If The Supreme Court doesn’t get the Trump immunity case right, it will be time to go after Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and George Bush for the potential crimes they committed while in office pic.twitter.com/oV9VvaBfJN
Trump’s legal argument is a path to dictatorship. That is not an exaggeration: His legal theory is that presidents are entitled to absolute immunity for official acts. Under this theory, a sitting president could violate the law with impunity, whether that is serving unlimited terms or assassinating any potential political opponents, unless the Senate impeaches and convicts the president. Yet a legislature would be strongly disinclined to impeach, much less convict, a president who could murder all of them with total immunity because he did so as an official act. The same scenario applies to the Supreme Court, which would probably not rule against a chief executive who could assassinate them and get away with it.
The conservative justices have, over the years, seen harbingers of tyranny in union organizing, environmental regulations, civil-rights laws, and universal-health-care plans. When confronted with a legal theory that establishes actual tyranny, they were simply intrigued. As long as Donald Trump is the standard-bearer for the Republicans, every institution they control will contort itself in his image in an effort to protect him. […]
[…]
No previous president has sought to overthrow the Constitution by staying in power after losing an election. Trump is the only one, which is why these questions are being raised now. Pretending that these matters concern the powers of the presidency more broadly is merely the path the justices sympathetic to Trump have chosen to take in order to rationalize protecting the man they would prefer to be the next president. What the justices—and other Republican loyalists—are loath to acknowledge is that Trump is not being uniquely persecuted; he is uniquely criminal.
This case—even more than the Colorado ballot-eligibility case—unites the right-wing justices’ political and ideological interests with Trump’s own. One way or another, they will have to choose between Trumpism and democracy. They’ve given the public little reason to believe that they will choose any differently than the majority of their colleagues in the Republican Party.
They are partisan above all else. There’s no other way to interpret their actions. They also have immunity from any accountability since we now know that the impeachment clause is completely impotent and they have lifetime terms. They don’t care.
“Our job is to condemn Hamas, a terrorist organization that started this war, condemn in every form antisemitism, islamophobia, and other forms of bigotry. But we do have to pay attention to the unprecedented humanitarian disaster taking place in Gaza right now.
Bernie Sanders: "Our job is to condemn Hamas, a terrorist organization that started this war, condemn in every form antisemitism, islamophobia, and other forms of bigotry. But we do have to pay attention to the unprecedented humanitarian disaster taking place in Gaza right now." pic.twitter.com/Rs27n5M2Tt
Trump got a bunch of blowback from the faithful for putting down RFK Jr.’s anti vax routine yesterday. He’s worried.
He didn’t like this either:
Right:
The former MAGA king is walking randomly around his tacky motel with a microphone, giving improvised speeches about his victim hood wherever he sees an assembly..#Pathetic#stinky#sleepydonpic.twitter.com/1E9ufVAGWw
— Dr. Oddman 😷 aka Dark Brandon (@oddemann) April 27, 2024
Joe Biden’s sharpest barb at the White House Correspondents’ dinner was about him running against a six year old.
“Of course, age is an issue. I’m a grown man, and I’m running against a six-year-old,” President Biden jokes at the White House Correspondents Dinner. “Age is the only thing we have in common…My vice president actually endorses me.”
The Guardian this morning uses a few more words for characterizing the “former factory worker” who rose from obscurity to serve as North Carolina’s Republican lieutenant governor. Mark Robinson is his party’s candidate for governor this November. It might be news that Republicans selected a Black candidate to run against state Attorney General Josh Stein. But if Donald Trump is a six year-old, it’s less clear how one might describe Robinson:
Born into poverty and working in a furniture factory while attending college, Robinson quit his job and dropped out of school to begin speaking at conservative events. (Robinson, if he wins, would be the first North Carolina governor without a college degree elected since 1937.)
Robinson beat a host of competitors for the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor in 2020, winning about a third of the primary vote. He faced the state representative Yvonne Holley, an African American Democrat from Raleigh. Holley’s campaign focused on North Carolina’s urban territory while largely ignoring rural areas of the state, while Robinson barnstormed through each of the state’s 100 counties. He won narrowly but outperformed Trump’s margin over Biden by about 100,000 votes.
That’s not headline news. Democrat Roy Cooper outperformed both Trump and Biden to win the governorship. That’s how state elections here roll. State voters have a moderate streak and a history of ticket-splitting when it comes to local vs. national races. Republicans find in Robinson a candidate “who could not be easily accused of bigotry.” On his face (literally), Robinson appeared to provide Republicans with some cover against such accusations, “until people began to pay attention to what he said,” the Guardian reports.
Such as?
Robinson has shared conspiracist comments about the moon landing and 9/11. He has attacked the idea of women in positions of leadership. His swipes at Black culture and public figures are talk-radio fodder, describing Barack Obama as a “worthless anti-American atheist” and suggesting Michelle Obama is a man.
“Half of black Democrats don’t realize they are slaves and don’t know who their masters are. The other half don’t care,” he wrote in one Facebook post. He described the movie Black Panther in another as the product of “an agnostic Jew and put to film by satanic marxist”, and wrote: “How can this trash, that was only created to pull the shekels out of your schvartze pockets, invoke any pride?”, using a derogatory Yiddish word to refer to Black people.
While the literati celebrating themselves last night in Washington, D.C. aimed (mostly) good-natured jokes at each other last night, Robinson isn’t joking.
The antisemitism of that comment is not singular. He has repeated common antisemitic tropes about Jewish banking, posted Hitler quotes on Facebook and suggested the Holocaust was a hoax. “There is a REASON the liberal media fills the airwaves with programs about the NAZI and the ‘6 million Jews’ they murdered,” wrote Robinson, with scare quotes around the figure.
Robinson’s Democratic opponent, Stein, could be the rapidly growing state’s first Jewish governor.
The two present a sharp contrast in policy, temperament and experience. After graduating from both Harvard Law and the Harvard Kennedy school of government, Stein managed John Edwards’ successful Senate campaign. Stein then served in the statehouse before winning the attorney general’s race in 2016, becoming the first Jewish person elected to statewide office in North Carolina.
Stein, 57, is running as a conventional center-left Democrat. At a stump speech in pastoral Scotland county near the South Carolina line, Stein focused on fighting the opioid-addiction epidemic, the state’s backlog of untested rape kits, clean drinking water and early childhood education. But he had some words about Robinson’s rhetoric.
“The voters of North Carolina have an unbelievably stark choice before them this November, between two competing visions,” Stein said in an interview. “Mine is forward and it’s inclusive. It’s about tapping the potential of every person so that they have a chance to succeed where we have a thriving economy, safe neighborhoods, strong schools.
What’s more, if the controversy over North Carolina’s infamous “bathroom bill” (HB 2) is any indicator, electing Robinson could be an economic hit for the Tar Heel State. The Associated Press estimated the law could cost the state “upward of $3.7 billion in sports/entertainment and business revenue over the next 12 years,” the Washington Post reported in 2017. Forbes in November 2016 estimated the state had “flushed away” perhaps “$630 million in lost business in the bill’s first eight months in effect. It helped cost Gov. Pat McCrory (R) reelection.
It’s not an economy voters might want to turn over to Robinson. The firmly anti-abortion Robinson’s finances have been in the headlines lately while Stein’s have not.
In one of Robinson’s three bankruptcy filings, reporters discovered that he had failed to file income taxes between 1998 and 2002. Questions have been raised about personal expenses charged to campaign funds from the 2020 race.
His wife shuttered a nutrition non-profit after a conservative blogger began to raise questions about the Robinson family’s financial dependence on government contracts. Reporters later learned that the North Carolina department of health and human services is investigating the firm for questionable accounting.
[…]
Robinson acknowledged in 2022 paying for an abortion for his wife 33 years earlier.
The question is whether Robinson’s full-throated anti-abortion stance hinders not just his own candidacy but that of Trump. Planned Parenthood plans to double its spending in North Carolina, to $10m, with an eye on defending the governorship and ending a veto-proof Republican legislative majority. Trump, meanwhile, has backed away from publicly endorsing the most extreme abortion bans.
No guarantees, but Trump and his 88 criminal charges and Robinson with his past statements and business history could bring out the moderate in North Carolina’s electorate this November.
Look at the powerful people Stealing the sun from the day Wish I could do something about it When all I can do is pray
– from “Powerful People” by Gino Vannelli
If we dig precious things from the land, we will invite disaster.
Near the Day of Purification, there will be cobwebs spun back and forth in the sky.
A container of ashes might one day be thrown from the sky, which could burn the land and boil the oceans
– Hopi Prophecies sung in the soundtrack of the film Koyannasqatsi
In case you missed it, Earth Day (this past Monday) and Arbor Day (this past Friday) came and went with nary a whimper, Also, we’re at the tail end of National Park Week. I suppose the media had other shiny things to chase after; important and impactful stories to be sure, but from a planetary perspective…will all of this fussing and fighting really matter in 50 years? As Grace Slick once sang, doesn’t mean shit to a tree. Believe me, over the millenniums Mother Nature has seen worse; and from her perspective, Earth is only mostly dead.
So there is still hope.
The photo above was taken December 24, 1968 by Apollo 8 crew member Major William A. Anders. The story behind that now iconic photo is on NASA’s website:
Anders said their job was not to look at the Earth, but to simulate a lunar mission. It was not until things had calmed down and they were on their way to the moon that they actually got to look back and take a picture of the Earth as they had left it.
“That’s when I was thinking ‘that’s a pretty place down there,'” Anders said. “It hadn’t quite sunk in like the Earthrise picture did, because the Earthrise had the Earth contrasted with this ugly lunar surface.”
Anders described the view of Earth before Earthrise “kind of like the classroom globe sitting on a teacher’s desk, but no country divisions. It was about 25,000 miles away where you could still recognize continents.”
An international group of scientists who work with satellite data say the acceleration in the melting of Earth’s ice sheets is now unmistakable.
They calculate the planet’s frozen poles lost 7,560 billion tonnes in mass between 1992 and 2022.
Seven of the worst melting years have occurred in the past decade.
Mass loss from Greenland and Antarctica is now responsible for a quarter of all sea-level rise.
This contribution is five times what it was 30 years ago.
The latest assessment comes from the Ice Sheet Mass Balance Intercomparison Exercise, or Imbie. […]
The 7,560 billion tonnes of ice lost from Greenland and Antarctica during the study period pushed up sea-levels by 21mm.
Almost two-thirds (13.5mm) of this was due to melting in Greenland; one-third (7.4mm) was the result of melting in Antarctica.
“All this has profound implications for coastal communities around the world and their risk of being exposed to flooding and erosion,” said Dr Inès Otosaka from the UK’s Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling (CPOM), who led the latest assessment.
“It’s really important that we have robust estimates for the future contribution to sea-level rise from the ice sheets so that we can go to these communities and say, ‘Yes, we understand what is happening and we can now start to plan mitigations’,” she told BBC News.
So hope does remain…provided that proactive steps are taken. Meanwhile:
We just lived through the hottest year since record-keeping began more than a century ago, but before too long, 2023 might not stand out as the pinnacle of extreme heat.
That’s because it’s unlikely to be the only hottest year that we experience. Our climate is changing, growing warmer due to the emissions from burning fossil fuels, and our weather is changing with it. It’s possible that this year may turn out to be hotter still.
In March, scientists from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service said February 2024 was the hottest February according to records that stretch back to 1940. The news came on the heels of their report in early January that, as expected, 2023 was indeed the hottest year on record. Temperatures closed in on the critical 1.5-degree Celsius rise above pre-industrial levels, after which we will see irreversible damage to the planet. These aren’t freak outliers: The extreme heat we’re experiencing is something we’ll need to be prepared to deal with on a much more regular basis, along with storms, floods and drought. […]
A key trend highlighted by the US government’s Fifth National Climate Assessment, published in November, was that climate change is provoking extreme weather events across the country that are both more frequent and more severe. It pointed to an increase in heatwaves and wildfires in the West over the past few decades, the increased drought risk in the Southwest over the past century and more extreme rainfall east of the Rockies. Hurricanes have also been intensifying, as those who have found themselves in the path of a storm know all too well. […]
Even if you live in a region that hasn’t yet directly been impacted by a climate-linked weather event, you’re not off the hook.
“As the climate continues to warm, most areas will be at an increased risk of some types of climate-linked extreme weather,” says Russell Vose, chief of the Monitoring and Assessment Branch at NOAA’ National Centers for Environmental Information and one of the NCA’s authors. “Perhaps the best example is extreme heat – it can occur anywhere.”
He points to the scorching heat dome that descended on the Pacific Northwest in June and July 2021, which was unprecedented in the historical record. The unpredictable nature of such extreme heat means no regions are marked as safe.
At first glance, the image above may appear to be a still from a post-apocalyptic film-but it’s a photo I snapped outside my Seattle office in September of 2020. You’re looking due East across Lake Washington at around 10am…directly into the sun and toward the Bellevue skyline. I was not using any filters, nor was there any retouching of the photo. Normally, the view across the lake appears as it does in this photo I took:
We not only had a freakish late summer “heat dome” in the Pacific Northwest, but much of the West Coast was aflame. For over a month, resulting smoke made air quality so dangerous that local health officials recommended staying indoors and sealing up windows (good times for those of us with no A/C). It was also recommended to wear masks outdoors…which we were already doing for COVID indoors. Oy.
Was this a sneak preview ? How’s the air today? The American Lung Association’s “State of the Air” report for 2024 is out, and…let’s just say, I wouldn’t toss those N95s away yet:
The “State of the Air” 2024 report finds that despite decades of progress cleaning up air pollution, 39% of people living in America—131.2 million people—still live in places with failing grades for unhealthy levels of ozone or particle pollution. This is 11.7 million more people breathing unhealthy air compared to last year’s report.
The significant rise in the number of individuals whose health is at risk is the result of a combination of factors. Extreme heat, drought and wildfires are contributing to a steady increase in deadly particle pollution, especially in the western U.S. Also, this year’s “State of the Air” report is using EPA’s new, more protective national air quality standard for year-round levels of fine particle pollution, which allows for the recognition that many more people are breathing unhealthy air than was acknowledged under the previous weak standard. […]
“State of the Air” 2024 is the 25th edition of this annual report, which was first published in 2000. From the beginning, the findings in “State of the Air” have reflected the successes of the Clean Air Act, as emissions from transportation, power plants and manufacturing have been reduced. In recent years, however, the findings of the report continue adding to the evidence that a changing climate is making it harder to protect human health. High ozone days and spikes in particle pollution related to extreme heat, drought and wildfires are putting millions of people at risk and adding challenges to the work that states and cities are doing across the nation to clean up air pollution.
I’m just here to bring you good cheer.
Anyway, here are my picks for the Top 10 eco-flicks. Erm…enjoy!
Chasing Ice– Jeff Orlowski’s film is glacially paced. That is, “glacial pacing” ain’t what it used to be. Glaciers are moving along (“retreating”, technically) at a pretty good clip. This does not portend well. To be less flowery: we’re fucked. According to nature photographer (and subject of Orlowski’s film) James Balog, “The story…is in the ice.”
Balog’s journey began in 2005, while on assignment in the Arctic for National Geographic to document the effect of climate change. Up until that trip, he candidly admits he “…didn’t think humans were capable” of influencing weather patterns so profoundly. His epiphany gave birth to a multi-year project utilizing modified time-lapse cameras to capture alarming empirical evidence of the effects of global warming.
The images are beautiful, yet troubling. Orlowski’s film mirrors the dichotomy, equal parts cautionary eco-doc and art installation. The images trump the montage of inane squawking by climate deniers in the opening, proving that a picture is worth 1,000 words.
The Emerald Forest– Although it may initially seem a heavy-handed (if well-meaning) “save the rain forest” polemic, John Boorman’s underrated 1985 adventure (a cross between The Searchers and Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan) goes much deeper.
Powers Boothe plays an American construction engineer working on a dam project in Brazil. One day, while his wife and young son are visiting the job site on the edge of the rain forest, the boy is abducted and adopted by an indigenous tribe who call themselves “The Invisible People”, touching off an obsessive decade-long search by the father. By the time he is finally reunited with his now-teenage son (Charley Boorman), the challenge becomes a matter of how he and his wife (Meg Foster) are going to coax the young man back into “civilization”.
Tautly directed, lushly photographed (by Philippe Rousselot) and well-acted. Rosco Pallenberg scripted (he also adapted the screenplay for Boorman’s 1981 film Excalibur).
Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster– I know what you’re thinking: there’s no accounting for some people’s tastes. But who ever said an environmental “message” movie couldn’t also provide mindless, guilty fun? Let’s have a little action. Knock over a few buildings. Wreak havoc. Crash a wild party on the rim of a volcano with some Japanese flower children. Besides, Godzilla is on our side for a change. Watch him valiantly battle Hedora, a sludge-oozing toxic avenger out to make mankind collectively suck on his grody tailpipe. And you haven’t lived until you’ve heard “Save the Earth”-my vote for “best worst” song ever from a film (much less a monster movie).
An Inconvenient Truth– I re-watched this recently; I hadn’t seen it since it opened in 2006, and it struck me how it now plays less like a warning bell and more like the nightly news. It’s the end of the world as we know it. Apocalyptic sci-fi is now scientific fact. Former VP/Nobel winner Al Gore is a Power Point-packing Rod Serling, submitting a gallery of nightmare nature scenarios for our disapproval. I’m tempted to say that Gore and director Davis Guggenheim’s chilling look at the results of unchecked global warming only reveals the tip of the iceberg…but it’s melting too fast.
Koyannisqatsi– In 1982 this genre-defying film quietly made its way around the art houses; it’s now a cult favorite. Directed by activist/ex-Christian monk Godfrey Reggio, with beautiful cinematography by Ron Fricke (who later directed Chronos, Baraka, and Samsara) and music by Philip Glass (who also scored Reggio’s sequels), it was considered a transcendent experience by some; New Age hokum by others (count me as a fan).
The title (from ancient Hopi) translates as “life out of balance” The narrative-free imagery, running the gamut from natural vistas to scenes of First World urban decay, is open for interpretation. Reggio followed up in 1988 with Powaqqatsi (“parasitic way of life”), focusing on the First World’s drain on Third World resources, then book-ended his trilogy with Naqoyqatsi (“life as war”).
Manufactured Landscapes– A unique eco-documentary from Jennifer Baichwal about photographer Edward Burtynsky, who is an “earth diarist” of sorts. While his photographs are striking, they don’t paint a pretty picture of our fragile planet. Burtynsky’s eye discerns a terrible beauty in the wake of the profound and irreversible human imprint incurred by accelerated modernization. As captured by Burtynsky’s camera, strip-mined vistas recall the stark desolation of NASA photos sent from the Martian surface; mountains of “e-waste” dumped in a vast Chinese landfill take on an almost gothic, cyber-punk dreamscape. The photographs play like a scroll through Google Earth images, as reinterpreted by Jackson Pollock. An eye-opener.
Princess Mononoke– Anime master Hayao Miyazaki and his cohorts at Studio Ghibli have raised the bar on the art form over the past several decades. This 1997 Ghibli production is one of their most visually resplendent. Perhaps not as “kid-friendly” as per usual, but many of the usual Miyazaki themes are present: humanism, white magic, beneficent forest gods, female empowerment, and pacifist angst in a violent world. The lovely score is by frequent Miyazaki collaborator Joe Hisaishi. For another great Miyazaki film with an environmental message, check out Nausicaa Valley of the Wind.
Queen of the Sun- I never thought that a documentary about honeybees would make me laugh and cry-but Taggart Siegel’s 2010 film did just that. Appearing at first to be a distressing examination of Colony Collapse Syndrome, a phenomenon that has puzzled and dismayed beekeepers and scientists alike with its increasing frequency over the past few decades, the film becomes a sometimes joyous, sometimes humbling meditation on how essential these tiny yet complex social creatures are to the planet’s life cycle. Humans may harbor a pretty high opinion of our own place on the evolutionary ladder, but Siegel lays out a convincing case which proves that these busy little creatures are, in fact, the boss of us.
Silent Running– In space, no one can hear you trimming the verge! Bruce Dern is an agrarian antihero in this 1972 sci-fi adventure, directed by legendary special effects wizard Douglas Trumbull. Produced around the time “ecology” was a buzzword, its message may seem a little heavy-handed today, but the film remains a cult favorite.
Dern plays the gardener on a commercial space freighter that houses several bio-domes, each dedicated to preserving a species of vegetation (in this bleak future, the Earth is barren of organic growth).
While it’s a 9 to 5 drudge gig to his blue-collar shipmates, Dern sees his cultivating duties as a sacred mission. When the interests of commerce demand the crew jettison the domes to make room for more lucrative cargo, Dern goes off his nut, eventually ending up alone with two salvaged bio-domes and a trio of droids (Huey, Dewey and Louie) who play Man Friday to his Robinson Crusoe. Joan Baez contributes two songs on the soundtrack.
Soylent Green– Based on a Harry Harrison novel, Richard Fleischer’s 1973 film is set in 2022, when traditional culinary fare is but a dim memory, due to overpopulation and environmental depletion. Only the wealthy can afford the odd tomato or stalk of celery; most of the U.S. population lives on processed “Soylent Corporation” product. The government encourages the sick and the elderly to politely move out of the way by providing handy suicide assistance centers (considering ongoing threats to our Social Security system, that doesn’t seem much of a stretch anymore).
Oh-there is some ham served up onscreen, courtesy of Charlton Heston’s scenery-chewing turn as a NYC cop who is investigating the murder of a Soylent Corporation executive. Edward G. Robinson’s moving death scene has added poignancy; as it preceded his passing by less than two weeks after the production wrapped.
# # #
Bonus Tracks!
Here’s an environmentally-sound mixtape for Earth Day:
I’m sure that these are decent people in many ways. I have people in my family who are good people in their personal lives but their politics are dangerous and frankly, evil. I can’t get through to them, no matter what tack I take and I’ve tried different approaches for many years. In the old days we could all just agree not to talk politics. Today there’s no avoiding it.
It’s the media they consume and the bubbles in which they live. And it’s morphed from an ideology into a cult. I have no idea what to do about it except to try to keep them from power while we still have a democracy and hope that somehow if the Trump bubble of invulnerability bursts they get tired or disillusioned and simply retreat as people whose cult leaders are exposed often do. Other than that I’m out of ideas.
I knew it! Trump’s Chick-fil-A stop was a staged photo op with Black Republican supporters. Michaelah Montgomery, the Black woman who told Trump that “we support you,” actually runs a conservative group and worked with Candace Owens’s Blexit Foundation. 😏 pic.twitter.com/IvQlb200T6
Like last week's Trump bodega "visit" today's Trump construction workers "visit" was totally pre-planned astroturf stunting – and most media fell for it https://t.co/Ce9OIrdaBQ
The Republican National Committee was poised to open and staff 40 satellite campaign offices across key battlegrounds when former President Donald Trump, now the presumptive GOP nominee, abruptly replaced RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and her deputies with fresh leadership.
Trump’s new RNC team, led by Chairman Michael Whatley, Co-Chair (and Trump’s daughter-in-law) Lara Trump, and senior campaign adviser Chris LaCivita, killed McDaniel’s 2024 blueprint. Roughly six weeks later, neither the committee nor the Trump campaign has much infrastructure or personnel in the swing states that will decide the November 5 election, multiple sources in Washington and the crucial battleground states told Dispatch Politics this week.
That means few if any regional and local campaign headquarters; little to no deployed field staff; and little to no traditional voter turnout activities, such as door-knocking, phone banking, or volunteer organizing. Even after the Trump-led RNC’s reimagined field program eventually emerges, their strategy is to concentrate almost exclusively on the half-dozen states that will determine Trump’s fate. Republicans elsewhere? They’re on their own…..
In early March, the RNC’s new leadership sackedmore than 60 full-time staff across the communications, data, and political departments. As Dispatch Politics reported soon after, roughly 40 of the 60 let go were field troops.
The majority of all fired employees were immediately invited to reapply for jobs. But weeks later, the field program is lagging, especially compared to the voter turnout operation stood up by President Joe Biden. The incumbent Democrat’s campaign has opened 30 headquarters alone in Michigan and has multiple such offices in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, New Hampshire, and Florida.
She’s just great. A perfect leader for today’s MAGA GOP:
I swear to God she is auditioning for the Real Housewives of Mar-a-lago. https://t.co/2FpDk9soSl
Rosenberg says this about the swing states which are still showing Trump ahead:
Here’s what I am seeing in the battlegrounds – MI, PA, WI are our best states right now, and in the 538 averages they are close and competitive. There are polls in each of these three states showing us ahead in recent weeks. Winning these three gets us to 269 Electoral College votes. As I wrote on Tuesday I am very optimistic that the extremism of the GOP in AZ and NC is giving us real opportunities in both states to win and make serious down-ballot gains. Nevada is always close, and we have work to do in Georgia. The campaign continues to monitor what’s happening in Florida, as Rs there will soon have to defend a newly implemented 6 week abortion ban, something that is currently polling in the lows 20s – a level of unpopularity on something that matters that is not often seen in politics.
I have no idea if he’s right but I do agree about those three midwest swing states and I think Arizona looks better every day because of that draconian abortion position of the GOP and their choice of that nutball Kari Lake for the Senate. And I’m hopeful about Nevada. But who knows? I still can’t believe it’s close anywhere and it’s profoundly depressing that it is. Apparently a booming economy and tons of policy to benefit people are over the country, from caps on prescription drugs for old people to student loan debt relief, is totally meaningless to tens of millions of Americans because they are so indoctrinated by Trump and right wing media that they think that hate and resentment toward their fellow Americans are the only things that matter.
I pump hopium into my veins for momentary relief but like any drug, it always wears off…
Tom posted one short CNN video of Bill Barr’s utter pusillanimity earlier but I wanted to show the whole interview so you could get the full picture of a typical establishment, Fox News brain-rotted Republican’s worldview. It will shock you:
Some excerpts from the transcript:
BILL BARR: So it’s not about me. I think that, that I’ve said this all along. If faced with a choice between two people, neither of which I think should be president, I feel it’s my duty to pick the person who I think would do the least damage to the country. And I think Trump would do less damage than Biden. And I think all this stuff about a threat to democracy, I think the real threat to democracy is the progressive movement. And in the Biden administration.
KAITLAN COLLINS: The Biden administration, or President Biden himself.
BILL BARR: Biden’s, Biden’s support for the progressive agenda.
KAITLAN COLLINS: I think a lot of people hear that. And the case that we just talked about that went before the Supreme Court, essentially, and say, how can you see that and say that Biden is a greater threat to democracy?
BILL BARR: Well, where are we losing our freedoms? We have our freedoms being constrained that they’re being constrained by, the progressive government and, you know, democracy especially, you know, from the Anglosphere democracies, the Five Eyes and so forth. The threats never been for autocratic government on the right.
KAITLAN COLLINS: But how specifically, is Biden threatening democracy?
BILL BARR: The threat to freedom and democracy has always been on the left. It’s the collectivist, socialist, agenda. And that is where we’re losing our freedom. Parents are losing the freedom to control, their children’s education. And, you know, people can’t speak their mind without losing their jobs and things like that. This is worse than the McCarthy era. Where is that coming from? It’s not coming from the right.
KAITLAN COLLINS: Those two things that you just noted there, you believe are worse than a president of the United States trying to subvert the will of the people by overturning the results, no question.
BILL BARR: No, I think I think a country well, all the things together, like we’re not enforcing our borders, we have open borders, we have lawlessness, in our cities, we have regulations coming fast and fierce. So telling people what kind of stoves they can use and what kinds of cars they have to drive and, you know, eliminating cars and and so forth. Yeah, those are those are the threats to democracy.
KAITLAN COLLINS: But but President Biden is not in control of what some school boards across the country.
BILL BARR: He’s using the administrative–
KAITLAN COLLINS: You can make that argument, but.
BILL BARR: He’s making.
KAITLAN COLLINS: How is that the same thing?
BILL BARR: Major changes are being made in our country without without the democratic process. And they’re being made by bureaucrats in these agencies.
KAITLAN COLLINS: You, okay? Pause! You cannot argue that Republicans across the country are not doing that as well. My own hometown. There’s a huge fight at the library over which books kids can read. This is not something that is a single-party fight.
BILL BARR: Do you think there are? Don’t you think there should be some limits on on what people are able to read? I agree, young people.
KAITLAN COLLINS: I just think people look at what you’re saying and they don’t. And maybe, maybe even Republicans who have concerns about what’s happening with school boards or, you know, the culture and don’t maybe abortion, even don’t equate that with with January 6th and Trump’s efforts. When you told him the the election was not stolen and he still went out there and said it was stolen and led a lot of people to believe that they don’t, those things aren’t equal. It feels like a false equivalency.
BILL BARR: Well, I disagree, I think, and I think, the country is much more susceptible to losing freedoms by the excesses of the left, and they have been steadily and that’s clear. People lose their jobs. Kids can’t speak out in the classroom. They have to go along with what the professor says in order to get good grades and so forth. It’s become like Stepford Nation being directed by, the progressive elites.
…
KAITLAN COLLINS: It is what you said recently, which was that, you know, the conduct that was involved with Donald Trump, you said trying to subvert and prevent the progress, the execution of probably the most important process we have, which is the peaceful transfer of power after an election. Name one thing that Biden has done that’s worse than that.
BILL BARR: I think this whole administration is a disaster for the.
KAITLAN COLLINS: Is worse than subverting the peaceful transfer of power.
BILL BARR: Did he succeed?
KAITLAN COLLINS: Only because Vice President Mike pence stood in the way? And now the people who are lining up again say that they will not do what Mike pence did.
BILL BARR: Look, I was very loud and saying, I thought it was a whole the whole episode was shameful. And I’m and I’m very troubled by it. And that’s why it’s not an easy decision. But I think when you have a Hobson’s choice, you have to pick the lesser of two evils.
KAITLAN COLLINS: You don’t see this as the definition of putting party over country.
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KAITLAN COLLINS: So just to be clear, you’re voting for someone who you believe tried to subvert the peaceful transfer of power that can’t even achieve his own policies, that lied about the election, even after his attorney general told him that the election wasn’t stolen. And as the former chief law enforcement in this country, you’re going to vote for someone who is facing 88 criminal counts.
Just contemplate for a moment that this man, who was the Attorney General of the United State twice, knows that Trump tried to overthrow the government and even quit over it, now says he will vote for him again because of campus leftism and government regulations of kitchen appliances. He actually seems to believe this. And yet, when Collins points out that schools are actually under siege from right wingers banning books and the like he says that’s perfectly fine. It is beyond hypocrisy, it’s total incoherence.
And let’s give Kaitlin Collins her due. She didn’t let him get away with this sophistry. I would hope that any Independent voter viewing this saw how insane this line of thinking really is.
