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The Body Man’s Plan

Published by digby on November 10, 2023

Johnny McEntee, the man in charge

From Jonathan Karl’s new book:

In his final days in the White House, President Donald Trump tried to launch a U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan — only he wasn’t exactly the person giving the orders, according to a new book by ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl.

In “Tired of Winning: Donald Trump and the End of the Grand Old Party,” excerpts of which were released in Vanity Fair on Friday, Karl reports that aide Johnny McEntee, known as Trump’s “body guy,” led a chaotic attempt to reshape the U.S. military posture abroad.

The incident was first reported on by Jonathan Swan of Axios, but Karl provides significant new details.

McEntee, after serving as Trump’s “body guy” (or “body man” as some say) — the staffer responsible for traveling with the president and carrying his bags — became, at age 30, the director of the Presidential Personnel Office, primarily responsible for overseeing the hiring and firing of executive branch employees, including ensuring staffers were loyal to Trump’s political vision.

But after the 2020 election, Karl writes, McEntee took on a greater role — one that saw him involved in Trump’s ousting of Defense Secretary Mark Esper — replacing him with Christopher Miller — and the recruiting of Miller’s senior adviser Douglas Macgregor.

From there, Karl reports, McEntee wrote a list for what Trump should do in the final days of his presidency — a list that included withdrawing U.S. forces from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Africa.

“Three days after Macgregor arrived at the Pentagon, he called McEntee and told him he couldn’t accomplish any of the items on their handwritten to-do list without a signed order from the president,” Karl writes in the excerpts released by Vanity Fair.

The House Jan. 6 committee’s investigation unearthed the extraordinary story of what happened next, Karl writes, but it wasn’t included in the committee’s final report. The panel had taken the sworn testimony of the key players, including McEntee and Macgregor, as well as national security adviser Robert O’Brien and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley.

Macgregor advised McEntee the priority should be the Afghanistan withdrawal and that it should be put in a presidential directive. But when McEntee couldn’t figure out how to draft such a document, Macgregor told him and his assistant “to open a cabinet, find an old presidential decision memorandum, and copy it,” Karl writes.

“Easy enough,” Karl reports. McEntee and his assistant “wrote up the order, had the president sign it, and sent it over to Kash Patel, the new acting defense secretary’s chief of staff.”

But the document caused widespread confusion among top officials.

Miller met with Milley and others to discuss next steps, but Milley quickly questioned who had given Trump such military advice. When no one could say where it came from, he and Miller went to the White House for answers, Karl writes.

When Milley asked O’Brien, Trump’s national security adviser, where the document came from, O’Brien said he’d never seen it before. Also at that meeting was Vice President Mike Pence’s national security adviser Keith Kellogg, who looked at the order and told the room: “This doesn’t look right,” according to the excerpts.

“‘You’re telling me that thing is forged?’ Milley responded in disbelief, Karl writes. ‘That’s a forged piece of paper directing a military operation by the president of the United States? That’s forged, Keith?'” Milley said, according to the excerpts.

The group eventually asked Trump directly, who confirmed he’d signed it. O’Brien then told Trump it “would be very bad,” Karl writes, and advised him not to follow through with the directive.

“As soon as he realized an Afghanistan withdrawal would require more work than having McEntee scribble up a note, he dropped it entirely,” Karl reports.

This is what we can expect in 2026 if he wins again. Johnny McEntee , along with Stephen Miller, is the one in charge of putting together the agenda for the second term.

I suppose that most people don’t know this stuff and some that do dismiss it as palace intrigue or fake news. But this is how Trump rolls and he hasn’t changed one bit. Look at how he’s handling his own legal affairs.

And yet half the country thinks this imbecile should be president again and it’s going to be political trench warfare to ensure that he isn’t. I’ll never stop being stunned by that. It’s shaken my belief in the basic common sense of Americans more than anything in my lifetime.

Meanwhile in the House of Representatives

Published by digby on November 10, 2023

Sean Casten, D-Il., lays it all out in this twitter thread:

It’s hard to explain how dysfunctional the @HouseGOP is, and the degree to which their own internal divisions are superseding every normal function of government. But I’m going to try with a short story about this week in the house. Thread: 

1. First: We operate on a 9/30 fiscal year but the (McCarthy) led house couldn’t agree on how to fund prior to. They tried to just say “cut everything by 30%”. That didn’t pass. So they said “let’s just fund at current levels for 45 days”. That cost McCarthy his job. 

2. For context, when Dems had the majority we got all our appropriations done by August 1 so the Senate could finalize and POTUS could sign. @HouseGOP still hasn’t done that. 

@HouseGOP 3. Also, you may recall this summer the @HouseGOP threatened to default on US debt unless we agreed to future spending rules. A deal was struck that passed the House and was signed into law to do so. The 30% cut was not consistent with that law. (AKA, it was illegal) 

@HouseGOP 4. By contrast, the straight 45 day continuing resolution that cost McCarthy his job was legal (in the sense that it did not violate the June agreement and bought us time to do so). OBEYING THE LAW WAS A RED-LINE FOR THE @HOUSEGOP. So they fired McCarthy. 

@HouseGOP 5. They then used the first 20 days of that 45 day period to fight over a new speaker. Should we pick someone who hates gay people, fought to overturn the election or creeps on his son’s porn? It took a while, but the @HouseGOP finally said YES to all three. 

@HouseGOP 6. That leaves a lot of work to do by a party that doesn’t like laws, is at war with itself and an inexperienced leadership team. But off we went. Last week, we were supposed to vote on transportation funding. Rs couldn’t agree so Johnson never brought a bill to the floor. 

@HouseGOP 7. (This isn’t just a Johnson problem. McCarthy previously chose not to bring an agriculture funding package to the floor because Rs couldn’t agree. Still don’t have a path on that one.) 

@HouseGOP 8. This week, we were supposed to vote on a funding package for our financial services & general government. Minutes before we were supposed to vote on that yesterday they pulled it on account of internal squabbles too. 

@HouseGOP 9. Note: ALL of these bills violate the law we passed last June. But having discovered that Ds won’t vote to break the law, they are trying to pass these with all R votes. But they’re big mad at each other so even that’s not possible.

@HouseGOP 10. Now to the question on the mind of every libertarian troll who’s read this far. “If government is going to run out of money and you aren’t even voting on bills to fund it why are you wasting my tax dollars in DC?” Well, here’s what they did bring up for votes this week: 

@HouseGOP 11. A bill to prevent the government from using the word “latin-x” – a bill to cut WH press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s salary to $1 – a bill to defund the office of gun violence prevention – a bill to eliminate the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau – 

@HouseGOP 12. A bill to cut SEC Chair Gary Gensler’s salary to $1 – a bill to defund the office of gun violence prevention – a bill to prevent the government from developing greenhouse gas disclosure rules – a bill to eliminate 50% of the budget for the consumer product safety commission. 

@HouseGOP 13. These things aren’t urgent. They aren’t helpful. And they aren’t going to become law (See: laws require Senate + POTUS approval). But they keep the idiot wing of the @HouseGOP from turning on their rookie manager. And waste 435 people’s time on the House floor. 

@HouseGOP 14. And so now we are 7 days from a shutdown. Still no path to fund. Still no sign of anyone in the @HouseGOP willing to stand up to their extreme fringe. Still no discernible leadership talents from their new Speaker. Right now it’s annoying. But in 8 days, its disastrous. 

@HouseGOP 15. Because if they can’t get their s**t together, 8 days from now soldiers, air traffic controllers, food safety inspectors, IRS agents, border patrol… all go without pay. Some will be furloughed. Food, heating, housing assistance. Every government function. 

@HouseGOP 16. PLEASE @HouseGOP. Grow up. Stop fighting with your brother and sister in the backseat. Either act like the adults you claim to be or at least have the dignity to go to your room so the adults can babysit your sorry selves. Too much is at stake.

They can’t. They are all suffering from a mass case of arrested development and cult worship. They are going to shut down the government because they think it will be good for them politically. They watch Fox and read Breitbart and follow the word of Dear Leader. They want a shutdown and they’re going to get it. Call it the Tuberville gambit: just say no and nothing else.

Explicit Payback

Published by digby on November 10, 2023

He will do it regardless. There is no doubt.

America “woke” to their shtick

Published by Tom Sullivan on November 10, 2023

“I am so tired of these psychos”

Maybe Americans are getting a clue. Maybe they are waking up, if not in the way wingnuts and QAnons think they should. The results of the last few elections suggest that, as Jamelle Bouie writes, the right’s culture war shtick — from “parental rights” to book bans to “critical race theory” to transgender kids and ad nauseum freakouts over drag shows — has finally worn thin (New York Times):

If the results of Tuesday’s elections in Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio tell us anything, however, it’s that this post-Roe form of culture warring is an abject failure, an approach that repels and alienates voters far more than it appeals to or persuades them.

It certainly turned off voters to Moms for Liberty. They got their asses handed to them in school board races in Iowa on Tuesday.

Amanda Marcotte writes that the Moms for Liberty brand is now toxic as well in Bucks County, Pennsylvania (Salon):

As I reported, parents in the Pennridge district eager to fight back against right-wing radicals formed the Ridge Network and got the word out, arguing to voters that the group was degrading the quality of the public schools. This week, those efforts paid off: Democrats won all five of the open school board seats in the district, wresting control away from Moms for Liberty.  

[…]

By the time this election rolled around, Moms for Liberty seemed to have already realized their brand had become poisonous. As the Daily Beast reported, “In 2021, Moms for Liberty claimed credit for 33 seats in Bucks County,” but in this election cycle, the group “endorsed only a single candidate in the county.” The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that some Republican candidates wanted the group to keep its distance, fearful of the taint. And that was my sense of things in the Pennridge district this fall. School board members who had links to Moms for Liberty tried to downplay it and ended up getting outed by investigators from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

Just an other well-funded astrourf group in retreat. Sunlight is not their friend.

“I am so tired of these psychos,” tweeted one fed-up parent involved in pushing back.

Moms for Liberty was started, in a fairly obvious manner, to help boost the national prospects of Republicans. So it’s a delicious irony that, in two short years, the organization is mostly known as a symbol of the MAGA extremism that is driving down the overall popularity of the GOP, leading to yet another election cycle where Democrats overperformed expectations. The group was meant to put a family-friendly gloss on right-wing extremism. Instead, they got parents and teachers, many who barely have time to work and care for their families, to become political organizers. Messing with people’s schools was not, it turned out, a genius political strategy. 

They’ll be back with whatever moral panic they cook up next.

Trump is running for dictator

Published by Tom Sullivan on November 10, 2023

Is that straight-talk enough?

Joe Biden is running for president of the United States. Donald Trump is running for dictator of the former United States. That is the 2024 presidential contest in a nutshell (until someone comes up with something blunter). There is not enough bronzer in the world to conceal the pasty, combed-over remnant of a democratic republic this country will be in 2025 should enough Americans not come to their senses and dump Trump and his Christian-nationalist authoritarian cult.

One thing Trump and his imitators know: repetition works. Say anything enough times and people will begin to believe it. Social proof. The left thinks facts speak for themselves and need no marketing. They’re wrong. Ask the people peddling Medicare advantage plans or Skyrizi.

The press sells more soap (drugs that may be “right for you,” these days) promoting a close horse race than on covering a democracy’s slow, public descent into authoritarianism. It’s a ratings downer. Martin Niemöller is a downer. Until Trump’s goons come for your favorite news anchor.

There are a few voices shouting warnings on the fringes. Margaret Sullivan warned on Thursday (The Guardian):

It’s now clearer than ever that Trump, if elected, will use the federal government to go after his political rivals and critics, even deploying the military toward that end. His allies are hatching plans to invoke the Insurrection Act on day one.

But the press is too timid to say so loud enough and often enough and soon enough.

Instead, journalists have emphasized Joe Biden’s age and Trump’s “freewheeling” style. They blame the public’s attitudes on “polarization”, as if they themselves have no role. And, of course, they make the election about the horse race – rather than what would happen a few lengths after the finish line.

Here’s what must be hammered home: Trump cannot be re-elected if you want the United States to be a place where elections decide outcomes, where voting rights matter, and where politicians don’t baselessly prosecute their adversaries.

This is not alarmism. It is literally what Trump says he will do if elected again.

Susan Glasser (The New Yorker) is baffled that Trump is still viable after inciting an insurrection, 91 felony charges, and being out of office for nearly three years:

On Thursday, in an interview with Univision, Trump again made explicit what is often implicit in his vengeance-fuelled campaign: his willingness to use the justice system to go after his opponents if he is returned to the White House. Any other prospective President would have denied with all possible force a recent Washington Post report that Trump has already demanded that his aides make plans to target some former advisers who have become public critics, including his former chief of staff John Kelly, former Attorney General Bill Barr, and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley. Instead, Trump all but confirmed the story when he told the Spanish-language network that he would use the courts against his political rivals. “If I happen to be President and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say, ‘Go down and indict them,’ ” Trump told Univision. “They’d be out of business. They’d be out of the election.”

@countdownwithko

TRUMPED-UP CHARGES. LITERALLY: In Univision interview Dementia J. Trump has confirmed last Sunday’s Washington Post story that if we do not stop him from again taking over The White House, he WILL openly politicize the Department of Justice and order it to create fictional indictments of his political rivals in order to prosecute them from campaigns or elections. He literally boasted that he would do what he has falsely accused the legal system of doing to him. And of course if Trump can fabricate charges against politicians, he can fabricate them against you. “If I happen to be president and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say ‘Go down and indict them.’ They’d be out of business, they’d be out of the election.” He also blamed the Democrats for his own evil, and in the process exposed more of his Swiss-cheese brain: “What they’ve done is, they’ve released the genie out of the…box.” It’s BOTTLE, genius. The Jack Smith Mar-a-Lago shocker: Potential witnesses against Trump? The receptionist, the head of maintenance, the housekeeper who cleans his bedroom suite and a woodworker who installed the Crown Molding in the bedroom (I’m guessing the color was gold). Trump was reportedly “ballistic” about the housekeeper. Could we get more obscure heroes like Alex Butterfield and Frank Wills? If you don’t know them, you will. Another judge muddies the 14th Amendment case. In Michigan, Judge James Robert Redford (seriously) asks the suing attorney if the clause means you can only disqualify somebody AFTER he’s been ELECTED? To which the lawyer aptly asks “That would require, what? The country to re-run an entire presidentical election?” And President Biden reminds us that his best re-election campaign ads would be ones in which he mocks Biden. Talking to auto workers yesterday he mocked him with instant success, and then doubled the laughter when he made the stations of the cross. GRAB THE FRIDAY COUNTDOWN PODCAST: https://tinyurl.com/vpw8dyje #countdownwithkeitholbermann #keitholbermann #trump #countdown #14thAmendment #biden #DementiaJTrump #JackSmith #DOJ

♬ original sound – CountdownWithKO

The Washington Post reported the story this morning, but you won’t find it on page 1. (I couldn’t find where it appears in the print edition.) The New York Times hasn’t found space yet.

The woman Trump’s rally mobs chanted he should lock up was right about him all along. Hillary Clinton still is, writes Glasser:

In an appearance this week on “The View,” Clinton compared Trump to Adolf Hitler, who was, she noted, “duly elected” before he dismantled Germany’s democracy and turned himself into a dictator. Her main point—and it bears endless repetition between now and whatever awaits us next November—is that Trump has clearly spelled out exactly how he plans to go after core tenets of American democracy. There is no mystery here. “Trump is telling us what he intends to do,” Clinton said. “Take him at his word. The man means to throw people in jail who disagree with him, shut down legitimate press outlets, do what he can to literally undermine the rule of law and our country’s values.”

It’s worth noting that Clinton made those comments before Trump’s incendiary interview. He’s said it all before; he’ll say it all again. The question, with one year left on the clock, is: Who’s listening? ♦

Too few. They’re too busy staring at the polls to see who’s ahead this week by a nose. (I accidentally typed noise. That works too.)

Explaining The Crisis

Published by digby on November 9, 2023

It’s not easy but some people do it well

Haggai Matar, Israeli peace activist, journalist and executive editor of @972mag has written one of the best analyses of the crisis in Israel and Gaza that I’ve read. I highly, highly recommend that you take the time to read the whole thing. It recognizes all the complications of the situation and doesn’t sugar coat anything. It’s such a relief to read something that’s nuanced and empathetic toward all the innocent people who are caught up in this hideous situation. It’s profoundly distressing.

But it’s important to read it all and understand just how difficult this is for everyone involved. I’ll just share the part where he looks to the future:

I will leave important discussions about the Palestinian leadership and struggle, broader regional dynamics, and the role of foreign powers for future analysis, which we will be publishing in the coming weeks and months on +972. For now, I wish to focus on the issue of Jewish-Israeli politics.

Two changes seem very clear to me at this point: the end of the Netanyahu era, and the end of the dominance of the “conflict management” discourse in Israeli society, giving way to a renewed public discussion on the future of Jewish-Arab relations.

Netanyahu is finished. I know this has been said many times before, and this leader has shown incredible survival abilities, but with what has happened in the past month, we are beyond that point. All polls since October 7 show that the vast majority of Israelis, including a considerable majority within his Likud party, believe he is to blame for Israel’s military defeat at the hands of Hamas, and that he has to go. Some of his allies in the media and in government are already turning on him, preparing for the day after.

This is one more reason that Netanyahu is so dangerous right now, believing — rightly, as things stand — that as long as the war goes on, no one will bother with the politics of replacing a prime minister. He may still find that even Israelis have a limit, and either before or after the war ends, in one way or another, he will be ousted.

Much more importantly than Netanyahu himself, though, is the Netanyahu doctrine, which has become the near-consensus of Jewish-Israeli politics. This doctrine held that Israel has beaten the Palestinians, that they are no longer a problem to contend with, that we can “manage” the conflict on a “low flame,” and that we should focus our attention on other matters. 

Throughout his near-continuous rein since 2009, this perception won the hearts and minds of Israelis, and the question of “what to do with Palestinians” — which used to be the main fault line of Israeli politics — has been removed from the agenda almost entirely, contributing to the hubris that led the army to drop its guard around Gaza. Last month, Hamas decimated that notion for years and maybe decades to come.

In the next Israeli elections, whenever they are held, we are likely to see a reorganizing of the political map, potentially creating three distinct blocs. It is too early to say how much traction each of these camps will have, but here is what they could look like. 

The first is of course the far right, which has already been gaining traction since 2021, and which will try to capitalize on recent events. Led by the likes of Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, probably joined by some from Likud, this camp will say that no matter how this war will end, it just wasn’t enough. Israel, they’ll argue, needs a definitive solution based on large-scale ethnic cleansing, because, in their eyes, the entire land belongs to us and there is no room for the Palestinian people to stay here as a collective.

A second approach, probably led by Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid, will likely center on unilateral steps, such as a “second disengagement” from the West Bank, pulling down settlements east of the separation barrier, annexing the rest, and fortifying the walls encaging Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza with more concrete, more tech, and more soldiers than ever before. Part of this approach may also include the “mowing the lawn” strategy — essentially, periodically recurring military campaigns — to prevent Palestinians from developing significant armed capabilities.

The third camp is likely to be a reconfiguration of what used to be Labor, Meretz, and parts of Yesh Atid, in which a key role may be played by the newfound hero of the Zionist center-left: former Meretz MK and army general Yair Golan, who spent October 7 as a volunteer one-man commando unit, going in and out of fighting arenas with his gun and private car, rescuing survivors under fire. This camp will likely propose a return to the two-state separation paradigm, to be achieved through negotiations with the PLO. It may also try to advance some discourse of coexistence within Israel, promoting different forms of Arab-Jewish partnership in civilian life.

The latter two camps will be emboldened by strong anti-settler sentiments that have been growing in the Israeli public, especially since anti-government protesters rightly began identifying the link between the far right’s judicial overhaul and its ideological sources in the religious Zionist movement in the occupied territories. The rejection of settler pogroms, like the one in Huwara last February, has only increased, with many Israelis seeing current settler attacks in the West Bank as provoking a third front in the war. 

Moreover, the knowledge that the Israeli army had redeployed forces from the Gaza fence to guard extremist settlers in remote West Bank outposts in recent months, which may have paved the way for the success of Hamas’ military operation on October 7, has strengthened hatred and resentment of these settlers. That said, Israeli hatred toward Palestinians has skyrocketed far more, and the remote possibility of a one-state or confederate solution being accepted by Israelis has further shrunk. 

Forward into the unknown

This is a grim and trying time for those of us who are committed to opposing apartheid and promoting a solution grounded in justice and equality for all. On the one hand, achievements hard won over decades of shared struggle have been erased by Hamas’ massacres, and will be hard to regain. Our movement is in disarray, and despair abounds. Thousands of lives have been lost, thousands more still may perish, and the collective traumas we carry are intensifying by the day.

On the other hand, once the war is over, there will have to be a reckoning within Israeli society, which could open up new opportunities for us to seize. Much of what we have been fighting for will become ever more relevant, with more people locally and globally willing to recognize that the system we live under is unjust, unsustainable, and offers none of us real security. We must double down on our commitment to promoting a peaceful political process, with the stated goal of ending the siege and the occupation, recognizing the right of return of Palestinian refugees, and finding creative solutions to materialize that right.

But the new reality will require some realignments. Alongside our commitment to the full realization of all Palestinians’ rights, our progressive, anti-apartheid movement will have to be explicit about the collective rights of Jews in this land, and to ensure that their security is guaranteed in whatever solution is found. We will have to contend with Hamas and its place in this new reality, ensuring it can no longer commit such attacks on Israelis, just as we insist on the security of Palestinians and their protection from Israeli military and settler aggression. Without this, it will be impossible to move forward.

Until then, there are two extremely urgent calls upon which to center our efforts right now: freeing civilian hostages, and an immediate ceasefire. Now.

They have instituted four hour ceasefires to allow people to leave northern Gaza and the numbers we’re seeing do that just shows how many people have been stuck there under bombardment. It’s hell on earth.

Read the whole thing.

Poor Unhappy Billionaires

Published by digby on November 9, 2023

Another disappointed master of the universe has regrets. Boo hoo hoo.

Barton Gelman had a chat with Peter Thiel. He has a sad:

It wasn’t clear at first why Peter Thiel agreed to talk to me.

He is, famously, no friend of the media. But Thiel—co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, avatar of techno-libertarianism, bogeyman of the left—consented to a series of long interviews at his home and office in Los Angeles. He was more open than I expected him to be, and he had a lot to say.

But the impetus for these conversations? He wanted me to publish a promise he was going to make, so that he would not be tempted to go back on his word. And what was that thing he needed to say, loudly? That he wouldn’t be giving money to any politician, including Donald Trump, in the next presidential campaign.

Already, he has endured the wrath of Trump. Thiel tried to duck Trump’s calls for a while, but in late April the former president managed to get him on the phone. Trump reminded Thiel that he had backed two of Thiel’s protégés, Blake Masters and J. D. Vance, in their Senate races last year. Thiel had given each of them more than $10 million; now Trump wanted Thiel to give the same to him.

When Thiel declined, Trump “told me that he was very sad, very sad to hear that,” Thiel recounted. “He had expected way more of me. And that’s how the call ended.”

Months later, word got back to Thiel that Trump had called Masters to discourage him from running for Senate again, and had called Thiel a “fucking scumbag.”

Thiel’s hope was that this article would “lock me into not giving any money to Republican politicians in 2024,” he said. “There’s always a chance I might change my mind. But by talking to you, it makes it hard for me to change my mind. My husband doesn’t want me to give them any more money, and he’s right. I know they’re going to be pestering me like crazy. And by talking to you, it’s going to lock me out of the cycle for 2024.”

This matters because of Thiel’s unique role in the American political ecosystem. He is the techiest of tech evangelists, the purest distillation of Silicon Valley’s reigning ethos. As such, he has become the embodiment of a strain of thinking that is pronounced—and growing—among tech founders.

And why does he want to cut off politicians? It’s not that they are mediocre as individuals, and therefore incapable of bringing about the kinds of civilization-defining changes a man like him would expect to see. His disappointment runs deeper than that. Their failure to make the world conform to his vision has soured him on the entire enterprise—to the point where he no longer thinks it matters very much who wins the next election.

He didn’t get everything he wanted. Imagine that. How dare America disappoint him like this?

Read the whole article if you can. This spoiled, petulant princeling says that he picks the most negative, pessimistic politicians because they are the most realistic. This is the silicon valley brain trust. Oy vey.

The Shutdown Looms

Published by digby on November 9, 2023

The Republicans just can’t get it together

They can’t even get the votes together to pass the draconian spending cuts they all live for:

House Republicans on Thursday pulled their annual financial services and general government funding bill amid divisions on abortion-related provisions and FBI funding. 

It was the second time in a week GOP leaders opted to punt a vote on a funding bill over divisions within the party.

GOP leadership hoped to pass the conference’s partisan plan laying out fiscal 2024 funding for the White House, the Treasury Department and other offices this week. But a planned vote was pulled at the last minute on Thursday as the conference struggled to unify behind the measure. 

Some moderate Republicans came out in opposition against language seeking to prohibit Washington, D.C., from carrying out a law that aims to protect people from employer discrimination based on their reproductive health decisions. 

“I think that we need to be much more respectful of the difficult decision that women have to make,” Rep. Marc Molinaro (R-N.Y.) said of the thorny policy rider on Wednesday. “I think we need to respect the city’s determination, and I think it’s a provision that is unnecessary in the bill.” 

He told reporters shortly ahead of the planned vote on Thursday that he was prepared to vote against the measure and suggested “there’s probably about five to eight of us that have expressed a concern regarding the one provision being placed in the bill.” 

In the House Republicans’ narrow majority, just a handful of members can sink any partisan bill.

The bill has also faced opposition from the right flank amid scrutiny around the FBI as some conservatives have accused the agency of political weaponization.  

An amendment pushed by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) earlier this week sought to bar funding from being used “for the acquisition of property” for a new FBI headquarters. 

“I don’t believe that the FBI deserves a massive new headquarters or Washington field office,” he said, while accusing the agency of working to “censor factual information harmful to their preferred political candidates.” 

Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.), who heads the subcommittee that crafted the bill, pushed back on Gaetz’s criticism at the time, saying “it is bad policy for the Congress to be taking steps to deny a federal agency that is in serious need, in my opinion, of an improvement to their headquarters.”  

“Notice I said improvement,” Womack said on the floor. “I didn’t say some massive big expansion, necessarily. But what I do know is that when I toured the FBI headquarters, I saw it in a state of disrepair that is going to need the attention of the owners of that property. And that’s us.”  

But other conservatives are still critical of FBI funding. Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) signaled he was a part of that camp in remarks to reporters on Thursday, while saying he also planned to vote against the bill.  

“FBI was a big deal. I raised that on the floor with Womack. It’s in disrepair. Well, the FBI is in disrepair as well,” he said, adding the bill didn’t go far enough to cut spending.  

“I mean, we’re just nibbling around the edges,” he said, telling The Hill the public is “tired of just going around in circles, and [if] we’re not going to cut, let’s just tell the American people we’re going bankrupt.” 

The bill is among the 12 annual government funding bills House Republicans sought to pass this month as they look to strengthen their hand in spending talks with Senate Democrats later this year.    

Like a chunk of the proposals, the bill considered on Thursday seeks to cut spending partly by rolling back funding for Democratic priorities approved in the previous Congress, with previous legislative summary detailing a pitch for clawing back billions of dollars in IRS funding. 

Republicans have defended the cuts, pointing to the rising national debt and inflation, and hardline conservatives are pressing for further reductions to spending.  

[…]

Earlier this week, House Republicans also punted plans to vote on a housing and transportation government funding bill over concerns from some in the party about a proposed drop in dollars for Amtrak. 

What a clusterfuck. And they have a religious nutcase running things now. This is going to be some holiday season…

The Media Has Got To Sober Up

Published by digby on November 9, 2023

They’re doing it again as if nothing has changed. Do they think they are immune to consequences of fascism?

Margaret Sullivan reads the media the riot act:

Whatever doubts you may have about public-opinion polls, one recent example should not be dismissed.

Yes, that poll – the one from Siena College and the New York Times that sent chills down many a spine. It showed Donald Trump winning the presidential election by significant margins over Joe Biden in several swing states, the places most likely to decide the presidential election next year.

The poll, of course, is only one snapshot and it has been criticized, but it still tells a cautionary tale – especially when paired with the certainty that Trump, if elected, will quickly move toward making the United States an authoritarian regime.

Add in Biden’s low approval ratings, despite his accomplishments, and you come to an unavoidable conclusion: the news media needs to do its job better.

The press must get across to American citizens the crucial importance of this election and the dangers of a Trump win. They don’t need to surrender their journalistic independence to do so or be “in the tank” for Biden or anyone else.

It’s now clearer than ever that Trump, if elected, will use the federal government to go after his political rivals and critics, even deploying the military toward that end. His allies are hatching plans to invoke the Insurrection Act on day one.

The US then “would resemble a banana republic”, a University of Virginia law professor told the Washington Post when it revealed these schemes. Almost as troubling, two New York Times stories outlined Trump’s autocratic plans to put loyal lawyers in key posts and limit the independence of federal agencies.

The press generally is not doing an adequate job of communicating those realities.

Instead, journalists have emphasized Joe Biden’s age and Trump’s “freewheeling” style. They blame the public’s attitudes on “polarization”, as if they themselves have no role. And, of course, they make the election about the horse race – rather than what would happen a few lengths after the finish line.

Here’s what must be hammered home: Trump cannot be re-elected if you want the United States to be a place where elections decide outcomes, where voting rights matter, and where politicians don’t baselessly prosecute their adversaries.

When Americans do understand how politics affects their lives, they vote accordingly. We have seen that play out with respect to abortion rights in Ohio, Virginia, Wisconsin and beyond. On that issue, voters clearly get that well-established rights have been ripped away, and they have reacted with force.

“Women don’t want to die for Mike Johnson’s religious beliefs,” as Vanity Fair’s Molly Jong-Fast said on MSNBC, referring to the theocratic House speaker.

Abortion rights is a visceral issue. It’s personal and immediate.

Trump’s threats to democracy? That’s a harder story to tell. Harder than “Joe Biden is old”. Harder than: “Gosh, America is so polarized.”

Journalists need to figure out a way to communicate it – clearly and memorably.

It was great to see the digging that went into that Washington Post story about Trump and his allies plotting a post-election power grab. But it was all too telling to see this wording in its subhead: “Critics have called the ideas under consideration dangerous and unconstitutional.”

So others think it’s fine, right? That suggests that both sides have a valid point of view on whether democracy matters.

Deploying the military to crush protests is radical. So is putting your cronies and yes men in charge of justice. These moves would sound a death knell for American democracy. They are not just another illustration of Trump’s “brash” personality.

We need a lot more stories like the ones the Post and the Times did – not just in these elite, paywalled outlets but on the nightly news, on cable TV, in local newspapers and on radio broadcasts. We need a lot less pussyfooting in the wording.

Every news organization should be reporting on this with far more vigor – and repetition – than they do about Biden being 80 years old.

It’s the media’s responsibility to grab American voters by the lapels, not just to nod to the topic politely from time to time.

Polls can be wrong, and it’s foolish to overstate their importance, especially a year away from the election, but if more citizens truly understood the stakes, there would be no real contest between these candidates.

The Guardian’s David Smith laid out the contrast: “Since Biden took office the US economy has added a record 14m jobs while his list of legislative accomplishments has earned comparisons with those of Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson … Trump, meanwhile, is facing 91 criminal indictments in Atlanta, Miami, New York and Washington DC, some of which relate to an attempt to overthrow the US government.”

So what can the press do differently? Here are a few suggestions.

Report more – much more – about what Trump would do, post-election. Ask voters directly whether they are comfortable with those plans, and report on that. Display these stories prominently, and then do it again soon.

Use direct language, not couched in scaredy-cat false equivalence, about the dangers of a second Trump presidency.

Pin down Republicans about whether they support Trump’s lies and autocratic plans, as ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos did in grilling the House majority leader Steve Scalise about whether the 2020 election was stolen. He pushed relentlessly, finally saying: “I just want an answer to the question, yes or no?” When Scalise kept sidestepping, Stephanopoulos soon cut off the interview.

Those ideas are just a start. Newsroom leaders should be getting their staffs together to brainstorm how to do it. Right now.

With the election less than a year away, there’s no time to waste in getting the truth across.

From her lips to CNN’s ears. The coverage of these polls is a very worrying harbinger of what’s to come. It appears they’ve learned nothing and it’s “butheremails” all over again.

GOPers On Parade

Published by digby on November 9, 2023

It’s not a pretty sight

The GOP debate last night was torture. I watched it because it’s my job but I’ll be very happy when this primary is over. I usually sort of enjoy watching them tear each other apart and say stupid things but this one is truly unpleasant.

I thought this one might be more interesting because it was on NBC so maybe it would have more interesting questions than the softballs they’ve been given on the earlier Fox debates. But no. It was just more dull — well except for Nikki Haley calling Ramaswamy “scum” and Ramaswamy calling Zelensky a Nazi. They didn’t ask about abortion until the last 15 minutes, they didn’t ask about guns, they didn’t ask about Trump’s legal problems. (Chris Christie did mention them in one early answer but that was that.)

Aaaaand there was a rousing discussion about how much to cut Social Security and Medicare! Here’s the leading so-called “moderate” on the stage who the media anointed the winner:

Points for making that clear.

It is a total waste of time for everyone. I don’t know why they are bothering.

Meanwhile, 15 miles away at the same time, here’s the man everyone says is so much sharper than Joe Biden:

Biden is old but he isn’t stupid and he isn’t crazy. Kids, please don’t make the mistake of voting third party because you don’t like something Biden did or didn’t do. You must realize that enabling this lunatic to have another term will end us.