside it who have constructive ideas for an educational curriculum that is true to Palestinian history and in the best interests of lasting coexistence.

4. Find a path for Gazans to write a constitution that will lead toward a more democratic state that can live in peace side by side with Israel. Israel needs to demonstrate that it is committed to a two-state solution. This is one way to do that.

5. Show Gazans that Israel is prepared to help Gaza rebuild economically. This close to Oct. 7, Israelis cannot readily conceive of committing to a Marshall Plan for Gaza. But Israel needs to think through what conditions would make this the right thing to do.

6. Border security for Gaza that Israel can live with — not a siege — is vital. The U.S. failure to plan for security along the Iran-Iraq border was one of the most egregious flaws in the entire U.S. postwar plan. Iran poured money, explosives and operatives into Iraq, undermining any hope for a more stable Iraqi government. It is obvious that the measures Israel has had in place since 2007 have not prevented Iran from funding, arming and helping train Hamas. Israel needs now to do better. Even when Israeli ground forces ultimately pull back from Gaza and Gazans start to provide their own police force, Israel will want to ensure for at least three decades, as unobtrusively as possible, that neither Iran nor anyone else has the ability to smuggle into Gaza the means of waging war. At the Department of Homeland Security, I helped draft this kind of plan for Israeli-Palestinian border security that could be retrieved from storage and updated — and to be made real.

As David Fromkin wrote in “A Peace to End All Peace,” it took Europe well over a thousand years to settle the fall of the Roman Empire. No one should be surprised that it is taking the Middle East more than a hundred years to settle the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

Is any of this realistic? I have no idea. Let’s hope those who do are thinking this through.

Update: Jesus. This is so awful. A nightmare.

At least 500 people were killed by an explosion at a hospital in Gaza City on Tuesday that Palestinian authorities said was caused by an Israeli airstrike.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said the number of casualties was expected to rise. Many civilians were sheltering at Al Ahli Arab Hospital, better known as Al-Ma’amadani, before it was hit.

The Israeli military said it was investigating if it was responsible for the blast. “We’re checking,” said Maj. Nir Dinar, a military spokesman. In the past, rockets fired by Palestinian armed groups have occasionally malfunctioned and hit civilian neighborhoods.

The deadly blast on the hospital came as President Biden was preparing for a visit to Israel on Wednesday as conditions in besieged Gaza grew ever more desperate. What little remains of the enclave’s food, fuel and water supplies was dwindling fast on Tuesday, and hundreds of thousands of people were on the move, fleeing the strip’s northern half to escape a planned Israeli ground invasion.

No matter who did it and whether it was a target or a mistake it’s going to change things for the worse. And it was already very bad.

They’re not sending their best to the MAGA rallies

During a New Hampshire event, Klepper stumped some of the supporters sporting the ex-president’s mugshot t-shirt that read “Never surrender.”

“Never surrender to the tyranny,” said a blond young man, pronouncing the word tie-ranny.

“What is Trump doing here on this shirt?” asked Klepper.

“This is his mugshot,” the man said.

“Gotcha. So that was taken when he surrendered to authorities to have his picture taken?” Klepper asked.

There was an awkward silence as the man considered the word “Surrender.”

“Huh?” is all the man could muster.

This is the MAGA cult and while I’m sure there are many who aren’t quite this thick, Donald Trump is equally absurd dozens of times a day and they are willing to make him president of the United States.

Broadcast radicalization

You’ll recall the hissy fit conservatives threw at the FBI’s suggestion post-Jan. 6 that domestic terrorism by “white supremacists, militias and other extremists” was a growing threat in this country.

Some years earlier, the Department of Justice was focused on foreign terrorists’ efforts at “online radicalization.” As in “Online Radicalization to Violent Extremism” (2014):

Using a combination of traditional websites, mainstream social media platforms, YouTube, and other online services, extremists broadcast their views, provoke negative sentiment toward enemies, incite people to violence, glorify martyrs, create virtual communities with like-minded individuals, provide religious or legal justifications for violent actions, and communicate individually with new recruits to groom them for violent activities

I’m wondering today (again) when the DOJ will turn its attention to the threat of broadcast radicalization. But I’m not holding my breath even after the stabbing death of a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy in Chicago, allegedly by Joseph Czuba:

In the petition requesting that Czuba be detained, Assistant State’s Attorney Michael Fitzgerald said that right before the attack, the landlord confronted the boy’s mother, Hanaan Shahin, and “told her he was angry at her for what was going on” in Israel.

Shahin “stated she responded to him ‘let’s pray for peace’,” the petition said. Shahin “stated Czuba gave her no chance to do anything … then attacked her with a knife.”

Czuba, the boy’s mother told investigators, was an “angry” man. His wife, Mary, told investigators that Czuba “listens to conservative talk radio on a regular basis” and became obsessed with the war between Hamas and Israel.

This is beyond bearing. https://t.co/nRjU2L0f93

— Sherrilyn Ifill (@SIfill_) October 17, 2023

Meanwhile in Georgia:

A Black man who spent 16 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted of a violent crime was shot and killed by police in Georgia on Monday.

Leonard Cure, 53, was killed after a sheriff’s deputy pulled him over in south-eastern Georgia’s Camden county early on Monday morning. The Georgia bureau of investigation (GBI) is examining the shooting.

Cure was released from prison in Florida in 2020 after a conviction review unit exonerated him of robbing a drug store in 2003.

These days, one is not willing to take the cops’ story at face value. But here it is:

Preliminary information indicates that at about 7:30 a.m., a Camden County deputy initiated a traffic stop on Interstate 95 Northbound, just south of Mile Marker 9 in Camden County, GA. The driver of the car, later identified as Leonard Allan Cure, age 53, got out of the car at the deputy’s request. Cure complied with the officer’s commands until learning that he was under arrest. After not complying with the deputy's requests, the deputy tased Cure. Cure assaulted the deputy. The deputy used the Taser for a second time and an ASP baton; however, Cure still did not comply. The deputy pulled out his gun and shot Cure. EMT’s treated Cure, but he later died.

There is no reference to body- or dash-cam footage that might corroborate the deputy’s account. Nor is there a reason given for the traffic stop. Mr. Cure is permanently unavailable for comment.

And this?

Southern MN high school cancels homecoming after students draw swastikas and anti-Islamic slurs on another student’s vehicle. https://t.co/ZXzT7TKS4j

— Christopher Ingraham🦗 (@_cingraham) October 17, 2023

Kids just being kids? Whose kids?

You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You’ve got to be carefully taught!

“an absurd and dangerous choice”

The Washington Post is posting live updates of Jacketless Jim Jordan’s quest to be Speaker of the House and second in line for the presidency. Really.

The House begins business today at noon, “two weeks to the day since former House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was ousted.”

“The next speaker should not be someone we already know is willing to manufacture  disputes and support groundless claims to overturn an election to install the president he wants,” Jill Lawrrence writes at The Bulwark. She offers a detailed list of why the Ohio congressman is “an absurd and dangerous choice for that reason and too many others to count.” Among them is former House Speaker John Boehner’s assessment of his fellow Ohioan: “Jordan was a terrorist as a legislator going back to his days in the Ohio House and Senate. . . . A terrorist. A legislative terrorist.”

Not to mention being an election denier and Trump co-conspirator, Jeffrey K. Tulis and William Kristol remind Bulwark readers.

Jordan has Donald Trump’s endorsement. That’s another strike against him for Americans who can barely recall “normal.” It was the kiss of death for many candidates in the last cycle.

A couple of those Post updates:

Jordan mounted a pressure campaign over the weekend, part of which is the roll-call vote today is Jordan “daring his opponents to vote against him and incur the wrath of the far-right media and political ecosystem that is firmly behind him.”

Leigh Ann Caldwell adds:

“Jordan’s team has the knives out,” said one House Republican who represents a swing district, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the pressure being exerted on the member to vote for Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) as speaker.

“I’ll vote my conscience, which is a ‘no,’ but I don’t want to be a punching bag for the next three days,” the member said.

The member said Fox Newshost Sean Hannity contacted them directly, urging them to support Jordan. Hannity is saying that the war in Israel is a reason to get behind Jordan now, according to the member.

Jordan will have to woo or strong-arm over 50 more of his colleagues to win the speakership. CNN reports, “He can now only afford to lose three GOP votes on the floor, assuming everyone votes, given Florida Rep. Gus Bilirakis will be away from the Capitol for a few hours on Tuesday until he returns in the evening, his office told CNN.”

Let the games begin.