Month: December 2024

Equalizers on retainer

Anticipating Donald Trump’s “promised revenge tour,” Josh Marshall floated the idea of about ten days ago that anti-Trumpers with deep pockets assemble a big pile of money for the legal defense of women and men on his enemies list.

Marshall is back to report there is movement on this effort in a good-news, bad-news sort of way. Since then, he’s become aware of “groups or consortia that are organizing to be the place that Trump targets can go when they get their subpoena or their lawsuit,” but for now they are keeping their identities below the radar:

For very real reasons these groups don’t want to draw a lot of attention to themselves. They don’t want themselves to become the targets of harassment and lawfare when they’re trying to defend others from it. If they themselves get run out of business who’s going to be around to help everyone else? So I can’t give websites for these operations that you’d want to look up if you’re a target or show you how to contribute money. They’re not set up that way and they don’t want the attention.

Marshall wonders how this might work and was initially dubious of the approach. But his thinking has shifted:

It’s not just Trump and official MAGA we have to worry about. We’re really facing an era of broader civic disinhibition, in which public and private actors will be declaring war on civil society, government employees and more in ways that simply haven’t happened in the past. There’s no one group that can combat that. And these nascent efforts are going to be a critical part of the equation — for the civil servant who gets harassed, for the nonprofit which needs legal assistance fending off financially ruinous subpoenas. And by this I don’t mean just to say … well, the small stuff. What I mean is that there’s going to be a lot of stuff, across society, across multiple layers of government. There’s a lot to go around. And not every individual or entity wants to become a poster child for MAGA abuses of power. Often they just need someone to pick up the legal work that would have bankrupted the organization or made an individual lose their home.

And defenders of civic society may not care for Trump sending his flying monkeys their way. (“I understood that reference.“)

Marshall floats how his Big Pile of Money (BPM) group might operate. As lawyerly Equalizers, in my view:

One of the best ways I can think of to describe what I’m looking for is by an illusory hypothetical. Let’s imagine there was another billionaire out there — a non-decadent, non-degenerate version of Musk — who said: I believe in America. Every person Trump targets, I’m going to send them a contact number at mega law firm X, which I’ve retained, and it’s an open tab for as long as they need. And if you’re out there wondering if you’re willing to take the risks of doing the right thing over the next four years, I’ll be sending you a contact number too. And I’m going to do more than that. I’m going to use the channels of these abusive lawsuits and criminal investigations to load these folks down with every discovery motion you could have imagined. I’m going to use my cash and the courts not just to protect people but to embarrass and humiliate the abusers, make them wish they’d never started.

That is, after all, how Trump has for decades used lawsuits to harass creditors until they run out of fight (and money) and go away. Defenders must exact a cost on those who would foul the civic square to create a “penumbra of fear,” in Marshall’s words.

But in an age when politics is a pro-wrestling spectacle, BPM groups must be seen doing it. Landing punches, and “damaging and embarrassing and humiliating the other side.” Turning idle spectators into fans and investors in creating a penumbra of safety. Because right now there is only one fighter in the ring throwing folding chairs.

How many Rocky movies?

Marshall concludes:

Any operation that doesn’t play in that realm isn’t playing this performative, public role. That’s critical. It also operates a virtuous or at least non-vicious circle. People need to open their pockets — billionaires and average people. People open their pockets when they’re seeing points put on the board, when they see punches being landed. 

Once again:

First, like it or not, the public wants Thunderdome. The press covers Thunderdome. Thunderdome draws eyeballs in this attention economy. Again, and again and again: How many Rocky movies did Stallone make?

People pay money to see that. They want to cheer for the little guy with heart facing insurmountable odds. They want to watch The Equalizer squash baddies the law cannot touch. Seen any of those lately?

Maybe the Big Pile of Money could run a classified ad.

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A post shared by Niall Harbison (@niall.harbison)

Every morning when I wake up and put on my glasses the first thing I look at online is this feed by Niall Harbison. It never fails to get my day started in the right frame of mind. (That link is to his Twitter feed, but he also posts all the time on Instagram.)

Niall lives in Thailand and runs a street dog rescue. Every day he has an amazing story about what he does often featuring the story of one dog he’s found in some terrible situation whom they bring back to what he calls “the land” and they fix the pup up both physically and psychologically. Then they find many of them a home there in Thailand and all over the world. One of the dogs was even adopted by Liam Gallagher from Oasis

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Niall Harbison (@niall.harbison)

He also runs sterilization clinics, feeds hundreds of street dogs and gives medication to those who need it every day. And he works closely with the locals to help them take care of their dogs and provides education and medical care. His rescue operation, in which he employs a number of Thai helpers and which also has dedicated volunteers, has satellites in several places around the world and he’s in the process of building an animal hospital on the rescue property.

He is the heart of the operation, a man who just a few short years ago was suffering from alcohol and drug dependency who was saved by saving dogs. It’s a great story. And every day he shares a series of posts about a dog who’s been rescued, rehabbed and very often eventually finds a home. You can see them come back to life and become loving pets after enduring unspeakable hardship. It will make your day.

Here’s a recent one that made me smile the whole day:

This is what a street dog rescue involves from start to finish. Very tough but what a result for Rolo in the end! 🐕

This is a bit of a longer watch but everybody has plenty of time at this time of year 😂 pic.twitter.com/qmsod7QGJG

— Niall Harbison (@NiallHarbison) December 26, 2024

The NY Times reports:

With all due respect, the look that Prince William sported at the starry reopening of Notre-Dame in Paris this month was nothing special: a well-tailored overcoat, a dark blue tie, a pressed white shirt. And, naturally, his new beard.

But that simple outfit did not fail to wow one luminary.

“He looked really, very handsome last night,” President-elect Donald J. Trump said about the future king of England, according to The New York Post. “Some people look better in person? He looked great. He looked really nice, and I told him that.”

His praise was just the latest instance in which Mr. Trump, 78, had complimented another man’s looks, part of a larger pattern of obsession he has with the personal appearance of individuals. That includes during the presidential campaign, when Mr. Trump often waxed poetic about the pilots posted to Air Force One, during his first term, likening them to taller versions of Tom Cruise.

“These guys are specimens,” he said during a late October interview with Joe Rogan. “Like perfect specimens.”

[…]

In the last three months alone, Mr. Trump has praised the looks of a sheriff in Tempe, Ariz.; a Mexican government negotiator; Shinzo Abe, a former leader of Japan; Senator Eric Schmitt, Republican of Missouri; and Mike Pompeo, his former secretary of state, who he noted had lost weight. (“You look so handsome,” he said about Mr. Pompeo.) He also famously alluded to the size of genitalia of the deceased golfer Arnold Palmer, whose looks Mr. Trump has also apparently approved of.

“They look like Arnold Palmer,” Mr. Trump said about a group of gun-toting security officials at an event in October. “Can’t look better than Arnold.”

Mr. Trump’s focus on being easy on the eye seems to extend to personnel decisions, as he has an apparent desire for those serving under him to fit the mold of “central casting,” a superficial but significant strategy of finding telegenic surrogates who look the part, regardless of their actual job qualifications.

Cases in point: Pete Hegseth, Mr. Trump’s pick for secretary of defense after his run as weekend host on Fox News; and Mehmet Oz, also known as Dr. Oz of daytime television fame, tapped to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Mr. Trump has also spoken glowingly of the looks of Scott Bessent, his choice for Treasury secretary, who would be serving in his first government job after a long career in finance.

The story actually goes on for quite a while listing dozens of the men Trump has said were handsome. Of course, he constantly talks about his own allegedly exceptional good looks as well and he certainly notices how hot (or not) women are. (He practically had a meltdown over the Time magazine cover of Kamala Harris shrilly insisting that they went back and redid the portrait to make her look better than she is.) He is obsessed with looks. In fact, he makes many of his important decisions based upon what people look like.

Psychologists are interviewed and they say things like it’s “a classic indicator of a narcissist’s need for social conquest” and the need to be a “man’s man.” Perhaps. But I think it’s simpler than that. He does not have the capability of critical thinking and doesn’t understand what most people are telling him. And yes, he is certainly a narcissist. But the chilling fact is that he is simply the shallowest man who ever occupied the presidency.

“Like Cocaine Bear, but Santa and Ozempic!” Musk added in a separate tweet.

It looks like yet another fault line in MAGA world is emerging:

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and President-elect Donald Trump’s“first buddy,” revealed on Christmas night that he was using the medication Mounjaro for weight loss while dubbing himself “Ozempic Santa” in a holiday-themed social media post.

The revelation also comes just a couple of weeks after he clashed with Trump’s designated Health and Human Services chief Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over the widespread use and long-term benefits of GLP-1 inhibitors in battling obesity.

Bobby Jr says that we need to ban junk food and sugar and people will eat healthy and they’ll be fine. Isn’t it pretty to think so? (Meanwhile, he’s been seen using Zyn nicotine pouches and if he isn’t using steroids he’s a freak of nature. )

Musk is an acknowledged user of many different drugs, some of which I’ll bet he was using during his Christmas tweet storm (and it wasn’t Ozempic.)

Earlier this month, a rift appeared to grow between Kennedy and Musk over the best way to make the American public healthier, considering that 40 percent of American adults are now considered obese.

During an appearance on Fox News’ Gutfeld! last month, Kennedy argued that making GLP-1 inhibitors available to all overweight Americans would cost taxpayers trillions of dollars, claiming it would be much cheaper just to provide healthier food to the public.

“If we spend about one-fifth of that giving good food, three meals a day, to every man, woman and child in our country, we could solve the obesity and diabetes epidemic overnight,” he said at the time. Of course, this also came as he was infamously forced to pose with Musk and Trump as they dug into a post-election McDonald’s feast on the president-elect’s private plane.

While Kennedy continued to insist that lifestyle change and greater access to organic foods were the keys to making America healthier, Musk contended this month that the expensive weight-loss drugs would make the biggest difference. “Nothing would do more to improve the health, lifespan and quality of life for Americans than making  GLP inhibitors super low cost to the public,” Musk wrote on December 11. “Nothing else is even close.”

They’re both right. We should have healthy food available to everyone and the weight loss drugs should also be available at super low cost to the public.

Win-win, MAGA! Get behind that one and you really might have a legacy that isn’t a toxic wasteland.

Here’s another Washington Post story that’s worth reading in full. (gift link) Yes, it’s another one of those “what do the Trump voters really think” stories but this one is a real doozy. They went to Pennsylvania to speak to low income voters who voted for him.

Here’s an example of what they said:

“We helped get you in office; please take care of us,” Mosura said, shifting the conversation as though she were speaking to Trump. “Please don’t cut the things that help the most vulnerable.”

“Trump won’t cut necessary programs, and nowhere has he said he is cutting any of that,” Ryan said. “He is cutting bloated government. He is not cutting programs that work for the American people.”

“It’s not cutting government programs, it’s cutting the amount of people needed to run a program,” Tillia, who said he is unable to work after suffering from mini strokes, said. “They are cutting staff, which could actually increase the amount of the programs that we get.”

Davis, a retired artist, subsists on a monthly $1,300 Social Security payment & $75 in food stamps. She rents her studio apartment for $385 per month. … “We are old & tired & just want to be taken care of, & Trump has too much common sense, so I don’t think he is going to do anything to hurt us.”

I will admit that there’s a huge part of me that thinks these people are getting what they deserve. They are adults and they have agency. They could have resisted the siren’s call of Trump’s Big Hatefest Show. But when you think about the the fact that they all live in communities and among families that are red-pilled Trump cultists and the media diet they are comfortable with is full of propaganda, it’s really not surprising. They simply don’t hear anything else.

(On the other hand I’m going to guess these people are among those who believe that they are entitled to their benefits, it’s just all those undeserving Black and brown people who are eating out of the government through and bankrupting he country. That’s usually how it goes anyway.)

The delusions run strong in the Trump cult.

@franchesca_leigh

Wishing you & the ones you love (and those you side eye) the #holiday season you deserve! visit shop.franchesca.net to get my new digital album “where’s that leopard lady?” #merrychristmas #leopards #election2024 #fyp #fypシ

♬ original sound – Franchesca Ramsey

If you have time to read one long story today, I recommend this one about the South Korea coup attempt in the Washington Post. I’m including a gift link so you can read the whole thing. Let’s just say the echoes are deafening:

Piecing together their accounts shows that Yoon’s plan had probably been months in the making and that he intended to use martial law to target political opponents and pursue baseless election fraud claims — a much more extensive agenda than he has claim

[…]

There was Yoon’s increasingly sharp rhetoric about his opponents. Then came the surprise appointment of his friend as defense minister. Then that minister surrounded himself with loyalists at the top of the chain of command. It seemed as if something as extreme as martial law could be in the works, said Park, formerly the nation’s deputy intelligence chief.

“We knew they were an extremely right-wing force, and they would do things we cannot imagine,” he said. “I warned this is a dangerous situation, it’s going to change quickly.”

All year, South Korea’s domestic political scene had been consumed by scandals — relentlessly targeted by the opposition — alleging corruption involving Yoon’s wife. The government declined to investigate, and the opposition blocked government initiatives, including budget measures, in response.

Yoon became increasingly isolated as he grew more frustrated, analysts say, leaning on a tiny group of loyalists, including Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun. This made Yoon more volatile, said Park Sung-min, a veteran political consultant.

Yoon’s decision in September to appoint Kim as the top defense official had prompted concerns, Park said. Not only was Kim known to be close to Yoon, the change was highly unusual ahead of the U.S. presidential election, given Seoul’s dependence on Washington for its security, the political consultant said.

Kim’s appointment also drew attention to the use of powerful school connections, which raised flags even in a nation that strongly values alumni networks.

Apparently, he was especially focused on manufactured charges of election interference and fraud. And yes, he did call out the military.

You have to read the whole thing. It’s such a cautionary tale. But then South Korea is apparently a much more highly developed democracy than America (despite our being 250 years old…) so they are actually managing to get rid of the guy who corrupted their government. We don’t do that here. When one of our presidents attempts a coup we send him home to his mansion for a few years to collect a bunch of money and then elect him again.

You love to see it

So to recap, yesterday:

-Elon/Vivek trashed American workers
-MAGA confirmed they’re against all forms of immigration
-Elon confirmed he’s not a “free speech absolutist”
-A ‘MAGA Civil war’ rages on

And Trump isn’t even president yet!

More: https://t.co/pLQv4jGF1b pic.twitter.com/SsHADUYFaf

— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) December 27, 2024

Wow, last night the Free Speech Absolutist removed the blue checks, changed the algo to crush their engagement, and removed the ability to get subscriptions, from dozens of big MAGA accounts who criticized him including Loomer. pic.twitter.com/oiDi0CNTAf

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) December 27, 2024

I wrote a bit about this yesterday so there’s no need to go into detail. (If you want it, just check into Twitter today…) But the little brouhaha did open the eyes of some of the MAGA folk who now realize that Musk has no respect or regard for them, is in it for himself, and his “free speech” yammering is all BS. Imagine that.

I think one of the sleeper hit sideshows of this next year is going to be MAGA on MAGA infighting. We’re seeing it here on social media and we’ve already seen it in the US Congress. Democrats are impotent and these people aren’t alive unless they’re going after someone so it stands to reason they’d start eating their own.

I suppose Dear Leader could do something. Unfortunately:

Here is Trump today, as President Musk & VP Ramaswamy roll out their new immigration policy. pic.twitter.com/RZRlYA9vSM

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) December 27, 2024

Buy popcorn futures.

The ballot counting is over but not the litigation

Welcome to the Great State of North Carolina (ProPublica):

Months before voters went to the polls in November, a group of election skeptics based in North Carolina gathered on a call and discussed what actions to take if they doubted any of the results.

One of the ideas they floated: try to get the courts or state election board to throw out hundreds of thousands of ballots cast by voters whose registrations are missing a driver’s license number and the last four digits of a Social Security number.

But that idea was resisted by two activists on the call, including the leader of the North Carolina chapter of the Election Integrity Network. The data was missing not because voters had done something wrong but largely as a result of an administrative error by the state. The leader said the idea was “voter suppression” and “100%” certain to fail in the courts, according to a recording of the July call obtained by ProPublica.

This novel theory is now at the center of a legal challenge by North Carolina appeals court Judge Jefferson Griffin, a Republican who lost a race for a state Supreme Court seat to the Democratic incumbent, Allison Riggs, by just 734 votes and is seeking to have the result overturned.

The state election board dismissed a previous version of the challenge, which is now being considered in federal court. Before the election, a Trump-appointed judge denied an attempt by the Republican National Committee to remove 225,000 voters from the rolls based on the same theory.

Copland has been voting since 1988, and after surviving Hurricane Helene, she just wants her voice to be heard. Jefferson Griffin doesn’t think her vote, nor the votes of her Western NC neighbors, should count.Add your name against the campaign to throw out 60,000 votes: ccnc.me/WeMatter

— Common Cause NC (@commoncausenc.bsky.social) 2024-12-26T20:27:36.462Z

I’ve tangled before with one of the scheme’s backers. He’s been at challenging votes for years:

In July 2024, the North Carolina chapter of the Election Integrity Network convened online to plan its efforts ahead of the presidential election. Worried about a surge of voter registrations from nonwhite voters who they believed would back Democrats, the activists discussed how to assemble a “suspicious voters list” of people whose ballots they could challenge.

Then, one of the group’s board members, Jay DeLancy, said he had another idea “that’s a lot slicker.”

DeLancy said that if a candidate lost a close election, the loss could be overturned by questioning the validity of voters whose registrations are missing their driver’s license and Social Security information. “Those are illegal votes,” he claimed. “I would file a protest.”

Jim Womack, the leader of the chapter, immediately pushed back: “That’s a records keeping problem on the part of the state board. That’s not illegal.”

But it’s nothing ventured, nothing gained in the election-rigging business.

By any means necessary

Though Griffin’s challenge of Riggs’ victory is now being considered in federal court, legal experts say it could still end up back where he intended: in front of the state Supreme Court.

Griffin’s petition is making what experts describe as extreme asks to the Supreme Court: to allow him to bypass the lower courts, to allow ballots to be thrown out without proving that voters did anything knowingly wrong and to essentially decide whether to change its composition to six Republicans and one Democrat.

Getting this dubious case somehow to the state Supreme Court is the endgame here. If not to throw the election to Griffin, then to force a new election.

And this Griffin guy want to sit on the same Supreme Court.

A Boxing Day survey of storm devastation off the beaten path

Ridgetops look like they’ve been bombed. Riverbeds are scoured, banks ripped open and lined with trash. Trees that once obscured the views are uprooted, toppled and lying in ranks. You’ve likely seen post-Helene images from western North Carolina. Many are of the River Arts District in Asheville and of devastation in nearby Swannanoa to the east. The Washington Post this week profiled Swannanoa flood victims from a row of mill houses left over from the days of the Beacon blanket factory, long gone.

A month ago, I told readers the region was out of the news but not out of the woods. That’s still true. Except on Boxing Day I surveyed some of the worst damage myself for the first time and came home stricken. The photos cannot convey the impact of the storm where news crews don’t go.

The bottom fell out of the sky on Sept. 25, two days before the remnants of Hurricane Helene even reached WNC. The rainfall was torrential and the ground saturation thorough. When the winds arrived on Friday morning, trees, big ones still in leaf, leaned over and fell everywhere in the city, shredding power lines and snapping power poles. Only more so did along exposed ridges. Picture the bomb damage in Gaza, only with trees instead of concrete. Where chainsaw crews cut downed trees off remote roadways, their carcasses line the highway for miles. When some agency will remove the debris, if ever, is anyone’s guess. Patching washed-out sections of roadway merits higher priority.

The winds hit hardest at elevation. Down below along waterways it was the flooding.

Along Paint Fork Rd. south of Barnardsville, flooding washed out culverts by the dozens. Fresh gravel drives covering shiny, new galvanized culverts lead to homes on the west side of the creek. In Barnardsville proper, flooding along Ivy Creek widened the streambed dramatically and left at least one destroyed bridge sitting in it downstream of where it once stood.

Forty-three died in Buncombe County alone, most from drowning, others killed by falling trees. In Swannanoa proper, where the Swannanoa River runs beside U.S. 70 in a low, flat valley, floodwaters spread out across a broad area and inundated homes and businesses. Much of the national news coverage you’ve seen focuses there.

But downstream and west of I-40 exit 59, the river loops north, west, and then south again. It flooded flat farmland before turning south and funneling itself into a narrow valley adjacent to the Botany Woods neighborhood. The waters rapidly filled the valley, tearing away vegetation and carrying away homes and residents.

I’d heard about the damage to this section of the county in October, but seeing it in person now that roads are serviceable again was shocking. Debris in some places hung in the trees 30 feet above the normal river level on Thursday. Trying to picture the scene was horrifying. Rain and wind now trigger survivors’ PTSD. It might be one of those internet “facts,” but more than a few here have told me we are among the few humans to witness a geologic event in their lifetimes.

So much Helene damage was never visible to national cameras. Flooding at PVC pipe manufacturer Silver-Line Plastics washed 10-ft lengths of pipe of various diameters downstream along the French Broad River north of Asheville. White plastic pipe hangs in the remaining trees lining the riverbanks for 30 or so miles like so much spaghetti.

“Silver-Line says it has hired a company to clean up the pipes,” Asheville Watchdog reports:

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is often tasked with maintenance and debris removal in rivers. David Connelly, a spokesperson for the Corps, explained how the system works in these types of disasters.

“Obviously the Silver-Line Plastics debris is an issue and is definitely on the radar; however, it is just one part of the estimated 10,445,000 cubic yards of debris across 27 counties in Western North Carolina we are working on,” Connelly said via email.

Upstream inside Asheville city limits, storm debris washed down the Swannanoa is not going anywhere soon.

@wlos_news_13 Destruction from Hurricane Helene on Thompson Street in Asheville, N.C. #helene #heleneaftermath #asheville #ashevillenc #ashevillenorthcarolina #ashevilleflood #ashevillenctravel #news #newstory ♬ original sound – WLOS News 13

First priority goes to direct relief efforts to people who’ve lost homes, belongings, businesses and jobs. River cleanup is almost a tertiary effort, if I read the reporting right. Where counties and states cannot handle the cleanup tasks, FEMA tasks the Corps to help. But that could take months. Removal of downed trees in remote areas like I drove though on Thursday could take longer. Years maybe. Or never.

When election results rolled in on November 5, among our first thoughts here was federal relief will dry up under Trump 2.0. Already the Republican majority in Raleigh seems bent on cutting off state relief to devastated counties that shifted bluer. The continuing resolution passed in Washington a week ago provides “about $100 billion in aid for states stricken by hurricanes Helene and Milton, along with other disasters.” However, N.C. Gov. Roy Cooper (D) estimated in late October that North Carolina’s need alone tops $53 billion.

Once again, thank you everybody for your kind generosity. I am so incredibly grateful and feel more motivated than ever to keep forging ahead. We’re facing some stiff political headwinds but I believe that with all of you at our backs we’ll be able to come through even stronger on the other side.

The MAGA cult is feeling its oats right now but reality is going to bite very soon. We’ll be here to document the victories and the atrocities and I hope you’ll all stop by frequently to see what we’ve dug up, analyzed or otherwise just observed with dismay or delight. Barring a round-up to the camps we’ll be here 7 days a week doing that thing we do.

I’m going to leave this up until New Year’s just in case there are any stragglers. And thank you again, from the bottom of my heart.

cheers,

digby