Month: April 2024

Fool me twice, etc.

“No one in law enforcement should be caught off guard if trouble breaks out before, during, or after the November presidential election,” Juliette Kayyem begins in The Atlantic.

It is not too soon for the Biden administration and the Department of Justice to start what-iffing a response, and to take seriously recommendations made by the January 6th Committee . It appears the administration means to get ahead of the next insurrection. “A show of readiness,” Kayyem writes, “can also deter people who might have learned the wrong lesson from the Capitol riot: that just a bit more violence might have changed the outcome of the 2020 election.” Because the most hardcore MAGA soldiers not already in jail (especially those with military training) will have learned from Jan. 6 how to do a coup and how not to.

Kayyem adds:

Any attempts to shore up the nation’s defenses against political violence might be misinterpreted—or intentionally misconstrued—by some of Trump’s supporters as an attempt by a Democratic administration to use federal power to interfere in the 2024 election. But the fact that everything Biden does at this stage will be seen through a politicized lens shouldn’t scare him into inaction.

If Trump and his supporters want to quibble with plans to protect election officials from external pressure during vote counts in Georgia and Wisconsin, or to protect members of Congress from rioters during the certification process, then they should do so out loud, before the election. But preparing for election turmoil shouldn’t be a partisan issue. The right keeps warning us of the potential for left-wing antifa violence; surely conservatives would want the executive branch to prevent it from affecting the vote certification if Trump wins. The best course is to lay out transparent plans to safeguard the electoral process no matter who is ultimately sworn in.

On one level, we all want to forget about the death and disruptions of COVID-19 pandemic that dominated 2020. It was a worldwide trauma. But people as committed as the Proud Boys and the Roger Stones and Christian nationalists will not go away. The figureheads will keep more distance from overt planning. But they may not need to do more than feed the desire of the fringe right for direct action. Trump, as Michael Cohen testified, knows well how to make his desires plain without stating them plainiy. His followers will take it upon themselves to give the Boss the violence he craves. Even MAGA judges know what the Boss wants:

In his sentencing memo Thursday, U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney made it clear why he was letting Tyler Laube off lightly.

It wasn’t just because of what Laube did or didn’t do – the defendant had already confessed to beating a journalist at a 2017 Southern California rally and pleaded guilty to violating riot laws as part of a white supremacist gang. 

Laube deserved a light sentence, Carney said, because prosecutors should have focused on leftist groups. 

In a 22-page memo, Carney repeatedly said prosecutors have “ignored” violence committed by Antifa and instead focused on targeting people like Laube – Trump supporters and members of the far right.

Ninety miles away on the same day, USA Today reminds readers, ANTIFA members were on trial:

In San Diego, the last two defendants in the “San Diego 11” – members of Antifa charged with committing violence against Trump supporters in January 2021 – were sitting before a jury. Their nine co-defendants have already been sentenced, some of them to years in prison, for their crimes. 

Strongmen rise out of chaos, a friend noted yesterday. Provide enough chaos and people will demand one. It need not be as localized as the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Yes, some of these clowns are itching to “go to guns” with the left and the gummint. But direct confrontation and frontal assault may not be the only way to introduce chaos. For those unwilling to martyr themselves in a glorious shootout, attacks on utilities have already been field-tested and not all the terrorists prosecuted. 

Some of the perps in the N.C. substation attacks may have been trained at Fort Bragg,  
North Carolina and elsewhere.

We’ve looked at such attacks here, here, and here.

The FBI is still looking for the perps behind the Aug, 2023 Torrance, California substation attack. To my knowledge, the 2013 Metcalf, Calif. sniper attack on a substation remains unsolved. This is chaos on the cheap for armed RW reactionaries. The “how to” is in circulation. You know it is. 

Lucklily for us, Trump will not be in control of the executive branch on Jan. 6 next year, or on Inauguration Day, win or lose. Better that the Biden adminstration is braced for whatever comes.

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Republicans in disarray

Republicans want desperately to control the national narrative around the presidential election. They need voters and the press focused on any number of subjects not-Donald Trump and his visible mental decay: an immigration “crisis,” inflation, the economy, Joe Biden’s age, sexual identity politics, election “fraud,” etc. It’s just that their MAGA base keeps spitting out the bit and Donald Trump cannot stay on his own message.

Trump’s campaign finance criminal trial in Manhattan begins on Monday despite his every effort to derail it. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-MAGA) threatens to oust yet another Republican speaker of the ungovernable House. GOP-controlled states keep tripling down on abortion restrictions. Arizona’s state Supreme Court just reactivated a Civil War abortion law.

The ruling, Washington Post reports, is “expected to have a seismic impact on the politics of the battleground state, testing the limits of Republican support for abortion restrictions and putting the issue front and center in November’s election.”

Whoops:

Arizona’s conservative Supreme Court on Tuesday revived a near-total ban on abortion, invoking an 1864 law that forbids the procedure except to save a mother’s life and punishes providers with prison time. The decision supersedes Arizona’s previous rule, which permitted abortions up to 15 weeks.

Arizonans are poised to consider the issue in November, now that the groups working to amend the state’s constitution to enshrine abortion rights — which include the ACLU of Arizona and Planned Parenthood Advocates of Arizona — say that they have acquired enough signatures to establish a ballot measure, according to the Arizona Republic. Meanwhile, Republicans in the state are asking Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs (D) and the Republican-led state legislature to come up with a solution.

The developments in Arizona are part of a wave of state actions to reckon with the future of access to reproductive care after the U.S. Supreme Court, with a conservative majority installed during Donald Trump’s presidency, overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. While several states enacted abortion restrictions as a result of overturning Roe, protecting access to reproductive care has broadly been a winning issue for Democratic candidates and for ballot measures that protect abortion access in the elections since the 2022 ruling.

Reproductive freedoms will be front and center in the national psyche, especially among women, between now and November. After Republican election losses and wins for reproductive freedoms in state after state post-Roe, this unpopular ruling is just what Republicans and Trump don’t need. Reproductive freedom guarantees are on the fall ballot or proposed in multiple states.

Trump’s bragging about ending Roe will be a centerpiece of Democrats’ campaigns across the country. It could even put Florida in play for Democrats. Trump’s attempt to leave abortion to the states and to back away from enacting a national abortion ban adds to the message confusion on the right. Republicans are trying to disclaim from their own positions. Women and men know that the fringe right won’t stop with abortion. Contraception access and IVF treatments will be next. Trump’s campaign is all over the place on these issues, Politico reports.

It is not helping that Trump is so discombobulated over the start of a criminal trial for the first time in his life. He’ll have to attend court each day where his criminality will be in the spotlight. He’ll try to play the victim, naturally. But it’s not exactly the campaign ad his party wants playing on repeat even if this jury fails to convict when another sent Trump fixer Michael Cohen to prison.

The propaganda arm of the GOP is no help either. Fox Business guest Mark Simone tells Larry Kudlow, “This issue does not hurt Donald Trump, he’s not against abortion. He’s actually okay with abortion, he wants that 15 week limit. Perfectly reasonable.” This Arizona decision will soon blow over. Letting states decide makes Trump the pro-choice candidate!

SIMONE: Yeah, it is to be pro-choice, states can decide. If you had to travel to another state to get an abortion, it’s not the worst thing in the world. Hopefully this is a very rare occurrence in your life, once in your life, maybe you would do it. Buying a bus ticket to go somewhere to get it is not worst thing in the world. 

Simone: If you had to travel to another state to get an abortion, it’s not the worst thing in the world. Hopefully this is very rare occurrence in your life… Buying a bus ticket to go somewhere to get it is not the worst thing in the world. pic.twitter.com/EmaCoft18T

— Acyn (@Acyn) April 9, 2024

That will play well with the majority of voters, won’t it?

If there’s an upside for the GOP, the fight to restore women’s freedoms takes the focus away from GOP efforts to rig the election for themselves in state after state.

Passing out in an hours-long line outside a polling station undersupplied with machines to vote on a single day in a Black precinct because the GOP outlawed anyone giving you water “is not the worst thing in the world” either, amirite? Hopefully your voting is very rare occurrence too.

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He’s right. It’s outright corruption.

This long expose of Jared Kushner’s corrupt foreign business dealings (NY Times gift link) will make you reach for the tequila. How are these people getting away with this stuff?

Jared Kushner’s investment fund is not especially large by global finance standards. But as he gets it fully up and running, each step is bringing with it ethical issues that would only grow if his father-in-law, Donald J. Trump, should win another term as president.

His $3 billion fund is financed almost entirely from overseas investors with whom he worked when he served as a senior adviser in the Trump White House. He has taken money from government wealth funds in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, as well as from Terry Gou, a founder of Foxconn, the Taiwan-based electronics manufacturer, whose role in Mr. Kushner’s firm has not been previously disclosed.

In total, 99 percent of the money placed with him by investors has come from foreign sources, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission in late March.

Mr. Kushner’s firm, Affinity Partners, is collecting approximately $40 million a year in management fees from those investors even before any share of profits earned on investments. He has made 10 investments to date, totaling $1.2 billion, many of them in companies based abroad.

The investments include stakes in the Shlomo Group, an Israeli car-leasing and financing company; Dubizzle Group, a Dubai-based online real estate site; EGYM, a Munich-based electronic fitness company; Mosaic, a California-based solar lending site; and Zamp, an Abu Dhabi-backed fast food company that operates more than 1,000 restaurants in Brazil.

Other investments include two insurance businesses and a software company.

The foreign transactions — previously unseen in scale and speed for a former White House adviser — are bringing fresh scrutiny as Mr. Kushner’s father-in-law again seeks the White House and control over American foreign policy.

[…]

In a series of interviews, Mr. Kushner, 43, laid out new details of his effort to ramp up his firm. He also defended himself against the conflict-of-interest questions that have swirled around him since he left the White House and began soliciting investors.

“Following the laws and the rules is something we always do,” he said. “Perception, I’ve learned that from my time in politics, is important. But I can’t control what everyone is going to write or say about me.”

Mr. Kushner, the sole owner of the company, said he hoped to generate billions of dollars in additional returns for his investors and himself after helping to expand the companies he is investing in.

He has set up shop on the ninth floor of an office tower north of Miami. Its walls are filled with mementos from his time at the White House, including at least a dozen items signed by Mr. Trump, often with the words “Jared, Great Job. Thanks.”

Mr. Kushner has said he does not intend to return to the White House. But pressed on whether he would definitively rule out going back to government, he spoke instead about how happy he was in his life right now. He continues to offer advice to America First Policy Institute, a nonprofit set up by former Trump White House officials who are already preparing for a possible return to power.

Please click on that gift link up at the top to read the whole thing. It. Is. Stunning. And perhaps the most stunning thing about it is the crusade the Republicans launched against that piker Hunter Biden for his ancient and penny ante foreign dealings. I can’t for the life of me understand why the Democratic Senate hasn’t launched full bore investigations into what’s going on here. Even Republicans in the article acknowledge that nobody’s seen the scale and speed with which anyone has cashed in as Jared has done.

For some reason Trump and his family’s flagrant corruption has never interested people much which is astonishing. It’s unprecedented and happened right out in the open and it’s hardy even a scandal. And I’m sure that when he is finally defeated the Democrats will simply say that they want to turn the page and that will be that. It’s outrageous.

You’re not going to like it

Trump only has one economic idea: tariffs. Oh, he’ll give tax cuts for himself and for other rich people in return for donations and favors, of course. But his only “economic” idea is that tariffs force other countries to stop laughing at us and bring in money for the government which is 100% nonsense. His tariffs cost the government when it is forced to compensate American producers for their losses when countries retaliate and the cost of the tariffs are born by consumers who pay higher prices for goods. Duh.

Former President Donald J. Trump is planning an aggressive expansion of his first-term efforts to upend America’s trade policies if he returns to power in 2025 — including imposing a new tax on “most imported goods” that would risk alienating allies and igniting a global trade war.

[…]

Essentially, Mr. Trump’s trade agenda aims at backing the United States away from integration with the global economy and steering the country toward becoming more self-contained: producing a larger share of what it consumes and wielding its might through one-on-one dealings with other countries.

Mr. Trump, who calls himself a “tariff man,” took steps in that direction as president, including placing tariffs on various imports, hamstringing the World Trade Organization and starting a trade war with China. If he is elected, he plans a more audacious intervention in hopes of eliminating the trade deficit and bolstering manufacturing — with potentially seismic consequences for jobs, prices, diplomatic relations and the global trading system.

His plans — which he has described as “a sweeping pro-American overhaul of our tax and trade policy” — would amount to a high-stakes gamble with the economy’s health, given that unemployment has dropped to 3.7 percent, inflation has substantially cooled from its post-pandemic spike, about 200,000 jobs are being created each month and the stock market is near a record high.

Mr. Trump’s plans have drawn warnings from trade experts with more traditional economic views. Daniel M. Price, a top international economics adviser in the George W. Bush White House, called the plans “erratic and irrational.” He said that the costs would be borne by U.S. consumers and producers, and that the plans would risk alienating allies.

Anyway, if you want a glimpse of what his big economic plan looks like for average Americans:

I hope people don’t like salad and fish because it’s not going to be affordable for most of us if Trump gets his way. Say goodbye to your morning coffee.

Four years ago today

Q: What do you say to the 16 million Americans who have lost their jobs in the last three weeks?

Trump: Now, that's just my feeling. It's a strong feeling. I've had good, proper feelings about a lot of things over the years. I think we're going to do well pic.twitter.com/gCNjh8XK18

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) April 9, 2024

Reality:

Your own network begs to differ. pic.twitter.com/87bgGv0GZf

— ML (@modernml) April 9, 2024

This doesn’t take into account the overwhelming horror of living in a woke country where transgender people exist and racial minorities are forcing the rightful white owners of the country to share power. The nightmare is real.

The Big Liars are organizing

Wired has a report on what they have planned:

As the most consequential presidential election in a generation looms in the United States, get-out-the-vote efforts across the country are more important than ever. But multiple far-right activist groups with ties to former president Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee are mobilizing their supporters in earnest, drawing on one baseline belief: Elections in the US are rigged, and citizens need to do something about it.

All the evidence states otherwise. But in recent weeks, these groups have held training sessions about how to organize on a hyperlocal level to monitor polling places and drop boxes, challenge voter registrations en masse, and intimidate and harass voters and election officials. And some are preparing to roll out new technology to fast-track all of these efforts: One of the groups claims they’re launching a new platform for checking voter rolls that contains billions of “data elements” on every single US citizen.

These groups could have a major impact on the 2024 election. In addition to disenfranchising voters and putting additional pressure on already overstretched election offices, they could convince more and more people that US elections are fraudulent.

Catherine Engelbrecht and her organization True the Vote have effectively tried to disenfranchise voters for more than a decade by claiming that voter rolls are filled with phony voter registrations. Engelbrecht’s rhetoric was given an unprecedented boost in the wake of 2020, when Trump and other elected officials mainstreamed conspiracies that the elections had been rigged in favor of Democrats. Hundreds of national and local election denial groups were formed, and many of them amassed huge followings on social media platforms like Telegram. As the 2024 presidential election looms, they are ramping up efforts to do it again.

“It could be exponentially worse than what we saw in 2020, but we’re going to be awake, we’re going to be engaged, we are going to understand the process, and we’re going to have options to continue to hold to those truths,” Engelbrecht said during a March webinar titled “Election Integrity Team Building 101.” “We’re not going to back down. There’s too much to lose.”

The hour-long presentation was delivered from a hotel room in Denver, with Engelbrecht laying out what could sound like a relatively benign plan to monitor elections and check voter rolls. “Keep a soft heart, keep a kind word in your mouth, approach people irrespective of party with love. You will find that things will be much better if that is the approach that is taken,” Engelbrecht said. The session, she said, was overbooked.

Engelbrecht then began speaking about elections being “perilously close to cracking in half,” and her presentation became a highlight reel of election conspiracies, references to crystals, Christian nationalist rhetoric, and militaristic jargon. “If this republic’s to be saved, it’s because [of] people like all of you that are on this webinar right now. There are some bad actors out there and we live in particularly chaotic and caustic times,” said Engelbrecht. “If we wait on somebody to do something, we will watch freedom slip away on our watch. That’s how close we are.”

This person is a proven wingnut liar:

Engelbrecht founded True the Vote in 2010, when she was an activist for the right-wing populist Tea Party movement. After the 2020 election, Engelbrecht and her collaborator Gregg Phillips became central figures in the Stop the Steal movement, and starred in the widely-debunked election conspiracy film 2000 Mules. They were also arrested for contempt of court after refusing to identify their source behind allegations that the Chinese government had accessed US election data. True the Vote also made wild allegations of widespread ballot stuffing in Georgia during the 2020 vote and a subsequent runoff in 2021. Earlier this year, True the Vote was forced to admit in court that the group had no evidence to back up its claims.

Apparently, nothing will stop them however. They have been developing lots of tools to help them steal it in 24:

In 2022, the group rolled out a slick new software tool known as IV3, based on technology developed by Phillips, that compared names on voter rolls to a database maintained by the US Postal Service, allowing anyone to challenge voter registrations across the country if they spotted a discrepancy. A WIRED investigation, however, revealed that the information used to challenge the registration of hundreds of thousands of people was based on unreliable data.

Undeterred, True the Vote announced last week that it was relaunching IV3. Phillips claims that the software’s database now has close to “100 billion data elements about every single voter in the United States.” WIRED has not seen proof of this claim. The new IV3 system will soon be available in all 50 states, the organization said. On Thursday, the group held a webinar to train local activists on how to use it. The new system also relies on data from the US Postal Service, but Engelbrecht claimed during the presentation that Phillips and his team had “normalized” the data from all 50 states to ensure the system would not produce inaccurate results. She also said that thousands of people across the country were already registered, and that they had a long waiting list.

Additionally, she said that another software tool developed by Phillips’ team, called Ground Fusion, would be released soon; it is aimed at organizations and PACs looking to identify voting irregularities across larger geographic regions.

True The Vote isn’t the only group doing this:

A secretive Georgia-based firm called EagleAI NETwork has developed a voter information database to fast-track the deletion of ineligible voters from the system. Voter rights groups have advised against its use, as insignificant errors—such as a missing comma before the suffix “Jr.”—have led to eligible names being removed. Still, at least one county in Georgia has agreed to use EagleAI to review voter challenges and conduct list maintenance activities.

One of EagleAI’s key backers is former Trump adviser Cleta Mitchell, who in the past two years has become central to the push to spread election conspiracies on a national level through her well-funded Election Integrity Network.

The group has held in-person training seminars in recent years, with session topics including how to protect “Vulnerable Voters from Leftist Activists” and “Monitoring Voting Equipment and Systems.” More recently, the group has made its training sessions available online, and is now once again ramping up its efforts ahead of the 2024 election with an initiative called Soles to the Rolls, aimed at boosting challenges to voter registration.

Read the whole thing. There are more groups organizing around a variety of different approaches, many of which are aimed at challenging the vote after the fact. I think we know that Trump will not accept a loss and he has a whole army of people ready to defend the sore loser in highly organized ways. Yes, they are mostly crackpots but you never know which ones might break through.

I think we all know by now that the only way the election will be over on November 5th is if Donald Trump wins and they will do everything in their power to make sure he does, by any means necessary. What happens if he loses is unknown but you can bet they aren’t going to go quietly.

Don’t let him forget it

Healey: He was quite clear today. There are 21 states in this country that have abortion bans total or nearly total including the majority that don't provide any exception for rape and incest. He supports right now his own home state's abortion ban pic.twitter.com/e5ghRKsRw4

— Acyn (@Acyn) April 9, 2024

What he said yesterday was that because he needs to get elected and he thinks this issue is hurting him so he’s just saying that he isn’t for a federal ban to get it off the table. But what Healey says above shows why he can’t take it off the table. He’s the reason all those states now have abortion bans and he’s proud of it. Normal people don’t care for the idea of women in neighboring states dying or young incest victims being forced into childbirth because Donald Trump is trying to split the difference. He created this problem when he and Mitch McConnell packed the court with wingnuts and now they have to live with it.

I noted yesterday that Lindsey Graham had come out with a big statement against Trump’s decision, pushing for a 15 week national ban, and Trump went on a tirade against him on Truth Social. By the end of the evening I became convinced this was a kabuki dance, at least on Graham’s part, to portray Trump as a “moderate.” “See, he’s not so bad!” I’m not entirely convinced Trump is in on that, however. His tirade went way farther than necessary to push that strategy. It sure sounded sincere to me…

As for the Republicans? Here’s a sample of the fatuous BS they’re trying to pull:

"Republicans do not support a federal ban on abortion/ That's a lie you're hearing from the Democrats to scare voters."

-GOP Senator @SteveDaines;
1 of 2 original co-sponsors of Lindsey Graham's 15-week federal abortion ban

— John Fugelsang (@JohnFugelsang) April 9, 2024

Come on. A 15 week abortion ban is an abortion ban. Words mean something. Or, at least, they used to.

Saying the quiet part outloud:

Trump advocate Newt Gingrich says Trump’s abortion video yesterday was part of a scheme to trick voters so they can pass the most restrictive national abortion ban possible pic.twitter.com/F6Z1j2Ec9y

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) April 9, 2024

UPDATE:

Oh my. Here’s one that Trump thinks is just fine and is the reason he proudly takes credit for overturning Roe:

BREAKING: Arizona Supreme Court rules a 160-year-old near-total abortion ban still on the books in the state is enforceable. pic.twitter.com/8qkTY6TQxv

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) April 9, 2024

Trump gave all of us more reason to vote this fall

If it was not clear before that reproductive freedoms will be the central issue of this presidential campaign, Donald Trump made that clear on Monday, as Digby noted. Every time he does, he’ll drown out his own party’s messaging about border security, age, inflation or any other bit of spaghetti they hope sticks to the wall. But then keeeping his mouth shut about “our Great Roe v. Wade Victory” is not one of Trump’s strong suits.

Donald Trump is the reason Roe v. Wade has ended.

If you reelect me and @KamalaHarris, we’ll be the reason it’s restored. pic.twitter.com/H0Qow6IL2Q

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) April 8, 2024

This is one Trump message the left should amplify, and Biden-Harris is on it.

This is a painful story that so many families around America now know too well: Amanda was denied the medical care she needed, and it nearly took her life.

More than 1 in 3 women in America now lives under an abortion ban, with more on the way.

Donald Trump did this. pic.twitter.com/2vH8EdzIw8

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) April 8, 2024

The GOP wants to leave all our freedoms up to individual states. Where once we were North and South, segregated and less-so, MAGA Republicans want to make what freedoms we Americans enjoy contingent not on the Constitution but on where we live. They want to leave our freedoms up to the states.

Not if we leave it up to our votes.

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No Confederate flags

When the eclipse reached totality Monday afternoon, we looked around and thought this one was much darker than the total eclipse that passed an hour away in 2017. Seven years ago when the celestial light dimmed it was dusky, but not dark. This time we were on the edge of night. What’s up with that?

It turns out that the explanation was out there. The geometry of the Earth, Moon and Sun were slightly different this time, making the path of totality wider (Mashable):

Setting aside weather conditions, the wider path of totality is also the reason some solar eclipse observers could be treated to a darker sky, Zeiler said, allowing people to see more stars against the backdrop.

If a person stood in the center of the narrower path in 2017, then went to the center of the broader 2024 path this April, the sky could appear darker the second time around. The duration of the eclipse and the level of darkness are related.

“If you’re in the center, then you’re a farther distance away from sunlight. That’s what it boils down to — how far you are from the edge of the shadow,” he said.

A Missouri masterpiece by @PDPJ.pic.twitter.com/hJy4hm1k7F

— The.Ink, from Anand Giridharadas (@AnandWrites) April 9, 2024

So it was near Bloomington, Indiana. The backroads drive up from Louisville, Kentucky through southwest Indiana was otherwise free of Confederate flags and Trump signs except for one house festooned with TRUMP you-name-it. But it was clear we’d arrived in one of Indiana’s few blue patches when a Bloomington church sign read:

Save The Earth
It’s The Only Planet
With Chocolate

The college town (Indiana University Bloomington) was flooded with people. You could tell by the offers of eclipse parking around town: $20, $30, $40. The frat houses brought couches out onto the lawns. A concert set up on a campus lawn for the afternoon. Security vehicles and personnel blocked entrances to empty lots around campus.

Out by the reservoir bridge (I spent 2017’s eclipse by a closer one) where the parking was free and less crowded, a family brought their 10-year-old from states away to celebrate her birthday. After the eclipse ended, the parking lot crowd sang Happy Birthday.

Most (including me) were too busy watching the sky to notice the shadow bands on the pavement the spouse and another woman witnessed:

As millions of Americans look to the sky on Monday to witness the total solar eclipse, a group of young astronomers from the University of Pittsburgh will be in a sparse pocket of the Texas Hill Country trying to crack a 200-year-old mystery.

Shadow bands are thin, wavy lines of alternating light and dark that seem to race across the ground in the minute or so right before, and right after, the moon completely blocks out the sun.

No one knows why this phenomenon occurs. But since German astronomer Hermann Goldschmidt wrote about it in 1820, a couple of theories have emerged.

The leading hypothesis is that shadow bands are caused by atmospheric turbulence. In the brief moments before and after the moon completely obscures the sun, just a sliver of light is visible. As that sliver travels down through the Earth’s atmosphere, it hits air pockets of different densities. That causes refraction patterns to create the undulating shadows.

As Digby noted in a tweet from her bunker, no virgins were sacrificed in the making of this eclipse. No Rapture either.

DID YALL GET RAPTURED TODAY OR NA? #SolarEclipse pic.twitter.com/UQFNLDUl9e

— Trae Crowder (@traecrowder) April 8, 2024

We need to flood the intertubes with missing persons stories today to freak out the fundies. Maybe scare some of them straight.

— EQV Analytics 🇺🇦 (@AnalyticsEqv) April 9, 2024

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So Trump has revealed his secret plan at last:

Former president Donald Trump has privately said he could end Russia’s war in Ukraine by pressuring Ukraine to give up some territory, according to people familiar with the plan. Some foreign policy experts said Trump’s idea would reward Russian President Vladimir Putin and condone the violation of internationally recognized borders by force.

Trump’s proposal consists of pushing Ukraine to cede Crimea and the Donbas border region to Russia, according to people who discussed it with Trump or his advisers and spoke on the condition of anonymity because those conversations were confidential. That approach, which has not been previously reported, would dramatically reverse President Biden’s policy, which has emphasized curtailing Russian aggression and providing military aid to Ukraine.

As he seeks a return to power, the presumptive Republican nominee has frequently boasted that he could negotiate a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine within 24 hours if elected, even before taking office. But he has repeatedly declined to specify publicly how he would quickly settle a war that has raged for more than two years and killed tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians.

Trump-aligned foreign-policy thinkers have emphasizedaddressing threats to U.S. interests from China and seeking ways to reverse Russia’s increasing dependence on China for military, industrial and economic assistance. They have also embraced limiting NATO expansion.

Privately, Trump has said that he thinks both Russia and Ukraine “want to save face, they want a way out,” and that people in parts of Ukraine would be okay with being part of Russia, according to a person who has discussed the matter directly with Trump.

Accepting Russian control over parts of Ukraine would expand the reach of Putin’s dictatorship after what has been the biggest land war in Europe since World War II. Some of Trump’s supporters have been trying to persuade him against such an outcome.

“I’ve been spending 100 percent of my time talking to Trump about Ukraine,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a onetime Trump critic turned ally. “He has to pay a price. He can’t win at the end of this,” Graham added, speaking of Putin.

I don’t really think Trump cares what Lindsey thinks. He cares what Vladimir thinks.

This plan has been on the table for a long time:

I was unaware of that one. But I sure remember this from the Mueller report:

And then there’s this:

Czech intelligence has busted a Moscow-financed network that spread Russian propaganda and wielded influence across Europe, including in the European Parliament, Prime Minister Petr Fiala said on Wednesday.

The group used the Prague-based Voice of Europe news site to spread information seeking to discourage the European Union from sending aid to Ukraine, which has been battling a Russian invasion since February 2022.

Fiala said the Czech Security Information Service (BIS) discovered that the pro-Russian network was indulging in activities that “would have a serious impact on the security of the Czech Republic and the EU.”

“This group sought to carry out operations and activities on EU territory aimed against the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine,” Fiala told reporters.

“The group’s activity… also reaches the European Parliament,” he said, refusing to disclose further details.

Aaaand this:

.@RepMikeTurner tells @jaketapper it's "absolutely true" that Russian propaganda has "infected" a portion of the GOP base, calling out "anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor." pic.twitter.com/Jv4fAiCNf4

— State of the Union (@CNNSOTU) April 7, 2024

I guess we can see all this as one big coincidence but that would be foolish. Russia is targeting right wing politicians in Europe and the US and it’s working, especially here. Republicans know that but they seem unwilling to do much about it.

I’m going to get out my worn copy of “The Guns Of August” and force myself to read it again.