"what digby sez..."
Digby's Hullabaloo Posts
Take the day off, pilgrim
Heather Cox Richardson provides a thumbnail sketch of how today became a national holiday. You can read that in full here. This Thanksgiving, Europeans can have the day off. I’d like to spend a little time with the Wampanoag, the People of the First Light.
Historian David Silverman introduced them inThe Atlantic thusly in 2019:
In the familiar American account of the first Thanksgiving, in 1621, the Pilgrims who settled in Plymouth were pious English refugees, one of many boatloads of Europeans who fled the tyranny of the Old World to become a liberty-loving people in the New World. The Indians whom they encountered (rarely identified by tribe) overcame their caution and proved to be friendly (a term requiring no explanation). Their chief, Massasoit, was a magnanimous host who took pity on the bedraggled strangers, taught them how to plant corn and where to fish, and thereby helped them survive their first harsh winters in America. Like Pocahontas and Sacagawea, two of the other famous Indians in American lore, Massassoit’s people helped the colonizers and then moved offstage.
Contrary to the Thanksgiving myth, though, friendliness does not account for the alliance the Wampanoag tribe made with the nascent Plymouth settlement. The Wampanoags had an internal politics all their own; its dynamics had been shaped by many years of tense interaction with Europeans, and by deadly plagues that ravaged the tribe’s home region as the pace of English exploration accelerated. Chief Massassoit—whom historians today generally refer to as the sachem Ousamequin—faced stiff opposition from his own people as he tried to manage the English newcomers and looked for ways to survive the forces of colonization already tearing at the Wampanoags.
The pesky English immigrants did not take the Wampanoags’ jobs but they did swiftly move them “offstage.” But not before a lot of bitter politics and plague.
Here, briefly, is how the remaining Wampanoags of Noepe introduce their own story:
The last great North American glacier began its retreat some 10,000 years ago, leaving behind the accumulation of boulders, sand, and clay that is now known as Martha’s Vineyard. There, it is said, a benevolent being named Moshup roamed the land. One day, Moshup was making his way across the mainland to the headlands of the Aquinnah Cliffs. Weary from his journey, Moshup dragged his foot heavily, leaving a deep track in the mud. At first, only a silver thread of water trickled in the track. But gradually, the ocean’s force of wind and tides broadened and deepened the opening, creating an island named Noepe. The Wampanoag were the first people of Noepe.
The ancestors of Wampanoag people have lived for at least 10,000 years at Aquinnah (Gay Head) and throughout the island of Noepe (Martha’s Vineyard), pursuing a traditional economy based on fishing and agriculture. The Aquinnah Wampanoag share the belief that the giant Moshup created Noepe and the neighboring islands, taught our people how to fish and to catch whales, and still presides over our destinies. Our beliefs and a hundred million years of history are imprinted in the colorful clay cliffs of Aquinnah.
For over ten thousand years the Wampanoag have inhabited the island of Noepe. When the first Europeans dropped anchor off our shores in the 1500s – just before the Pilgrims – we numbered three thousand or more. To this day we still occupy our aboriginal land of Aquinnah and count 901 members, about 300 of whom live on the Island.
The Wampanoag Nation once included all of Southeastern Massachusetts and Eastern Rhode Island, encompassing over 67 distinct tribal communities. The Wampanoag people have undergone a very difficult history after assisting pilgrims in the early 1600s. With the European settlers came much adversity for our tribe – disease that virtually wiped out whole villages, systems of government that bore little resemblance to our tribal practices and values, missionaries intent on converting us to Christianity, and private models of land use and ownership that conflicted with our tribe’s own communal practices and values. The vast majority of these tribal communities were killed in battles initiated by colonists to secure land. Today, only six visible tribal communities remain. Mashpee and Aquinnah have maintained physical and cultural presence on their ancestral homelands. Linking these tribal communities through preservation efforts is essential for survival of the many cultural arts and traditions at risk of being lost.
Nevertheless, they persisted.
Three years ago, the Mashpee Wampanoag secured “substantial control of roughly 320 acres around Cape Cod.” Donald Trump’s administration ordered the land first placed in trust by the Obama administration removed from that protection, the Washington Post reported. A federal judge blocked the move. Joe Biden’s Department of the Interior led by Deb Haaland, the first Native American to serve as a cabinet secretary, withdrew the government’s appeal held over from the Trump administration.
Hundreds of years later, may we, the pilgrims’ ancestors, also persist. It’s looking to be a rough winter. Perhaps not as rough as those of Abraham Lincoln’s presidency. Yet amidst a devastating civil war, he declared the last Thursday of November as a day of Thanksgiving.
Richardson concludes:
In 1861, Americans went to war to keep a cabal from taking control of the government and turning it into an oligarchy. The fight against that rebellion seemed at first to be too much for the nation to survive. But Americans rallied and threw their hearts into the cause on the battlefields even as they continued to work on the home front for a government that defended democracy and equality before the law.
And in 1865, at least, they won.
May we as well and, like the Wampanoag, survive what’s coming.
Happy Thanksgiving.
I just saw a great video from my old friend Cliff Schechter on his new YouTube channel, Cliff’s Edge.
Is It Time to Start FIGHTING Dirty Against Donald Trump?
After I watched it, I liked, subscribed and joined the channel as a paying member. I’d like folks to do the same. Then I called Cliff to talk about it.
I’ve known Cliff for years and we talked about “fighting” on camera on RW media, and the opportunity for a lefty billionaire to buy a media outlet like CNBC and MSNBC. I hope it happens. If it DOES happen, we need to understand the fear of funders on the left to fighting back and what to do about it.
One thing that I’ve seen is that people who consider themselves journalists in the mainstream media don’t see “fighting back” as their job. That’s the job of activists. That’s the job of Democrats. Many see their role as reporting the facts. (Or “documenting the atrocities” as Atrios would say.)
I’ve written about what happens to journalists when they do report the facts, do the “both sides” bit, and talk to experts. They get threatened. Accepting death threats IS NOT part of the job! @spockosbrain
I’ve been a behind the scenes activist for almost 20 years. I’ve taught my techniques and methods to others. I see how when we win, the right adapts. I actively developed the Spocko Method to drive advertisers away from the violent rhetoric of RW talk radio. This method destroyed RW media’s easy corporate revenue stream. Brands didn’t want to associate with hosts talking about blowing people’s brains out, and sexist attacks on women. Respectable corporate customer facing ads got pulled from RW radio hosts’ shows. The RW media lost 100s of millions of dollars in revenue.
The RW media adapted and started taking money from boner pill companies & supplements. They took money from dark money fronts & RW groups who just wanted the audience and didn’t need to sell goods or services.
I don’t want to get started about how this strategy failed with Elon Musk. When you can tell Advertisers to Go. F*ck. Yourself, that’s a game changer. I worked with the groups that contacted advertisers just to tell them “Hey your brand is being tainted you might want to do something” Musk SUED THOSE GROUPS, AND THE ADVERTISERS! That is something Disney/ABC/ didn’t do when I alerted advertisers to the violent rhetoric coming from the KSFO hosts.
But just like the RW adapts, so do we. There are ways to fight back. There are people who are fighting back. And we need to support them. Financially.
One of my recent projects involves helping the people who have been harmed by the right. It involves suing those who have been harming others AND those who organized the harm. What I’m doing behind the scenes is learning WHY, when we win, we stop. I’m looking at the models of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Qui tam laws and class actions suits. I’m also looking at how these stories are covered in the media, how they are shared (or not shared) on social media. How can these stories penetrate the RW bubble? What can we do when the RW bubble REFRAMES everything so that the person DOING the harm is seen as the victim? (“Cricket shot first! Kristi Noam was defending her family from a vicious dog! Coastal elites don’t understand farm life!”)
One of the things I’m looking at is how regular people can help, without subjecting themselves to massive attacks online, in the media and on social media. Here’s the thing, there are already people who have been harmed and the bad people have gotten away with it. They PROFITED from organizing harm. People might say, that’s “Just good business” because in America making money often overrules EVERYTHING. But not always.
Some change does happen when causing and organizing harm ends up COSTING corporations and individuals money. And when reducing harm MAKES money for the people who were harmed, well, most people can get behind that.
Yes. I know the people causing harm adapt. We on the left feel better helping victims. We don’t like to be the aggressor, many want to forgive the bad people and move on. We need to understand this impulse, and prepare for it in our fights.
This is one of the reasons that the right screams “political prosecution!” when they are held accountable for crimes where they have had due process, found guilty and ordered to pay restitution. They STILL want to appeal to people’s sympathy. We are seeing this right now with Rudy Giuliani’s failure to pay what he owes to Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss.
Rudy goes outside the courthouse, where he’s not under oath, and lies about the case. That’s the video I’ve seen used on TV and quoted in stories. What we DON’T see are the lawyers for Freeman & Moss calling out the lies following Rudy’s press conference outside. I want to see more of Freeman & Mosses lawyers on the attack.
If we don’t hear from the victims, the focus of the story becomes RUDY as the victim, not, Rudy failing to pay the REAL victims what he owes. RUDY IS NOT THE VICTIM! He’s the bully, the aggressor and the adjudicated LOSER in this case. If I was doing PR for the lawyers I would be out front of the courthouse every SINGLE TIME Rudy whines, and point out what a LIAR he is and remind people of the HARM he caused.
We can not forget what happened to Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, remind people of the 100’s of death threats they got that drove them from their homes. Tell people the story again of the big names who still haven’t been held accountable for their role in the case. We need to fight back on behalf of the people who have been harmed. And we keep fighting back after we win.
Yes, I’m on BlueSky @spocko.bsky.social also on Mastodon @spocko@mastodon.online
Cross posted to Spocko’s Brain.
Rolling Stone is reporting today that Trump and Co have revived their plans to invade Mexico. I’m not kidding:
Within Donald Trump’s government-in-waiting, there is a fresh debate over whether and how thoroughly the president-elect should follow through on his campaign promise to attack or even invade Mexico, as part of the “war” he’s pledged to wage against powerful drug cartels.
“How much should we invade Mexico?” says a senior Trump transition member. “That is the question.”
It is a question that would have seemed batty for the GOP elite to consider before, even during Trump’s first term. But in the four years since, many within the mainstream Republican centers of power have come around to support Trump’s idea to bomb or attack Mexico.
Trump’s Cabinet picks, including his choices for secretary of defense and secretary of state, have publicly supported the idea of potentially unleashing the U.S. military in Mexico. So has the man Trump has tapped to be his national security adviser. So has the man Trump selected as his “border czar” to lead his immigration crackdowns. So have various Trump allies in Congress and in the media.
Apparently, no decision have been made yet. Once source told the magazine. However, “if things don’t change, the president still believes it’s necessary to take some kind of military action against these killers.” Another option on the table is to just send in Special Forces to “take out” the cartels, which I’m sure will work. (It’s not like that hasn’t been tried before in South America. It didn’t exactly work.) Apparently, Trump likes this idea, no doubt because it’s like a movie he saw once.
He’s told people that he will tell Mexico that if they don’t fix this problem immediately he will send in the military. Marco Rucio the new Secreatry of state reportedly supports this plan as long as the Mexican government is involved. I’m sure they’ll be just fine with Americans essentially invating. No problema.
Meanwhile, the pending Sec Def Pete Hegseth has thoughts:
Fox News commentator Pete Hegseth, whom Trump chose to lead the Pentagon, said last year that it could be in the national interest to deploy the military against Mexican drug cartels, which he referred to as “terrorist-like organizations poisoning our population.”
“If it takes military action, that’s what it may take, eventually,” said Hegseth. “Obviously, you’re gonna have to be smart about it. Obviously, the precision strikes. But if you put the fear in the minds of the drug lords, at least as a start, [and] they can’t operate in the open with impunity, [it] changes the way they operate. You combine that with actual border security … now you’re cooking with gas and you’ve got a chance.”
What a genius.
This has been on the agenda for a while even as Trump is supposedly the “peace president” who will end all warts forever. Obviously, he is anything but. He just wants his own wars — mostly on Americans and countries he perceives as being shitholes. It’s very disappointing that this never came up during the campaign.
I wrote this a couple of years ago on this subject:
I think Trump just said he’s going to declare war on Mexico if he wins
Published by digby on January 5, 2023
As president, Donald Trump weighed bombing drug labs in Mexico after one of his leading public health officials came into the Oval Office, wearing a dress uniform, and said such facilities should be handled by putting “lead to target” to stop the flow of illicit substances across the border into the United States.
“He raised it several times, eventually asking a stunned Defense Secretary Mark Esper whether the United States could indeed bomb the labs,” according to a new book by New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman. White House officials said the official, Assistant Secretary for Health Brett Giroir, an admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, often wore his dress uniform for meetings with Trump, which led him to falsely think Giroir was a member of the military.
Sadly, I wouldn’t be all that surprised if Ron DeSantis and others agree with this one, at least in the campaign. It’s very popular among the right, particularly among those who think the support for Ukraine should be switched to some kind of war with Mexico because they say we’re protecting Ukraine’s border but not our own. In honest moments they will say that we should be like Putin and invade. I’m not kidding.
This is a real thing on the right. I don’t know how widespread it is. But Trump is making it clear that he, at least, is serious about using military action against Mexico.
They’re serious.
You’re kidding…
This was obvious before the eleciton but Trump’s promise was such music to people’s ears that I guess eveyrone decided to just let his stupid demagoguery hang out there unrefuted:
U.S. oil and gas producers are unlikely to radically increase production under president-elect Donald Trump as companies remain focused on capital discipline, a senior executive at Exxon Mobil (XOM.N), opens new tab said on Tuesday.
“We’re not going to see anybody in ‘drill, baby, drill’ mode,” Liam Mallon, head of Exxon’s upstream division, told the Energy Intelligence Forum conference in London.
“A radical change (in production) is unlikely because the vast majority, if not everybody, is focused on the economics of what they’re doing,” he said.
What he means by “focused on the economics” is that there is a thing called “supply and demand” and they aren’t going to boost production to lower the price and cut into their profits. It’s ridiculous and always was.
58% say he isn’t honest and 54% say he doesn’t care about people like them. 65% don’t think he’s a good role model. And yet he is the president. I guess Biden being seen as senile and Trump calling Kamala Harris an idiot a couple of thousand times made him seem mentally sharp and that was the deciding factor?
Oy.
A few years back on Thanksgiving eve I ran this recipe for Pumpkin Cake and received a very nice note from journalist Karen Tumulty saying that she’d been tooling around the web for something to bake and tried it and liked it very much. Ever since then I’ve called it Karen Tumulty Cake. It’s easy even for non bakers and it really is very good. And while that pan is lovely, you could easily bake it in a regular bundt pan or regular cake pans.
Karen Tumulty Pumpkin Cake
For cake
* (3/4 cup) softened unsalted butter.
* 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour plus additional for dusting pan
* 2 teaspoons baking powder
* 1 teaspoon baking soda
* 1 teaspoon cinnamon
* 3/4 teaspoon ground allspice
* 2 tablespoons crystalized ginger, finely chopped
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1 1/4 cups canned pumpkin
* 3/4 cup well-shaken buttermilk
* 1 teaspoon vanilla
* 1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
* 3 large eggs
Icing
* 2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons well-shaken buttermilk
* 1 1/2 cups confectioners sugar,
* 1/4 cup chopped walnuts
* a 10-inch nonstick bundt pan
Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter bundt pan generously.
Sift flour (2 1/4 cups), baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, allspice, and salt in a bowl. Whisk together pumpkin, 3/4 cup buttermilk, ginger and vanilla in another bowl.
Beat butter and granulated sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, add eggs and beat 1 minute. Reduce speed to low and add flour and pumpkin mixtures alternately in batches, beginning and ending with flour mixture, just until smooth.
Spoon batter into pan, then bake until a wooden pick inserted in center of cake comes out clean, 45 to 50 minutes. Cool cake in pan 15 minutes, then invert rack over cake and reinvert cake onto rack. Cool 10 minutes more.
Icing:
Whisk together buttermilk and confectioners sugar until smooth. Drizzle over warm cake, sprinkle with chopped walnuts (keep a little icing in reserve to drizzle lightly over walnuts) then cool cake completely. Icing will harden slightly.
Easy as pie (easier, actually.)
Pam Bondi is right out of Central Casting
Many Americans were sorely disappointed this week when Special Prosecutor Jack Smith decided to drag up and withdraw the January 6th indictment and the appeal of the classified documents case dismissal against Donald Trump. Smith said in his filings that the government stood by the charges but because of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel’s rule that a sitting president cannot be prosecuted, he had no choice but to drop the charges.The judges in the cases acceded to his requests and dismissed them both without prejudice although the idea that anyone will bring these cases in 2029 when Trump is 82 years old is fanciful. It’s over. He got away with it once again.
It’s not that we didn’t know it was coming one way or the other. In fact, from the moment the Supreme Court issued their shocking opinion about presidential immunity, the writing was on the wall that Trump would face no accountability even if he didn’t win the election. It went without saying that if he won, he would order the cases dismissed and that would be that. So, this wasn’t a surprise but like so much else we’ve experienced with Trump ,not the least of which was this last election, it was just one more depressing, ennervating event seemingly designed to drain the fight out of anyone who sees this man’s lawlessness and corruption as a blight on our nation.
That’s because one of the disturbing consequences of the repeated failures to hold him to account is the fact that he seems invincible, impervious to negative ramifications for his actions and is therefore seen by his followers as a kind of superhero with magical powers. It’s not true, of course. He’s no hero, super or otherwise. He’s just a shameless, corrupt con artist who has lied his way out of trouble his whole life. And now that he knows he has immunity from any criminal acts he might commit as president, he is willing to use his power to punish his enemies. He’s made it clear that Jack Smith and his team are among them.
On a radio show before the election he said that he would fire Smith in “2 seconds” because he now has immunity. He also declared, “we should throw Jack Smith out with them, the mentally deranged people. Jack Smith should be considered mentally deranged, and he should be thrown out of the country.” Do you think he bears a grudge at all?
When former Congressman Matt Gaetz withdrew after Trump’s daft nomination of him for Attorney General there was a great sigh of relief that someone so unfit would not be made the top law enforcement officer in the land. It was obvious that Trump had nominated him with the express purpose of going after his enemies in the DOJ and using the power of federal law enforcement to prove his accusations against the department’s alleged “weaponization.” He has scores to settle and Gaetz was champing at the bit to help him do it.
Unfortunately for Gaetz he’d made so many enemies on Capitol Hill that Trump was forced to tell him he had to go. (It almost certainly wasn’t because of any concerns about the sordid accusation of underage sex and drug use. Those were more likely considered qualifications since Trump related to his legal travails having a similar history himself.) There was hope after he dropped out that Trump might appoint someone more respectable to this important post and one who would be less likely to become his hatchet man. Fat chance.
He didn’t name a hatchet man, that’s true. He named a hatchet woman, one of his impeachment defense lawyers and the former Attorney General of Florida, Pam Bondi.
As David Dayen at the American Prospect has reported, her tenure at Florida AG was notorious for her ruthless treatment of Floridians whose homes had been unlawfully foreclosed upon. But America first became acquainted with Bondi during Trump’s first campaign when it was reported that at Florida AG she had dropped out of the class action suit againt the now defunct Trump University after having received a $25,000 check from the (also now defunct) Trump Foundation.
Bondi was an early Trump supporter when he ran for president, eagerly joining him on the campaign trail as one of his most energetic endorsers and making frequent appearances on Fox News. From that moment on she was always hanging around the periphery of Trump World in one way or another.
She gave a singularly unimpressive performance during Trump’s first impeachment trial but turned up later with Rudy Giuliani and his motley crew contesting the election results in 2020. She was in Pennsylvania insisting that “cheating” was going on and was among those who gathered at that historically bizarre press conference at the Four Seasons Landscaping office, which they had evidently mistaken for the Four Seasons Hotel.
Bondi has also made it clear where she stands on the idea of seeking retribution for the indictments against Trump. As far back as 2023 she has said that the prosecutors should be prosecuted:
Coming from a former prosecutor and state Attorney General that’s quite a statement. It’s clear that this sentiment is one of the main reasons Trump has chosen her for the job.
One of her most important tasks will be overseeing the mass deportation program. Trump’s chosen “immigration czar” Tom Homan, who has been tapped to run it, calls her “one hell of an AG” declaring that they plan to prosecute anyone who stands in the way of their plans:
The Washington Post reports that Trump wants to fire all of the DOJ attorneys who worked with the Special Prosecutors office, including the career civil servants which would require some extraordinary actions on the part of the new AG. She seems up for the task.
And that’s not all. According to the Post:
Trump is also planning to assemble investigative teams within the Justice Department to hunt for evidence in battleground states that fraud tainted the 2020 election, one of the people said.
You can bet that Trump’s new Attorney General will not make the mistake that former Attorney General Jeff Sessions made when he recused himself from the Russia investigation even though she clearly should having been involved in his attempt to overturn the election. She’s no doubt as eager to prove the Big Lie as he is. (If she isn’t Trump will not be happy.)
Bondi is the perfect Trump choice for this particular gig and I’m surprised he didn’t choose her in the first place. She has all the credentials Matt Gaetz didn’t have and will likely be much more competent in her pursuit of Trump’s vengeance agenda. It would be nice to think that she’ll be stopped in the Senate but there’s virtually no chance of that. It will be smooth sailing for her. She’s right out of Central Casting.
Salon
Will the press play ball?
Trumpflation is coming. Better buy your knee pads before Donald Trump’s tariffs kick in after Jan. 20. He’ll expect us all to kowtow, dontcha know.
Greg Sargent’s Daily Blast features Margaret Sullivan, former public editor for The New York Times, regarding Trump’s recent demand that the paper apologize for unspecified bad coverage. “He actually thinks [the Times] should grovel and show submission to him now that he won,” says Sargent. Bad coverage being any story that doesn’t fluff his stuff:
Sargent: I want to read a key part of Trump’s rant about the times. He said, I don’t believe I’ve had a legitimately good story in The New York Times for years, and yet I won in record fashion, the most consequential presidential election in decades. Where is the apology? Now, it wasn’t in record fashion, but either way, Margaret, this neatly captures how Trump understands the media. He actually thinks it should grovel and show submission to him now that he won. I don’t think he accepts on the most basic level that the press’s role is to challenge power. At least he doesn’t accept it when he’s in power. What do you think we can take from that?
Sullivan: In some ways, it’s nothing new. He’s always been very manipulative about the press and he does not understand that the press is there to help citizens hold him accountable. This never entered his mind, or if it has, he’s quickly dismissed it. But yes, he does seem to think that because he won the election and again, of course it has to be put in these superlative and false terms, that therefore, the Times should apologize to him for anything that isn’t what he terms “a good story.” And a good story, of course, is a story that flatters him and makes him look great. We know and your sophisticated listenership here knows that that is not what The New York Times should be doing in any way. He has this thing about, I have a huge mandate here, and everybody needs to get in line and bow. That is worrisome for sure.
What Trump could do to punish journalists is to use the Espionage Act to throw journalists in jail for publishing leaked classified information. He could look to make an example of someone to put the fear of the Orange God into reporters. Sullivan cites the Morning Joe hosts traveling to Mar-a-Lago to make nice with Trump as an example of preemptive submission.
This is what we have to watch for in the Trump 2.0 era as the press tries to cover it:
Sullivan: There’s a strong sense that we don’t want to alienate this huge number of 75 million people in the country who voted for him because we want a big tent. We want all the customers and all the readers and everybody we can get. And we don’t want those people to be alienated by us. That’s the push and pull. And I don’t know how it’s going to play out. The Times made a very strong endorsement of Kamala Harris to their credit. At the same time, some of the coverage of Trump has been very white glove careful. So I guess we’ll see.
I guess we’ll see, indeed.