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Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

A Little Pandering Between Friends

Published by Tom Sullivan on June 12, 2024

Oreos, beer, snack food and sedition

https://x.com/JohnFugelsang/status/1800690946172166633

How gullible do Donald Trump’s footmen think his #MAGA base is? Pretty gullible, judging by their latest conspiracy theory regarding Hunter Biden’s three felony convictions. And conservatives claim it’s liberals looking down their noses at them.

CNN:

In the wake of Hunter Biden’s conviction on federal gun charges Tuesday, right-wing media personalities sought to downplay the jury’s decision, falsely claiming the case was a “fake trial” designed to “cover up” other supposed crimes committed by the president and his family.

The reaction showcased how far to the fringes the right-wing and pro-Trump media ecosystem has drifted in recent years, with high-profile personalities defaulting to conspiracy theories and innuendo in response to inconvenient political news.

Via Greg Sargent at The New Republic:

“Hunter Biden guilty. Yawn,” tweeted MAGA thought leader Charlie Kirk. “The true crimes of the Biden Crime Family remain untouched. This is a fake trial trying to make the Justice system appear ‘balanced.’ Don’t fall for it.”

“The gun charges are a giant misdirection,” added Stephen Miller. He added that the verdict is an easy opportunity for the Justice Department to hoodwink “a pliant media that is all too willing to be duped. Don’t be gaslit. This is all about protecting Joe Biden and only Joe Biden.”

Yes, the people whose 24-7-365 propaganda made “gaslighting” Merriam-Webster’s word of the year in 2022 warn MAGA cultists against being seduced by the lies of devilish nonbelievers. The truth is what Dear Leader declares it (The National Desk):

The Trump campaign released a statement to CNN saying, “This trial has been nothing more than a distraction from the real crimes of the Biden Crime Family, which has raked in tens of millions of dollars from China, Russia and Ukraine. Crooked Joe Biden’s reign over the Biden Family Criminal Empire is all coming to an end on November 5th, and never again will a Biden sell government access for personal profit. As for Hunter, we wish him well in his recovery and legal affairs.”

The media outlet pointed out that Trump’s campaign then sent an updated statement “striking the well wishes to Hunter.”

Ever the sore winner, Donald Trump with his 34 felony convictions sneers at Hunter’s three and alleges fraud in the counting. (Not yet, but give him time.)

Everything is rigged against Trump is a cornerstone of the MAGA faith. Trump may have bent the rules a bit, promoted a little violent sedition. He had to smite the Left for God and country and to stop the steal. But Joe Biden is the Devil incarnate. The Devil issued this statement upon his son’s conviction:

As I said last week, I am the President, but I am also a Dad. Jill and I love our son, and we are so proud of the man he is today. So many families who have had loved ones battle addiction understand the feeling of pride seeing someone you love come out the other side and be so strong and resilient in recovery. As I also said last week, I will accept the outcome of this case and will continue to respect the judicial process as Hunter considers an appeal. Jill and I will always be there for Hunter and the rest of our family with our love and support. Nothing will ever change that,” the president said in a statement provided to The National Desk.

Sargent again:

The enormous contortions required to portray the justice system as rigged at every turn show yet again that pretty much everything the MAGA right is saying about these matters is about laying a pretext for Trump, once back in office, to launch prosecutions of Biden and Democrats without cause, under the guise of tit-for-tat payback for something that wasn’t actually done to Trump and his followers. As I’ve argued, Trump and his MAGA allies relentlessly claim that he will seek “revenge” and exact “retribution” with such prosecutions, to reverse-engineer the deceptive impression that Trump was the victim of what he is threatening, i.e. prosecutions without a legitimate basis.

The MAGA media stars promoting law enforcement-as-conspiracy nonsense know what they’re selling is as phony as the penis pills and dietary supplement ads that pay their salaries. Is it propaganda? Yes. It’s also pandering, pandering to people they believe are gullible enough to think they are sincere and to buy their shit.

Jon Stewart on Monday’s “The Daily Show” roasted “hollow corporate pandering” behind campaigns promoting Gay Pride month, DEI programs, and whatever social movement is popular this month to sell Oreos, beer, and snack foods. Only until those pressures subside.

“So, they are very clearly conflicted between the very high moral values that they think we want and the amoral values that serve their shareholders,” Stewart argued. “There is nothing corporations do that is not in service of their bottom line.”

https://youtu.be/TWVbZ0WQ3s8?si=6nGmxXTyo7ZhzhUV

We are conditioned from childhood to consume. The people with something to sell (even sedition) know that and use that, employing the same techniques that treat their followers as uncritical marks, easily led, and too stupid to know it. The right’s bottom line is control.

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A Study In Contrasts

Published by digby on June 11, 2024
The 2016 GOP Convention

As Democrats continue with their perennial handwringing over the election and media bigfoots write the 3,785th article about why, despite polls showing a tied election. Joe Biden should drop out it’s interesting to note that the recently convicted felon heading up the other party’s ticket is being deliriously embraced by voters and officials alike. Not even one Republicans has suggested he step down. Not one newspaper or right wing columnist. Nada.

The Huffington Post’s S.V. Date takes a look at the GOP’s total unwillingness to even consider dumping Trump:

Eight years after a credible effort to dump Donald Trump as their presidential nominee because of his vulgarity, Republicans today appear stuck with the newly convicted felon for November, with no realistic means of taking the nomination away from him at their convention next month, even if they wanted to.

“There will be no move to, no mechanism for and no interest in removing Trump at the convention,” said Richard Porter, a Republican National Committee member from Illinois.

To Fergus Cullen, a former RNC member as a onetime chair of the state party in New Hampshire, the key element of that analysis is “no interest in.”

“The residents of Jonestown chose suicide rather than leave,” he said, likening Trump to the infamous cult leader Jim Jones. “He has a death grip on the RNC and the delegates. Even if polls showed him losing 65-35, they would choose to go down with him.”

That’s an interesting analogy isn’t it? Especially considering that Trump said this just this last weekend:

Back in 2016 they tried to stop him. The rules allowed for it. But Trump has taken care of that. Today he has personal flunkies in almost every position in the party. Even if there was a movement afoot to do it, which there isn’t, there will no path to make it happen under the rules.

I would imagine there might be a few Haley voters in the group who’ll carry some signs but the GOP is winner take all in most states (thanks to trump) and there won’t be much pushback. It will be a Trump coronation with all the bells and whistles. There will be no deviation among the cultists.

We Need A Little Hopium Today

Published by digby on June 11, 2024

Simon Rosenberg has a good one today. He shows that Biden has made some slight gains in the polls in the wake of Trump’s conviction although it’s still essentially tied. He also notes:

538 unveiled its 2024 forecasting model this morning and it gives Biden a 53% chance of winning the election. The key to how we win in this model is our strength in MI, PA, WI, the blue wall states which get us to 269 Electoral College votes, or check as I’ve been calling it.

He also notes that we have reports in the last week or so showing that the economy is rolling, crime is way, way down and (I would add, border crossings are also much lower in the last 6 months.)

Rosenberg concludes:

In the last few weeks we’ve gotten repeated confirmation of the success of the Biden Presidency – inflation is down, food prices are down, crime and murder rates are way down, gas prices are down, the flow to the border is down. We’ve had the strongest economic recovery of any advanced economy in the world, the best job market since the 1960s, the lowest uninsured rate in American history, the deficit is trillions less, the Dow has broken 40,000 and all three indices continue hover in record terrirtory, and domestic oil, gas and renewable production continue to be at all time highs leaving America more energy independent than it has been in decades. Consumer sentiment surged last month. The Wall Street Journal called the American economy the “envy of the world,” and the Economist just wrote about the unprecedented start up boom America is experiencing right now. Biden’s big three investment bills have dramatically accelerated the energy transition necessary to combat climate change and will be creating opportunities and jobs for our workers for decades to come.

Yes, I know. If things are so good why is it so close? It’s because our political culture is sick because of Trump and his MAGA movement which has turned right wing grievance into a profit making cult.

Yes, prices are higher than they were in 2019. So are interest rates. But people are also getting raises, they’re travelling all over the place, buying big consumer items and generally doing fine, which even they admit when asked. They are just disturbed about the state of the economy for everyone else, which gives away the game. This isn’t about individuals’ assessment of their material well-being. It’s about their spiritual and psychological well-being. Trump is making everyone, especially his own followers, unhappy.

But I’d still rather be us than them. Reality does eventually bite.

I’ve Got Your Kitchen Table Issue For You Right Here

Published by digby on June 11, 2024

This is very good news:

The Biden administration Tuesday willannounce rules to block medical debt from being used to evaluate borrowers’ fitness for mortgages and other types of loans, people familiar with the matter told The Washington Post.

The proposed rules from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau arrive less than five months before Election Day and are poised to be part of President Biden’s closing argument that he is addressing pocketbook issues as voters rank the economy as their top concern.The White House has repeatedly focused on the issue of medical debt, saying it disproportionately harms low-income Americans and communities of color.

“This is going to be an enormous relief for so many people battling bills when it comes to medical visits,” CPFB director Rohit Chopra said Tuesday on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” teasing the forthcoming rules.

The rules set to be announced Tuesday would ban credit reporting agencies from incorporating medical debt when calculating credit scores, said the people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private discussions. The rules would also bar lenders from using medical debt to determine loan eligibility, they said.

The proposal will undergo weeks of public comment — meaning this November’s election will probably determine whether the measures are finalized. GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump did not seek to remove medical debt from consumers’ credit reports during his four years in the White House.

This could be huge for millions of people. Medical debt can be crippling because the numbers are so large. It’s been mitigated by the availability of insurance and the rules promulgated by Obamacare, but it’s still out there. Even if you have good insurance it can be overwhelming. This sort of debt is unavoidable so it shouldn’t be held against you.

Whether the Wingnut 6 on the Supreme Court will allow this to go through is another story. But Democrats have to try to get this sort of thing done. Student loans and medical debt are major problems that are begging for relief and the high court plays with fire every time it denies that these issues affect every American who isn’t a millionaire.

The Greatest Oil Trader Ever

Published by digby on June 11, 2024

2024’s biggest story you’ve never heard about

That’s just fascinating. But this is the only place I’ve heard about it. I’m going to guess that the Biden campaign doesn’t want to say anything ab out it for fear of it backfiring. But it’s something that history will surely record.

Hunter Biden Guilty

Published by digby on June 11, 2024

This isn’t a surprise. I expect that Hunter will see the inside of a jail cell for his crimes of filling out one form wrong and paying his taxes late long before Trump will. After all, Trump just tried to stage a coup and stole nuclear secrets so the punishment must fit the crime.

For the first time ever in history, the right is applauding someone being found guilty on federal gun charges of failing to properly fill out a form. Normally they have a hard time applauding the conviction of mass murderers if they used a precious AR-15 to do it. Nonetheless, they are absolutely convinced that it’s all for Biden’s benefit because it makes him look good:

They are also a little bit bewildered that the leader of the Biden Crime Family allowed this to happen. They assumed that he would get off:

That fine fellow is on the short list for Attorney General in a new Trump administration.

I heard something this morning that I’ve missed before. Apparently, one of the reasons the plea agreement fell apart last year was because they wanted the judge to supervise his parole and she refused. They wanted her to do it because they were afraid that a Trump administration in charge of Hunter Biden’s release would almost certainly say he violated the terms and throw him in jail. This was reported by MSNBC’s Lisa Rubin and I don’t know how much this had to do with the decision to back out of the plea deal.

CNN reported that the Trump campaign put out this statement:

“This trial has been nothing more than a distraction from the real crimes of the Biden Crime Family, which has raked in tens of millions of dollars from China, Russia and Ukraine. Crooked Joe Biden’s reign over the Biden Family Criminal Empire is all coming to an end on November 5th, and never again will a Biden sell government access for personal profit. As for Hunter, we wish him well in his recovery and legal affairs.

Apparently, they then withdrew it and erased that final sentence. I’d guess Dear Leader didn’t like it. Class all the way.

I’m not sure if any of this will make a difference in today’s political world but it’s right nonetheless:

Does anyone care?

Betting Against America

Published by Tom Sullivan on June 11, 2024

It’s never a good bet

Well, this is eye-catching from Jeet Heer:

“In other words, a significant portion of America’s economic elite are either autocrats, cowards, or so single-mindedly rapacious that they are indifferent to the survival of democracy.”

Heer begins:

While Donald Trump’s felony conviction for falsifying business documents is hurting him with independent voters, it has only increased his popularity with a demographic cohort that is much smaller in number—but still has an outsize role to play in election outcomes: the super-rich. Axios reports that a Morning Consult poll shows that 49 percent of independent voters think Trump should drop out of the presidential race because he is a felon. This strong negative result is already in evidence in polls showing that Trump’s persistent lead over rival Joe Biden has shrunk and the presidential race is now dead even.

But this bad news for Trump, the BBC reports, has been countered by another development: “Ultra-wealthy Republican donors are rallying behind former US President Donald Trump following his historic trial and criminal conviction.” Indeed, for some tycoons, Trump’s courtroom troubles are reasons for supporting him. For Shaun Maguire, a partner in the powerful Silicon Valley firm Sequoia Capital, Trump’s long list of indictments was a “radicalizing event.”

“Bluntly, that’s part of why I’m supporting him,” Maguire wrote in a long post on X (formerly known as Twitter) announcing a $300,000 donation to Trump’s campaign. “I believe our justice system is being weaponized against him.” Aside from Maguire, the BBC lists other extremely wealthy Trump supporters, including casino owner Miriam Adelson, hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, fracking pioneer Harold Hamm, and Blackstone Group CEO Steve Schwarzman. Some of these moguls, notably Schwarzman, had previously been critical of Trump for his instigation of an attack on the Capitol as part of scheme to overturn the 2020 election results. But in recent months, they and other members of the 1 percent have decided to put their money on Trump. As a result, Joe Biden’s once formidable financial lead over Donald Trump is rapidly shrinking. In the month of April—for the first time in this election cycle—Trump started raking in more money than Biden.

In response to the rich rallying to Trump, The Economist published a polemic by LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman arguing that investors should realize that Trump’s return to the White House would undermine the rule of law, an essential prerequisite for capitalist health. Hoffman acknowledges the “lamentable” reality “that a growing number of America’s corporate and financial leaders are opening their wallets for Donald Trump.”

Here’s some of what Hoffman wrote:

He and his ideological allies have been quite explicit: upon regaining power, they intend to corrupt the legal system to use the state against political opponents. Some American elites support this autocratic agenda because in such a Trumpist regime they expect to be the new oligarchs. Others fear that opposing Mr. Trump will bring retaliation, so seek safety by pledging loyalty.

Most conventionally, of course, there is the simple siren promise of a second Trump term’s lower corporate-tax rates and softer regulatory enforcement.

That’s right. They hate paying the cost of the civilization that made their businesses rich so much that they’ll bet on an autocrat who would make the country unsafe for doing business. (Do they teach basic logic in business schools or just wealth maximization?)

But, ooooh, we could be the new oligarchs! Like Russia’s oligarchs. Think of the money to be made selling defenestration insurance! (We ourselves will never need that, of course.)

Heer suggests that Hoffman’s warnings are lost on Trump’s wealthy supporters because “they are as inherently autocratic as Trump himself.”

Stay with me.

Marley’s ghost carried the chains he unknowingly forged in his life. Seems to me we rarely recognize the traditions and habits of mind passed down for so many generations that they’re almost genetic. Patriarchy for one. Race animosity is another. When friends insist on labeling economic harms a product of late-stage capitalism or neoliberal policies, I wince. Those views are too 20th-century. I’d look further back, Much further.

It’s why readers may be tired of me branding flag-draped MAGAs royalists, not colonists. Some habits of mind, some personality types even, run deeper than modern economic analysis. Caste runs deeper. (India banning it didn’t make it go away.) And antisemitism. It took Russia barely a decade from the fall of the USSR to revert to being a nation of oligarchs and peasants, not unlike what it had been before the October Revolution.

What we see today is feudalism trying to reassert itself. It did not vanish with the Magna Carta and The Enlightenment. It just went underground for a few centuries. It was present in the “Cotton is King” days under slavery in the South. It popped up again for a time during the Gilded Age before Progressive Era reforms. It’s been trying to crawl out from under its rock ever since FDR.

Our 21st century plutocrats were only waiting, biding their time.

Arguing for economic populism, Heer concludes, “Trump-loving plutocrats are a threat to democracy, and there is political capital to be reaped by highlighting that fact and promising to rein in their outsize economic power.”

Joe Biden warns, “It’s never ever a good bet to bet against America.” Look where these guys are placing bets and call them out for it. For what they’re doing. For who they really are.  

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Authoritarianism By Numbers

Published by Tom Sullivan on June 11, 2024

Momma always said feral is as feral does

Biden ad: https://x.com/MikeSington/status/1799847976346739104

Yes, it’s true that just over a third of Republicans are unaware that their party’s nominee has been indicted for conspiring to overturn the 2020 election. But that says more about them than it does about Joe Biden’s and Democrats’ prospects for November. Even most of the third-plus that are aware of Trump’s indictments will vote for him anyway. It’s the slow bleeding of support that’s begun that will doom Trump’s reelection. Why do you think he’s working more systematically than ever to prepare his minions for overturning democracy and instituting authoritarian rule when he loses in 2024? He doesn’t need a majority to do it, just general American complacency and numbness to his nuttiness.

Yes, Trump rants like someone you’d cross the street to avoid. But it’s not the unwell, conscious parts of his brain plotting authoritarian rule. That’s his feral instincts at work, the ones that have kept him out of jail into his late seventies.

Adam Parkhomenko lays out how authoritarianism-by-numbers works for Los Angeles Magazine:

Donald Trump will be a dictator from Day One. He will seek revenge against his adversaries. He will fire civil servants not loyal to him. He will pardon insurrectionists and terminate the constitution.

He’s said as much to fawning right-wing interviewers, and he makes these statements by design, Parkhomenko explains:

An age-old gambit from the authoritarian playbook, the strategy behind Trump’s statements is one that worked in Nazi Germany, in the Soviet Union, and in other repressive regimes throughout history. Evil intentions are floated. Reactions are assessed. Weaknesses are exploited. Intentions are repeated. Wrongs become desensitized. Scapegoats are named. Opposition is divided and conquered. Power is grabbed. Distractions are created. Dissent is squashed. Then, with the groundwork complete, what was once considered unthinkable becomes reality.

Trump, like aspiring authoritarians before him, is fostering a national environment in which his self-first vision of governance can be achieved. He is conditioning and reconditioning Americans to tolerate central tenets of authoritarianism. Sadly, the sinister strategy is thus far working. Each time he speaks of eroding the norms of American governance, our national and individual alarm bells ring a little quieter than the time before. Numbness permeates about the grave danger he represents.

In addition to Republicans not being aware of Trump’s indictments, Rachel Bitecofer warns that Americans in general are unaware of what the Trump Reorganization’s Project 2025 has planned in its roadmap to autocracy.

What you don’t know can hurt you. And what you think you know and thus stopped paying attention to can as well.

As Trump’s repeated authoritarian statements wear out moderate voters’ emotions, they also provide tantalizing red meat to his base. MAGA diehards are thrilled by Trump’s every suggestion of upending norms in America because they wish to live in a country in which Trump is their all-powerful leader. They want Donald Trump as their Vladimir Putin or their Kim Jong Un.

“We have no king but Caesar!” cried the Hebrew chief priests to Pontious Pilate in rejecting Christ. Jesus-shmesus. Who needs freedom of religion and self-governance?

“Donny Trump stashed his Kim Jong Un love letters with his passports,” Marcy Wheeler (emptyweheel) tweeted this morning. He so wants an invitation to their autocrats club, even as they laugh at him like other world leaders.

But recognize that while Trump’s conscious mind is scrambled eggs, the feral parts still have agency and focused purpose that can do great harm. Think Frankenstein’s monster:

Former president and convicted felon Donald Trump has told America who he admires, who he is, and how he intends to destroy the foundations of our republic. After years of conditioning, many voters will dismiss the former president’s statements as hyperbole and nothing more than ‘Trump being Trump.’ Others will wrongly believe that sweeping changes could never come to pass in America, even if he is elected. Millions adopted a similar mindset throughout history, and like authoritarians before him, Trump is counting on mass complacency.

Authoritarian regimes come to power when the population fails to take threats to their freedoms seriously, or when the population fails to recognize emerging authoritarianism until it is too late. To stop Donald Trump from becoming the dictator he wishes to be, the American people and our institutions must recognize what he is doing and be vigilant enough to stop him. We must defeat him on November 5.

Don’t let others save the republic for you. It’s not a private fight. Anyone can join.

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Good Words From The Right Person

Published by digby on June 10, 2024

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) warned that the “progressive movement is undermined” when criticism of the Israeli government turns to antisemitism.

Ocasio-Cortez, along with other members of the progressive congressional “Squad,” has called for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas conflict amid thousands of civilian casualties in Gaza. Israel has said strikes will continue until Hamas is eliminated following the terror group killing more than 1,0000 and kidnapping hundreds in an Oct. 7 attack.

Ocasio-Cortez hosted a talk on Monday with Jewish Council for Public Affairs CEO Amy Spitalnick and public policy strategist and activist Stacy Burdett centered on rising reports of antisemitism in the United States amid college campus protests condemning Israel’s government.

The New York congresswoman stressed that criticism of Israel is not automatically antisemitic, but stressed that antisemitism is “on the rise.” When rhetoric “crosses a line,” she argued, into hateful speech then it “undermines” the “progressive movement.”

“Criticism of the Israeli government is not inherently antisemitic and criticism of zionism is not automatically antisemitic. That being true does not mean that we should not recognize criticism and when that criticism crosses a line into real harms against our Jewish community,” she said. “Antisemitism is an assault on our values as Americans and especially as progressives.”

“Acknowledging” that antisemitism is on the rise, she added, “does not take away from fights for liberation.”

“When the Jewish community is threatened, the progressive movement is undermined,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “That’s why it’s so important that we reject it as fiercely as we reject and look for misogyny, Islamophobia, or any form of bigotry and discrimination in any space that we occupy.”

She is a true leader. The best.

Nobody has been more critical of Israel and the Biden administration over Gaza. But she’s absolutely right to admonish people about antisemitism which is definitely in the rise and is being commonly wielded by people who apparently don’t know better. She is the right person to carry this message.