Author: tristero

A Free Pass Masquerading As Objectivity

by tristero

There’s something really screwy at the NY Times.  Trump and his cronies are desperate to project total unity. But with the publication of the Christianity Today editorial blasting Trump’s morals, that wall, at least among evangelicals, has started to show cracks. So how does the Times write up that astonishing (and wonderful) news?

The headline states, “Evangelical Leaders Close Ranks With Trump After Scathing Editorial.” But the article itself contradicts the headline by directly quoting an “evangelical leader” — and by no stretch of the imagination, a liberal or a secularist— who did not close ranks with Trump:

Peter Wehner, a Christian columnist and author who worked as a speechwriter for President George W. Bush, said that Mr. Trump’s most outspoken defenders had created a misleading impression that evangelical Christians universally embrace the president. 

“They speak as if they define the movement,” he said. “And a lot of people who aren’t familiar with evangelical Christianity see this and say, ‘Well, they must be representing all Christians.’” 

“That’s the significance of what Christianity Today did,” Mr. Wehner added. “They stood up and they said no. That’s not right. We can’t continue with this charade, this moral freak show anymore.”

Yes, Trump and his christianist goons have bludgeoned most of his evangelical opponents into a surly silence. But the story, the news, is that that silence is starting to fall apart, not that his henchmen are still pledging loyalty.

But also, the article goes easy on Trump. Very easy. Check this out:

For the past three years, conservative American politics, and white evangelical Christianity along with it, has realigned steadily and forcefully around Mr. Trump and his coalition. Much like the “Never Trump” voices within the Republican Party, evangelical detractors have receded into the background during the three years Mr. Trump has been president. 

Their absence from the national conversation was partly why the editorial was so jolting. But it was also a reminder that the evangelical movement is not monolithic and includes people who may appreciate some of the president’s actions, like the appointment of conservative judges, but are repelled by his inflammatory rhetoric on issues like race and immigration.

This description, while harsh, is still treating Donald Trump with kid gloves. It’s not that the Times needs to eviscerate Trump. They simply need to be objective. For example:

My guess is that if the Times bothered to talk to the many evangelical Christians who have been dissed into silence,* they’d learn they are repelled by far more than his racism and xenophobic rhetoric (although that is more than enough). They also care about what he does.

For starters, they are repelled by his disgusting adulterous behavior, his vindictiveness, his lies, his incarcerating children in cages, his mockery of people with disabilities, his disrespect for military heroes, and his flouting of every single standard of moral decency, including every Christian standard of morality.

*I know at least one very devout Christian who is terrified to speak out against Trump to nearly everyone s/he knows. I don’t travel in evangelical circles but s/he has struck me over the years, as more than representative of the others I’ve met. I’m certain there are many more conservative Christians who are appalled at Trumpism.

Thanks Be To God

by tristero

 An editorial from Christianity Today,

The president of the United States attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president’s political opponents. That is not only a violation of the Constitution; more importantly, it is profoundly immoral…

To the many evangelicals who continue to support Mr. Trump in spite of his blackened moral record, we might say this: Remember who you are and whom you serve. Consider how your justification of Mr. Trump influences your witness to your Lord and Savior. Consider what an unbelieving world will say if you continue to brush off Mr. Trump’s immoral words and behavior in the cause of political expediency. If we don’t reverse course now, will anyone take anything we say about justice and righteousness with any seriousness for decades to come? 

Nope. Unless they immediately renounce their delusional obsession with Trump, no one should take anything an American evangelical says seriously about justice and righteousness ever again.

By the way,  Christianity Today is not, by any stretch of the imagination, even a “centrist” publication, as it’s been described by an incredibly lazy mainstream press. It was founded by the preacher Billy Graham who was a close friend of Richard Nixon’s. They shared anti-semitic un-pleasantries back in the day. That’s not centrism in my book.

In other words, that even Christianity Today is calling for Trump’s removal is a sign of (1) how utterly unhinged from mainstream political discourse the rest of the evangelical movement has become; and (2) perhaps a hopeful portent that finally evangelicals are waking up to the strategic stupidity of supporting a president who is a moral disaster.

It’s Holiday Fundraising time. If you’re of a mind to support the kind of independent media we provide here, informed by nearly two decades of daily observation and analysis, you can do so at the links below or at the address on the column on the left.


Again, thank you so much for reading and supporting my work all these years. It means the world to me. — digby

Happy Hollandaise everyone!

“A Nice School Shooting” — And Then It Gets Worse. And Even Worse.

by tristero

There doesn’t seem to be a bottom to the rightwing. Or to how far the mainstream press will go to attempt to normalize them. This would have seemed to be as low as it could get:

The conservative married couple’s afternoon talk show on KNUS in Denver had been going for a half-hour on Tuesday when the husband made a remark that alarmed his wife, stunned their listeners — and soon cost them their jobs. 

“All right, Chuck Bonniwell, Julie Hayden here, a little after 1:30, talking about the never-ending impeachment of Donald Trump,” Mr. Bonniwell said on the air. “Yeah, you wish for a nice school shooting to interrupt the monopoly—”

Well, openly wishing for a “nice school shooting” got them yanked from the air, like pronto.

Good, right? Nope.The station still had to fill up that air time. So who did they pick?

On Thursday, to replace the canceled “Chuck and Julie Show,” KNUS began airing a show hosted by Sebastian Gorka…

This is Sebastian Gorka:

A group with alleged historical links to Nazi Germany has told NBC News it was “proud” when President Donald Trump’s deputy assistant wore its medal. 

Controversy has swirled around Sebastian Gorka, one of Trump’s top counterterrorism advisers, ever since he attended the president’s Jan. 20 Inaugural Ball wearing the honorary medal of Hungarian nationalist organization Vitezi Rend…

… members of the organization were likely complicit in the murder of some of the hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews toward the end of World War II. 

That’s right. The radio station replaced a guy who was yearning for “a nice school shooting” with a man who, in the White House, wore medals linked to a Nazi-aligned group implicated in the murder of hundreds of thousands of Jews.

And then it gets even worse. Because this is how the NY Times described Sebastian Gorka:

On Thursday, to replace the canceled “Chuck and Julie Show,” KNUS began airing a show hosted by Sebastian Gorka, a hard-line conservative who was briefly an adviser to Mr. Trump before being forced out in August 2017.

The Times thinks Sebastian Gorka is “a hard-line conservative?” Are they out of their minds?

A “hard-line conservative” is to Sebastian Gorka as rotted shark is to dog poop. Yes, rotted shark is utterly revolting, but eating dog shit can kill you.

It’s Holiday Fundraising time. If you’re of a mind to support the kind of independent media we provide here, informed by nearly two decades of daily observation and analysis, you can do so at the links below or at the address on the column on the left.

Again, thank you so much for reading and supporting my work all these years. It means the world to me. — digby

Happy Hollandaise everyone!

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The Best News of 2019 (In Fact, the Only Good News) 

by tristero

The return of The Far Side.

Times Square NY Impeachment Eve 

by tristero

It’s holiday fundraiser time —if you would like to help keep his blog going, you can use one of the buttons below. Thank you so much. — digby

Happy Hollandaise!

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Distorted Reporting

by tristero

I honestly don’t know how the Times lets political reporters get away with this egregiously awful level of distorted reporting. Let me summarize first.

The first four paragraphs of the story describe how Representative Slotkin released a statement supporting Trump’s impeachment and then was “shouted down” by MAGA goons at a town hall meeting. The distinct impression you get is that her decision to impeach was wildly unpopular at the town hall.

It’s not until the second sentence of Paragraph Five that you learn the truth. In fact, Slotkin’s constituents support impeachment, and her. And the distortions don’t end there. Slotkin wasn’t shouted down. In fact, despite the MAGA clown acts, she actually read her statement supporting impeachment.


Don’t take my word for it. Here’s the opening of the story:

 Impeaching President Trump, Representative Elissa Slotkin said, “was pretty much the last thing I wanted to be working on in my first term as a congressperson.” 

Yet there she was at midnight Sunday, holed up in her farmhouse at a desk that had belonged to her grandfather — and, before that, President Woodrow Wilson’s secretary of war — clicking the “send” button on a newspaper op-ed article explaining why, after months of resisting impeachment, she would vote to charge the president with high crimes and misdemeanors. 

The blowback was quick and intense. Dozens of angry Trump supporters bearing “Impeach Slotkin, Keep Trump” signs shouted down Ms. Slotkin, a first-term Democratic congresswoman who represents a Republican-leaning district, at a packed town hall-style meeting on Monday morning in a university ballroom in the city of Rochester. 

“Hey, hey! Ho, ho! Elissa Slotkin has got to go!” they chanted, amid intermittent cries of “One-term congresswoman!” and “C.I.A. Hack!” — a reference to Ms. Slotkin’s past work as a C.I.A. analyst. 

But the voices on the other side, though not nearly as loud, were present in force. Most in the crowd of about 400 people leapt to their feet and applauded when Ms. Slotkin — plowing through her prepared statement as her pleas for civility were ignored — announced her intention to vote “yes” on Wednesday when the House holds historic votes on two articles of impeachment.

Something is seriously wrong at the Times.

It’s Happy Hollandaise time. If you’d care to support this blog for another year, you can do so below. Thanks — digby

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Looks Like We’re Not Going to Keep It 

by tristero

“A republic, if you can keep it, ” Ben Franklin famously said when asked whether the Founders had created a republic or a monarchy.

Looks like we’re not going to keep it. The reason? Republicans are outspending and out-talking Democrats to sway public opinion about impeachment:

U.S. President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign is countering impeachment efforts against him with a new surge in Facebook ads, while his Democratic rivals are saying little on the subject on the social media site or the campaign trail.

Living in a republic is no walk in the park, as we all know. But it sure beats living in a dictatorship, as we’re all about to find out unless things turn around very, very quickly.

The Best Way to Listen to Congressional Testimony 

by tristero

Cook.

Today, while listening to hours of debate, I baked a nice loaf of bread and also cooked some Aloo Gobi (potatoes/cauliflower curry) and basmati rice. Easy to do and enabled one to concentrate on the discussions. Conclusions:

The Republicans don’t have a leg to stand on and they know it. The Democrats did a very good job of making the case (but should have added more articles of impeachment).

Oh, and the food came out well but I’ll have to wait several hours to try the bread, which is agony.

It’s Not Just the Jews — and It’s Not Just America 

by tristero

India:

India’s parliament has passed a bill which offers amnesty to non-Muslim illegal immigrants from three neighbouring countries. 

The controversial bill will provide citizenship to religious minorities in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. 

The government, led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), says this will give sanctuary to people fleeing religious persecution. 

Critics say the bill is part of a BJP agenda to marginalise Muslims…

Delhi-based lawyer Gautam Bhatia says that by dividing alleged migrants into Muslims and non-Muslims, the bill “explicitly and blatantly seeks to enshrine religious discrimination into law, contrary to our long-standing, secular constitutional ethos”. 

Historian Mukul Kesavan says the bill is “couched in the language of refuge and seemingly directed at foreigners, but its main purpose is the delegitimisation of Muslims’ citizenship”. 

Critics say that if it is genuinely aimed at protecting minorities, the bill should have have included Muslim religious minorities who have faced persecution in their own countries – Ahmadis in Pakistan and Rohingyas in Myanmar, for example. (The government has gone to the Supreme Court seeking to deport Rohingya refugees from India.) 

 And speaking of Myanmar…

A day after Daw Aung San Suu Kyi listened at the world’s highest court in The Hague to testimony of the horrors inflicted upon the Rohingya Muslims of Myanmar — veils ripped off girls before their rapes, babies thrown to their deaths, hundreds of villages turned into kindling — the Nobel Peace Prize laureate on Wednesday defended her homeland from accusations of genocide at the International Court of Justice. 

“Genocidal intent cannot be the only hypothesis,” she said in day two of public hearings, adding that her country’s own judicial system was investigating any possible crimes and would be reaching its own conclusions. 

Presenting what many human rights experts have called some of the worst ethnic pogroms of this century as the result of “cycles of intercommunal violence going back to the 1940s,” Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi chided outsiders for not having an adequate understanding of Myanmar’s complex ethnic and social makeup.

As if any country’s “complex ethnic and social makeup” justifies genocide.

Anti-Semitism Is About to Become Official US Policy

by tristero

The United States is about to enshrine anti-Semitism as its official policy:

Liberal American Jewish advocacy groups have reacted with horror to reports that President Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order defining Judaism as a nationality rather than just a religion. 

According to a Tuesday report from The New York Times, the president is planning the order to help combat anti-Semitism on U.S. college campuses and crack down on boycott campaigns against the state of Israel. 

But progressive Jewish groups suggested the reported move is actually anti-Semitic, in that [it] casts Jews as a separate nationality to all other Americans…

Exactly. If Judaism is a nationality, then Jews by definition, can no longer be American citizens. Unless, of course, they renounce their loyalty to Judaism. Regardless, there will always be the suspicion of dual loyalty.

And that, dear readers, is anti-Semitism, plain and simple.

*****

Adding: Trump’s anti-Semitic initiative also implicates Jews more directly in Israeli policies. Because Jews are, by definition, citizens of a Jewish nation, that means that Jews living in the US who forcefully criticize Israel (their actual nation, the nation of Jews) betray their country.

No, it’s not really coherent, but it doesn’t matter. What matters are the consequences of this incredibly dangerous Trump policy:

If you think anti-Semitic hate crimes are on the rise — and they most certainly are — you ain’t seen nothing yet.

UPDATE: And what I mean is there will be more killings, like Pittsburgh and, now, Jersey City 

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