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Heads, we win, tails, you die

Published by Tom Sullivan on November 20, 2023

Timidity and irresolution and menace

After a Colorado court ruled against barring Donald Trump from the ballot there, I commented on the atmosphere of menace Trump has created around any attempts to hold him accountable before the law for any of his actions. This includes attempts to disqualify him from holding elected office via the 14th Amendment. I focused on the fact that three different judges had cited three different reasons for not giving Trump the boot. That’s not so say (and I did not mean to suggest) the rulings were in error. But I did not address what the ruling did or did not do for Trump cases on appeal. Kim Wehle does so this morning at The Bulwark.

The 102-page ruling contains findings of fact that Colorado District Judge Sarah B. Wallace clearly wrote “with an expectation that judges at higher state courts and likely even the U.S. Supreme Court would wind up studying her analysis on an appeal petition,” Wehle writes.

Notably:

Wallace ruled, as a matter of proven fact, that:

  • Donald Trump “put forth no evidence at the Hearing that he believed his claims of voter fraud despite the overwhelming evidence there was none.”
  • “Trump knew his claims of voter fraud were false.”
  • Trump “sought to corruptly overturn the election results through direct pressure on Republican officeholders in various states both before and after the Electoral College met and voted in their respective state.”
  • “Trump knew that his supporters were angry and prepared to use violence to ‘stop the steal’ including physically preventing Vice President Pence from certifying the election.”
  • “Despite knowing of the risk of violence and knowing that crowd members were angry and armed, Trump still attended the rally and directed the crowd to march to the Capitol.”
  • “Trump’s Ellipse speech incited imminent lawless violence.”
  • Trump’s “call to ‘fight’ and ‘fight like hell’ was intended as, and was understood by a portion of the crowd as, a call to arms.”
  • “Trump’s conduct and words were the factual cause of, and a substantial contributing factor to, the January 6, 2021 attack on the United States Capitol.”
  • Trump’s 2:24 p.m. tweet on January 6th that “‘Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!’ . . . caused further violence at the Capitol.”
  • “Trump had the authority to call in reinforcements on January 6, 2021, and chose not to exercise it thereby recklessly endangering the lives of law enforcement, Congress, and the attackers on January 6, 2021.”
  • And “the Court heard no evidence that Trump did not support the mob’s common purpose of disrupting the constitutional transfer of power.”

We’ve addressed the 14th Amendment’s Section 3 multiple times and Wehle does so again, in light of the Colorado ruling, but also summarizes where the other cases stand:

Here’s what other courts have ruled thus far about Trump and Section 3:

  • Earlier this month, the Minnesota Supreme Court rejected a bid to keep Trump off the state’s primary ballot, but for a different reason than Wallace’s: that “there is no state statute that prohibits a major political party from placing on the presidential nomination primary ballot . . . a candidate who is ineligible to hold office.” Translated, the Republican party is fully in charge of who gets on the primary ballot. Yet Minnesota Chief Justice Natalie Hudson noted that the plaintiffs could file another suit later to keep Trump off the general election ballot should he win the Republican primary in Minnesota.
  • In Michigan, Court of Claims Judge James Redford took a different route altogether, ruling that courts have no business deciding what Section 3 means because it’s a “political question” that exclusively belongs to Congress. (The political question doctrine is a made-up rule the Supreme Court uses if it just doesn’t want to wade into sticky political issues like crafting the technical rules governing an impeachment trial, for example.) However, if Trump wins the general election, Redford added, his eligibility under Section 3 could be revisited, and if he’s then determined ineligible, the Twentieth Amendment—which provides for the vice president-elect to become president if a president-elect dies before taking the oath of office—could somehow kick in.
  • In New Hampshire, a federal judge ruled in October that John Anthony Castro, an unknown presidential candidate from Texas who has initiated over two dozen Section 3 lawsuits across the country, did not have standing to sue under Article III of the U.S. Constitution—meaning he lacked a sufficient injury to bring the matter within Article III’s “case” or “controversy” requirement that gives federal courts jurisdiction in the first place. The judge wrote: “Castro has not established that he has or will suffer a political competitive injury arising from Trump’s participation in the New Hampshire Republican presidential primary.” In addition, he agreed with the Michigan state court judge that the matter is probably a “political question” that’s for elected politicians—not judges—to decide.
  • Finally, in Florida, another federal judge dismissed a case for lack of standing in September. The plaintiff in that case was an individual citizen who, the judge ruled, had no legal basis to complain about another person’s running for office. A “generalized interest” in the election outcome is not enough of an injury to invoke the power of the courts.

There is a pattern in the reluctance of lower courts (or anyone in Congress or the elections machinery) to take a stand on Section 3. Brian Beutler chalks it up to (as I suggested) the “timidity and irresolution of the judiciary.” Wallace found “a (tortured) way to construe the 14th amendment that exempted Trump,” and thus “felt compelled to adopt it,” Beutler writes (subscription req’d for full access):

The judiciary is essentially split between judges, like Aileen Cannon, who are thrilled to protect Trump from the rule of law, and more impartial jurists who are scared to apply it to him. The latter behave as though holding Trump to a more lenient set of rules is worth it to avoid some civil strife they’ve conjured in their minds, or the death threats they know will follow any significant adverse rulings. I suspect these kinds of considerations influenced Judge Wallace. They also seem to influence Arthur Engoron, the New York judge in Trump’s civil-fraud case who barks loudly about Trump’s flagrant contempt of court, but can never bring himself to bite.

Same with Chutkan, who early on signaled she’d be reluctant to jail Trump for violating the terms of his bond, and would only deter him with the threat of a speedier trial. “The more a party makes inflammatory statements about this case which could taint the jury pool,” she stated, “the greater the urgency will be that we proceed to trial quickly.”

Um, yeah, well.

If Trump stands federally convicted early-mid 2024 of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election, Beutler asks, then what? Would he remain free on (endless) appeal? Would the Roberts Supreme Court quickly overturn his conviction (something Trump would obviously bet on)?

All Americans—and that sincerely includes Trump and all of his supporters—deserve for him to be tried for his crimes before the GOP selects his nominee; if convicted, for him to be jailed immediately; if jailed, for his party to have time to make a considered decision about whether to nominate him; and for the election to proceed from there. 

That seems unlikely to happen. Trump is making a mockery of the very law judges swore to uphold. Delays by the Justice Department and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in bringing cases may be justified (“You come at the king, you best not miss”), yet the timing plays right into Trump’s tiny hands. It all makes the possibility of Trump winning a second term “as an unimprisoned convict” that much more real, Beutler believes.

But that’s not merely because our justice system moves slowly and methodically — timidly, irresolutely in Beutler’s telling — but also because of the atmosphere of menace Trump and his supporters have created in the country through violence, threats, and intimidation reinforced with tactical gear and AR-15s. We’ve moved on from heads, we win, tails, you lose to heads, we win, tails, you die.

Either way, the country could die.

Theocracy rising

Published by Tom Sullivan on November 20, 2023

On the public dime

Republicans do not have a governing majority, argues Jennifer Rubin. What Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D- Calif.) did with her thin Democratic margin as speaker, Republicans cannot with theirs. Not without the Democrats’ help. This leaves Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) in a unique position. He has the best of both worlds:

He’s not responsible for electing a speaker whose Christian fundamentalist views and financial questions make him a weight around the necks of Republicans in swing districts. He can castigate Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) for his noxious views and effectively produce legislation that does not compromise Democrats’ minimum standards. At a Wednesday news conference, Jeffries emphasized, “House Republicans are unable to govern on their own. Period, full stop, no further observation necessary.”

Ask Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.).

Rubin describes what Democrats are able to do (and have) from the back seat. “Now, imagine what Democrats could do if they had the mathematical majority,” she concludes.

Gerrymandering and sluggishness have left Democrats here in North Carolina in a far weaker position. Their goal in the last few elections has been just to hang onto the governor’s mansion and win themselves just enough numbers to sustain Roy Cooper’s veto. That evaporated when former Democrat Rep. Tricia Cotham switched parties in January.

All that leads to what North Carolina Republicans are doing with their override majorities: subsidizing Mike Johnson’s Christian fundamentalism. Carolina Forward explains:

As reported by the News & Observer, the new state budget included millions of dollars in direct state grants to churches and religious organizations. Just a few examples include:

  • $4 million to the Mooresville Area Christian Mission (Iredell)
  • $1.5 million to the Community Church of Mt. Pleasant (Cabarrus county)
  • $100,000 to the Carolina Christian Academy (Davidson)

According to state and federal law, public money may not be used for sectarian purposes, and must be for activities that are for “public purposes only.” Spokespeople for many of the groups who received funding insisted that this is what they do. Yet it’s clear this isn’t true. Many of the evangelical churches receiving funding – for example, Mt. Pleasant’s Community Church – publicly proclaim their discrimination against broad classes of people, especially those who identify as LGBTQ. A sectarian private school like the Carolina Christian Academy does not serve the public by definition.

No similar Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or atheist/agnostic organization received any such direct funding in the state budget, which is also a very telling omission.

Add to those $20 million for “crisis pregnancy centers.” CF explains, “One such group, LifeLink Carolina, which received a whopping $12.5 million direct grant, was cited by the state just a few years ago for spending previous grant money on religious literature and Bible study courses, in plain violation of federal law.”

Then there is the religious right (and vulture capitalists) raiding public school funding, The Big Enchilada, that largest slice of the annual budget pie in all 50 states (of which I’ve written since the aughts). Carolina Forward again:

One of the most controversial parts of the new state budget was the massive expansion of the state’s school voucher program, which subsidizes tuition at private religious schools at the expense of public schools. Under the expansion as written, the voucher program could receive as much as a half-billion dollars annually by 2032. The voucher program is expected to wipe $200 million out of North Carolina’s public school system just in the next three years alone.

This staggering amount of state money has some fraudsters seeing dollar signs. With the promise of free money from the state, with almost no restrictions or oversight (such as curriculum or testing standards) and a history of fraud, the voucher program is an almost irresistible target. Take, for example, Sam Currin, a Republican former state judge and convicted felon fraudster who recently published an op/ed titled, “Should Your Church Start a School?” The tsunami of state funds available for vouchers, with few if any hard requirements, is virtually tailored to produce a proliferation of junk “schools” aimed at vacuuming up voucher money, without any real intention to educate.

Even with far-right Christianity in decline, evangelicals are determined to create a theocracy in this country. At public expense. When that happens in majority Muslim countries, that’s bad. When evangelicals do it, it’s God’s will.

The American evangelical church, beset on one side by a rampant sexual abuse crisis and an epidemic of fraud and political hucksterism on the other, has plainly lost the political power, to say nothing of the social trust, it held just a decade or two ago. And perhaps that is for the best. It would plainly be better for any healthy religious movement to focus on the spiritual realm, instead of the political one. Yet with so much money to be made playing politics, some evangelical leaders may find it hard to resist.

For big charter companies, it’s simply about the predictable, government-guaranteed, near-recession-proof stream of public tax dollars. For evangelicals, it’s what you get combining right-wing politics with the prosperity gospel. Getting rich with God is nothing new. What is new over the last couple of decades is evangelicals treating public education dollars as a religious entitlement and a means of funding its goal of turning the U.S. into a Christian theocracy.

Funding the poor with tax dollars? That’s bad. Funding Christian nationalism with them, that’s God’s plan.

Let’s Keep It Up

Published by digby on November 19, 2023

 California Gov. Gavin Newson is sending a warning shot at Florida’s Ron DeSantis over abortion ahead of their anticipated clash on Fox News later this month.

On Sunday, Newsom is debuting a new TV ad that accuses the Republican governor and presidential candidate of pushing policies that criminalize women and doctors who pursue abortions after six weeks. The ad, narrated by Newsom, shows pictures of a woman and a doctor under a “Wanted” sign and states that their possible arrest is “by order of Governor Ron DeSantis.”

DeSantis signed Florida’s six-week abortion ban into law this year, upending his state’s status as an abortion haven in the South as he sought to boost his conservative bonafides in the presidential primary. Democrats, meanwhile, have capitalized politically since the Supreme Court overturned abortion protections, with anger on the left fueling better-than-expected results at the ballot box.

A DeSantis spokesperson did not respond to the abortion issue but pointed to a prior statement from the governor’s campaign saying he was eager to “expose to a national audience just how dangerous [Newsom’s] radical ideology would be for the country.”

Newsom’s ad — set to run in Florida and Washington, D.C. — continues the long-simmering feud that culminates Nov. 30 with a 90-minute event with DeSantis moderated by Fox’s Sean Hannity. The ideological clashes between the two governors elevated their respective profiles, though DeSantis has struggled to gain traction in his presidential run and Newsom has taken to questioning why the Florida governor would stoop to participating in the intramural skirmish.

But neither side wants to back down now, and each is suggesting that they have plenty of material to work with. DeSantis has ridiculed Newsom as presiding over a “woke” state in decline, pointing to California’s well-documented struggles with homelessness and open-air drug use. In recent days, he assailed Newsom for problems in his native San Francisco around the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit and said the Democrat’s approach would “accelerate the decline of America.”

Newsom, who is viewed as a likely future White House aspirant, has said he’ll defend his state as well as stump for President Joe Biden in the debate. Newsom has spent more than a year trolling his GOP nemesis, describing him as “fundamentally authoritarian,” “a small, pathetic man,” and holding him up as a foil to attack conservative policies and promote his own brand of pugilistic progressivism. Newsom months ago declared DeSantis’ presidential run dead, giddily adding he “belly-flopped” and mocking him as a bad imitation of frontrunner Donald Trump.

DeSantis and Newsom also have sparred over book bans, immigration, education and guns, among other policies. Newsom’s latest ad comes more than a year after he ran TV spots in Florida contending that freedom was under attack there and inviting Floridians to move to California…

You might think that’s all just fun and games since DeSantis is a dead man walking. But get a gander at the guy everyone seems to think represents the old Republican establishment:

He would. Of course he would. Any Republican president would.

They Finally Found Their Smoking Gun

Published by digby on November 19, 2023

It turned out to be a vape pen

Our new Christian Nationalist Commander Mike Johnson has released all the January 6th footage which shows not every minute of the insurrection was violent, thus proving that there was no violence at all. Or at least that’s what the right wingers seem to think.

Here’s an example of how it’s going:

As expected, new conspiracies are being launched based on the J6 footage released by Speaker Mike Johnson, each one crazier than the next.

The hottest one making the rounds claims that someone in a MAGA hat is flashing a police badge inside the Capitol. This feeds the conspiracy that J6 was orchestrated by FBI agents dressed as Trump supporters, advanced by several Members of Congress. Just this past week, Rep. Clay Higgins claimed that busses of FBI agents disguised as Trump supporters came in “ghost busses.”

And now, a US Senator gets in on the action:

The new conspiracy, latched onto this morning by Utah Senator Mike Lee and several others, is that one of the J6ers inside the Capitol must be holding an FBI badge because, I guess, it supposedly looks like a badge. Of course, since they have been unable to prove the “fedsurrection” conspiracy for two years now with actual evidence, so they are desperate to find anything.

Of course, the problem with this new conspiracy is that we already know who this is and what he was holding because the case has already been adjudicated. The man in the photo is J6 defendant Kevin Lyons, who was sentenced to 51 months in prison, and the object he is holding in his hand is a vaping device. He is also holding a photo of John Lewis that he stole from Nancy Pelosi’s office. (Pro tip – not a Fed).

During the riot, Lyons was screaming at Capitol Police Officers that they were “f–king Nazis!” Lyons also stole a wallet with $150 cash in it from the jacket of a staffer. But this is the guy who is going to prove that J6 was really just Feds.

Here’s a video people may have forgotten about and there’s no question about what it says:

Members of congress are apparently immune from any accountability for such incitement. I find it hard to believe that’s what the constitution or the law intends but it seems that’s what we’ve got.

RIP Rosalyn Carter

Published by digby on November 19, 2023

Former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, a passionate champion of mental health, caregiving, and women’s rights, passed away Sunday, Nov. 19, at 2:10 p.m. at her home in Plains, Georgia, at the age of 96. She died peacefully, with family by her side.

Mrs. Carter was married for 77 years to Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the United States and the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize recipient, who is now 99 years old.

“Rosalynn was my equal partner in everything I ever accomplished,” President Carter said. “She gave me wise guidance and encouragement when I needed it. As long as Rosalynn was in the world, I always knew somebody loved and supported me.”

She is survived by her children — Jack, Chip, Jeff, and Amy — and 11 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren. A grandson died in 2015.

“Besides being a loving mother and extraordinary First Lady, my mother was a great humanitarian in her own right,” said Chip Carter. “Her life of service and compassion was an example for all Americans. She will be sorely missed not only by our family but by the many people who have better mental health care and access to resources for caregiving today.”

She lived through a very tumultuous century. Born in 1927, she grew up in the depression, saw WWII, the cold war, the sexual revolution, helped her husband be elected to the Governor’s house and the White House and then spent the equivalent of another lifetime working with Carter Center on democracy, poverty and mental health. What a life.

I’m sure people have found things to dislike about her but I have never heard them,.

The Richest Man In The World Needs to STFU

Published by digby on November 19, 2023
Another SpaceX rocket blew up yesterday. So did twitter.

I don’t know if you’ve heard about Elon Musk’s raging antisemitism but it’s causing Xitter to lose massive numbers of advertisers and even more people are leaving the platform because of it. Here’s the basic outline of what happened:

The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society “likes to bring invaders in that kill our people … Screw your optics, I’m going in.” Those were the last words posted online by Robert Bowers before he massacred worshippers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in 2018. It was the single deadliest anti-Semitic attack in American history. In previous postings, Bowers explained the grievances that led him to commit mass murder. He shared meme after meme asserting that Jews were conspiring to flood the country with brown people in order to oppose and displace the white race. “Open you Eyes!” declared one. “It’s the filthy EVIL jews Bringing the Filthy EVIL Muslims into the Country!”

On Wednesday night, the world’s wealthiest man affirmed this same conspiracy theory on X, formerly Twitter, the social-media site he owns. Like so many of Elon Musk’s acts of self-immolation, it happened in the space of a tweet. The incident began with a post from a conservative Jewish user who complained about anti-Semitic content on social media during the current Gaza conflict. “To the cowards hiding behind the anonymity of the internet and posting ‘Hitler was right,’” he wrote. “You got something you want to say? Why dont you say it to our faces.” A small-time white-nationalist account soon responded by attributing this anti-Semitism to minorities, and blaming it on the Jews:

Jewish commun[i]ties have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.

I’m deeply disinterested in giving the tiniest shit now about western Jewish populations coming to the disturbing realization that those hordes of minorities that [they] support flooding their country don’t exactly like them too much.

You want truth said to your face, there it is.

This exchange would have languished in obscurity had Musk not replied to this bigoted bromide with six words: “You have said the actual truth.”

That’s about as antisemitic as it gets and in a week in which the front runner for the GOP nomination for president calls his enemies vermin, that’s saying something. Elon Musk has 160 million followers on twitter.

But then it got weirder. Jonathan Greenblatt of the Anti-defamation League posted this:

Evidently, objecting to “decolonization” is a heroic act but disseminating the grossest of conspiracy theories about the Jews is no big deal? What? Has everyone lost their minds?

Anyway, again, this is social media becoming an even worse sewer which was already awful. But the tensions that we’re all feeling over the crisis in Israel and Gaza are very real. That’s why I found this Ezra Klein interview with Rabbi Sharon Brous so edifying. She is a very wise woman.

Ezra’s introduction is excellent as well:

Everything I’m about to talk about is hard to talk about. It is hard to talk about because it’s personal to me. It’s hard to talk about because it’s happening in the midst of an active hellacious war. And it’s hard to talk about because even when there is not a war, this is just hard to talk about.

Maybe I’ll start here. I think something we’re seeing in the politics in America around Israel right now, I think it reflects three generations with very different lived experiences of what Israel is. You have older Americans, say, Joe Biden, who saw Israel as the haven for the Jews and who also saw Israel when it was weak and small, when it really could have been wiped off the map by its neighbors.

They have a lived sense of Israel’s impossibility and its vulnerability and the dangers of the neighborhood in which it is in. Their views of Israel formed around the Israel of the Six-Day War in 1967, when its neighbors massed to try and strangle Israel when it was young, or the Yom Kippur War in 1973, when they surprise attacked Israel 50 years ago.

Then there is the next generation, my generation, I think. And I think of us as this straddle generation. We only ever knew a strong Israel, an Israel that was undoubtedly the strongest country in the region, a nuclear Israel, an Israel backed by America’s unwavering military and political support. That wasn’t always true, at least not to the extent now. In his great book, “The Much Too Promised Land,” Aaron David Miller points out that before the Yom Kippur War in 1973, Israel ranked 24th in foreign aid from the US, 24th. Within a few years of that war, it ranked first, as it typically has since.

We also knew an Israel that was an occupying force, a country that could and did impose its will on Palestinians, and I don’t want to be euphemistic about this, an Israel in which Palestinians were an oppressed class, where their lives and their security and their freedom were worth less. But we also knew an Israel that had a strong peace movement, where the moral horror of that occupation was widely recognized. We knew an Israel where the leaders were trying imperfectly, but seriously and continuously, to become something better, to become something different, to become in the eyes of the world what Israel was in its own eyes, a Jewish state, but a humane and moral one.

And then, as Yossi Klein Halevi described on the show recently, that peace movement collapsed. The why of this is no mystery. The Second Intifada, the endless suicide bombings were a trauma Israel still has not recovered from. And they posed a horrible question, to which the left, both in Israel and in America, had no real answer then or now. If your story of all this is simplistic, if it is just that Israel wanted this, it is wrong.

But what happened then is Israel moved right and further right and further right. Extremists once on the margin of Israeli politics and society became cabinet ministers and coalition members. The settlers in the West Bank ran wild, functionally annexing more and more territory, sometimes violently, territory that was meant to be returned to Palestinians, and doing so with the backing of the Israeli state, doing so in a way that made a two-state solution look less and less possible.

Israel withdrew from Gaza, and when Hamas took control, they blockaded Gaza, leaving Gazans to misery, to poverty. Israel stopped trying to become something other than an occupier nation. It became deeply illiberal. It settled into a strategy of security through subjugation. And many in its government openly desired expansion through expulsion. And so now you have this generation, the one coming of age now, the one that has only known this Israel, Netanyahu’s Israel, Ben-Gvir’s Israel.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the panic in the Jewish community, about what gets short-handed as antisemitism on campus. And there is antisemitism on campus and on the left and on the right — always has been. But to read only the most anti-Semitic signs in a rally, to hear only the anti-Semitic chants, can also obscure what else is happening there. If it’s just antisemitism, then at least it is simple. They just hate the Jews. They hate us. They always have. They always will.

But a lot of what is happening at these rallies is not just antisemitism. A lot of it is a generation that has only known Israel as a strong nation oppressing a weak people. They never knew a weak Israel. They never knew an Israel whose leaders sought peace, showed up to negotiate deals, who wanted something better.

And I am not unsympathetic to the Israeli narrative here. I believe large parts of it. We have an episode coming soon on the many failures of the peace process. And the Israelis who say they did not have a partner, they are right. But that does not justify what Israel became, and there are consequences to what it has become.

There is this Pew survey in 2022 that I find really telling. It found that 69 percent of Americans over age 65 had a favorable view of Israel, but among Americans between ages 18 and 29, young Americans, 56 percent had an unfavorable view. As it happens, American politics right now is dominated by people over 65, but it won’t be forever.

And there are many of us who warned of this exact thing happening, who said, if you lose moral legitimacy, you will not have the world’s good will when you need it most, who said it is a problem for the Jewish state to not be seen, to not be a moral state. That it is a problem geopolitically, and it is a problem spiritually because for Jewish-Americans — and I am one — Israel isn’t simply a question of politics, it is the Jewish state. So what does what Israel is say about Judaism? What does Judaism say about it?

This has been an almost exquisitely uncomfortable space. To believe Israel had become something indefensible on 10/6. To know that it needed defenders on 10/7, to know that antisemitism is real and every century seems to have its era of butchering the Jews. To believe deeply that Jewishness is about how we treat the stranger, is defined by the lessons of exile, and to see the Jewish state inflicting exile on so many. To value all lives and see so many of our one-time allies devaluing our own.

Throughout these last few months, I’ve been extremely moved by the sermons of Rabbi Sharon Brous of Los Angeles’s IKAR synagogue. She has a book coming out called “The Amen Effect,” which you can and you should pre-order. I’ve read some of it.

But I got to know her through these sermons, which did something very few people have been able to do, at least for me, which is to find a prophetic voice rooted in the Jewish tradition that can hold this complexity, these questions of Israel, both in critique and defense, of Jewishness, of liberalism, of antisemitism, of identity. And so I asked her to come on the show to try to talk through topics. And to be honest, I’m not all that comfortable talking about it all. As always, my email, ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.

The interview is here. She is a truly remarkable person and I highly recommend you listen to the whole thing at the following:

Or, you can read the transcript here (free gift link)

We Must Remind Ourselves Not To Go Down The Rabbit Hole

Published by digby on November 19, 2023

Kevin Drum wrote a post that reminded me that I need to avoid social media right now like the plague — and should probably ignore stories about social media too. His very wise post about a story I posted yesterday is much more reasoned than mine was.

Here’s the latest trend story from the New York Times. It’s about—God help us—”TikTok economics”:

This is the most tiresome thing ever. When are newspapers going to learn the obvious: social media doesn’t represent anything in the real world? I mean, how likely are you to post a TikTok about how your life is fine and everything is pretty good?

Not very. That’s just the nature of H. sapiens, who love to performatively gripe and complain a lot more than we like to performatively say that things are OK. The way to account for this bias is to actually ask people how they feel. Then you’ll get equal responses from everyone. Let’s try it:

Compared to 2019, young people have jobs at the same rate; they’re satisfied with their jobs at the same rate; they’re earning a little bit more; they rate their financial situation about the same; and they’re probably about as happy now that they’re recovering from their pandemic blues.

As Kevin says, it appears that nothing much has actually changed despite the propensity of people on Tik Tok and Twitter to whine constantly about everything.

I have to remind myself of that. Social media, whether twitter, Facebook, youtube, threads, Blue Sky whatever, is not reality. There is no reason to put much stock in anything you see on there that isn’t actual documentary evidence. I still appreciate the video threads that some people are generous enough to put together but beyond that it’s really not that useful anymore.

160 years ago

Published by Tom Sullivan on November 19, 2023

The work is never finished

I am reminded.

Full quotation:

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Michael Beschloss will be along presently.

The anniversary brings to mind something related to Gettysburg that I wrote for Dirty Hippies in 2011, “The Future They Feared”:

We were sitting in a Waffle House in Staunton, Virginia discussing the state of the nation over breakfast. I had just read an Ed Kilgore column in Salon  about the nationwide Republican war on voting rights, and the conservative debate over whether voting is even a right or not.

As I am standing in line to pay my tab, a African-American man in his forties slides into an occupied booth next to the register and sits opposite an older white man. They share a brief exchange about how his shift went. Two smiling, white waitresses come over to take his order and start a friendly argument over how he likes his toast. He is a regular.

“Toast, not grits?” remarks the older white man.

“It’s Filmore,” smiles one of the waitresses to the cook. “Burn it. He likes it burnt.”

“Dark, not burnt,” Filmore insists.

This is Virginia — the capitol of the Old South. Black man. Restaurant. Sharing a table with a white man. White women competing over who will wait on him.

It occurs to me that the prospect of the very everydayness of such a scene horrified many Virginians and others across America 50 years ago.

Some people need an “other” to fear or they don’t know who they they are themselves. It’s not just generational. It is a personality type. Many of the same types today fear poor people, gays, Muslims and Mexicans.

We are on our way to see the Gettysburg battlefield where two American armies slaughtered each other, where the Army of Northern Virginia lost its war over the right to deny rights to an entire class of “others,” and to hang onto a people’s irrational fear of the future I saw at a northern Virginia Waffle House.

Today add to the list of irrational fears transgender people, grooming, drag shows, and black history. In 50 years, should we survive the next few, no one will bat an eye.

“It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Working on it. Hope you are. The work is never finished.

Late Update: Heather Cox Richardson has more on the events of the day.

Progressive not in a good way

Published by Tom Sullivan on November 19, 2023

“Parkinson’s disease sucks”

It’s heartening to see people who still believe in public service as a vocation. A neighbor spent his career in international development. My state representative served first in the Peace Corps. I recently met a couple who retired here after careers as Foreign Service officers.

Donald Trump calls Washington, D.C. a swamp and people eat it up in part because guys like George Santos and Bob Menendez give public service a bad name. (Even though there’s some “both sides” to that, political corruption and faithlessness does seem to have a right-wing bias.)

Yet some people still believe. They’re not the ones who become notorious in the press.

CBS this morning profiles Virginia congresswoman Jennifer Wexton (D). Wexton comes from a family of public servants. She’s afflicted with a rare disease, yet forgoes some speech and physical therapy to keep serving her consituents:

Progressive Supra-nuclear Palsy, as Wexton said, has no cure. At this time, there is no treatment that will slow its progression, and it tends not to respond to medication, according to the National Institutes of Health. It often worsens rapidly, and most patients “develop severe disability within three to five years of symptom onset.” It affects movement — loss of balance is a common symptom — and causes slurred speech. Vision problems often develop as the disease progresses, too. 

Wexton described exhaustion, missed therapy appointments and lost sleep as the effects of the recent relentless House schedule. The narrowest of margins between the parties meant she needed to be present on Capitol Hill for the dozens of votes and debates.   

Her fatigue was so severe that she suspects it contributed to a painful fall at her home in Virginia four weeks ago. It was the fall that injured her neck and continues to cause her pain.

“It’s just so hard for me now,” Wexton told CBS News. Her voice and her ability to speak have been impaired by her medical condition, and her fatigue has grown.   

“Fatigue absolutely does have an impact,” she said during an extended interview. “The most important thing you can do is get sleep.”

She teared up several times as she echoed the message she sent to constituents in a written statement earlier this year: “I’m heartbroken to have to give up something I have loved after so many years of serving my community.”

“I’ve been worse since September. It’s been tiring. It’s been really hard being here for the ten weeks,” she said. “It’s awful.”

Wexton will leave the office she’s held since 2019 after sge defeated incumbent Republican Barbara Comstock.

“There is no ‘getting better’ with PSP,” Wexton told the press in September. She was dignosed in April. “People with progressive supranuclear palsy typically die six to nine years after their diagnosis,” reports the Cleveland Clinic. Plus, “People with PSP also have a higher risk of falls, which can result in bone fractures and head traumas. Falls that cause serious injuries are a common cause of death among people with PSP.”

We wish her well.