Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Walking the crooked and narrow path

“We’ve reached the part of the campaign where Trump destroys Nikki Haley’s career and she then thanks him for it,” LOLGOP (Jason Sattler) posted this morning at Blue Sky. The former South Carolina governor has gained ground on Donald Trump in recent polling but has checked herself from launching direct attacks against TFG.

Politico’s Burgess Everett is also pondering the how swiftly 2024 Republican presidential also-rans and other Republican Trump critics will have their come-to-Donald moments. With the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary held within the month, it will happen faster than the demon made Linda Blair’s head spin.

Trump has already contacted Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) about an endorsement. Hoeven had endorsed fellow North Dakotan Gov. Doug Burgum before Burgham dropped out:

The Hoeven call shows how Trump’s campaign for Capitol endorsements is accelerating as he nears the first GOP nominating contest in Iowa. He won five endorsements from Republican senators during December alone, after snagging just three of them over the preceding four months. So far, Trump’s secured 18 endorsements from the Senate GOP, a group that ranges from establishment-minded Republicans to confrontational conservatives who will be vocal allies if he wins another term.

That success winning over the Hill GOP was hardly guaranteed — and comes just three years after Trump mounted a public campaign to overturn his 2020 loss that’s gotten him indicted on dozens of criminal charges. But a combination of behind-the-scenes courtships like that of Hoeven and the growing feeling of inevitability that Trump will win the nomination is peeling off Republican senators who might otherwise have longed for a new, less divisive standard-bearer. These days, many in the GOP see only upside to early support for Trump.

Haley was once Trump’s U.N. ambassador. Perhaps she imagines a promotion in a second Trump administration if she plays nice.

His recent converts include freshman Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.), who initially said her RNC job precluded an endorsement before endorsing Trump in December, as well as Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who led a challenge to Trump’s 2020 defeat by President Joe Biden.

Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the second senator to endorse Trump in his 2024 bid, said the growing tide of pro-Trump senators signals that the former president’s path to the nomination is now “more clear” than ever in the days before Republicans cast their first ballots.

Graham’s head has been in a dark place for years. There was never any question how much farther up he would go.

There may be GOP holdouts, Everett explains. Republicans not facing reelection this year, for example. And men like Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. The Senate minority leader secured his power long before Trump. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) claims he will remain neutral until Republicans have selected their candidate, then offer his enthusiastic support.

There will remain only a handful of critics. Sens. Mitt Romney of Utah or Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, for example. The rest will fall in line behind Trump, however malodorous that position may be.

“He’s a weak human being,” former Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger notes. What does that say about his supporters, especially elected “leaders,” that they will debase themselves to join Trump’s fraternity?

Adam Kinzinger describes Donald Trump’s odor situation as “not good” and says he smells like arm pits, ketchup, makeup, and ass pic.twitter.com/LvqQ5As9Ez

— Acyn (@Acyn) December 28, 2023

“That strength among Republican primary voters has always been there,” said Sen. Mike Braun of Indiana, a Trump supporter who is running for governor. “A lot of this is [senators] seeing what folks are telling them back home.”

Trump’s elected and unelected supporters want to rule. As much as they want to be ruled. It is no accident that his evangelical supporters were raised from childhood to long for the return of their risen king. Shy of getting Him, they’ll settle.

Update: They’re falling in line.

Republican loyalty to Trump, rioters climbs in 3 years after Jan. 6 attack

Trump complained to Breitbart about Biden’s vacations. I’m not kidding.

Trump [said] that when he went on vacation as president, he was always actually working and taking meetings with world leaders and lawmakers—and he never made anyone who had urgent business wait for a call back. He called Mar-a-Lago, where he spent some of his holidays as president, the “Southern White House,” and noted that he regularly packed his schedule even when he was not in the White House.

“I have to say, when I take vacations I’m always working,” Trump said. “This is really the Southern White House. I have meetings left, right, and all day. Even if I’m playing golf, I’m always playing golf with somebody who is important like heads of countries, senators, et cetera. But it’s all work.”

When Biden goes on vacation, though, Trump said he hears that he refuses to take phone calls and refuses to meet anyone—he just totally and completely checks out and makes himself unavailable for weeks on end.

“This guy takes a vacation and he doesn’t talk to anybody,” Trump said. “They say, ‘He’ll call you in two or three weeks because he’s on vacation.’ Did you know that? People call him and they say he’ll try getting back to you in the next two to three weeks because he’s on vacation.”

Note that he seems to be saying that he’s still president. “This is really the Southern White House …” Cognitive problems by any chance?

It’s all a big lie, of course. Trump spent all his mornings in the White House tweeting and watching television (aka “Executive Time”) and went on vacation more than any other president despite saying during the 2016 campaign that he would never leave the White House. Just because he called Mar-a-Lago “the Winter White House” and Bedminster the “Summer White House” and his aides call them “working vacations” doesn’t mean they weren’t vacations. He golfed constantly and whenever he went overseas he made promotional trips to his properties.

And, by the way:

Fact check:

As of Dec. 13, 2020, Trump had made 293 daytime visits to his golf clubs as president, with evidence of him playing golf on at least 148 visits, according to Trump Golf Count. By the Washington Post’s account published in August, Trump played golf on 237 separate occasions, nearly all at his properties.

In July 2019 at the Oval Office, a reporter asked Trump if he planned to take a “working vacation” that year at his Bedminster property. Trump pushed back on a link between Bedminster and “vacation.”

Trump said: “So I go to Bedminster, which is a beautiful place, but it’s never a vacation. It’s working, mostly.”

Trump may not like to use the word “vacation” for his down time. But his travels to his private properties and golf outings indicate that he hasn’t entirely committed to his campaign pledge not to take vacations. His own staff described his annual summer trips to his New Jersey golf club as a “working vacation.”

Any president of the United States is always working and that includes Biden. Trump is lying about him, of course. When he breathes, he lies.

Biden goes on a normal vacation in August and Christmas. On the weekends he often goes to his house in Delaware which is just a few miles away. And he goes to Camp David which is the presidential retreat. He works during all of it just like every other president.

Trump complained about Obama golfing throughout the 2016 campaign and during his presidency despite the fact that he golfed constantly and much more often than Trump. If you want to see how much it cost for him to be flying to Mar-a-Lago constantly check out this official GAO report.

It’s going to be momentous, no matter which way it goes

Author Brynn Tannehill tweeted this and I think she’s right. No matter what happens in the election in 2024, we are in for tremendous tumult. Even so, there is only one thinkable outcome. It won’t be easy and the aftermath may very well be violent. But it’s infinitely better than the alternative.

I’m going to bookmark once I post this, because it’s about what’s going to happen in 2024. I’m going out on a limb to say that regardless of what specifically happens, this is going to end up being mentioned along with 1860 as watershed moments in US history. 

Look, it’s easy to say that if Trump wins, it’s going to be chaos. We’ll see his new cabinet coming in. They’ll be telegraphing their intentions, and it’s going to be mayhem. Protests will already be happening, and Trump will already be promising to quash them.  

So, if Trump wins, on December 31st, 2024 we will be living in a nation holding it’s breath for the chaos and horror that comes next, whether it’s a theocratic fascist dictatorship, or a nation that Balkanizes in the attempt. If Trump wins, we get one or the other. 

But let’s suppose he doesn’t. In that case, he’s on his way to prison. The MAGA movement will be incensed, howling for blood, and p***ed that SCOTUS didn’t save their guy. There’s no way Republicans accept the results of the election if it’s close.  

And if it isn’t close, it’s going to because Trump got convicted somewhere, and a bunch of states were forced to take him off the general election ballot because of laws prohibiting convicted felons from running (or being on the ballot). 

In this latter case (again) there’s going to be anger, and an even stronger drive coming from within southern states to cease recognizing the authority of the federal government. 

If Trump loses, I also expect desperate shenanigans along the lines of the fake electors schemes, refusal to certify the election in the Senate or House if the GOP controls either. I also expect violence.

Regardless of who wins the 2024 election (Biden/Trump) it’s ugly. 

I also foresee a Supreme Court that continues to weaken it’s credibility regardless of how it rules. They’re now in a position where they’ll have to pick a side in a hopelessly divided nation. If they delay enough to allow Trump into office, it makes Balkanization likelier 

Of course, there will be Black Swan events. Maybe Trump or Biden suffers a medical emergency. Maybe the GOP fractures after a Trump conviction and Trump / Haley split the GOP votes. Maybe Trump does something so heinous that he loses cleanly. 

(The last is REALLY unlikely, the GOP base will never abandon him).

But, at the end of the day, we have an angry fascist movement that will stop at nothing to seize power and abuse it.

2024 will decide if they take power legitimately like Germany in 33 or Russia in 99. 

It’s going to be ugly in the US between 2024 and 2028. Way uglier than what we saw after the 2020 election. The question is, what SORT of ugly will it be?

2024 is going to determine what sort of suck we’re facing going forward. 

Even if Biden wins, we’ll see efforts to discredit the election and the courts. We’ll see efforts to overturn the election. Afterwards, we’ll see red states going even harder right and more autocratic, relying on SCOTUS to bail them out, and ignoring them when convenient. 

And if Trump wins, next New Year’s will be one of terror and despair for me, most LGBT people, and their families. It will be for a lot of other people who understand what the Trump administration is about to do.

But, one way or another, 2024 is going to a watershed. 

There is no doubt about it. No need to belabor what will happen if Trump wins.

If Biden wins we might get lucky and the air will just go out of the MAGA cult and his followers will content themselves with whining on social media and yelling at people on the street as they did when they won in 2016. (Yes, they do this even when they win.) But I imagine there will be some sort of violent paroxysm of anger that will be disturbing if not truly terrifying. We need to be prepared for anything..

Some sanity in Israel today:

Israel’s high court on Monday struck down Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s polarizing law that sought to limit the court’s power over government decisions and sparked mass anti-government protests and international condemnation.

Netanyahu’s plans to overhaul the judiciary upended Israel in the months leading to the Israel-Gaza war — and now threaten to cause a constitutional and leadership crisis just three months after the hotly divided country united behind the war effort.

Netanyahu’s Likud party slammed the decision as “in opposition to the nation’s desire for unity, especially in a time of war.”

“Today the Supreme Court faithfully fulfilled its role in protecting the citizens of Israel,” Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid said on X, formerly Twitter.

Monday’s ruling concerned an amendment to Israel’s “Basic Law,” which serves in place of a constitution, that was pushed through and passed by Netanyahu’s far-right government in July. The altered law removed the right of the Israeli Supreme Court to block decisions made by government ministers that the judges deem “unreasonable.”

In striking down the law 8 to 7 on Monday, the top court’s ruling calls for the legislation to be removed. If Netanyahu’s government refuses to honor the ruling, the wartime country could face a constitutional crisis.

The overhaul plan, which Netanyahu’s coalition first proposed last January, set off nearly a year of widespread social unrest and drew extraordinary opposition from military and senior security officials.

Supporters of the legislation said it was a necessary corrective to an activist Supreme Court led by a clique of elite judges. Opponents said the law could lead to authoritarianism and paved the way for Netanyahu’s far-right and ultra-Orthodox backers to alter key foundation’s of Israel’s liberal democracy.

Weekly protests against the proposal drew hundreds of thousands of people. Military pilots and soldiers threatened not to report for volunteer duty if the government refused to back off its plan.

In March, Netanyahu fired his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, after Gallant called on the government to halt its plan, warning of potential security problems for Israel if reservists walked out. Gallant was reinstated two weeks later.

President Biden, one of Israel’s staunchest allies, in March also came out against the law in a rare public disagreement. “I hope he walks away from it,” Biden said, adding the Netanyahu’s government “cannot continue down this road.”

The ramifications of this are unknown. Netanyahu is weakened by it, for sure, and he and his far right allies are squealing about the ruling coming “in a time of war.” They had obviously been counting on that to get them out of this jam and it didn’t. Now they’re wringing their hands about how it will “destabilize” the government at a terrible time but that’s the best chance there is of putting an end to the carnage sooner rather than later.

Let’s hope the movement that has been in the streets over this will carry on. This government has to go. Netanyahu is corrupt, he and his allies failed to ensure that Israel was secure and now have taken advantage of the emotions naturally stirred by the events of October 7th to secure his position. It’s grotesquely cynical.

That used to be the mantra. Now nobody mentions it.

Trump should not be allowed to claim that he had the best economy the world has ever seen. It wasn’t bad, at least until the pandemic, which he made worse.His trade policies were destructive and he was basically riding on the belated recovery of the Obama years.

But this one is better. Way better.

Trump is testing his ability to persuade people to once again believe him or their lying eyes. It certainly works very well on the cult and no doubt will be successful. The question is whether or not he has the power to make people who don’t support him believe the same. A lot of that depends on the media. If they step up we might be ok.

Remember when Republicans thought they were finally rid of Trump and said things like this?

It didn’t last:

There has never before in history been a bigger group of craven opportunists or gutless cowards. Rubio’s not the only one, of course. The whole party has fallen into line behind the man most of them (aside from the truly dumb ones like Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin or Rep. Virginia Fox) know very well is a liar a cheat and a criminal.

This is what it’s going to take a long time to fix not the righteous application of the rule of law.

At least for a little while

I’m pretty sure this will be reversed but in the meantime it’s nice to know that won’t have to go into my local Starbucks and see someone playing cowboy with a gun in his holster while a cop stands by at the door as I did a couple of months ago. It was an incredibly unnerving moment. I left as did a bunch of other people and the barristas were obviously nervous. This is no way to live.

A California law that bans people from carrying firearms in most public places will take effect on New Year’s Day, even as a court case continues to challenge the law.

A U.S. district judge issued a ruling Dec. 20 to block the law from taking effect, saying it violates the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and deprives people of their ability to defend themselves and their loved ones.

But on Saturday, a federal appeals court put a temporary hold on the district judge’s ruling. The appeals court decision allows the law to go into effect as the legal fight continues. Attorneys are scheduled to file arguments to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in January and in February.

The law, signed by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, prohibits people from carrying concealed guns in 26 places including public parks and playgrounds, churches, banks and zoos.

There is no reason for people other than police to carry guns in public. Nobody feels any “safer” when they see it. They feel in danger. And they often are:

Couldn’t say it better

Happy New Year’s!

Preview of November 6, 2024:

(h/t @JuliusGoat@mastodon.social)

Yes, they’ll howl. The Truth hurts.

A couple of items this morning remind us what lies ahead. There’s dread and there’s hopium, depending on how one reads the tea leaves.

Roy Edroso considers the rise of Unpopularism. Republicans have decided that their path to power is to give people what they don’t want:

I talk a lot about abortion rights here for a bunch of reasons, but the relevant one here is the lengthening string of goose-eggs Republicans have suffered in the repro rights referenda that came after they destroyed Roe v Wade. Even in Kansas and Ohio they couldn’t win.

Yes, a few right-wing pundits who survived Covid with their olfactories intact can smell the stink that isn’t issuing from Trump’s Depends, but they are the exceptions.

Their pro-life palaver started as a sop to one specific religious constituency, but over time it has become the symbol of the Republican Party’s whole anti-choice, anti-consent, anti-democratic ethos.

Look at how hard they fight to preserve gerrymanders, to stop early, drop-off, and mail voting, and to disenfranchise any voter group that is likely to defy their wishes (as opposed to trying to convince new voters to join or even get their old voters to turn out). Look at how (again, despite years of libertarian bullshit) they repeatedly overturn local authorities and plebiscites that deviate from wingnut orthodoxy. Hell, look how they keep coming for Social Security and Medicare!

Republicans still have a lot of tricks in their bag, but their most effective line used to be that they were advocating for the will of the people versus the busybodies, black-robed masters, and buttinskis of the Democrat Party. They used to invite voters to laugh at the gag about how the most frightening words in the world were “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.”

Well, look who’s the busybodies now. (They’re not totally hypocritical, though — since they aren’t even pretending to be “here to help you.”)

There is no sign that Donald Trump believers convinced he’s been charged by God with giving them Dominion over all the Earth (and women in particular) have sobered up. They intend to show the Taliban how it’s done.

Their patron saint of empty promises (Infrastructure Week? That Obamacare replacement?) is now the front runner for the GOP nomination for president in 2024. Yes, he did deliver on Dobbs, and they are drooling about getting control of the Seven Mountains. Standing between them and their grand plans are four grand juries of ordinary Americans in three states and D.C. that reviewed evidence and issued 91 felony indictments against the King of Chaos, the Doge of Mar-a-Lago, the new Clown Prince of Crime.

Stephen Collinson writes at CNN:

The Republican front-runner vows to use the authority of the presidency to wreak “retribution” on his enemies and gut bureaucracy to make the government an instrument of his personal power. Comparisons to Nazis are overblown at this point, but Trump’s rhetoric – including his labeling of political opponents as “vermin” and warnings that immigrants will pollute the blood of America – do recall 1930s demagoguery and augur potentially America’s most extreme presidency. Abroad, Trump is signaling he’d ditch Ukraine to cozy up to autocrats like Russian President Vladimir Putin, and his hostility to alliances could even endanger NATO.

Time is running out for Republican primary candidates to topple Trump. Unless there’s an upset in the next few weeks in Iowa and New Hampshire, the former president will be more in control of the GOP than when he left Washington in disgrace in January 2021. The country has never faced an election like it – with the likely challenger, an ex-president facing 91 criminal charges across four criminal cases, including for alleged crimes against democracy, being prosecuted by a special counsel in his successor’s administration. If Trump prevails, it will be one of the most stunning, and ominous, comebacks in political history.

Meantime, writes Collinson:

A tiny Republican House majority hostage to pro-Trump extremists, which is bent on impeaching Biden and enacting massive spending cuts despite lacking a functioning mandate, will surely radicalize even further in the election year. New House Speaker Mike Johnson’s grip on power is already tenuous since he’s locked in the same governing-versus-politics dilemma that felled his predecessor Kevin McCarthy. Such is the tumult – and disgust with incumbents – that it’s quite possible that the Republican-led House and the Democratic-led Senate could flip in opposite directions this fall.

Elections are about choices. Much this election year will come down to whether an Electoral College majority of Americans are suicidal enough to return an insurrectionist to the Oval Office who’s promised to end the country his base believes was as divinely inspired as the King James version.

Mark Leibovich a few weeks back wrote that if that happens, well, that should put an end to the myth that “this is not who we are.” He wrote in The Atlantic:

In retrospect, so many of the high-minded appeals of the Obama era—“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for”; “When they go low, we go high”—feel deeply naive. Question for Michelle: What if they keep going lower and lower—and that keeps landing the lowest of the low back in the White House?

Are we really “better than this”?

One hoped that Biden was correct, that we were in fact not a nation of vandals, cranks, and insurrectionists. But then, on the very day the Capitol had been ransacked, 147 House and Senate Republicans voted not to certify Biden’s election. Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, skulked back to the ousted president a few weeks later, and the pucker-up parade to Mar-a-Lago was on. Large majorities of Republicans never stopped supporting Trump, and claim they never stopped believing that Biden stole the 2020 election and that Crooked Joe’s regime is abusing the legal system to persecute Trump out of the way.

Here we remain, amazingly enough, ready to do this all again. Trump might be the ultimate con man, but his essential nature has never been a mystery. Yet he appears to be gliding to his third straight Republican nomination and is running strong in a likely rematch with an unpopular incumbent. A durable coalition seems fully comfortable entrusting the White House to the guy who left behind a Capitol encircled with razor-wire fence and 25,000 National Guard troops protecting the federal government from his own supporters.

You can dismiss Trump voters all you want, but give them this: They’re every bit as American as any idealized vision of the place. If Trump wins in 2024, his detractors will have to reckon once again with the voters who got us here—to reconcile what it means to share a country with so many citizens who keep watching Trump spiral deeper into his moral void and still conclude, “Yes, that’s our guy.”

Perhaps Trump will choose “Honey Boo Boo” as a MAGA-pleasing running mate. Sure, she’s not old enough for federal office per the Constitution. But then, MAGA Republicans have decided that hewing to a constitution inspired by the Savior himself is optional.

Sometimes animals save us as we save them

They need us and we need them:

Some say they were first brought in to take out the rats. Others contend they wandered in on their own.

What everyone can agree on — including those who have lived or worked at Chile’s largest prison the longest — is that the cats were here first.

For decades, they have walked along the prison’s high walls, sunbathed on the metal roof and skittered between cells crowded with 10 men each. To prison officials, they were a peculiarity of sorts, and mostly ignored. The cats kept multiplying into the hundreds.

Then prison officials realized something else: The feline residents were not only good for the rat problem. They were also good for the inmates.

“They’re our companions,” said Carlos Nuñez, a balding prisoner showing off a 2-year-old tabby he named Feita, or Ugly, from behind prison bars. While caring for multiple cats during his 14-year sentence for home burglary, he said he discovered their special essence, compared with, say, a cellmate or even a dog.

“A cat makes you worry about it, feed it, take care of it, give it special attention,” he said. “When we were outside and free, we never did this. We discovered it in here.”

Known simply as “the Pen,” the 180-year-old main penitentiary in Santiago, Chile’s capital, has long been known as a place where men live in cages and cats roam free. What is now more clearly understood is the positive effect of the prison’s roughly 300 cats on the 5,600 human residents.

The felines’ presence “has changed the inmates’ mood, has regulated their behavior and has strengthened their sense of responsibility with their duties, especially caring for animals,” said the prison’s warden, Col. Helen Leal González, who has two cats of her own at home, Reina and Dante, and a collection of cat figurines on her desk.

“Prisons are hostile places,” she added in her office, wearing a tight bun, billy club and combat boots. “So of course, when you see there’s an animal giving affection and generating these positive feelings, it logically causes a change in behavior, a change in mindset.”

Prisoners informally adopt the cats, work together to care for them, share their food and beds and, in some cases, have built them little houses. In return, the cats provide something invaluable in a lockup notorious for overcrowding and squalid conditions: love, affection and acceptance.

“Sometimes you’ll be depressed and it’s like she senses that you’re a bit down,” said Reinaldo Rodriguez, 48, who is scheduled to be imprisoned until 2031 on a firearms conviction. “She comes and glues herself to you. She’ll touch her face to yours.”

My favorite job of the week is searching for animal posts for the Friday night soother. I hesitate to admit how much time I spend “researching” them. But it makes me feel better when I do it. These stories bear out the fact that our relationship with the animals can be the thing that makes us human.