Gaetz: Steve Bannon.. Rudy Giuliani.. President Trump, myself all under one roof and if Joe Biden is re-elected, that roof will be known as cell block A pic.twitter.com/RVKfLEoZJH
This is more that just the usual, tiresome “I know you are but what am I” nonsense. He’s right about Bannon, Giuliani and Trump but not because Joe Biden is threatening to put them behind bars if he’s re-elected (like someone else we know is doing.) It’s because all of them are under indictment. Unless he knows something we don’t, Gaetz was actually let off the hook by the DOJ for his predatory behavior with drugs and underage girls.
But yes, these people are accused criminals and they are going to trial and if they are found guilty they could go to jail. That’s how the Law and Order Party believes it should be for anyone but their crooked leaders.
We are told by the TV legal beagles that, in the interest of expediency, Jack Smith is going the extra mile to lay out the case he is planning to make and it’s becoming clear that he plans to make it clear that the election was not stolen which would be a real service:
Special counsel Jack Smith on Saturday sharply rejected former President Donald Trump’s contention that foreign governments may have changed votes in the 2020 election, laying bare new details about his team’s extensive probe of the matter and its access to a vast array of senior intelligence officials in Trump’s administration.
In a 45-page filing, Smith’s team describes interviewing more than a dozen of the top intelligence officials in Trump’s administration — from his director of national intelligence to the administrator of the NSA to Trump’s personal intelligence briefer — about any evidence that foreign governments had penetrated systems that counted votes in 2020.
“The answer from every single official was no,” senior assistant special counsel Thomas Windom writes in the filing.
The filing was part of the special counsel’s opposition to a bid by Trump to access a broad swath of classified intelligence as part of his defense against charges that he conspired to subvert the 2020 election and disenfranchise millions of voters, culminating in the violent Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Trump has argued that foreign governments fueled his supporters’ concerns about election integrity and that some classified evidence revealed potential meddling that justified his own professed fears about fraud.
But prosecutors say Trump’s new legal effort is just an extension of his election lies — and that, in fact, intelligence officials unanimously rejected the idea that foreign governments penetrated any systems that counted votes or could have altered the election tally itself. Rather, they said, intel officials documented some breaches of state voter registration databases that permitted various influence campaigns but were not capable of causing the vote-stealing scheme of which Trump has long sought to convince his followers.
Trump, Windom writes, tries to create a “false impression” and “manufacture confusion” by citing these “irrelevant network breaches” and conflating them with potential changes to the vote total.
To rebut these claims, Windom indicates that prosecutors asked Trump’s “former DNI, former acting secretary of DHS, former acting deputy secretary of DHS, former CISA director, former acting CISA director, former CISA senior cyber counsel, former national security adviser, former deputy NSA, former chief of staff to the National Security Council, former chairman of the Election Assistance Commission, presidential intelligence briefer, former secretary of Defense and former DOJ leadership” for any evidence of that foreign or domestic actors flipped a single vote from a voting machine in 2020.
They offered none, he says.
Windom also contended that Trump’s repeated effort to describe partisan bias in intelligence about the election belied that those making the assessments were his own appointees, buttressed by conclusions at a slew of intel agencies. Windom also specified that one noted instance of bias was allegedly committed in Trump’s favor by his own acting DNI.
Trump is gagged from trashing all the witnesses who spoke with the Special Counsel and told him that the election was legitimate. I expect that there are a whole bunch of former domestic officials who did the same. At the end of this, the record will be laid out in a legal proceeding proving that he is the pathological liar we know he is. The cult will never believe it but there may be a few who haven’t really paid attention who will finally be convinced.
Allies of Hungary’s far-right prime minister Viktor Orbán will hold a closed-door meeting with Republicans in Washington to push for an end to US military support for Ukraine, the Guardian has learned.
Members of the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs and staff from the Hungarian embassy in Washington will on Monday begin a two-day event hosted by the conservative Heritage Foundation thinktank.
The first day includes panel speeches about the Ukraine war as well as topics such as Transatlantic Culture Wars. It is expected to feature guests including Magor Ernyei, the international director of the Centre for Fundamental Rights, the institute that organized CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) Hungary. Kelley Currie, a former ambassador under then president Donald Trump, said she was invited “but declined”.
According to a Republican source, some of the attendees, including Republican members of Congress, have been invited to join closed-door talks the next day.
The meeting will take place against a backdrop of tense debate in Washington over Ukraine’s future. Last week the White House warned that, without congressional action, money to buy more weapons and equipment for Kyiv will run out by the end of the year. On Wednesday Senate Republicans blocked an emergency spending bill to fund the war in Ukraine.
A diplomatic source close to the Hungarian embassy said: “Orbán is confident that the Ukraine aid will not pass in Congress. That is why he is trying to block assistance from the EU as well.”
Orbán is a frequent critic of aid to help Ukraine against the Russian invasion. Seen as Vladimir Putin’s closest ally inside the EU for the past few years, he was photographed smiling and shaking hands with the Russian president two months ago in Beijing.
Orbán recently demanded that Ukraine’s European Union (EU) membership be taken off the European Council’s agenda in December. The Hungarian leader posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter: “It is clear that the proposal of the European Commission on Ukraine’s EU accession is unfounded and poorly prepared.”
The Heritage Foundation is leading Project 2025, a coalition preparing for the next conservative presidential administration, and has in recent months hosted speeches by leading British Conservative party members Liz Truss and Iain Duncan Smith.
The thinktank has also been a vocal opponent of US assistance to Ukraine. Last year Jessica Anderson, the executive director of its lobbying operation, released a statement under the headline: “Ukraine Aid Package Puts America Last.” In August, Victoria Coates, Heritage’s vice-president, posted on social media: “It’s time to end the blank, undated checks for Ukraine.”
When Heritage celebrated its 50th anniversary last April, Orbán’s political director, Balázs Orbán (no relation), was invited as a speaker for the event. Heritage’s president, Kevin Roberts, repeatedly praised the Hungarian leader on X: “One thing is clear from visiting Hungary and from being involved in current policy and cultural debates in America: the world needs a movement that fights for Truth, for tradition, for families, and for the average person.”
In recent years Orbán has championed a transatlantic far-right alliance with a hardline stance against immigration and “gender ideology”, staunch Christian nationalism and scorn for those who warn of a slide into authoritarianism.
Try to imagine such a thing happening a decade ago. It seems impossible to believe. But Heritage and Orban love them some Putin — he’s a white strongman defending “traditional values” like jailing journalists and LGBTQ people. They love that. They only wish Trump could be such an authoritarian monster. But hey, they’re all talking about invading Mexico so who knows?
Update:
Oh Baby. Biden claps back hard on this one doing a little “counter-programming”
BIDEN KICKS DOWN THE GOP's CLOSED DOOR MEETING WITH ORBAN ALLIES: @POTUS shows his p*mp hand is strong with a fast, counter move hosting Zelenskyy in DC on the very same day GOP lawmakers are holed up in secret plotting how to back-stab his country. We've got your back, 🇺🇦. pic.twitter.com/VsaRgDqFyO
None of that matters. They have order from Dear Leader and they do what he wants:
House Republicans are preparing to formalize their impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden with a House vote this week, as their investigation reaches a critical juncture while right-wing pressure grows.
Up until this point, House Republicans have not had enough votes to legitimize their ongoing inquiry with a full chamber vote. The probe has struggled to uncover wrongdoing by the president which is why it hasn’t garnered the unified support of the full GOP conference.
Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy unilaterally launched the inquiry in September, even though he had previously criticized Democrats for taking the same step in 2019 when they launched the first impeachment probe of then-President Donald Trump without taking a vote at the beginning.
The dynamics for House Republicans changed, however, when the White House told the trio of GOP-led congressional committees leading the investigation that its subpoenas were illegitimate without a formal House vote to authorize the inquiry. The Trump administration made a similar argument against House Democrats at the start of his 2019 impeachment.
That gauntlet thrown by the White House has appeared to help reluctant, more moderate Republican members get on board with formalizing the inquiry.
The argument from Republican proponents of the effort, according to multiple GOP lawmakers and aides, is that a floor vote will strengthen their legal standing against the White House and fortify their subpoenas targeting witnesses like Hunter Biden, the president’s son, who has signaled he will not appear for his scheduled closed-door deposition this week.
“I didn’t come to Washington to expel a member of Congress or impeach a president,” Rep. Marc Molinaro, a swing district Republican from New York, told CNN. “The White House would do well by honoring subpoenas and participating in the investigation. If they chose not to and they obstruct, with all due respect, it’s the legislative branch’s responsibility to assert our right and responsibility to provide that oversight.”
In one of the Atlantic articles about “If Trump Wins” Mark Liebovich goes where everyone else is afraid to go. He talks about the Trump voter. Of course, he does it after explaining that you can’t really point any of this out because it upsets the MAGAs and we can’t have that. But he does explode this high minded myth that “we’re better than that,” meaning Americans write large, which clearly only applies to some of us. Anyway:
After the shock of Trump’s victory in 2016, the denial and rationalizations kicked in fast. Just ride out the embarrassment for a few years, many thought, and then America would revert to something in the ballpark of sanity. But one of the overlooked portents of 2020 (many Democrats were too relieved to notice) was that the election was still extremely close. Trump received 74 million votes, nearly 47 percent of the electorate. That’s a huge amount of support, especially after such an ordeal of a presidency—the “very fine people on both sides,” the “perfect” phone call, the bleach, the daily OMG and WTF of it all. The populist nerves that Trump had jangled in 2016 remained very much aroused. Many of his voters’ grievances were unresolved. They clung to their murder weapon.
Trump has continued to test their loyalty. He hasn’t exactly enhanced his résumé since 2020, unless you count a second impeachment, several loser endorsements, and a bunch of indictments as selling points (some do, apparently: more medallions for his victimhood). January 6 posed the biggest hazard—the brutality of it, the fever of the multitudes, and Trump’s obvious pride in the whole furor. Even the GOP lawmakers who still vouched for Trump from their Capitol safe rooms seemed shaken.
“This is not who we are,” Representative Nancy Mace, the newly elected Republican of South Carolina, said of the deadly riot. “We’re better than this.” There was a lot of that: thoughts and prayers from freaked-out Americans. “Let me be very clear,” President-elect Joe Biden tried to reassure the country that day. “The scenes of chaos at the Capitol do not reflect a true America, do not represent who we are.”
One hoped that Biden was correct, that we were in fact not a nation of vandals, cranks, and insurrectionists. But then, on the very day the Capitol had been ransacked, 147 House and Senate Republicans voted not to certify Biden’s election. Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, skulked back to the ousted president a few weeks later, and the pucker-up parade to Mar-a-Lago was on. Large majorities of Republicans never stopped supporting Trump, and claim they never stopped believing that Biden stole the 2020 election and that Crooked Joe’s regime is abusing the legal system to persecute Trump out of the way.
Here we remain, amazingly enough, ready to do this all again. Trump might be the ultimate con man, but his essential nature has never been a mystery. Yet he appears to be gliding to his third straight Republican nomination and is running strong in a likely rematch with an unpopular incumbent. A durable coalition seems fully comfortable entrusting the White House to the guy who left behind a Capitol encircled with razor-wire fence and 25,000 National Guard troops protecting the federal government from his own supporters.
You can dismiss Trump voters all you want, but give them this: They’re every bit as American as any idealized vision of the place. If Trump wins in 2024, his detractors will have to reckon once again with the voters who got us here—to reconcile what it means to share a country with so many citizens who keep watching Trump spiral deeper into his moral void and still conclude, “Yes, that’s our guy.”
I’ll just say this: Hillary was right. We knew it at the time and so did the press.
Call it a referendum. Call it a ballot measure. Whatever. The race at the top of every voter’s ballot next year will not be a race for president. Not pumped enough to show up and vote in a race between (highly likely) two old white men? How do you feel about a choice between authoritarianism and democracy? That’s what’s really the first contest on your ballot.
Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré (Ret.) is counting on Gen Z, first-time voters to help save the country he served for decades:
This new generation of voters will be the most diverse our nation has ever seen. And already, these same young people have been politically engaged. In recent years, young people have been outspoken about some of the most contentious issues of our time, from climate change to reproductive rights to racial injustice. Yet the young people who have been engaged online, and in their communities, need to put that same energy into registering themselves and their peers to vote.
It’s become a cliché this century that every election is the “most important of our lifetimes.” It may be cliché, but it’s true. With every recent election, the stakes seem to become higher, and the consequences of low voter turnout have become greater.
(Yeah, I hate that cliché too. But for a different reason. When politicos pitch every election as a sky-is-falling event, Democrats, those policy liberals, become campaign conservatives. Playing it safe won’t save us.)
“Not the odds, but the stakes,” says NYU’s Jay Rosen. People need to focus on the stakes.
Where the stakes were women’s reproductive rights post-Dobbs, voters in state after state stepped up to preserve those rights. Balloptpedia provides an accounting:
In every case, in red state and blue, voters chose to protect women’s reproductive freedom. That choice could be on ballots in 15 more states — at the bottom, not the top — across the country in 2024:
Just because climate change and racial injustice are not explicitly on your ballots as well doesn’t mean they aren’t there too. They are. Right at the top where you’ll choose between authoritarianism and democracy.
Democrats and aligned 501 groups must make it clear, especially to younger voters, that the 2024 presidential race is a referendum not only on preserving our democracy, but on reproductive rights, climate change and racial justice as well. Voters from all parties turned out to successfully defend reproductive rights in Kansas, in California and in Vermont, and in Montana, Kentucky, Michigan and Ohio.
Honoré lays out the stakes as a career soldier might:
The 2024 presidential election, however, is not about red versus blue, Republican versus Democrat. Think what you will of the incumbent, President Biden, but the frontrunner for the other party has made his intentions clear. Former President Trump — the leading Republican candidate — is campaigning on an “authoritarian vision for [a] second term.” He’s suggested turning the law enforcement power of the federal government against his political opponents. He’s asserted that military generals should be loyal to their leader — not, first and foremost, to the Constitution. He and his advisers have discussed using the Insurrection Act to turnthe U.S. military on protesters in cities and on migrants at the southern border. And, as we’ve seen before, he’s more than willing to deny the outcome of any election he doesn’t win.
If young people don’t vote in droves in the 2024 election, alongside older Americans of goodwill and conscience, to keep Trump from returning to power and cementing power as an authoritarian leader, there may not be a 2028 presidential election. Historians and political scientists have warned that failed coup attempts — like the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection — are often “dress rehearsals” for a successful coup.
At this moment, we face two existential threats: the global rise of authoritarianism and the ongoing climate crisis. After decades of assessing and neutralizing threats, I have one message for young voters: If we do not preserve our democracy and our climate, nothing else matters.
As the song written the same day as the Pearl Harbor attack goes, “We did it before and we can do it again | and we will do it again.”
Some guy seems not to have noticed that Taylor Swift’s hottest concert ticket of the year made her Time‘s Person of the Year. Or that Barbie was the hottest movie ticket of the year. Barbie ends with joke about women’s health care. It figures some clueless guy‘s name is Ken.
There is no substitute for medical judgment, except the judgment of me, Ken Paxton.
Am I a doctor? No. I’m something better than a doctor: a Ken. My accessories include: no medical expertise and a boundless reservoir of cruelty. And one time, I saw a horse. I have also been told that my handwriting is bad and that I am not patient. This all screams “doctor” to me.
“This seems like a horrible, ghoulish way to behave when a person needs to access emergency medical care,” you might say. Sure! But we are not talking about a person in this case. We are talking about a woman. Totally different, in my medical opinion.
The state court’s ruling was in response to an appeal from Attorney General Ken Paxton of Texas, who opposed the woman’s abortion.
Ruth Marcus (also from the Post) finds less humor in Just Ken’s un-pink meddling. A supporter of women’s reproductive rights, Marcus is willing to allow that some people on the anti side are motivated by deep moral convictions. But not Just Ken:
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is an exception. He deserves no such respect, only condemnation for his unnecessary, inexplicable cruelty. No moral person — no person with true compassion for life — could be launched on Paxton’s current crusade against a Texan named Kate Cox.
Cox is a 31-year-old mother of two, about 20 weeks pregnant with a third, very much wanted. But the fetus has Trisomy 18, a severe genetic disorder. Some 95 percent of such pregnancies do not make it to term or are stillborn. Half of those born with the condition do not survive beyond the first week; 9 out of 10 die within the first year.
This is worse than heartbreaking; it is dangerous to Cox’s health and future fertility. Because she has had two previous Caesarean sections, Cox would have to have a third C-section because of the risk of uterine rupture. A repeat procedure would make it more difficult for her to carry a successful pregnancy in the future. Cox’s doctors have advised her and her husband that abortion would be the safest choice to protect her ability to have more children.
Texas argues that its abortion ban’s language is clear. Crystal.
“With allowing reasonable medical judgment, you avoid the possibility of getting it wrong and ending up in prison,” Texas Assistant Attorney General Beth Klusmann assured the court. “As long as your judgment is reasonable, you should be fine under this law.”
Now comes Paxton, Klusmann’s boss, to make clear that is not the state’s position at all. Not only can Cox’s doctor not use her judgment about what’s best for her patient, but she also can’t rely on a court order allowing her to do so. This isn’t regulating abortion — it’s terrorizing those who dare to perform the procedure and endangering the women who need it.
I’m guessing you’ve already had it up to “here” with holly jolly Burl Ives and Rudolph with his frigging red nose so bright wafting out of every elevator in sight. Christmas comes but once a year; this too shall soon pass. I promise I won’t torture you with the obvious and overplayed. Rather, I have curated 15 selections that aren’t flogged to death every year; some deeper cuts (and a few novelty items) for your Xmas creel.
Happy Crimble, and a Very New Year!
All I Want For Christmas – The Bobs
The Bobs have been stalking me. They formed in the early 80s, in San Francisco. I was living in San Francisco in the early 80s; I recall catching them as an opening act for The Plimsouls (I think…or maybe Greg Kihn) at The Keystone in Berkeley. I remember having my mind blown by a cappella renditions of “Psycho Killer” and “Helter Skelter”. Later, I resettled in Seattle. Later, they resettled in Seattle. I wish they’d quit following me! This is a lovely number from their 1996 album Too Many Santas.
Ave Maria – Stevie Wonder
There are songs that you do not tackle if you don’t have the pipes (unless you want to be jeered offstage, or out of the ball park). “The Star Spangled Banner” comes to mind; as does “Nessun dorma”. “Ave Maria” is right up there too. Not only does Stevie nail the vocal, but he whips out the most sublime harmonica solo this side of Toots Thielemans.
Blue Xmas – Bob Dorough w/ the Miles Davis Sextet
The hippest “Bah, humbug!” of all time. “Gimme gimme gimme…”
Christmas at the Airport – Nick Lowe
Wry and tuneful as ever at 74, veteran pub-rocker/power-popper/balladeer Nick Lowe continues to compose, produce, record and tour. This is from his 2013 Christmas album, Quality Street. I think a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nomination is overdue.
Christmas in Suburbia – The Cleaners From Venus
Despite the fact that he writes hook-laden, Beatlesque pop gems in his sleep, and has been doing so for five decades, endearingly eccentric singer-musician-songwriter-poet Martin Newell (Cleaners From Venus, Brotherhood of Lizards) remains a selfishly-guarded secret by cultish admirers (of which I am one). But since it is the holidays, I’m feeling magnanimous-so I will share him with you now (you’re welcome).
Christmas Wish – NRBQ
NRBQ has been toiling in relative obscurity since 1966, despite nearly 50 albums and a rep for crowd-pleasing live shows. I think they’ve fallen through the cracks because they are tough to pigeonhole; they’re equally at home with power-pop, blues, rock, jazz, R&B, country or goofy covers. This is from their eponymous 2007 album.
I Yust Go Nuts at Christmas – Yogi Yorgesson
I first heard this tune about the “joys” of holiday gatherings on “The Dr. Demento Show” . It always puts me in hysterics, especially: “My mouth tastes like a pickle.”
Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring – Leo Kottke
In 1969, an LP entitled 6- and 12-String Guitar quietly slid into record stores. The cover had a painting of an armadillo, with “Leo Kottke” emblazoned above. In the 50+ years since, “the armadillo album” has become a touchstone for aspiring guitarists, introducing the world to a gifted player with a unique and expressive finger picking technique. Kottke’s lovely take on a Bach classic is a highlight.
River – Joni Mitchell
Not a jolly “laughing all the way” singalong; but this is my list, and I’m sticking to it. Besides, Joni opens with a “Jingle Bells” piano quote, and the lyrics are stuffed with Christmas references. Oft-covered, but it doesn’t make a lot of holiday playlists.
Santa – Lightnin’ Hopkins
Best Christmas blues ever, by the poet laureate of the Delta.
Now, I happened to see these old people learning the young ones, Yeah just learning them exactly what to do. So sweet, it’s so sweet to see these old people, Learning they old children just what to do. Mother said a million-year-ago Santa Claus come to me, Now this year he gone come to you.
My little sister said take your stocking now, Hang it up on the head of the bed. Talkin’ to her friend she said take your stocking, And please hang it up on head of the bed. And she said know we all God’s saint children, In the morning Ol’ Santa Claus gone see that we all is fed.
Sleigh Ride– The Ventures
I’ve never personally seen anyone “hang ten” in Puget Sound; nonetheless, one of the greatest surf bands ever hails from Tacoma. This jaunty mashup of a Christmas classic with “Walk, Don’t Run” sports tasty fretwork by Nokie Edwards and Don Wilson (sadly, co-founder and rhythm guitarist Wilson passed away last year at the age of 88).
Sometimes You Have to Work on Christmas – Harvey Danger
Ho-ho-ho, here’s your %&#!@ change. We’ve all been there at one time or another. I have a soft spot for this music video (It’s a Wonderful Life meets Clerks) because it features one of my favorite neighborhood theaters here in Seattle-The Grand Illusion.
Stoned Soul Christmas – Binky Griptite
“Man, what’s the matter with you…don’t you know it’s Christmas?!” A funky sleigh ride down to the stoned soul Christmas with guitarist/DJ Binky Griptite (formerly of The Dap Kings). A clever reworking of Laura Nyro’s “Stoned Soul Picnic.” Nice.
A Winter’s Tale – Jade Warrior
Not a Christmas song per se, but it certainly evokes a cozy holiday scenario:
Ivy tapping on my window, wine and candle glow, Skies that promise snow have gathered overhead. Buttered toast and creamy coffee, table laid for two, Lovely having you to share a smile with me.
A beautiful track from an underappreciated UK prog-rock band.
‘Zat You, Santa Claus? – Louis Armstrong
The great jazz growler queries a night prowler who may or may not be the jolly old elf.
Bonus track!
What begins as a performance of “Everlong” turns into a rousing Christmas medley in this 2017 performance by the Foo Fighters on Saturday Night Live. Good grief!
“That report was widely cited in the media, and fearmongering about ‘organized retail crime’ was everywhere. But the facts in that study were way wrong. And it's important to unpack just what happened,” says @chrislhayes, debunking the myth of "organized" shoplifting. pic.twitter.com/XpoUCkbOK4
