Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

The whole world is watching

Geopolitically, Israel could no more not retaliate for the Hamas butchery and hostage-taking than the U.S. could brush off the 9/11 attacks. The question in each case was always how.

“While you feel that rage, don’t be consumed by it,” President Joe Biden cautioned on his 7 1/2-hour visit to Israel after seemingly ISIS-inspired Hamas attacks. “After 9/11, we were enraged in the United States. And while we sought justice and got justice, we also made mistakes.”

Some of us still remember the mistakes. The PATRIOT Act, the Office of Special Plans, “Curveball,” aluminum tubes, yellowcake uranium, Colin Powell’s U.N. address, the Iraq invasion, Coalition Provisional Authority Order Number 2, Abu Ghraib, extraordinary rendition, enhanced interrogation techniques, Guantanamo. Plus, “We’re an empire now.“

Speaking of ISIS, ISIS was the product of our mistakes too.

Did Israel listen to Biden? This is from the Times of Israel on Friday (which I’ve not seen reported elsewhere): Cabinet said slated to okay police use of live fire against protesters blocking roads during multi-front war.

The Guardian cited that report and followed up, reporting:

The war has sparked a crackdown by the Israeli government against perceived dissent, with hundreds of people arrested or disciplined for speech sympathetic to Gazans. Police have been given wide new powers to determine what applies as “support for terrorism”, and have declared they will not allow solidarity demonstrations in support of Gaza.

If you’ve got a sinking feeling that you picked a bad week to stop sniffing glue, join the club.

Biden has pledged America’s unwavering support for Israel. Does the United States of America support Israel shooting domestic protesters? How far does that unwavering support extend?

What Israel has done is launch its own version of Shock and Awe against Gazans. The BBC this morning offers drone footage of the results to date:

The streets of the city are covered in large piles of rubble from collapsed buildings, and homes can be seen filled with debris, having lost their roofs.

Israel has been bombing Gaza since Hamas militants crossed the border into Israel on October 7 and killed 1,400 people.

This would all play better for Israel on the world stage if we saw the bodies of Hamas fighters on TV, not just Palestinian civilians weeping over their dead and wounded. With Hamas invisible, even if buried in their tunnels beneath hundreds of tons of collapsed apartment blocks, what the world sees is Israel slaughtering civilians and starving the survivors.

Nicholas Kristof writes in the New York Times:

One well-educated young woman inside Gaza, Amal, told me over WhatsApp that the victims she knew of were mostly civilians, and she sounded full of despair.

“Constant bombardment has me feeling as if I am not human anymore, as if our souls mean nothing at all,” she told me. “We are being massacred.”

A 16-year-old girl in Gaza offered this message, conveyed through Save the Children: “It’s like we are overpaying the price for a sin we didn’t commit. We were always with peace and will always be.”

As Israel launches ground operations, even if necessary for its security, is eradicating Hamas even possible? And when, not if, Israel withdraws, then what? Who will step in to fill the power vacuum? No regional player wants to.

I’m skeptical, and when I hear backers of an invasion speak of removing Hamas I have the same sinking feeling as when I heard hawks in 2002 and 2003 cheerily promising to liberate Iraq. Just because it would be good to eliminate a brutal regime doesn’t mean it is readily achievable; the Taliban can confirm that.

Then there is the moral cost Israel (and the U.S.) will pay for managing this response badly:

The second prism through which to consider the Gaza war is a moral one, for we have values as well as interests. Decades from now when we look back at this moment, I suspect it’s the moral failures that we may most regret — the inability of some on the left (and many in the Arab world) to condemn the barbaric Oct. 7 attacks on Israelis, and the acceptance by so many Americans and Israelis that countless children and civilians must pay with their lives in what Netanyahu described as Israel’s “mighty vengeance.”

When Israeli Jews were asked in a poll whether the suffering of Palestinian civilians should be taken into account in planning the war on Gaza, 83 percent said “not at all” or “not so much.” I can’t help feeling that while we say that all lives have equal value, President Biden has likewise greatly prioritized Israeli children over Gazan children.

[…]

Every account I’ve heard from Gaza this past week, including directly from people there who despise Hamas, suggests that the civilian toll there has been horrendous. One gauge is that at least 53 United Nations staff members have been killed so far, including teachers, an engineer, a psychologist and a gynecologist. More than 20 journalists have been killed, too, and an Al Jazeera correspondent lost his wife, son, daughter and grandson to an airstrike.

It will get worse before it gets better, and maybe not in what remains of our lifetimes.

Kristof concludes:

Israel faces an agonizing challenge: A neighboring territory is ruled by well-armed terrorists who have committed unimaginable atrocities, aim to commit more and now shelter in tunnels beneath a population of more than two million people. It’s a nightmare. But the sober question must be: What policies will reduce the risk, not inflame it, while honoring the intrinsic value of Palestinian life as well as Israeli life?

People will answer that question in different ways, and I don’t claim to have all the answers. But I think some day we will look back in horror at both the Hamas butchery in Israel and at the worsening tableau of suffering in Gaza in which we are complicit.

And should the war widen into a regional one?

Judi Dench was on Graham Norton last night to push her new book about her life and work with Shakespeare. After making the point we quote Shakespeare daily without knowing it, this happened: pic.twitter.com/CIhP39b4Bs

— Justin Sherin (@wychstreet) October 27, 2023

One of the greats.

That’s all he said about Ivanka. As you can see, it’s really all about him.

It is perfectly justified to bring Ivanka to testify. She wasn’t made part of the case because of the statue of limitations. A technicality. She was one of the main conduits between the Trump org and its major lender, Deutsche Bank so she is certainly an important witness.

“It doesn’t get better than this,” Ivanka Trump boasted in 2011, in an email celebrating the low interest rate she’d just won on a $125 million loan her father needed for his Miami golf course.

Lawyers for the New York attorney general’s office, who plan to call Ivanka Trump to the witness stand on Friday at their ongoing, $250 million Trump fraud trial, agree it was quite the deal.

As Donald Trump’s top loan negotiator, Ivanka Trump indeed excelled at securing rock-bottom interest rates, they say, saving her father as much as $150 million on $400 million in Deutsche Bank loans used to develop Trump’s palm-studded Florida golf course, his luxury hotel in Washington, DC, and the Chicago tower that is his tallest skyscraper.

The terms on the golf course loan were so good, “She didn’t even want to negotiate on it,” Kevin Wallace, James’ senior enforcement counsel, noted four weeks ago, during opening statements.

But the interest-rate savings, which ranged as high as 8 percent, were won through fraud, Attorney General Letitia James argues, and the trial judge has already found. And when she takes the stand, Ivanka Trump will be asked to describe how she turned this underlying fraud – in the form of Trump’s annual, widely exaggerated net worth statements – into easy cash for the family business.

Her testimony at the non-jury trial could prove highly damaging to her father and two eldest brothers, Donald Trump, Jr., and Eric Trump – Trump Organization vice presidents who, like their father, are defendants in James’ lawsuit. Through this lawsuit, James seeks to permanently ban them and the company from doing business in New York.

Someone Ivanka Trump’s testimony won’t damage — other than, perhaps, reputationally — is herself. She was originally a defendant for her alleged complicity in using the fraudulent statements to win loans. But she was cut from the case on statute of limitation grounds in an appellate decision over the summer.

“Until 2017,” when she left New York to work in the Trump White House, “Ms. Trump was the primary contact for the Trump Organization’s largest lender, Deutsche Bank,” James said in first laying out a detailed case against the Trumps in a court filing nearly two years ago.

“In connection with this work,” the AG wrote then, “Ms. Trump caused misleading financial statements to be submitted to Deutsche Bank and the federal government.”

Ivanka Trump will certainly be asked about using the net worth statements to win and maintain the three Deutsche Bank loans, and about what representations she may have made to the bank’s private wealth management group, which underwrote them.

She’ll also likely be asked about one number she did negotiate with Deutsche Bank. The private wealth management group demanded Trump maintain a net worth of $3 billion.

“Ivanka Trump tried to negotiate the number down to 2 billion,” Wallace said in openings, “before agreeing to 2.5 billion.”

She’ll also likely be asked to describe the far higher interest she would have been stuck with had the Trump Organization continued to use Deutsche Bank’s commercial real estate loan division, which did not rely on net worth statements.

Ivanka Trump didn’t just negotiate loans, however.

She played a key role in the Trump Organization’s effort to win a ground lease from the US government for the Old Post Office property in Washington, the historic building Trump converted into a luxury hotel.

When the federal General Services Administration began seeking requests for proposals for the property’s development, Ivanka Trump was the one who presented the Trump Organization’s bid, the AG alleges.

She cited “Donald J. Trump’s significant net worth” in her bid, which included his most recent net worth statement, and instructed, “Please find Trump’s Statement of Financial Condition in an envelope submitted with each copy of this proposal.”

Ivanka Trump can also expect to be asked about the apartment she and her husband, Jared Kushner, rented more than a decade ago in her father’s Trump Park Avenue property in Manhattan.

The couple paid a rent that was a mere fraction of that of other penthouses in the building, the AG alleges.

In 2011 and 2012, the couple had an option to purchase the unit for $8.5 million, documents already in evidence show. But during the same period, Donald Trump’s net worth statements valued the exact same unit at $20.8 million.

Ivanka Trump is scheduled to testify Friday, though it’s possible a last-minute appeal could delay or cancel that timing.

Her brothers are scheduled to take the stand earlier in the week, with Donald Trump, Jr. slated for Wednesday, and Eric Trump slated for Thursday.

Donald Trump himself is scheduled to be the last of the Trumps to testify, on Monday, November 6.

Lately, it seems like all the very richest, most successful people (men, mostly) are batshit crazy. Here’s a primary example:

The Adidas team was huddled with Kanye West, pitching ideas for the first shoe they would create together. It was 2013, and the rapper and the sportswear brand had just agreed to become partners. The Adidas employees, thrilled to get started, had arrayed sneakers and fabric swatches on a long table near a mood board pinned with images.

But nothing they showed that day at the company’s German headquarters captured the vision Mr. West had shared. To convey how offensive he considered the designs, he grabbed a sketch of a shoe and took a marker to the toe, according to two participants. Then he drew a swastika.

It was shocking, especially to the Germans in the group. Most displays of the symbol are banned in their country. The image was acutely sensitive for a company whose founder belonged to the Nazi Party. And they were meeting just miles from Nuremberg, where leaders of the Third Reich were tried for crimes against humanity.

That encounter was a sign of what was to come during a collaboration that would break the boundaries of celebrity endorsement deals. Sales of the shoes, Yeezys, would surpass $1 billion a year, lifting Adidas’s bottom line and recapturing its cool. Mr. West, who now goes by Ye, would become a billionaire.

When the company ended the relationship last October, it appeared to be the culmination of weeks of Mr. West’s inflammatory public remarks — targeting Jews and disparaging Black Lives Matter — and outside pressure on the brand to cut ties. But it was also the culmination of a decade of Adidas’s tolerance behind the scenes.

Inside their partnership, the artist made antisemitic and sexually offensive comments, displayed erratic behavior, and issued ever escalating demands, a New York Times examination found. Adidas’s leaders, eager for the profits, time and again abided his misconduct.

When he exploded in bitter outbursts at Adidas managers, the company typically sought not to rein him in but to appease him. In negotiations over the years, Adidas kept sweetening the deal, doubling down on its investment and tethering its fortunes more closely to him.

Even as Mr. West voiced increasingly toxic beliefs, privately and publicly, Adidas stepped up production and released Yeezys more frequently. And executives disregarded employee concerns that his troubling conduct risked tainting the brand’s reputation.

As companies increasingly turn to deals with celebrities, the Yeezy collaboration shows the precarious balance of risk and reward. Adidas entered the partnership in hopes of catching up to Nike, which had long dominated the hypercompetitive global sneaker market. But working with Mr. West, one of the most influential artists in the world — a “master of spectacle,” as one former executive put it — meant being tied to a provocative, polarizing and sometimes unstable personality.

While some other brands have been quick to end deals over offensive or embarrassing behavior, Adidas held on for years.

This article is the fullest accounting yet of their relationship. While some details have been reported earlier, The Times interviewed current and former employees of Adidas and of Mr. West, and obtained hundreds of previously undisclosed internal records — contracts, text messages, memos and financial documents — that reveal episodes throughout a partnership that was fraught from the start.

Just weeks before the 2013 swastika incident, The Times found, Mr. West made Adidas executives watch pornography during a meeting at his Manhattan apartment, ostensibly to spark creativity. In February 2015, preparing to show the first Yeezy collection at New York Fashion Week, staff members complained that he had upset them with angry, sexually crude comments.

He later advised a Jewish Adidas manager to kiss a picture of Hitler every day, and he told a member of the company’s executive board that he had paid a seven-figure settlement to one of his own senior employees who accused him of repeatedly praising the architect of the Holocaust.

Again and again, Mr. West contended that Adidas was exploiting him. “I feel super disrespected in this ‘partnership,’” he said in one text message. “I’ve never felt understood,” he wrote in another. He routinely sought more money and power, even suggesting that he should become Adidas’s chief executive.

His complaints were often delivered amid mood swings, creating whiplash for the Adidas team working with him. Diagnosed with bipolar disorder, he at times rejected the assessment and resisted treatment. Tears were common; so was fury.

Meeting with Adidas’s leaders in November 2019 to discuss his demands, he hurled shoes around the room. The month before, an internal text message described him becoming “fully, fully ramped up” and charging, “‘This is slavery’” — an accusation he leveled multiple times during the partnership.

As Adidas grew more reliant on Yeezy sales, so did Mr. West. In addition to royalties and upfront cash, the company eventually agreed to another enticement: $100 million annually, officially for Yeezy marketing but, in practice, a fund that he could spend with little oversight.

At the same time, he scaled his goals, opening an unaccredited Christian school, taking on a disastrous 2020 presidential campaign that reflected his rightward political drift, and promising to create flying cars, build futuristic communities and otherwise solve the world’s problems.

In a statement to The Times, Adidas said it “has no tolerance for hate speech and offensive behavior, which is why the company terminated the Adidas Yeezy partnership.” The brand turned down interview requests and, citing confidentiality rules, declined to comment on financial aspects of the collaboration and Adidas’s relationship with Mr. West.

Mr. West declined interview requests and did not respond to written questions or provide comments.

After the relationship ruptured and Yeezy sales came to a halt, both Adidas and the musician were hit hard. The company projected its first annual loss in decades. Mr. West’s net worth plummeted.

But they had at least one more chance to keep making money together.

The company announced in May that it would begin releasing the remaining $1.3 billion worth of Yeezys from warehouses around the world. As the shoes have reappeared, so has Mr. West. He performed onstage for the first time in over a year. Music from what is rumored to be his comeback album has leaked online.

And he trademarked a new Yeezy creation, a sock shoe, suggesting he intends to keep making footwear — with or without Adidas.

There’s a lot more at the link. The man is very seriously mentally ill with an extremely ugly character — and Adidas didn’t care at all. I guess there have always been grotesquely immoral wealthy entrepreneurs but it sure seems like we’ve had an unusual spate of them lately.

Mike Johnson is a delusional zealot

He’s an educated man but his knowledge of history is nil. Someone should tell him about the centuries of religious wars in Europe that shaped the founders beliefs about religion and the state:

Mr. Johnson, a mild-mannered conservative Republican from Louisiana whose elevation to the speakership on Wednesday followed weeks of chaos, is known for placing his evangelical Christianity at the center of his political life and policy positions. Now, as the most powerful Republican in Washington, he is in a position to inject it squarely into the national political discourse, where he has argued for years that it belongs.

Mr. Johnson, 51, the son of a firefighter and the first in his family to attend college, has deep roots in the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination. For years, Mr. Johnson and his wife, Kelly, a licensed pastoral counselor, belonged to First Bossier, whose pastor, Brad Jurkovich, is the spokesman for the Conservative Baptist Network, an organization working to move the denomination to the right.

Mr. Johnson also played a leading role in efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and has expressed skepticism about some definitions of the separation of church and state, placing himself in a newer cohort of conservative Christianity that aligns more closely with former President Donald J. Trump and that some describe as Christian nationalism.

“Speaker Johnson really does provide a near-perfect example of all the different elements of Christian nationalism,” said Andrew Whitehead, a sociologist at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. He said those included insisting on traditionalist family structures, “being comfortable with authoritarian social control and doing away with democratic values.”

Mr. Johnson declined an interview request and did not respond to a request for comment about whether he considers himself a Christian nationalist. But the little-known speaker of the House has made clear that his faith is the most important thing to know about him, and in previous interviews, he has said he believes “the founders wanted to protect the church from an encroaching state, not the other way around.”

Over the arc of his career, Mr. Johnson, a lawyer and a member of the Louisiana Legislature before his election to Congress, has been driven by a belief that Christianity is under attack and that Christian faith needs to be elevated in the public discourse, according to a review of his appearances on talk shows and podcasts, as well as legislative speeches and writings over the past two decades.

He refers to the Declaration of Independence as a “creed” and describes it as a “religious statement of faith.” He believes that his generation has been wrongly convinced that a separation of church and state was outlined in the Constitution.

In his first interview as speaker, Mr. Johnson described himself to the Fox News host Sean Hannity as “a Bible-believing Christian” and said that to understand his politics, one only need “pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my worldview.”

That includes opposition not just to abortion, which he has called “a holocaust,” and same-sex marriage, but to homosexuality itself, which he has written is “inherently unnatural” and a “dangerous lifestyle.” He is the sponsor of a bill that would prohibit the use of federal funds for providing education to children under 10 that included L.G.B.T.Q. topics — a proposal that critics called a national version of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law.

In a 2006 column for Townhall, a conservative website, Mr. Johnson railed against “the earnest advocates of atheism and sexual perversion.”

“This sprawling alliance of anti-God enthusiasts has proven frighteningly efficient at remaking America in their own brutal, dehumanizing image,” he wrote.

He added: “In the space of a few decades, they have managed to entrench abortion and homosexual behavior, objectify children into sexual objects, criminalize Christianity in the popular culture, and promote guilt and self-doubt as the foremost qualities of our national character.”

In Washington, the prime role of religion in Mr. Johnson’s political life is often the first thing colleagues learn about when they meet him.

“It doesn’t take long,” said Representative Byron Donalds, Republican of Florida, who said that Mr. Johnson often begins meetings by leading a prayer. “You’ll pretty much know that in the first five minutes. He’s truly a humble man.”

Yet he is not shy about framing his political career as a divinely driven battle to put religion at the center of American policy and lawmaking. From gun violence to abortion to immigration, Mr. Johnson’s policy views are shaped by his belief that too many Americans are “denying existence of God himself.”

In remarks to a Louisiana congregation in 2016, Mr. Johnson linked school shootings to no-fault divorce laws (he is in a covenant marriage with his wife, which makes divorce more difficult), “radical feminism” and legal abortion. “We’ve taught a whole generation — couple of generations, now — of Americans that there is no right and wrong,” he said then.

In an episode of his podcast, “Truth Be Told,” Mr. Johnson explained how his religion drives his hard-line immigration stance, arguing that while the Bible teaches Christians to practice “personal charity,” that commandment was “never directed to the government.”

“The left is taking it and using it out of context,” Mr. Johnson said. Welcoming the stranger, he added, is an exhortation to “individual believers,” while the government’s duty is to enforce laws — in this case, strong border control policies to stop the influx of migrants into the United States.

In lectures to student groups he addresses across the country, Mr. Johnson has lamented: “There’s no transcendent principles anymore. There’s no eternal judge. There’s no absolute standards of right and wrong. All this is exactly the opposite of the way we were founded as a country.”

It is a viewpoint fervently embraced by much of the hard-right Republican base, which reveres Mr. Trump and identifies with his frequent claims of being persecuted, aggrieved and looked down upon by liberal elites.

On his podcast, which he co-hosts with his wife, Mr. Johnson often bemoans what he considers to be the repression of religious views in America.

“What we found was often the Christian viewpoint is not given equal treatment and equal platform and equal chance,” he said in one episode, according to transcripts of the shows compiled by the Brookings Institution. “Very often religious viewpoints, specifically Christian viewpoints, are censored and silenced.”

In the same episode, Mr. Johnson said the removal of religion from public schools had a “tragic effect,” adding: “People are separating what is religious, quote unquote, with quote unquote real life, right? And that dichotomy was never intended by the founding fathers.”

He said that sometimes “hostile” interviewers would ask him why he represented only Christians in his work as a lawyer doing religious liberty litigation, and not, say, Muslims or Jews.

“I would say because the fact is very simple: There is not an open effort to silence and censor the viewpoints of other religions,” he said. “It is only and always the Christian viewpoint that is getting censored.” He added, “The fact is the left is always trying to shut down the voices of the Christians.”

His colleagues on Capitol Hill describe Mr. Johnson as not particularly verbose or flamboyant, someone who lacks a flashy social media presence and may get lost in a sea of attention seekers. But his more mellow style can mask the fact that he proselytizes extremely hard-line views and has been hitting the right-wing talk show circuit doing that for decades.

In the 2000s, Mr. Johnson, then a lawyer and spokesman for the anti-abortion and anti-gay rights group Alliance Defense Fund, was also a prolific writer, posting columns to Townhall and writing opinion pieces for his local newspaper in Shreveport.

In his writings, he harshly criticized opponents on the left and those who did not share his beliefs. Almost always, the views he espoused were intertwined with his Christian beliefs.

In 2007, Mr. Johnson wrote a column claiming ulterior motives by proponents of the “Day of Silence,” an annual event where supporters pledge silence to bring attention to bullying and harassment of L.G.B.T.Q. students.

“The event is being sold to sympathetic schoolteachers and administrators as a gentle plea for sexual tolerance and understanding,” he wrote. “But the real agenda is to gild and glamorize homosexual behavior while gagging anyone who opposes it.”

“Experts project that homosexual marriage is the dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy that could doom even the strongest republic,” he wrote in an article in 2004.

On Thursday, Mr. Hannity asked him to explain some of his previously stated views about same-sex marriage, which is broadly supported across the country, including among many Republicans.

“I don’t even remember some of them,” Mr. Johnson said of his previous comments. “I genuinely love all people, regardless of their lifestyle choices. This is not about the people themselves.”

Mr. Johnson’s political career has been a rare glide path that has put him in the most powerful position in Congress without ever having run a competitive race. When he took office in the Louisiana House of Representatives in 2015, he ran unopposed for a seat that had been vacated. In his first run for Congress in 2016, he handily defeated his Democratic opponent, Marshall Jones, and last year he ran unopposed for his seat.

He has also recorded over a thousand interviews on talk radio and television — much of it from his time at the Alliance Defense Fund, now called the Alliance Defending Freedom — leaving a long trail of words that help paint a picture of an arch-conservative who promotes a literal reading of the Bible.

In 2015, Mr. Johnson provided legal services to Answers in Genesis, a fundamentalist Christian group founded by Ken Ham that rejects scientific findings about evolution and the early history of the cosmos. The organization cites “the Word of God” in saying that the universe is 6,000 years old and suggests that “we simply have been indoctrinated to believe it looks old.” The universe is in fact about 13.8 billion years old, astronomers generally agree.

It retained Mr. Johnson after tourism officials in Kentucky refused to grant tax incentives for the building of a Noah’s Ark theme park, citing the organization’s plan to require employees to submit a statement of faith. Mr. Johnson successfully sued in 2015, arguing that the denial of tax breaks was discriminatory.

Mr. Johnson praised Ark Encounter, the theme park, which includes dinosaurs in its life-size replica of the ark, in a 2021 interview with Mr. Ham as he guest-hosted the radio show of Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, whom he has called his “original mentor.”

“The Ark Encounter is one way to bring people to this recognition of the truth that, you know, what we read in the Bible are actual historical events, and that there are implications to what you do with all these stories in the Bible there,” Mr. Johnson said.

This guy scares the living daylights out of me.

Update: Also this:

I wonder why they would think the economy is so terrible? Whatever would make them think that?

Another admission of conservative impotence

Put us in charge, say Republicans. We pledge to do nothing.

“The end of the day, it’s, the problem is the human heart. It’s not guns. It’s not the weapons. At the end of the day, we have to protect the right of the citizens to protect themselves, and that’s the Second Amendment.”

— House Speaker Mike Johnson, asked by Fox News’s Sean Hannity about demands for more gun laws or more legislation in the wake of mass shootings

Alexandra Petri translates:

The problem is the human heart. Gun violence is an unchangeable, immutable fact of the human condition. That is why it is localized so strongly to this country and this time period. This is not a problem with a solution. It is the price you pay for being human. This is not unique to the United States, although you see it only here. Maybe it’s something to do with the water. Not laws, though; as we know from our efforts to impose vicious lawsuits and increasingly draconian restrictions against anyone who seeks an abortion, it is pointless to legislate about a problem. Some things, you are just born with and must accept; guns are one of them.

The heart is a uniquely American problem. Johnson, I hear, had his removed long ago, which allows him to look on the suffering of his fellow man with equanimity and detachment, because of his serene awareness of the Divine Plan.

Is it fatalism or is it nihilism?

God, grant conservatives the serenity to accept the mass murders they cannot change … until they lose their spouses, sons and daughters to them.

Mike Johnson’s “commitment is not to democracy”

“If Republicans vote for a medieval insurrectionist, and nobody knows, does it count?” Brian Beutler recommended on Friday at Off Message, meaning the new Republican speaker from Louisiana. Make Mike Johnson famous:

Instilling an idea about a person in the social consciousness and making it stick is an unending and tedious process. Republicans didn’t define Al Gore as a wooden teller of Big Fish tales in one day, it required relentless scoffing; same with John Kerry as the out-of-touch cheese-eating surrender monkey, Hillary Clinton as Mrs. Emails. Nancy Pelosi as Mrs. San Francisco values, and so on. 

Nancy Mace wants to wear a Scarlet Letter? How about two? MJ. Republicans hung “Nancy Pelosi liberal” around Democratic candidates’ necks for decades. Two parties can play that game.

The press is obliging. Politico’s Katelyn Fossett spoke with Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a historian of evangelical Christianity and politics.

Du Mez describes Johnson as “incredibly standard in terms of being a right-wing, white evangelical Christian nationalist” in the tradition of David Barton of Wallbuilders. Barton (for those unfamiliar) is a self-trained historian — pseudo-historian in her professional opnion —who has spent decades claiming the separation of church and state is a myth:

It’s really hard to overstate the influence that Barton has had in conservative evangelical spaces. For them, he has really defined America as a Christian nation. What that means is that he kind of takes conservative, white evangelical ideals from our current moment, and says that those were all baked into the Constitution, and that God has elected America to be a special nation, and that the nation will be blessed if we respond in obedience and maintain that, and not if we go astray. It really fuels evangelical politics and the idea that evangelicalism has a special role to play to get the country back on track.

Johnson’s viewpoint is not so much white supremacy as Christian supremacy. Every knee shall bow, meaning yours. As Du Mez sees the movement today, “conservative evangelicals are much more comfortable in just making that plain and no longer feeling a need to pay lip service to democracy or voting rights or those sorts of things.”

His commitment is not to democracy. He’s not committed to majority rule; he seems to be saying he’s committed to minority rule, if that’s what it takes to ensure that we stay on the Christian foundation that the founders have set up.

It’s Christian nationalists’ country. Behave yourselves and they may let you live in it under their minority rule.

I’ll interject here that in the same way Republicans use racist dogwhistles — coded language — to send sub rosa messages intended for a select audience and not the press and general public, Christianists do the same. If a particular phrase strikes your ear as odd or off-key, it’s likely sending a message not meant for you. If you’re not reading the line through Christianist glasses, you’re not getting the real meaning.

“So really, Christian supremacy and a particular type of conservative Christianity is at the heart of Johnson’s understanding of the Constitution and an understanding of our government,” says Du Mez. (Below, emphasis mine.)

You’ll see this in some of his speeches. In his speech on Wednesday, he incorporated a G.K. Chesterton quote about the U.S. being based on a creed. And he said the American creed is “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.”

But he goes much deeper than that, and really roots that in what he would call a biblical worldview: The core principles of our nation reflect these biblical truths and biblical principles. He has gone on record saying things like, for him, this biblical worldview means that all authority comes from God and that there are distinct realms of God-ordained authority, and that is the family, the church and the government.

Now, all this authority, of course, is under this broader understanding of God-given authority. So it’s not the right of any parents to decide what’s best for their kids; it’s the right of parents to decide what’s best for their kids in alignment with his understanding of biblical law. Same thing with the church’s role: It is to spread Christianity but also to care for the poor. That’s not the government’s job.

And then the government’s job is to support this understanding of authority and to align the country with God’s laws.

So, a kind of civic trinity: family, church, and government. Separation of church and state being a myth (Barton), church and state are at once separate and one. God has not charged His government with caring for the poor, but His church. That the church sucks at meeting the need is unimportant.

Du Mez adds:

Christian nationalism essentially posits the idea that America is founded on God’s laws, and that the Constitution is a reflection of God’s laws. Therefore, any interpretation of the Constitution must align with Christian nationalists’ understanding of God’s laws. Freedom for them means freedom to obey God’s law, not freedom to do what you want.

It’s an evangelical trope that the country was founded as a Christian nation of, by and for Christians. Never mind the thin historical evidence for that notion. It is an idée fixe that evidence will not penetrate any more than science can uproot the creationist notion that the Earth is a mere 6,000 years old.

At a county Board of Elections meeting here on Tuesday, a Republican member recommended referencing state law sections in documents outlining staff procedures as the N.C. State Board does religiously. Seemed like a good idea.

I went looking for evangelical efforts to do the same with the Declaration and Constitution. As you might expect, attempts I found to shoehorn Bible verses into both stretch credulity and the language in all three documents. I won’t trouble you with them here.

The Tanuki!

The tanuki is a wild canid species native to Japan that is related to wolves, foxes, and domestic dogs. It’s also known as the Japanese raccoon dog (Nyctereutes procyonoides viverrinus) and is a subspecies of the raccoon dog (Nyctereutes procyonoides) that’s found in mainland Asia.

With its thick fur, masked face, and curious nature, the tanuki has served as a cultural icon in Japanese folklore for centuries. The bushy-tailed animal is known as a mischievous trickster that’s shown up in legends and myths as a shapeshifter with supernatural abilities. In popular culture, tanuki can be spotted in Nintendo video games and Studio Ghibli films.

Here are eight little-known facts about this fascinating canid species.

1. Tanuki Are Not Related to Raccoons

Despite their masked appearance, tanuki are not close relatives of the common raccoon, the famous species native to the United States. Tanuki belong to the Canidae family, alongside wolves and foxes. In contrast, the common raccoon shares more in common with mustelids, a family that includes weasels, badgers, and otters. Their similar appearance could be a case of convergent evolution, where different species evolve to occupy the same ecological niche.

2. They Can Climb Trees

Tree-climbing isn’t a skill often associated with dogs, and in fact, tanuki and the North American gray fox are the only canid species that exhibit this trait. They are accomplished climbers thanks to their curved claws and can be found foraging for berries and fruit among the branches. In addition, their natural habitat is woodlands and marshes, and tanuki are skilled swimmers that will dive underwater to hunt and forage.

3. They Are Bred and Killed in the Fur Trade

Both the tanuki and its mainland raccoon dog cousin are bred in captivity for the global fur trade. In some instances, their fur has been found in garments that were advertised as containing faux fur. According to the Humane Society of the United States, 70% of the faux fur garments they analyzed contained raccoon dog fur.

Most of the animals killed and sold for their fur are bred in captivity and spend their entire lives in cages. Even when clothing is advertised as animal-free faux fur, it could be a false statement, and it’s worth knowing how to check for yourself.

4. They’re Considered an Invasive Species in Europe

Originally introduced into Russia to bolster the trapping trade in the early 20th century, the tanuki has spread into all of Europe, where it’s considered an invasive species that is threatening biodiversity. With few natural predators and an affinity for scavenging in close proximity to humans, the tanuki population has exploded. Many European nations have started programs to hunt and trap the animal and banned its trade as an exotic pet.

5. They Are Highly Social Creatures

Companionship and family are important for these critters, which usually live in monogamous pairs or in small, close-knit groups. In winter, a mating pair will share a den and raise a litter of pups together. Male tanuki have been observed taking part in family life in ways that other species seem like poor parents. They bring food to their pregnant mates and help to raise their pups, which live alongside them for four to five months after birth.

6. They Are the Only Canines That Hibernate

While wolves, foxes, and other canines have no trouble braving the snowy, barren winter months, tanuki prefer to wait them out and hunker down. In early winter, they will gain weight, decrease their metabolism by 25 to 50%, and settle inside their burrows until warmer weather arrives. They don’t go it alone either. These sociable animals are communal hibernators that prefer to spend the long winter in close proximity to their mating partner, though by definition they actually enter a state of torpor rather than hibernation because they remain semi-conscious and will emerge to forage on especially warm days.

7. They Hold an Important Position in Japanese Folklore

The version of tanuki often referred to in Japanese folklore is a mystical creature known as bake-danuki, which can be literally translated as “monster raccoon dog.” The creature was first referenced in a text published in 720 AD called “Nihon Shoki,” which is one of the oldest Japanese history books, weaving important historical events with mythology and creation stories. Tanuki have since been a recurring figure in folk tales throughout Japanese history, usually appearing as a trickster, shapeshifter, or a sign of good luck.

The mythical version of the animal is often depicted with an oversize scrotum, which has been the source of both comedy and confusion. One theory is that this depiction dates to the 19th century when metal workers wrapped gold in tanuki skin before hammering it into gold leaf. The strength of the tanuki’s skin was so great that, according to legend, a tiny piece of gold could be hammered thin enough to stretch across an entire room.

8. They Are One of the Most Ancient Canine Species

The tanuki is considered a basal species, or one of the species most similar to its ancestors. Thousands of years ago, most dogs probably looked more like the tanuki than your modern domestic pet. Since tanuki do not bark—instead whining, growling, and mewling—and are more omnivorous than most other wild dogs, it’s ancient lineage provides insight into the diverse origins of canine species. Fossil found in the Tochigi Prefecture of Japan suggests the first tanuki appeared between 2,588,000 to 11,700 years ago during the Pleistocene era.

The new Speaker Mike Johnson appeared on Hannity last night and made it clear that the impeachment inquiry onto Joe Biden is all systems go. Or is it? Philip Bump writes:

The Hannity interview was useful in one sense. Johnson’s predecessor as speaker, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), had approved the impeachment inquiry driven largely by Comer and Jordan. When McCarthy was ousted, it wasn’t clear what would happen. Johnson confirmed that it will move forward.

Or perhaps it won’t. In late September, the impeachment inquiry held a hearing involving a handful of witnesses, none of whom could provide any evidence impugning Joe Biden or his son, by their own admissions. The 2019 impeachment of Donald Trump — probably the target of Johnson’s sniffy disparagement of “the other team” — had released its final report about three weeks after its first hearing (which was followed by four more days of hearings). The Biden “impeachment inquiry” has held no more hearings in the month since the first one. And, by his own admission, Comer doesn’t want to.

“I don’t know that I want to hold any more hearings, to be honest with you,” Comer said while speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill last week. He complained that it was hard to keep members present for hours on end, given that so many had other commitments. Instead, he said, he preferred depositions, which “you can do more with.”

There’s a truth buried in that, of course. You can do more with cherry-picked transcripts when your goal is to coat Joe Biden with insinuations and unproved allegations.

[…]

One would think that at some point, Comer would need to present evidence that withstands objective scrutiny — including by non-right-wing media outlets. The value of adjudicating these things in public hearings is that they are tested and challenged, making the surviving evidence stronger. We can be more confident that Biden’s role in the firing of the Ukrainian prosecutor was not corrupt because the assertion was evaluated during the 2019 impeachment.

But we know this isn’t really necessary. Johnson and Comer can remain surrounded by their allies, including Hannity, and pluck stuff out of depositions that hops over the low evidentiary bar they’ve all agreed to. After all, it’s what they’ve done so far.

This will not be surprising in the least. They will move forward with an impeachment vote based upon cherry picked, incomprehensible gobbldygook with a lot of shrill speeches that prove nothing and they will impeach Joe Biden. They know it will fail in the Senate and indeed, it may not even be taken up, depending on how long this whole process takes. But they will have it on the record that Joe Biden was impeached and that’s what Dear Leader wants. If Johnson can also get Trump’s impeachments “expunged” he will be the MAGA hero of all heroes.

The circus is still in town.