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Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

The Half-Liz

Published by digby on January 30, 2024

JV Last at the Bulwark points out that everyone needs to take a breath and remember that Nikki Haley is untrustworthy. All you have to do is look back at the way she’s been trying to have it both ways throughout the primary campaign to realize it. I would add that her decision to work for Trump and then sing his praises when she left the administration, promising to campaign for “this one” gesturing to Dear Leader was a low point.

Anyway, Last writes:

Nick Catoggio argues that Haley is trying to execute “the Half Liz.” He means that she’s attempting to thread the needle between the Liz Cheney and Ron DeSantis positions on Trump:

[Q]uestioning his mental stability and vouching for the defamation judgment are meaningful, if lesser, transgressions to GOP orthodoxy in their own right. By moving past policy to blame him for causing his own biggest problems, Haley is rejecting the first commandment. From “chaos follows him” to “he surrounds himself in chaos”: That’s the half Liz.

But Catoggio points out that what Haley is saying about Trump now will ultimately matter a lot less than what she says after she quits the race:

[W]hat Nikki Haley says about Trump after her campaign ends will be much more significant than what she says about him during its current “hospice care” stage. The half Liz strategy is fine for now—she’s earned the benefit of the doubt on her political instincts by overperforming in the primary—but if she turns around after exiting the race and supports Trump, she’ll have proved my critique correct. Unless it eventually progresses to the full Liz, the half Liz is ultimately just a “permission structure” to vote MAGA in the general election, albeit a bit more grudgingly than you otherwise might have.

I wouldn’t get my hopes up. Last notes that she is still trying to hedge her bets quoting her saying that despite all his problems, “I trust the American people to make good decisions.”

“I trust the American people to make good decisions” is tautological. It’s declaring that any decision which the public makes is, by definition, the good one.

But it’s not just tautology. It’s a permission structure. Haley is laying the groundwork to endorse Trump because, if the voters choose Trump as the nominee, then they must be correct. Nikki Haley has off-loaded her capacity to reach critical judgments concerning Trump. That’s simply in the hands of The People.

And who is she to tell Republican primary voters that they’ve made a terrible decision?

The logical contradiction is obvious. Here’s the first theorem:

IF, Nikki Haley trusts the American people to make good decisions . . .

AND in 2016 and 2020 one group of the American people—Republican voters—chose to nominate Trump . . .

THEN these must have been good decisions.

But how does that gibe with the second theorem:

IF in 2020 an even larger group of the American people decided that they preferred Joe Biden to Donald Trump . . .

THEN that was a good decision, too.

You can reconcile them by simply agreeing that Biden > Trump.

But Haley has to square it with a third theorem:

IF Republican voters decide to nominate Trump for a third time . . .

THEN this is a good decision . . .

AND People should vote for Biden this time, too . . .

BECAUSE Biden > Trump.

As Last concludes, she is certainly going to endorse Trump when all is said and done. It will be a total shock if she doesn’t.

Meaning that, again, this is a politicians who will simply say anything.

Of course she is. She will do anything to preserve her viability. But, in truth, she will have none. If he wins he will never forgive her. If he loses the base will never forgive her. She should probably go full-Liz in the hopes that somehow the GOP will come to its sense in the next few years and reward those who stood up. But she won’t. She’s cooked.

It’s Always Something

Published by digby on January 30, 2024

Elected Republicans can’t agree on anything these days. (Well, except for their love and commitment to Dear Leader Trump.)

Fireworks erupted during a closed-door House Republican whip meeting on Monday night, Axios has learned.

House Republicans are bitterly divided over the bipartisan tax deal struck by Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.), but they’re being side-stepped by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.).

Smith and Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) could be overheard in a heated exchange outside the meeting, with the New York Republican hammering the measure for not including a provision on raising the State and Local Tax deduction (SALT) cap — a key priority for members in high-tax states.

The tense conversation came as Johnson told a group at a Congressional Institute event that House GOP leadership has decided to move forward with the tax deal on suspension.

This procedural move requires a 2/3 vote to pass the House, but prevents small groups of members from blocking a vote.

 “I understand these guys’ frustration, both political and policy wise,” bill supporter Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.) told Axios.

“But I think at the end of the day you’ve got to try and get as many votes as you can otherwise you’re not gonna have any chance of movement in the Senate.”

“I get it if you’re from New York and California you’d like to get some tweaks,” another member said.

The deal struck by Smith and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) would bolster the child tax credit and provide research and development credits for businesses.

Multiple GOP members argued they think more time should be provided to members to be briefed and allowed to provide their input on the bill.

Some conservatives have argued that they’re concerned the Child Tax Credit language not requiring a parent to have a Social Security number would provide a tax break for undocumented immigrants and feel it shouldn’t be brought up under suspension.

When the Republicans can’t agree among themselves on a tax bill you know they are just fighting for the sake of fighting. Chaos is their middle name.

No, Trump Was Not The Prince Of Peace

Published by digby on January 30, 2024

The right is pimping this fatuous notion that Trump never lost a life (not counting the hundreds of thousands from COVID, of course) during his presidency. Why do they think this? Because Dear Leader says so:

“we would right now have Peace throughout the World” if Jesus Christ … er… Donald Trump were president. He says that and they believe it.

His and others’ recitation of the Trump presidency is not true. Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal and set them back on the course to being a pariah state. It hasn’t gone well.

CNN’s Briana Keilar on Monday got into a heated exchange with Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL) over the Biden administration’s Middle East policy, which he said was emboldening Iran to sign off on proxy attacks on American soldiers.

During an interview, Keilar argued to Waltz that figuring out how to deter Iran-backed proxies had plagued multiple administrations, including Trump’s whose policies Waltz touted as a better alternative.

“I know you’re critical of President Biden, that you think he is emboldening Iran, but how should the U.S. respond when even former President Trump — I mean, you said that peace broke out [under his watch], but his direct and controversial action like taking out [late Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani] did not stop the deadly attacks on U.S. troops,” she noted.

Waltz replied that Trump ordered the assassination of Soleimani after Iran-backed proxies had launched multiple strikes on the U.S. and its allies, and he claimed that those strikes single-handedly fixed the problem.

“They launched some missiles and that was it!” he claimed.

“Service members died!” Keilar interjected.

“Who died, post-Soleimani strike?” Waltz demanded to know.

“March 2020, service members died,” she said. “You had Iranian-backed proxies… the one in March was determined that it likely was [Iran] and you had service members, two Americans and one Brit, who were killed… So if we’re talking realistically on what deters and what does not deter the proxies, then let’s use those facts to talk about what might actually be a way to… get them to stop.”

https://youtu.be/oFQWqApBzU4?si=ZPG18npC-XP2pyrb

MAGA Thinks It’s Won The Election

Published by digby on January 30, 2024

I can usually suss out what they’re talking about but in this case I just don’t get it. Why is this going to win him the election? E. Jean Carroll going shopping with the 83 million in damages she won from Trump defaming her? That she offered to take Rachel Maddow with her? So what? How is that the political death blow to Biden?

Whatever. I guess I shouldn’t question the logic of people who think Taylor Swift is a Pentagon Psy-op to sabotage Trump’s election. There’s no point.

The Essence of Trumpism

Published by Tom Sullivan on January 30, 2024

A party of frauds

E. Jean Carroll (center) and attorneys Roberta Kaplan and Shawn Crowley.

E. Jean Carroll’s attorney Shawn Crowley last week rebutted Donald Trump lawyers’ argument to the jury in his $83.3 million defamation case. She distilled Trump and Trumpism to his/its essence (CNN):

Crowley concluded her rebuttal by saying essentially that Trump believes he is above the law.

Trump believes that “He gets to lie. He gets to threaten. He gets to ignore a jury verdict. He gets to defy the law and the rules of this courtroom,” Crowley said. “You saw how he behaved through this trial. Rules don’t apply to Donald Trump.”

“Ladies and gentleman, this isn’t a campaign rally. It’s not a press event. It’s a court of law and Miss Carroll’s life,” Crowley said. “Donald Trump sexually assaulted her. He defamed her. He is not the victim.”

But MAGA Republicans are MAGA Republicans because they believe, as Trump believes of himself, that they are victims. Trump portrays himself as the patron saint of victims, and their avatar.

Trump is special. Oh so special.

“Donald Trump is just not a regular man,” Doug Roberts, a retired electrician and Trump fan, said outside a Nikki Haley rally in South Carolina on Sunday. Roberts showed off his “I Voted For Trump” tee shirt for the AP camera. White on black.

“Through him, and with him, and in him,” as the Eucharistic Prayer concludes, MAGA partakes of Trump’s glory. Elevated, sanctified in his body and blood, they are, as Trump is, above the law and beyond it. They may lie, threaten, reject election results, sack the Capitol, and claim “hostage” status when held to account. In His Name their sins are forgiven.

And increasingly without him. Trumpism is a symbol of conservatives’ rejection of all they once claimed holy. But he is not the source of their apostacy. He is its expression.

Aaron Blake writes (Washington Post):

A consequential development of the Trump era is what increasingly looks like the Republicans’ acrimonious divorce from the rule of law.

The party that once prided itself as the law-and-order side has leaped headlong into highly speculative theories about the “weaponization” of the justice system, spurred by former president Donald Trump. Both Trump and his former lawyer Rudy Giuliani recently flouted civil defamation verdicts against them by continuing to defame their victims — cheered on by many on the right. Republican voters increasingly want a president who is willing to break both rules and laws to get things done.

But some members of the party have in recent days crossed a new threshold: by suggesting that it’s okay to disregard the Supreme Court.

After the Supreme Court ruled last week that federal authorities can remove razor wire that Texas put on the U.S.-Mexico border, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.) posted on X, formerly Twitter, that “Texas should ignore it.”

Chip Roy was not alone.

By Friday, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) had gone on CNN and indicated that it would be okay to disregard the Supreme Court in certain circumstances.

Stitt’s office did respond to a request for clarification.

The behavior, even if not an explict violation of the Supreme Court ruling, now adds to a pattern of defiance not unlike that of southern states ahead of April 1861.

The Roy and Stitt comments come after Alabama Republicans last year flouted a Supreme Court order regarding the state’s congressional map. The court had upheld a lower-court ruling that required a second district “in which Black voters either comprise a voting-age majority or something quite close to it.” The resulting district was just 40 percent Black. The lower court again rejected it, saying it was “not aware of any other case in which a state legislature” declined to abide by such an order. The Supreme Court again upheld that ruling.

Republican claims to the rule of law are as much a fraud as Trump himself. We are headed into “dicey territory,” Blake writes, with rhetorical clashes that “come from a party that has demonstrated increasingly little regard for the current application of the rule of law.”

Except when it can be used as a cudgel against adversaries.

Bright Light Of Goodness

Published by Tom Sullivan on January 30, 2024

Sunlight to a vampire

Formerly Twitter observed that there are more images and video of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce hugging and kissing after Sunday’s AFC Championship Game than of the JFK assassination. It’s been nagging at me in a good way.

David Letterman called it “a lovely thing.” He calls Swift “a glowing, bright light of goodness in the world,” and sorely needed.

Fans began calculating travel time, and whether Swift will be able to fly back from her Tokyo show in time to make the Super Bowl. Others noted that during the celebration on the field that Swift stepped aside so Travis Kelce could share a moment alone with his brother Jason. Swift shared warm hugs with Travis’ mother and father and sister. It’s an entire glowing, bright light of family values goodness.

Naturally, the right web is seething and losing what’s left of its mind.

The right’s lunatic fringe is floating insane consipracy theories about the left using Swift to rig the Super Bowl, and Swift planning to endorse Joe Biden at halftime, etc. The entire relationship is fabricated for ratings and political advantage, dontcha know?

User Andrew Nadeau snarked, “I love the idea that liberals conspired to get Taylor Swift to date Travis Kelce and then rigged the playoffs because this somehow abstractly helps Biden. That’s where we shine. We can’t get free healthcare but perfectly execute a Riddler-esque conspiracy to ruin a football game.”

The right’s freakout is about more than Kelce being vaccinated against Covid. It’s about this:

https://x.com/Victorshi2020/status/1752023330096370121?s=20

They’re scared. They should be.

But here’s the thing. Let’s go back to what Anat Shenker-Osorio said last week:

The thing is, people need to see, “Oh, that’s what my kind of a person thinks.” Humans are social creatures. We’re tribal. We want to find cues in our environment that tell us what our category subscribes to.

The left needs (and habitually fails to adopt) powerful symbols to indicate belonging and to provide those on the fence with social proof of what “people like me” think. “The left needs hats,” Anand Giridharadas suggests, a symbol that makes fence-sitters say, “I’ll have what she’s having.”

Shenker-Osorio writes:

As we’ve touched on previously, social proof  — where people think the thing they think people like them think — is real. It’s one of the most persuasive tools in our arsenal. It’s the reason why the MAGA hat is so important and effective, and, conversely, why the green bandana has been so effective in Argentina and across Latin America. We used it in the abortion rights campaign in Argentina, and we used it in Mexico, we used it in Colombia.

But the Swift-Kelce relationship is more than just a symbol without a hat. The contrast between their “bright light of goodness” and the ugliness of what Trump’s MAGA movement represents to the U.S. and to the world could not be more stark. The right sees it plainly and recoils. It makes them seethe. It’s sunlight to a vampire. Swift’s good-girl image and her “lovely thing” relationship has (as I use too often) cut the right over the eye. Go out and work the eye.

Now to find a symbol for it that lefties will actually adopt and share.

Update from Brian Beutler:

There are many things to say about this brewing GOP conspiracy theory, but the most important one is a warning—of the rot that will ultimately consume any party that organizes itself around scheming and rat fucking and propaganda to manipulate voters, in lieu of trying to be decent and likable.

Taylor And Travis Have Turned Republican Minds To Mush

Published by digby on January 29, 2024

It’s all a conspiracy! They are Soros funded, deep state,pizza parlor pedophiles!

As it happens they might want to keep their mouths shut:

Taylor Swift could heavily influence the way that Americans vote in the presidential election – with a fifth of voters saying they’re ‘likely’ to back a candidate she endorses.

The popstar’s stratospheric influence on popular culture may sway the race to the White House, especially as new Gen Z voters join the electorate this year. 

In a poll conducted by Redfield & Wilton Strategies for Newsweek, 18 percent of voters say they’re ‘more likely’ or ‘significantly more likely’ to vote for a candidate endorsed by Taylor Swift.

Her sway was more visible with voters under the age of 35. 

This election will see 8 million new voters in the US electorate – and a total of 41 million Gen Z voters, many of whom are influenced by celebrities and social media.

[…]

Trump has weighed in on the romance of Taylor and Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, and made his own predictions of the tryst.

‘I wish the best for both of them. I hope they enjoy their life, maybe together, maybe not — most likely not,’ Trump said in a candid response during an interview with the Daily Caller.

I don’t know if she’s planing to endorse Biden but they will certainly be happy if she does:

Biden aides are drafting wish lists of potential surrogates, including elected officials, social media influencers and the endorsement of their wildest dreams: the global superstar Taylor Swift…

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, a top Biden surrogate, all but begged Ms. Swift to become more involved in Mr. Biden’s campaign when he spoke to reporters after a Republican primary debate in September.

“Taylor Swift stands tall and unique,” he said. “What she was able to accomplish just in getting young people activated to consider that they have a voice and that they should have a choice in the next election, I think, is profoundly powerful.”

The chatter around Ms. Swift and the potential of reaching her 279 million Instagram followers reached such intensity that the Biden team urged applicants in a job posting for a social media position not to describe their Taylor Swift strategy — the campaign had enough suggestions already. One idea that has been tossed around, a bit in jest: sending the president to a stop on Ms. Swift’s Eras Tour.

Couldn’t hurt. Seriously.

I think Taylor’s political clout is overstated in that poll but even a fraction of that could be meaningful. With the right going after her the way they are she might feel compelled to get a lot more involved than they want her to.

I mean…

These examples are just the tip of the iceberg. They are going batshit crazy over these two celebrities. They’re terrified.

I’ll just leave this one here without comment:

They Don’t Work And We Love Them!

Published by digby on January 29, 2024

This is what happens when you have a demagogue who has the ability to convince half the country that up is down and black is white. They get rewarded over and over again for fucking everything up.

And he wants to do it again. I mentioned yesterday that Trump’s big economic agenda item is: more Chinese tariffs, big ones. He has no reason other than that they are very bad people and they are laughing at us. So, more tariffs. That’s all he knows.

This Must Be Bad News For Biden, Right?

Published by digby on January 29, 2024

Trump says America is failing and the economy is crashing. He couldn’t be more wrong:

The European economy, hobbled by unfamiliar weakness in Germany, is barely growing. China is struggling to recapture its sizzle. And Japan continues to disappoint.

But in the United States, it’s a different story. Here, despite lingering consumer angst over inflation, the surprisingly strong economy is outperforming all of its major trading partners.

Since 2020, the United States has powered through a once-in-a-century pandemic, the highest inflation in 40 years and fallout from two foreign wars. Now, after posting faster annual growth last year than in 2022, the U.S. economy is quashing fears of a recession while offering lessons for future crisis-fighting.

“The U.S. has really come out of this into a place of strength and is moving forward like covid never happened,” said Claudia Sahm, a former Federal Reserve economist who now runs an eponymous consulting firm. “We earned this; it wasn’t just a fluke.”

On Friday, President Biden hailed fresh government data showing that annual inflation over the second half of 2023 fell back to the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent target. Coupled with Thursday’s news that the economy grew by 3.1 percent over the past 12 months, the Commerce Department report showed that the United States appears to have achieved an economic soft landing.

The recovery from the pandemic challenged long-standing economic beliefs, such as the idea of an inverse relationship between unemployment and inflation. (As one rose, the other was expected to fall.) Expressed in what economists call the Phillips curve, this nostrum proved nearly useless in explaining the economy’s recent behavior.

Washington’s success in reviving the economy also suggests a new approach to future downturns, one that relies more on the government’s power of the purse and less on the Federal Reserve’s control of the cost of credit.

“Putting money in people’s hands vs. moving around interest rates, which is monetary policy, fiscal policy is going to be stronger,” Sahm said. “We cannot go into the next crisis being, like, ‘Oh, the Fed’s got this.’”

Hello, I’d like you to meet my friend John Maynard Keynes, he’d like to have a word….

Consumers are spending eagerly, which is turbo charging the economy. Yes, everyone’s whining constantly about how terrible the economy is but they sure are enjoying their new cars and nice vacations. When asked they admit that their own financial situation is great it’s just everyone else’s that’s bad. Where do you think they got that idea?

The size of the economy, adjusted for inflation, regained its pre-pandemic peak in early 2021. Through the end of September, it was more than 7 percent larger than before the pandemic. That was more than twice Japan’s gain and far better than Germany’s anemic 0.3 percent increase, according to British Parliament data.

For most Americans, the growth paid off in the form of higher wages. Over the four years through September, the most recent comparison available, U.S. wages — after inflation — grew 2.8 percent.

“The U.S. has seen a particularly strong GDP recovery, and inflation has cooled sooner and more quickly than in other large, advanced economies. And the increase in real wages is unique to our country’s recovery,” Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said in a Chicago speech last week.

That should count for something, don’t you think? Or are we so far gone that we’re going to reward Orange Julius Caesar and his henchmen?

Trump Needs The Border To Be Chaos

Published by digby on January 29, 2024

So he can say “I alone can fix it.”

The Republicans have a problem. They had hoped to rope in Independents and GOP moderates by insisting that the economy is so bad that America simply must elect a Republican to fix it. it’s worked in the past at times but the reality is that Democrats tend to fix the economy after Republicans break it and in this case it’s not looking like it’s going to be a winning electoral issue for them;. So they’re banking on the border, one of their perennial scaremongering tactics to get them over the line this time.

Trump is saying it out loud:

This bill is actually a very Republican friendly bill without any concessions to the Democrats which will make it a no-go among many of them. And we know they want the issue for the election. But as Greg Sargent points out, there is more to it than that:

I think it’s no accident that Trump and MAGA are trying to sink this deal even as Trump and Miller are loudly advertising plans for an extraordinarily cruel and draconian second-term crackdown. This includes the mass removals of millions of undocumented immigrants settled here, commencing on Day One; and dramatically scaled up “camps” to detain enormous amounts of asylum-seekers, who would be subject to appalling new limits that would go farther than the GOP bill does. Trump is openly flaunting this agenda’s white nationalist aspirations.

The spectacle of border disorder along with Congress doing nothing in response is the essential combination that Trump, Miller, and MAGA Republicans need. Images of serious destabilization being met with parliamentary sclerosis might create the opening for them to persuade swing voters—especially those who aren’t ideologically opposed to immigration—to accept maximal ethnonationalist savagery, packaged as “border security,” as the only “solution” that will “work.”

The last thing you want is for those swing voters to see that you don’t need to open up concentration camps to get the border under control or that Biden is able to pass bipartisan legislation. That would be bad. So they absolutely need to show the congress as totally impotent to solve the problem so they can sell his strongman act as the only answer. It’s diabolical.