JD Vance on This Week, calmly demonstrating his revolutionary MAGA zeal:
As you can see, this man is unhinged. But the confident glibness of the slick liar is always unnerving. He’s dangerous.
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School voucher salesmen. This is getting to be like an old “I Love Lucy” episode. The facts don’t matter. Taxpayers are lining up to be sheared.
Friends like Jeff Byant (N.C.) and acquaintances like Jess Piper (Mo.) have hammered on efforts to privatize public schools for years. No matter what they’re called — school vouchers, charter schools, opportunity scholarships — they are schemes for separating public funding from public education and resegregating schools under the rubric of “choice.” For investors and wealthy parents, it’s about the money, either in profits or in tax breaks.
Piper is right, BTW:
So is Bryant. Charters that were once local and parent-organized are being squeezed out by the big-money boyz:
The aim is to bust school budgets and, in the words of Grover Norquist, drown public education in the bathtub so the mandated not-for-profit spending can wind up in the for-profit world.
This from Arizona in 2023:
Arizona’s universal school voucher program that was estimated to cost only $65 million is now poised to cost the state $900 million over the next year, exceeding its available funding by hundreds of millions of dollars.
John Ward, chief auditor for the Arizona Department of Education, said Wednesday the skyrocketing price tag is due to a projected spike in applicants to the voucher program. Ward estimates that the Empowerment Scholarship Account program, as it’s officially known, will reach 100,000 applicants by July 2024, far outstripping initial estimates and surpassing the $500 million dollar cushion provided in the budget passed last month.
Don’t believe this is not by design. The scheme is a scam, writes Thomas Mills at PoliticsNC:
When Moore says “ALL families,” he’s referring to wealthy families since the legislature eliminated the income cap for the vouchers. The site crashed because North Carolina has so many people already in private schools who now are eligible for state subsidized education. Rich folks who send their children to private schools are about to get a windfall while poor schools are going to lose funding. It’s Robin Hood in reverse.
The whole program is a scam, the epitome of a bait-and-switch. Republicans pushed through their voucher program as a way to level the playing field, offering poor families a way to send their children to private schools when public schools weren’t working for them. Now, they’re saying that families that don’t send their children to public schools shouldn’t have to pay for them. They have dropped any pretense of helping struggling families and moved straight to subsidizing rich people. According to Republicans, rich people have no community obligations.
Let’s be clear. The name “Opportunity Scholarship” is pure propaganda. There are two types of scholarships, need-based and merit-based. Giving vouchers to rich people just because they decide not to send their kids to public schools is a tax break, not a scholarship. And it’s a tax break designed for wealthy people at the expense of poor people.
Republicans are working hard to damage public schools. They fundamentally don’t believe in the responsibility of the state to provide a sound, basic education. They have cut per pupil spending, let teacher pay lag, and reduced support staff in schools. They’ve tried to dictate curriculum to indoctrinate students in a conservative philosophy, all while claiming public schools are brainwashing our kids with left wing ideas. They’ve left us with demoralized teachers and overworked staff and our children are paying the price.
And the GOP will subvert state constitutions to do it. You may have noticed that sort of thing is in fashion among MAGA Republicans.
If the Republicans win, they will have essentially reinterpreted the constitution. Article 9, Section 2 of the constitution reads, “The General Assembly shall provide by taxation and otherwise for a general and uniform system of free public schools, which shall be maintained at least nine months in every year, and wherein equal opportunities shall be provided for all students.” Traditionally, the court has interpreted the “uniform system” of “equal opportunities” to mean the quality of education should be as good in poor counties as it is in rich ones. The GOP would render the clause either aspirational or maybe just a suggestion, despite the word “shall.”
“Are you tired of paying high taxes, or any taxes? Tell ya what I’m gonna do.”
Joe Biden dominates South Carolina Democratic primary
With over 95 percent of the vote counted in Saturday’s Democratic primary in South Carolina, President Joe Biden swept every county, garnering 96 percent of the vote overall and 95 percent or better in every county.
As The New York Times put it, “There was not much drama Saturday night.” Biden himself was in Southern California, reports Politico. At the watch party at the state fairgounds in Columbia, people were headed for the doors less than an hour after poll closing.
Self-help author Marianne Williamson edged out Rep. Dean Phillips (Minn.), with the pair earning a combined 2 percent of the vote.
With the Biden vote so dominant, the race so uncompetitive, and the vote count so low (a mere 131 thousand), the Times attempts to draw comparisons to past primaries, but comparables are slim:
The last time an incumbent Democratic president sought re-election, in 2012, President Barack Obama went unchallenged in South Carolina — and the state did not hold a primary.
Four years later, when former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton defeated Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont in the state’s primary, 370,864 people voted. In 2020, with no competitive Republican primary and 12 Democrats on the ballot, 536,949 people voted.
The South Carolina Democratic Party said early vote data showed that the share of Black voters in the electorate was 13 percent higher than in 2020, when people of color made up about half of the voters in the Democratic primary and there was no Republican primary to siphon off voters.
In 2016, the last year in which both parties held presidential primaries in South Carolina, voters of color made up two-thirds of Democratic primary voters.
Biden and his allies moved South Carolina’s primary this year ahead of two states with less diverse population (Iowa and New Hampshire). Biden’s 2020 win there revived what appeared a flagging campaign. The campaign hoped “to counter a decline in approval for the president among some Black voters” and to underscore “actions the administration has taken to help benefit Black communities,” The Washington Post reports:
The incumbent’s team hoped a big win would springboard his campaign in the states ahead with a show of strength and quash intraparty doubts about some polling that has shown him trailing former president Donald Trump in a potential rematch. Saturday’s vote was also expected to provide a measure of Biden’s standing among Black voters, who helped propel Biden to victory and made up 56 percent of Democratic primary participants in the state four years ago, according to exit polls.
About polling. Use caution:
As far as what will motivates 2024 voters, I’m struggling to balance the need to defend our freedoms from (let’s face it) creeping fascism and Democrats’ conviction that what motivates voters more are kitchen table issues. I grew up in the Cold War when Birchers were screaming about the threat of creeping communism. Their red, white, and blue heirs today hunger for a fascist strong man. Do average voters see that threat or are they too busy fretting over paying for rent and groceries to notice?
Democratic politicians and MSNBC pundits keep hammering away at the threat to democracy. But democracy and fascism are too abstract for most voters. Freedom is not. But they can’t seem to get on board with that framing. Freedom is stability. Can Democrats walk the freedom walk and chew groceries at the same time?
Ezra Klein opined on people’s need to vote for stability in troubled times:
Biden and his allies are framing this election as order against chaos. The party that gets things done against the party that will make America come undone. Kristen Soltis Anderson, a co-founder of the Republican polling firm Echelon Insights, believes that the Democrats are right that voters are craving stability. But she thinks they refuse to see that Trump is leading in many polls because voters believe that he is the one who might offer it. What Trump is pitching, she said, is a “push for order — ‘I am going to be the one who secures the border. I’m going to be the one that cracks down on crime. I’m going to be the one that tries to stabilize your prices.’” To that list one might add Trump’s skepticism of America’s support for Ukraine and many voters’ dislike of Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza.
I’ve struggled with this portrayal of Trump as the candidate of stability. I doubt it can survive the gale-force winds of the actual campaign he will run, of the things people will hear and see from him when they tune in to the election. But I think Soltis Anderson is right when she says that Democrats are having trouble persuading voters of their central pitch: that they are the party of stability. It does not feel like a stable time. It is not Biden’s fault that the world is tumultuous. But that does not mean he will not be blamed for it.
There are months to go before fall voting begins. That the broader economy is going gangbusters may finally reach people’s kitchen tables beforehand. But Biden and Democrats still have to sell the Biden recovery and not flinch from fears that voters won’t buy it because they don’t feel it. Don’t take the country’s temperature, people. Change it. Biden has to lead the way, and he’s doing too few interviews, Klein suggests, at a time when his age is an issue, like it or not.
Meantime, I’m still obsessed with turning out independents, unaffiliateds, NPAs, etc. whose votes will ultimately determine the fall elections in multiple states. They are overwhelmingly under 45 around here and turn out at ~12 percent below Democrats in North Carolina’s bluest, densest precincts. Out in red, rural Trump country, older independents turn out far more. For Republicans. State average indendent turnout is 6.5 precent below Democrats.
What are Democrats doing wrong where their support among independents is strongest? There’s some drama there, I’m sure of it.
I don’t feel safe in this world no more
I don’t want to die in a nuclear war
I want to sail away to a distant shore and make like an apeman
-from “Apeman” by The Kinks, written by Ray Davies
Don’t put that umbrella away…the forecast is cloudy, with a chance of cosmic debris:
Meteorite hunters have successfully recovered fragments of an asteroid that impacted Earth over Berlin, Germany, on January 21st— and the space rocks could be very rare indeed.
The 3.3-foot (1-meter) wide asteroid dubbed 2024 BX1 was spotted by NASA around 90 minutes before it hit Earth’s atmosphere. It burned up upon impact, exploding and creating a fireball seen by observers across Europe.
Following the event, on January 22nd, intrepid meteorite hunters were out searching for fragments of Asteroid 2024 BX1. One team that hit pay dirt was led by SETI meteor scientist Peter Jenniskens; the crew found the second and third fragments to be uncovered. […]
The meteorites, weighing 5.3 grams and 3.1 grams respectively, were finally discovered by Freie Universitaet students Dominik Dieter and Cara Weihe at around noon local time on January 26th, with the team uncovering yet more samples on January 27th and 28th.
Well, no one got hurt, right? And besides, what are the odds of another one…oh, crap.
(via Live Science on February 1st)
A “potentially hazardous” football stadium-size asteroid will zip safely past Earth on Friday (Feb. 2), and, in doing so, will reach its closest point to our planet for more than 100 years. It will also be at least several centuries before the space rock ever gets this close to us again.
The massive asteroid, named 2008 OS7, is around 890 feet (271 meters) across and will pass by Earth at a distance of around 1.77 million miles (2.85 million kilometers), according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). For context, that is more than seven times further away than the moon orbits Earth.
Obviously we dodged that one (after all, it’s Saturday-and you’re reading this). Now I think we can relax. That should cap the gloom and doom for this week …oh, FFS:
WASHINGTON, D.C. – January 23, 2024 – The Doomsday Clock was reset at 90 seconds to midnight, still the closest the Clock has ever been to midnight, reflecting the continued state of unprecedented danger the world faces. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, stewards of the Doomsday Clock, emphasized in their announcement that the Clock could be turned back, but governments and people needed to take urgent action.
A variety of global threats cast menacing shadows over the 2024 Clock deliberations, including: the Russia-Ukraine war and deterioration of nuclear arms reduction agreements; the Climate Crisis and 2023’s official designation as the hottest year on record; the increased sophistication of genetic engineering technologies; and the dramatic advance of generative AI which could magnify disinformation and corrupt the global information environment making it harder to solve the larger existential challenges.
But aside from the nuclear/environmental/technological threats…we’re in good shape?
Rachel Bronson, PhD, president and CEO, the Bulletin, said: “Make no mistake: resetting the Clock at 90 seconds to midnight is not an indication that the world is stable. Quite the opposite. It’s urgent for governments and communities around the world to act. And the Bulletin remains hopeful—and inspired—in seeing the younger generations leading the charge.”
I’m getting mixed messages. You’ve seen the X-rays, so just give it to me straight, doc.
A durable end to Russia’s war in Ukraine seems distant, and the use of nuclear weapons by Russia in that conflict remains a serious possibility. In February 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced his decision to “suspend” the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START). In March, he announced the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus. In June, Sergei Karaganov, an advisor to Russian President Vladimir Putin, urged Moscow to consider launching limited nuclear strikes on Western Europe as a way to bring the war in Ukraine to a favorable conclusion. In October, Russia’s Duma voted to withdraw Moscow’s ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, as the US Senate continued to refuse even to debate ratification.
Nuclear spending programs in the three largest nuclear powers—China, Russia, and the United States—threaten to trigger a three-way nuclear arms race as the world’s arms control architecture collapses. Russia and China are expanding their nuclear capabilities, and pressure mounts in Washington for the United States to respond in kind.
Meanwhile, other potential nuclear crises fester. Iran continues to enrich uranium to close to weapons grade while stonewalling the International Atomic Energy Agency on key issues. Efforts to reinstate an Iran nuclear deal appear unlikely to succeed, and North Korea continues building nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. Nuclear expansion in Pakistan and India continues without pause or restraint.
The candidates’ suitability to shoulder the immense presidential authority to launch nuclear weapons should be a central concern of the US election in fall. This is especially true given the concerns at the end of the previous administration, which prompted then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley to take steps to ensure that he would be consulted in the event the former president sought to launch nuclear weapons.
And the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas has the potential to escalate into a wider Middle Eastern conflict that could pose unpredictable threats, regionally and globally.
Jeez. I bet you guys are fun at parties.
Anyway, the pure entertainment value of Armageddon has not been lost on film makers over the years, whether precipitated by vengeful deities, comets, meteors, aliens, plagues, or mankind’s curious propensity for seeking new and improved ways of ensuring its own mass destruction. With that joyful thought in mind, I’ve curated my Top 10 End of the World Movies, each with a suggested co-feature.
So enjoy…while you still can.
The Book of Life
The WMD: An angry God
Hal Hartley’s stylish, postmodernist fantasy re-imagines Armageddon as an existential boardroom soap. On New Year’s Eve, 1999, a yuppie Jesus (Martin Donovan) and his P.A., Magdalena (P.J. Harvey) jet into NYC, checking into their hotel as “Mr. and Mrs. DW Griffith”. J.C. has arrived to facilitate Dad’s bidding re: the Day of Judgment. However, the kid has doubts about all this “divine vengeance crap”. His corporate rival, Satan (Thomas Jay Ryan) is also in town. Trials and tribulations ensue.
Although it is not a “comedy” per se, I found the idea of Jesus carrying the Book of Life around on his laptop pretty goddam funny (“Do you want to open the 5th Seal? Yes or Cancel”). Clocking in at 63 minutes, it may be more akin to a one-act play than a full feature film narrative, but it’s engrossing and thought-provoking.
Double bill: w/ The Rapture
The Day the Earth Caught Fire
The WMD: Nuclear mishap
This cerebral mix of conspiracy a-go-go and sci-fi (from 1961) was written and directed by Val Guest. Simultaneous nuclear testing by the U.S. and Soviets triggers an alarmingly rapid shift in the Earth’s climate. As London’s weather turns more tropical by the hour, a Daily Express reporter (Peter Stenning) begins to suspect that the British government is not being 100% forthcoming on the possible fate of the world. Along the way, Stenning has some steamy scenes with his love interest (sexy Janet Munro). The film is more noteworthy for its smart, snappy patter than its run-of-the-mill f/x, but has a compelling narrative. Co-starring veteran scene-stealer Leo McKern.
Double bill: w/ Until the End of the World
Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
The WMD: The Doomsday Machine
“Mein fuehrer! I can walk!” Although we have yet to experience the global thermonuclear annihilation that ensues following the wheelchair-bound Dr. Strangelove’s joyous (if short-lived) epiphany, so many other depictions in Stanley Kubrick’s seriocomic masterpiece about the tendency for those in power to eventually rise to their own level of incompetence have since come to pass, that you wonder why the filmmakers even bothered to make it all up.
It’s the one about an American military base commander who goes a little funny in the head (you know…”funny”) and sort of launches a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. Hilarity and oblivion ensues. And what a cast: Peter Sellers (as three characters), George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Slim Pickens, Keenan Wynn, James Earl Jones and Peter Bull. There are so many great quotes, that you might as well bracket the entire screenplay (by Kubrick, Terry Southern and Peter George) with quotation marks. (Full review)
Double bill: w/ Fail Safe
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
The WMD: Ornery aliens
The belated 2005 adaptation of satirist Douglas Adams’ classic sci-fi radio-to-book-to TV series made a few old school fans (like me) a little twitchy at first, but director Garth Jennings does an admirable job of condensing the story down to an entertaining feature length film. It’s the only “end of the world” scenario I know of where the human race buys it as the result of bureaucratic oversight (the Earth is to be “demolished” for construction of a hyperspace highway bypass; unfortunately, the requisite public notice is posted in an obscure basement-on a different planet).
Adams (who died in 2001) was credited as co-screenwriter (with Karey Kirkpatrick); but I wonder if he had final approval, as the wry “Britishness” of some of the key one liners from the original series have been dumbed down. Still, it’s a quite watchable affair, thanks to the enthusiastic cast, the imaginative special effects and (mostly) faithful adherence to the original ethos.
Double bill: w/ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Original 1981 BBC-TV series)
Last Night
The WMD: Nebulous cosmic event
A profoundly moving low-budget wonder from writer/director/star Don McKellar. The story intimately focuses on several Toronto residents and how they choose to spend (what they know to be) their final 6 hours. You may recognize McKellar from his work with director Atom Egoyan. He must have been taking notes, because McKellar employs a similar quiet, deliberate manner of drawing you straight into the emotional core of his characters.
Although generally somber in tone, there are plenty of wry touches (you know you’re watching a Canadian version of the Apocalypse when the #4 song on the “Top 500 of All Time” is by… Burton Cummings). The powerful denouement packs quite a wallop.
Fantastic ensemble work from Sandra Oh, Genevieve Bujold, Callum Keith Rennie and Tracy Wright. McKellar tosses fellow Canadian director David Cronenberg into the mix in a small role.
Double bill: w/ Night of the Comet
Miracle Mile
The WMD: Nuclear exchange
Depending on your worldview, this 1998 sleeper is either an “end of the world” film for romantics, or the perfect date movie for fatalists.
Anthony Edwards and Mare Winningham give winning performances as a musician and a waitress who Meet Cute at L.A.’s La Brea Tar Pits museum. But before they can hook up for their first date, Edwards stumbles onto a reliable tip that L.A. is about to get hosed…in a major way.
The resulting “countdown” scenario is a genuine, edge-of-your seat nail-biter. In fact, this modestly budgeted 90-minute thriller offers more heart-pounding excitement (and more believable characters) than any bloated Hollywood disaster epic from the likes of a Michael Bay or a Roland Emmerich. Writer-director Steve De Jarnatt stopped doing feature films after this one (his only other credit is the guilty pleasure sci-fi adventure Cherry 2000).
Double Bill: w/ One Night Stand (1984)
Testament
The WMD: Nuclear fallout
Originally an American Playhouse presentation, this film (with a screenplay adapted by John Sacred Young from a story by Carol Amen) was released to theaters and garnered a well-deserved Best Actress nomination for Jane Alexander. Director Lynne Littman takes a low key approach, but pulls no punches; I think this is what gives her film’s anti-nuke message more teeth and makes its scenario more relatable than Stanley Kramer’s similarly-framed but more sanitized and preachy 1959 drama On the Beach.
Alexander, her husband (William DeVane) and three kids live in sleepy Hamlin, California, where afternoon cartoons are interrupted by a news flash that nuclear explosions have occurred in New York. Then there is a flash of a different kind when nearby San Francisco (where DeVane has gone on a business trip) receives a direct strike.
There is no exposition on the political climate that precipitates the attacks; this is a wise decision, as it puts the focus on the humanistic message of the film. All of the post-nuke horrors ensue, but they are presented sans the melodrama that informs many entries in the genre. The fact that the nightmarish scenario unfolds so deliberately, and amidst such everyday suburban banality, is what makes it very difficult to shake off.
As the children (and adults) of Hamlin succumb to the inevitable scourge of radiation sickness and steadily “disappear”, like the children of the ‘fairy tale’ Hamlin, you are left haunted by the final line of the school production of “The Pied Piper” glimpsed earlier in the film… “Your children are not dead. They will return when the world deserves them.”
Double Bill: w/ When the Wind Blows
The Quiet Earth
The WMD: Science gone awry (whoopsie!)
Bruno Lawrence (Smash Palace) delivers a mesmerizing performance in this 1985 cult film, playing a scientist who may (or may not) have had a hand in a government research project mishap that has apparently wiped out everyone on Earth except him. The plot thickens when he discovers that there are at least two other survivors-a man and a woman. The three-character dynamic is reminiscent of a 1959 nuclear holocaust tale called The World, the Flesh and the Devil, but it’s safe to say that the similarities end there. By the time you reach the mind-blowing finale, you’ll find yourself closer to Andrei Tarkovsky’s territory (Solaris). New Zealand director Geoff Murphy never topped this effort; although his 1992 film Freejack, with Mick Jagger as a time-traveling bounty hunter, is worth a peek.
Double Bill: w/ The Omega Man
…or one from column “B”: The Last Man on Earth, I Am Legend
The Andromeda Strain
The WMD: Bacteriological scourge
What’s the scariest monster? The one you cannot see. Robert Wise directs this 1971 sci-fi thriller, adapted from Michael Crichton’s best-seller by Nelson Gidding. A team of scientists race the clock to save the world from a deadly virus from outer space that replicates with alarming efficiency. The team is restricted to a hermetically sealed environment until they can figure a way to destroy the microbial intruder, making this a nail-biter from start to finish.
Double bill: w/ 28 Days Later
When Worlds Collide
The WMD: Another celestial body
There’s a brand new star in the sky, with its own orbiting planet. There’s good news and bad news regarding this exciting discovery. The good news: You don’t need a telescope in order to examine them in exquisite detail. The bad news: See “the good news”.
That’s the premise of this involving 1951 sci-fi yarn about an imminent collision between said rogue sun and the Earth. The scientist who makes the discovery makes an earnest attempt to warn world leaders, but is ultimately dismissed as a Chicken Little. Undaunted, he undertakes a privately-funded project to build an escape craft that can only carry several dozen of the best and the brightest to safety.
Recalling Hitchcock’s Lifeboat, the film examines the dichotomy of human nature in extreme survival situations, which helps this one rise above the cheese of other 1950s sci-fi flicks (with the possible exception of a clunky Noah’s Ark allusion). It sports pretty decent special effects for its time; especially depicting a flooded NYC (it was produced by the legendary George Pal). Rudolph Maté directed; Sydney Boehm adapted his screenplay from the novel by Edwin Balmer and Philip Wylie.
Double Bill: w/ Another Earth
Further hand-wringing:
Happy End of the World: Top 15 Anti-Nuke Films
Viral Movies: 10 Films You Never Want to Catch
West Coast Aflame, Film at 11: Top 10 Eco-flicks
More reviews at Den of Cinema
— Dennis Hartley
But what if it doesn’t happen?
IN THE MIDDLE of last year, several of Donald Trump’s closest advisers, including some of his 2024 campaign’s senior staff, started noticing an ominous trend in independent polling and in internal Republican survey data: A significant share of swing voters in key states — even some Republicans — say they would not want to vote for a freshly-convicted criminal.
The trend spooked them enough that, in recent months, some of these officials and political allies have directly warned Trump of possible looming catastrophe ahead for his 2024 presidential bid, two people with direct knowledge of the matter tell Rolling Stone.
For the most part, Trump has shrugged off such warnings, as he and his campaign brass publicly lean on bravado and their messaging that President Joe Biden’s reelection prospects are unequivocally doomed in November. Still, Trump and his legal team are working diligently to delay his criminal trials, in hopes that he can secure the presidency once again — and the power to quash the cases — before any potential convictions come down.
They’ve had at least some success: On Friday, the judge in Trump’s Washington, D.C. election subversion case declared that the trial will not take place on March 4, as it was originally scheduled, and will be rescheduled at a later date.
Republicans close to the former president and current 2024 GOP frontrunner have been carefully tracking poll results — especially in a handful of battleground states that will decide the expected Biden-Trump rematch — of likely swing voters who say they are open to pulling the lever for Trump, with a major caveat. Many of these survey respondents, including in the crucial bloc of self-identifying independents, keep saying that they would not vote for Trump, if prior to the election, a jury handed down a guilty verdict in one of the criminal cases against him.
In a number of national and state polls, this variable — whether Trump is criminally convicted — puts what has been a moderate Trump lead in peril. For several months, this trend has continued to appear in a variety of high-quality polls, both public and private, including as recently as this week.
But even as the MAGA elite publicly insist that Biden is historically vulnerable as an incumbent, the polling trend has grown increasingly difficult for Trump’s lieutenants to just brush off, according to interviews with seven knowledgeable sources such as conservative activists close to Trump 2024, officials working on the ex-president’s campaign, longtime GOP operatives, and Trump allies in right-wing media.
“[Late last year], I mentioned to him how the polls were saying a conviction would hammer him with some of the voters he needs to keep in his column to win,” says a source who has spoken to Trump about 2024 many times. “I said it was something to take very seriously, but not necessarily a death blow … But in my own thoughts, I kept thinking, ‘It’d be a fucking disaster.’ But we’ll find out, I guess. Hopefully, people are lying to the pollsters.”
[…]
Within the upper echelons of Team Trump, there is a range of opinion on what these numbers mean exactly. Some say it’s too early and that it’s all theoretical, and therefore possibly a polling mirage. Others are concerned, but they’re not setting their hair on fire. Some are privately saying that a criminal conviction could be fatal to Trump’s chances at reconquering the White House.
Another close Trump ally tells Rolling Stone that, though there are many variables and Biden’s own polling is uniquely terrible, they can’t shake the feeling that one day they’ll look back on this polling trend as a bright-red warning sign — one that is comparable to the foreboding signs that Trump’s 2016 opponent saw for months before her defeat.
As this Trump ally points out, 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign was derailed in part by an investigation by former FBI Director James Comey. The ally notes that Clinton “had [FBI director James] Comey hanging over her for the 2016 campaign. It was not the only thing that brought her down, but it was a significant thing… hacking at her campaign for months. Is a criminal conviction going to be our Hillary-Comey moment, if there ends up being [a guilty verdict] before the election? It’s a question that sort of haunts me, and I’ve discussed it with some of President Trump’s campaign people and people who the [former] president listens to.”
His cult doesn’t care, of course. They think he’s Jesus. And Trump himself doesn’t really worry about this having a negative effect on his electoral chances, I suspect because he plans on trying to unleash massive civic unrest if it happens. Whether that would do him any good remains to be seen but we saw on January 6th that he’s convinced violence is not only acceptable, it’s preferable to accepting defeat.
They go on to quote one of his big Evangelical backers who says that he will only get more popular if he’s convicted. They really do see him as the second coming.
The big question here is whether or not he will have a conviction under his belt before the election. The way it’s going , it doesn’t look all that promising. Jude Tanya Chutkan just postponed the January 6th case beyond March because the District Court is dragging its feet on the immunity case. (Needless to say, if they and the Supremes find that presidents have immunity for anything they do while president, even after they are out of office, we will have bigger problems — we will have a democracy in name only.) These delays could very well put them out of reach before the election and we know what he’ll do if he wins. And if the media would pound this the way they did Hillary Clinton’s penny ante email scandal, it would help.
And I have to wonder what will happen even if one or more of these important cases goes to tria and he’s found not guilty or there’s a mistrial? It’s certainly not beyond the realm of possibility. Look at Kyle Rittenhouse, who went to a protest, loaded for bear, and then killed two unarmed protesters and got away with it. It could happen. And then all bets are off.
Don’t believe anything Republicans say
In virtually every way, this economy is better than it was under Trump before the pandemic. You know, the best economy the world has every seen? Yeah, that one.
In case you were wondering how they are dealing with this?
Of course.
I wrote recently about Kevin McCarthy’s crusade to take down Nancy Mace and the others who engineered his ouster. Mace is a specific target and for good reason. She is a real piece of work.
Just this week this was revealed:
According to two reports, as pro-Trump rioters stormed the US Capitol in an attempt to stop Congress from certifying the presidential election on January 6, freshman GOP Rep. Nancy Mace tried to convince her staff to let her get attacked.
The Washington Post reports Mace was so incensed at then-President Donald Trump that she brought up the idea of approaching rioters head-on in the hopes she would get punched in the face and become the “face of anti-Trump Republicans.”
She’s since endorsed Trump to become the GOP’s next presidential nominee.
Hours after the Post published its piece, The Daily Beast seconded the reporting, noting that three sources who personally witnessed the conversations confirmed they happened. Those sources told the Beast that Mace explicitly said she wanted to “get punched in the face” for “media attention.”
This report by Abby Phillips says it all. The question is, will Trump go to bat for her? Will MyKevin cross him? Stay tuned.
Who needs a dog whistle?
Some of you may not be fully aware of who Charlie Kirk is and how influential he has become in the Republican Party. He originally started as a right wing youth organizer but in recent years has evolved into a major organizer of right wing activism across the board. Hit Turning Point USA conferences, which are held throughout the year, are major events that attract all the big names in the MAGA word as well as many “establishment” types. His organization is the heir to CPAC which has been losing steam for some time.
Here’s a recent dispatch from Dave Weigel at Kirk’s latest gathering:
LAS VEGAS – In a Planet Hollywood hotel ballroom, a few steps away from the Criss Angel Theater, around 200 Republican Party activists worked on their battle plans. The Republican National Committee would not save them. They would save themselves.
“No more culture of losing,” Turning Point USA CEO and co-founder Charlie Kirk told an audience of RNC members, GOP county chairs, and plugged-in activists. “Embrace Donald Trump. Don’t fight Donald Trump. Embrace what he’s brought to the party. It’s a populist, people-centered movement, and this is what the oligarchs fear the most.”
The two-day Restoring National Confidence summit was built to tweak Ronna McDaniel’s party committee, whose 168 members were about to meet in another hotel on the strip. Both meetings unfolded as the RNC released its weakest yearly fundraising numbers of McDaniel’s tenure.
TPUSA, with annual revenue not far off the RNC’s, had been building an alternative power base for years. It advocated non-stop “relational” organizing, developing an app that its allies could use to find votes. It had identified low-propensity voters — “disengaged voters,” as Arizona RNC member Tyler Bowyer called them — and put their information in binders for conference attendees. And it had built an influential media network, including Kirk’s show, which revels in the weekly churn of cultural battles that obsess the young, online right.
One host last week had expounded at length on the potential “psyop” of the Kansas City Chiefs making it to the Super Bowl and Taylor Swift endorsing Joe Biden — a topic that came up several times on stage in Las Vegas. Democrats, explained Bowyer and pundit Jack Posobiec, would use Swift’s fame to engage those lower-propensity, low-information voters.
The same week, Kirk had caused his own uproar by lashing out about diversity efforts at airlines — “I’m sorry, if I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like boy I hope he’s qualified,” he said on his show — and posting at length about the criminal records of the Central Park Five, after one of them, the recently elected New York City Council Member Youssef Salem, was pulled over by police. Earlier in the month, he’d commemorated Martin Luther King Jr. Day by remarking upon the civil rights leader’s “awful” personal life. The comments drove shocked media coverage — and, according to Kirk, getting no blowback “outside of one donor.”
Kirk then made this pivot …
That last is fellow fascist agitator Candace Owens getting on the bandwagon.
I wish this was fringe stuff but it isn’t. As you can see these people have a ton of money and they are very influential. They travel under the radar of the mainstream media so you may not be aware of just how dangerous they are. The fascist tone of their rhetoric has become very explicit. And millions of people absorb what they’re saying every single day.
Update —
Lol. There’s a little trouble in paradise:
There was a time when the right wing railed against Michelle Obama for encouraging kids to eat their vegetables and go outside to play and had a complete meltdown over governments trying to stop kids from drinking so much sugary soda that there is now an epidemic of obesity among children. How dare the government deign to advise Americans about healthy eating.
Just a couple of months ago there was a story that health experts were considering telling people that they should cut down on beer consumption and it resulted in this lovely retort:
Needless to say, nobody is talking about shutting down the beer or soda pop industry or limiting Ted Cruz from drinking as much as he wants to.
Get a load of what the freedom loving right is up to now. Yes, Florida is leading the way, once again:
Gov. Ron DeSantis said at a press conference Friday that he opposes the promulgation of lab-grown meat in Florida.
Discussing his opposition to implanting an environmental agenda on farmers, the governor noted that lawmakers are working through legislation to ban lab-grown meat production.
“You need meat. OK?” the governor said. “We’re gonna have meat in Florida.”
“We’re gonna have fake meat? That doesn’t work,” he said. “We’re gonna make sure to do it right.”
Rep. Tyler Sirois, R-Merritt Island, is the sponsor for HB 435. The legislation has so far passed one subcommittee in the House and has two more to go.
Sen. Clay Yarborough, R-Jacksonville, is the sponsor for SB 586. That bill has not been taken up by any of its committee assignments yet.
A bill by Sen. Jay Collins, R-Tampa, SB 1084, also would crack down on lab-grown meat, with other provisions included. It has passed one of its three committee assignments so far.
Florida Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson has been working with lawmakers to push that provision, along with farmer tax breaks and other measures.
This is obviously a sop to the meat industry which doesn’t want the competition. In the world as we previously knew it the market decides if people want the alternative product or not and I would guess that most people are still going to choose the real thing when it comes to meat. Nobody is proposing to force people to eat Impossible or Beyond Beef but now DeSantis is proposing to ensure that those who want it can’t have it. Because, as he says, “you need meat!”
It’s not just about helping out his rich buddies, though. It’s also another salvo in the right’s culture jihad where he remains its Osama bin Laden. He’s been pushed back to Tallahassee but he hasn’t given up.
Insist it’s already bent
Donald “91 Counts” Trump famously learned to attack, attack, attack from skeevy attorney Roy Cohn, and to worship himself from Norman Vincent Peale, the positive-thinking guru. Trump has navigated 77 years of his life and scammed his way to celebrity by demanding, whatever the truth of the fine mess he’s created, whatever the dirty deals he was involved in (look, here’s another), that reality bend to his will. He’s always the innocent, always the victim, always the victor.
It’s not as if the Republican Party with the aid of its right-wing media allies wasn’t already far along the path to up-is-downism. It’s just that Trump’s natural flair for the scam fit so well with the party’s proclivities that he was able to wholly coopt the conservative movement.
Now, with the U.S. economy firing on nearly all cylinders under Joe Biden in 2024, Trump will have to find another gear to sell his marks that it’s all going to shit. Have no doubt. He will.
The U.S. economy just keeps getting better. And it’s forcing Donald Trump and his allies to contort the talking points they thought would guide them back to the White House.
A remarkable run of good economic news has tripped up the Trump campaign’s initial plans to paint President Joe Biden as a disaster on the economy. Now, the GOP frontrunner is grasping for new ways to attack the administration’s increasingly robust record.
You can read about that here and here. Even Fox Business is buckling to to reality. Even hacks and shills like Stephen Moore recognize it (emphasis mine).
“I think that is the question of the day,” said Stephen Moore, a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation and an economist with FreedomWorks who is close to the Trump campaign. “You can’t blame the president when policies go wrong, and then say he’s not responsible if things are going right.”
Moore, who said he met with Trump in December and discussed the economic outlook, added: “If this continues, where you see strong job growth and also if you see wages outpacing inflation, as has been for the last nine months or so, that certainly makes the argument less persuasive.”
But Trump’s skill is not in crafting persuasive arguments. It’s in relentless repetition. He’ll “power of positive thinking” his way to convincing followers his fabulous new clothes fit his naked, rock-hard body like his head fits Sylvester Stallone’s torso.
See?
Trump has responded by throwing out a series of counterarguments downplaying Biden’s role in the economic upswing, including suggesting that the stock markets’ gains are actually his doing.
On Monday, he claimed on Truth Social that voters were already enjoying a “TRUMP STOCK MARKET” because the economy was anticipating his eventual victory. For now, Trump said, “EVERYTHING ELSE IS TERRIBLE (WATCH THE MIDDLE EAST!)”
Such claims have proved too much for economists and “for many Republicans as well.” But those are people who live in the real world and only vacation in Trump’s, not residents of MAGAstan.
“Biden officials say they recognize that the president faces an uphill battle selling his own agenda, even with the recent economic tailwinds,” Politico continues. So long as grocery prices remain 25 percent higher than where they were before the Covid pandemic, Trump will have an easier time selling “EVERYTHING ELSE IS TERRIBLE.”
Democrats need not to sit back and let him. People can’t eat statistics.
Truth:
“Trump won’t be honest about the economy for the same reason he’s been rooting for the market to crash before the next election,” Democratic National Committee rapid response director Andrew Floyd said in a Friday statement. “He only cares about himself, and he’ll leave working families out to dry if he thinks it’ll help him and his ultra-rich friends.”