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Is There Even A Point To This?

Published by digby on January 15, 2025

There was a time not all that long ago when confirmation hearings were at least slightly meaningful. Sure, they were mostly just pro forma since the new president is always presumed to have the prerogative to appoint his own cabinet. And even judicial nominees, including those for the Supreme Court, only became contentious when the Republicans started nominating extremist judges.

But things have changed. The Republicans have learned that there is no price to pay for appointing unqualified and unfit sycophants and far right ideologues and so that’s what they are doing. In this current round the nominees aren’t even meeting with the Democrats before their hearings as it’s assumed that only Republican votes matter and they know they have enough of those going in because they’ve successfully intimidated anyone who might have had an objection.

Jane Mayer’s latest piece in the New Yorker is about the pressure campaign to confirm Pete Hegseth:

At the Senate confirmation hearing for Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, on Tuesday, the most telling feature may be the voices from whom the senators won’t hear. The Trump transition team has waged an intense, and in many ways unprecedented, behind-the-scenes campaign ahead of the hearing to intimidate and silence potential witnesses, aimed at keeping Republican senators in line and in the dark.

Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democratic member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which will be holding Hegseth’s hearing, told me, “I’m deeply concerned by an apparent pattern of intimidation and threats, whether it’s legal action or reputational harm. They’re playing the hardest of hardball. It’s harder by several orders of magnitude than in almost any other confirmation.” Senator Elizabeth Warren, another Democrat on the committee, said the pressure tactics “seem designed” to insure that witnesses “don’t speak up.” Blumenthal said that “it’s been pretty unnerving” for Senate Republicans, “because this nominee is so deeply unqualified and unprepared,” yet they fear political retaliation from Trump if they vote their consciences.

Referring to reports that Hegseth, a former National Guard major and Fox News weekend host with minimal civilian management experience, has been accused of drunkenness on the job, sexual impropriety at work, and other kinds of professional misconduct, Blumenthal said, “Someone who is inebriated, or self-dealing, or managerially incompetent in this position could put the whole nation at risk. My Republican colleagues are unsettled,” he added, “and some genuinely feel scared and intimidated.”

This is not normal politics by the standards we used to have but I think it’s the new normal with a convicted criminal as president, the richest man in the world willing to use his fortune to enforce his will and millions of violent cultists ready to attack. To say this changes the calculation is a monumental understatement.

Hegseth is manifestly unfit and unqualified to lead the Pentagon. Most Republicans know this. Many don’t care because they have no respect for government anyway. Some do but are afraid of the mob. And many of them just see this as the price they pay for power and are more than willing to go along. None of them are willing to take a chance on losing their seats over it. Real profiles in courage.

Meanwhile, today, we have this grotesque display from what will certainly be the new Attorney General of the United States:

Perhaps that’s just practice for her Supreme Court confirmation hearings. After all, those GOP nominees all lie under oath as well.

Confirmation hearings are a farce in this hyper partisan age but never more than now. Their shamelessness knows no bounds. I’m just waiting to see how many Democrats decide that it’s in their personal interest to go along with it.

Enraging

Published by digby on January 15, 2025
https://twitter.com/tedlieu/status/1879341834524393674

These are such loathsome people I can hardly contain myself. I would say that we should withhold aid from them when the inevitable disaster hits their states but what good would that do? They simply have no understanding of the social contract or even what the definition of a nation is. They are horrible liars and corrupt criminals and I just don’t see how we can survive with people like this running the government.

I hope that every Democrat in the country runs ads with these people making these grotesque comments and ask if that’s what America is really all about. Abstract paeans to democracy obviously can’t get people off their couches. Maybe this will. (Sadly, I’m not optimistic.)

And then there’s this lunacy:

He hates windmills because he hates the way they looked in the ocean outside his Scottish golf course and they wouldn’t remove them.

Oligarchy, American Style

Published by digby on January 15, 2025

When President-elect Trump held a press availability as he was speaking to Republican Governors last week he rattled off a number of big names who’d made the pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring of the new Don. He actually sounded rather surprised by it, saying, “they all came. Jeff Bezos came, Bill Gates came, Mark Zuckerberg came, many of them came numerous times, the bankers have all come, everybody’s coming. I haven’t had anyone say anything bad about me. I’m not used to it.”

He believes they come because they are dazzled by the power and strength of his massive electoral victory (like nobody’s ever seen before!) but none of them are as dumb or as deluded as he is so that’s obviously not the case. I’m going to guess they’re dazzled by the richest man in the world’s proximity to him and they want a piece of that action. Elon Musk has opened the door to a new style of oligarchy, American style.

The history of Russia after the fall of communism is instructive here. Under the first president of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, in the 1990s, a group of snake oil salesmen and scam artists swooped in to take advantage of the opening that “shock therapy” provided and gobbled up valuable state owned properties and resources at fire sale prices and made themselves into billionaires overnight. They were thoroughly corrupt and basically robbed the Russian people blind.

When Vladimir Putin eventually replaced the discredited Yeltsin, he called them all to the Kremlin and laid down the law demanding that they pledge fealty to him personally and do what they were told. If they complied they would be allowed to keep their ill-gotten fortunes as long as they made sure that tribute was paid to him. Some did not and were thrown into a Siberian prison or forced into exile or died in suspicious circumstances. The rest complied and Putin is reputed to actually be the richest man in the world although his fortune is not publicly traceable.

Obviously, Donald Trump is no Vladimir Putin. He doesn’t have that kind of authority in the American system (at least not yet) or the savvy to use it as efficiently as Putin. But he thinks he’s doing the same thing. In truth he’s more of a Yeltsin, gladly accepting the attention and flattery of the oligarchs as they attempt to steer the government in their favor.

He has no idea what they’re really after. For example, at his press conference last week at mar-a-Lago he was asked if he thought Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg had changed the company’s policies to favor Trump because of his threats, he replied “probably.” I really doubt that’s the reason.

Yes, it’s true that Trump threatened Zuckerberg with life in prison for “plotting” against him during the 2020 election by “steering” Facebook against him. Now, all is forgiven as Zuckerberg has decided to follow Trump’s Rasputin, Elon Musk’s, lead and allow right wing propaganda to flourish on Facebook and Instagram to please the Dear Leader. It’s a small price to pay for such close proximity to power. And after all, Zuckerberg has long considered himself the spitting image of Roman Emperor Augustus Caesar so it’s only right.

Jeff Bezos similarly has tasked Amazon with making a $40 million dollar documentary about Melania Trump as a token of his appreciation as well as a million dollar donation to the Inauguration slush fund. In fact all the oligarchs are ponying up big bucks for that event. It’s unknown what Bill Gates got out of his visitation but one assumes that he too has seen the advantage of getting up close and personal with this elderly narcissist who is so easily swayed by flattery and attention.

And then there’s Musk himself who appears to be even more narcissistic than Trump himself and has apparently convinced himself that he has somehow been anointed as a man who will rule the world through Donald Trump. He’s not only created a grandiose outside group that basically answers to no one (well, there’s Donald Trump, but he’s clueless about what they’re up to) and now he’s meddling in other countries’ politics as well. (His recent foray into the UK has not been well received by the locals.)

The latest rumor is that he’s been approached to buy the most popular social media company in the world, Tik Tok. Between him and Zuckerberg, Trump friendly oligarchs would then dominate that media sphere for their own and Donald Trump’s benefit. The potential for reality shaping propaganda will explode exponentially.

Meanwhile, the bankers, the CEOs and the Big Money Boys on Wall Street are also on board. The Financial Times reports that they are thrilled with Trump’s election. Corporations all over the country are ostentatiously cancelling their DEI programs and any form of LGBTQ celebrations and Pride promotions. Apparently, they are all very excited to go back to just hiring the white males so they no longer have to worry about MAGA boycotts and death threats.

One Wall Street fellow told the Times, “Most of us don’t have to kiss a– because, like Trump, we love America and capitalism.” A top banker said, “I feel liberated! We can say ‘re—rd’ and ‘p–sy’ without the fear of getting canceled… it’s a new dawn.” (Interesting that he didn’t let them use his name, however.)

This is the new American oligarchy — crude, extremely wealthy men cozying up to the new president, a convicted criminal and adjudicated sexual abuser, a man who attempted to illegally overturn an election, who bungled a major national crisis and remains the most ignorant person to ever sit in the oval office. They know exactly what they can get from him. He’s much more Yeltsin than Putin.

The full picture will be clear on inauguration day with this tableau:

Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg will attend President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration Monday, according to an official involved with planning the event. They will have a prominent spot at the ceremony, seated together on the platform with other notable guests, including Trump’s Cabinet nominees and elected officials.

Oh, and Speaker of House Mike Johnson has overturned centuries of protocol and will order the flags that are flying at half mast for the death for former president Jimmy Carter to be raised on inauguration day so that none of those dignitaries will have to be reminded of what the presidency used to be before the oligarchs took over.

Salon

Maybe The Storm Really Is Coming

Published by Tom Sullivan on January 15, 2025

MAGA will “fight for Trump.” Will Dems fight for us?

Former D.C. Metropolitan Police officer Michael Fanone almost died defending the U.S. Capitol from the violent MAGA mob on Jan. 6, 2021.

“I don’t believe we live in a democracy anymore,” Fanone told Huffington Post earlier this month. “I believe democracy in this country is dead, and it died when the Supreme Court granted the president of the United States immunity for official acts and then failed to define what the fuck official acts are.”

Unofficial acts by Trump’s followers committed against Fanone and his family continue four years later. To the point that he doesn’t report many of them to the police:

Someone threw a brick at his mother’s home a little over a month ago, he said. Fanone said there was another incident where his mother was raking leaves in her front yard and a man “pulled up and threw a bag of shit on her.”

Jack Smith will be watching his back for a long time.

After the Department of Justice released special counsel Smith’s report on the Jan. 6 insurrection on Tuesday, Greg Sargent spoke with historian Julian Zelizer about his recent piece in The New Republic .

If you believe Trump’s bullshit about destroyed and deleted information, his innocense and his landslide, he’s got a “university” in Manhattan to sell you. Sargent observes that Trump’s tweet gloats, I got away with it.

Michael Podhorzer at his substack confirmed Fanone’s assessment. The high court shielded Trump from prosecution and enabled him to run again for office (and win) by neutering the insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment. Podhorzer wrote, “In any other country, we would understand that as part of an autocratic takeover, not a democratic victory.”

The Republican Party decided Trump was their best vehicle for maintaining power, said Zelizer. (Just as Christian nationalists have decided he’s their path to restoring their political and cultural dominance, I’d add.)

Zelizer advised Democrats in his piece “to “to embrace the power of partisan polarization.” Trump’s victory was narrow (despite his boasts):

Over the next two years, the party will have one shot to block the radical retrenchment of core government policies, the erosion of cherished American values, and the aggressive exercise of presidential power. They will need to use all the procedural and financial weapons available to keep their own members in line and to reward those who stand firm in their opposition, all the while communicating a compelling message through new media to win back voters before 2026. 

There are a lot of ifs behind that recommendation.

Zelizer told Sargent on Tuesday:

And Democrats are really struggling, even with signs of the fight, to figure out what they’re going to do in the next couple years. Just all this added together with the fact he won reelection despite what Smith had been investigating says positive things for his political standing at the moment. But at the moment is different than in a year. And that’s part of what we’ll watch how it plays out.

[…]

Democrats not only have to be strong, but one of the things they can do is create very small fissures in the House Republican caucus, for example, and it will cause immense problems for the Republicans to be able to do anything.

There is a lot of on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand to that assessment. But Democrats’ prospects are hampered by their own conflict-averse inertia. We saw some fight on Tuesday out of Democratic women during the Senate Armed Services Committee questioning of Pete Hegseth, Trump’s impossibly unqualified nominee for secretary of defense. It won’t be enough.

What Hegseth and Trump’s other nominees represent is not just the collapse of competence and the Republicans’ rejection of ethics, American values and democracy itself. It is their embrace of might making right.

David Hogg, candidate for DNC first vice chair, writes in a FB ad that “the people making decisions for the Democratic Party care more about keeping their jobs than about fighting for us.” Do they even retain the muscle memory? What worries me most right now is how much Fanone’s experience demonstrates that Trump’s MAGA brownshirts over the long haul are more willing to “fight for Trump.”

They Don’t Want To Be Colonized By America

Published by digby on January 14, 2025

Imagine that

The Canadians and Panamanians aren’t too thrilled by it either which, considering our own colonial origins, shouldn’t come as a huge surprise.

Nobody’s taking these threats very seriously and I hope that’s correct. But even the rhetoric is toxic. America is now seen by the rest of the world as a bully and a threat. We are very powerful so I suppose most people think there’s no need to worry. But it the rest of the world allies against us, as they might if Trump follows through on his ridiculous tariff scheme or he decides to confront a fellow NATO country like Denmark and seize their protectorate it could get ugly fast.

Virtue Is For Losers

Published by digby on January 14, 2025

JV Last asks us to consider Pete Hegseth as if he wasn’t a red-pilled, alcohol dependent, rapist and instead is a moderate, pure as the driven snow boy scout. And then consider this:

The job of SecDef is almost impossible to conceive in its immensity. You manage a workforce of 2.87 million employees and a budget of $842 billion. You are responsible for the longest and most complex logistics operation ever devised by man. You are tasked with handling today’s national security challenges and looking over the horizon to plan for challenges that will appear years after you have left the job. You must have a fluent understanding of large organizations and bureaucracies. You must be a subject-matter expert in either war fighting, technology, or international affairs—but it helps if you have mastery over more than one of those disciplines.

Here are the backgrounds of the last nine SecDefs:

Lloyd Austin: Vice chief of staff of the Army, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, commander of CENTCOM.

Mark Esper: Deputy assistant SecDef, senior leader at Raytheon, secretary of the Army.

Jim Mattis: Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, commander of CENTCOM.

Ash Carter: Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, Kennedy School of Government, under SecDef for acquisition, technology, and logistics.

Chuck Hagel: Founder of a technology company, chair of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, U.S. senator for twelve years.

Leon Panetta: Member of Congress for sixteen years, White House chief of staff, director of CIA.

Robert Gates: Deputy national security advisor, director of CIA.

Donald Rumsfeld: Member of Congress for six years, head of White House Office of Economic Opportunity, ambassador to NATO, White House chief of staff.

William Cohen: U.S. senator for eighteen years (preceded by six years in the House of Representatives), including serving on the Senate’s Intelligence, Armed Services, and Government Affairs Committees.

Then there’s Hegseth, whose CV reads:

  • Served in the Army National Guard.
  • Briefly led a small, failing nonprofit.
  • Helped host a weekend show on Fox News.

Looking at all of this, you’re probably asking yourself, “How is this guy getting a confirmation hearing at all? Especially with his personal vices?”

Last is right when he says that Hegseth will get this job not in spite of his noxious personal character or total lack of qualifications but because of them. He quotes from this excellent piece on Hegseth by Rebecca Traister:

Some Democrats retain the wan hope that they can persuade a Republican or two to actually defeat Hegseth’s nomination, and they worry that coming in ablaze will impede those efforts. Winning, said several staffers from offices less inclined to light Hegseth up, would mean not leaning in on the rape allegations and instead creating space to oppose him on grounds that Republicans can also oppose him on. Instead of giving Fox News the woke-mob martyrdom its audience craves, they say they can highlight his financial mismanagement and lack of relevant experience.

That’s where we are now. If anyone raises the prospect of a nominee’s lack of character it actually helps them get confirmed. I’m not sure it’s a good idea to just let the fact that he’s a disgusting pig just slide but it’s all moot anyway. The only people they are unwilling to confirm are those who have been disruptive to their own power like Matt Gaetz. (You can bet it wasn’t because of his proclivities for drugs and underage sex. They were prepared to go to the mat for him over that.)

Last goes on to discuss the concept of business “moats” (which I admit I had never heard of.) Basically it’s the idea that some companies have a competitive advantage: “Proven, perpetuating and permanent unit economic advantages from peers within a competitive set” He mentions Apple’s hardware, Amazon’s cloud computing and Tesla’s stock price, all things that put these companies in a unique position relative to their competitors. How does this apply to Trump and his cronies?

He talks about “vice signaling” which is the opposite of the right wing slur against anyone on the left who has a conscience: virtue signaling. He quotes from a piece by Tim Miller:

The term [vice signaling], popularized by Jane Coaston, refers to people who now gleefully portray themselves publicly as amoral or immoral in order to demonstrate some sort of strength or sophistication. . . .

How did we get here? Because of the corrupting influence of Trumpism.

If we were talking about President Mitt Romney, there is no way—none, at all—that Brit Hume would be working overtime to vice signal. He would be rightly praising the president’s model behavior and discretion. We know this to be true. Instead we have a Republican president who is—just objectively—a man of utterly irredeemable personal character. And so, in order to justify their continued enabling of him, people such as Hume begin to not just ignore virtue, but bow toward vice.

Last says conservatives will all retort that this is all because liberals have cried wolf and now nobody believes any of these accusations. If that were true it would actually be because the system has refused to hold Trump accountable not anyone crying wolf, but it’s bullshit anyway. And anyway, conservatives are constantly melting down over alleged corruption and deviant behavior — of Democrats. When they can’t find any they make them up.(He brings up this grotesque conspiracy theory as an example of their lunacy.)

Republicans embrace vice not because they believe that the accused Republican figures are innocent, but because they believe they are guilty. And so these voters exist in the hope that their champion will go on to hurt their enemies on their behalf. After all: If a guy is willing to rape a woman, surely he can be counted on to visit destruction on Democrats, or woke generals, or whoever.

I think that is exactly why many of Trump’s cultists love him so much. He is a monster. But he’s their monster and they love him for it.

Vice is their moat.


Great God Almighty, They’re Free At Last!

Published by digby on January 14, 2025

He didn’t use his name, though.

Some of the moves, such as the parade of CEOs visiting Trump in Florida, the donations, and the effort to do business with people in his inner circle, appear designed to curry favour with a man famous for attacking companies and executives he dislikes.

But the election has also accelerated a wider shift back to more conservative social and political stances and an embrace of unfettered capitalism.   Companies are scrapping diversity, equity and inclusion departments, cutting their support for racial diversity charities, and dropping out of climate change groups. They are also scrubbing anything that could be perceived as “woke” from public statements, corporate documents and advertising.

The election has empowered some top executives to start speaking out in favour of conservative policies, from tax cuts to traditional gender roles.

The article has a ton of examples but this one really got me. The CEO of Allstate was excoriated for making the thoroughly anodyne statement: “we need to be stronger together by overcoming an addiction to divisiveness and negativity,” by right wingers who claimed that he was pushing progressive causes and minimizing murder. (I assume most of them had been erroneously convinced that the murderer was an illegal immigrant by their Dear Leader.)

I understand from right wing influencers that “me too” was rejected at the ballot box which, after watching the Hegseth hearing and the rapist in chief being re-elected, seems to be true. So it’s not surprising that the workplace would also be seen as a misogynist free-for-all. As Zuckerberg told Joe Rogan, they want more “masculine energy” in the workplace.

I’m old enough to remember when “masculine energy” ran the workplace. Let’s just say that “Madmen” wasn’t exaggerated. I pity the younger generation of women if they have to put up with that. It was awful.

They’re Making America Great Again from the government to the military to the workplace. MAGA!

QOTD: A US Senator

Published by digby on January 14, 2025

KAITLIN COLLINS: How’s the bad behavior of a senator a defense of someone who wants to run the Pentagon?

MARKWAYNE MULLIN: It’s not. What I was trying to get to is, if you’re capable of doing your job and you’re able to still drink on the job or late in the evening, don’t tell me that Pete can’t.

In other words, Pete Hegseth is so good he can drink all day and all night and do a great job.

This is what we’ve come to.

What Is This Oligarchy You Speak Of?

Published by digby on January 14, 2025

Did you vote for any of these people?

Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg will attend President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday, according to an official involved with the planning of the event.

They will have a prominent spot at the ceremony, seated together on the platform with other notable guests including Trump’s Cabinet nominees and elected officials.

That image is going to be iconic. It says everything.

By the way, this isn’t just a ceremonial thing for Musk:

The New York Times is reporting that Elon Musk is preparing to set up the Department of Government Efficiency in the Eisenhower Building, which is less than a five-minute walk from the White House. It’s still unclear if the billionaire will have complete unfettered access to the West Wing (that requires a “special pass”), but at this point it’s obvious that the CEO—who has billions of dollars in federal and international contracts—will be a full-time cast member in Trump’s second term.

It’s still unclear what exactly DOGE will look like in D.C., as it is not an official government department and Musk is not a government employee. This would mean Musk and DOGE should be kept out of certain meetings and relationships, especially given the federal contracts Musk’s companies hold. Some Trump transition officials who spoke with the Times suggested that Musk could get an all-access West Wing pass by becoming a “special government employee.” But Trump is also very comfortable blurring those lines, or just erasing them altogether.

And running his businesses at the same time! He’s a busy boy. It’s nice that Musk will be able to keep an eye on all his government contracts from the inside. But then Trump will be doing the same thing so why not?