N.C. House Speaker Tim Moore in 2019. Photo via Colin Campbell/WUNC.
Election rigging has been Republican SOP at least since their REDMAP project in 2010. The gerrymandered districts they drew in 2011 continue to pay dividends a decade and a half later.
Republicans are now so brazen about their intentions to seek power above all else that they’ve said so into microphones in state after state. Thomas Mills of Politics NC that the latest comes from (you guessed it) North Carolina:
On Wednesday, the state house overrode Governor Roy Cooper’s veto of the bill that strips power from the in-coming Democrats elected to executive branch offices. Out-going Speaker and Congressman-elect Tim Moore told Steve Bannon, “This action item today is going to be critical to making sure North Carolina continues to be able to do what it can to deliver victories for Republicans up and down the ticket.”
Yes, you read that right. The bill was not about disaster relief. It was not about good government. It was not about the people of North Carolina. It was about consolidating power and rigging elections for Republicans.
Republicans have rigged the state by subverting democracy. They used extreme gerrymandering to give themselves almost veto-proof majorities in both houses of the legislature. With a partisan and complicit state Supreme Court, they have few restraints on their power. Now, they are trying eliminate the checks and balances of the executive branch to further consolidate their power. As one friend wrote, “They’re now using all three branches to guarantee their hold on power.”
What do you think will be Job One for a guy like Tim Moore in his new Capitol Hill job?
Watch this guy closely. You’ll be hearing his name moore soon.
Dick Van Dyke’s Beloved Cat Bobo Has Been Found After He And His Wife Were Forced To Leave Him Behind Amid Malibu Wildfire Evacuations
Dick, 98, previously told concerned fans that Bobo the cat had escaped as he and his wife evacuated their Malibu home with their other pets on Tuesday evening.
Among these residents was legendary actor Dick Van Dyke, 98, and his wife, Arlene Silver, who reassured fans on Tuesday that they’d safely escaped the danger zone.
However, one beloved family member ended up being left behind: Dick and Arlene’s beloved cat, Bobo.
Posting to his official Facebook page, Dick explained that they’d managed to leave with most of their pets, but Bobo had sadly escaped at the last moment.
Commenting on the original Facebook post late on Wednesday evening, Dick confirmed that Bobo was dutifully waiting for his owners at home when they returned.
Bobo doesn’t look too thrilled about all the attention. But he’s an Orangy. Waddya gonna do?
San Pedro, United States – March 28, 2018: Ships, containers, and railways at the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, California; the busiest seaport on the west coast of the United States, shot wide angle from an altitude of about 1500 feet during a helicopter photo flight.
“I’ve studied automation, and know just about everything there is to know about it.”
There are many, many stupid things to read today. But that has to be the dumbest.
Trump is promising not to automate America’s ports on behalf of the East Coast Longshoreman’s union. (The West Coast union already made a deal to accommodate it but I guess they don’t know what they’re doing.)
I posted about this yesterday but it’s worth doing it again in light of his bragging about his vast knowledge of how the supply chain works:
You know, the supply chain is still broken. It’s broken. You see it. You go out to the docks and you see all these containers. And I own property in California, in Palos Verdes. They’re very nice. And I passed the docks, and I’ve been doing it for 20 years. I’ve never seen anything like it. You know, for 17 years, I saw containers and, you know, they’d come off and they’d be taken away—big areas, you know, you know, in that area, you know, where they have the big, the big ships coming in—big, the port. And I’d see this for years as I was out there inspecting property and things, because they own a lot in California. And I look down and I see containers that are, that are 12, 13, 14 containers. You wouldn’t believe they can hold each other. It’s like crazy. No, the supply chain is is broken. I think a very bad thing is this, what they’re doing with the cars. I think they lost also because of cars. You know, there are a lot of reasons, but the car mandate is a disaster. The electric, the EV mandate.
Obviously it no longer matters if a president is even sentient. As long as he tells people what they want to hear they’re happy. And I suppose that they want to hear that the president is an expert on every single subject. He has said that he understands immunology and epidemiology better than anyone, for instance. That explains why he led the country through the pandemic so effectively. But then his uncle taught at MIT, which obviously makes him a genius, so it’s not surprising.
Still, it is newsworthy that he’s also an expert on automation and has such a thorough understanding of how the ports work simply from “passing the docks.” Who knew?
Only 52% of the public would be bothered a lot by this? Is this a great country or what? But this is interesting:
Trump suggested during the presidential campaign that he could suspend some laws and constitutional provisions to go after political enemies in his second term. The public is divided on whether this is something he will seriously do (48%) or if it is more of an exaggeration (47%). Most Democrats take these statements seriously (77%) while most Republicans tend to see them as an exaggeration (71%). Republicans are somewhat less likely to takes these statements seriously now (21%) then they were six months ago (33% in June).
Republicans don’t take his threats seriously. I guess they really do believe it’s just a show. But the truth is that if this happens, Kash and Pam will just say they’re criminals and Republicans will swear that it has nothing to do with Trump taking his revenge.
The Trump transition team has started to explore pathways to dramatically shrink, consolidate or even eliminate the top bank watchdogs in Washington.
In recent interviews with potential nominees to lead bank regulatory agencies, Trump advisers and officials from his newfound Department of Government Efficiency have, for example, asked whether the president-elect could abolish the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., people familiar with the matter said.
Advisers have asked the nominees under consideration for the FDIC, as well as the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, if deposit insurance could then be absorbed into the Treasury Department, some of the people said.
Any proposal to eliminate the FDIC or any agency would require congressional action. While past presidents have reorganized and rebranded departments, Washington has never shut down a major cabinet-level agency and rarely closed other agencies like the FDIC that are not.
Bank executives are optimistic President-elect Donald Trump will ease a host of regulations on capital cushions and consumer protections, as well as scrutiny of consolidation in the industry. But FDIC deposit insurance is considered near sacred. Any move that threatened to undermine even the perception of deposit insurance could quickly ripple through banks and in a crisis might compound customer fears.
This is so crazy I can’t imagine even these freaks would actually do it. But consider that this is the kind of thing that’s never necessary until we have a financial crisis so people may not realize how important it is until it’s too late. Luckily we haven’t had one in … checks notes … 16 years. So, not a problem.
I wish I had more faith that the Democrats would find a way to stop this and exploit it but instead I’m seeing nonsense like this from progressives:
I’m sure they’ll be thrilled to only cut the parts of government thast progressives want them to cut. No need to worry about all the rest of it.
As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to install Musk as the federal government’s cutter-in-chief, some ambitious Democrats are taking a warmer approach to the billionaire businessman than their party leaders have in the past as he has become one the most influential people on the planet.
“He’s had an undeniable impact on the Pennsylvania election, and I think the election overall,” Fetterman, the Democratic Pennsylvania senator, told POLITICO. “I’ve warned Democrats, if you’re just going to make fun of it or to dismiss it, you do it at our peril. And I think that’s very clear what happened.”
Musk is the world’s richest man, and his companies are helping determine the future of space exploration, electric vehicles, AI and social media. Democrats who are making friendly overtures to him said that they want to shape the thinking of someone who will have an outsize microphone regardless of what they do. They are also eager to encourage him to develop his businesses in their backyards.
Some of them are also eyeing presidential runs in 2028, and may want to avoid getting on his bad side for political reasons. Musk spent $280 million this year supporting Trump and other Republicans.
[…]
But increasingly, some Democrats are arguing that was the wrong approach and think Musk played an outsize role in helping elect Trump — the latest sign that the left is confronting the president-elect differently this time around. It’s an open question whether other Democrats will follow suit, and either benefit or suffer consequences.
Some Democrats remain deeply skeptical of Musk, who is one of several billionaires and tech leaders Trump has tapped to staff his administration. They see Musk as an oligarch, and are concerned about his plans to slash the federal government with entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy as incoming co-leaders of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency.
“I reserve the right to be surprised, but this looks to me like a coming kleptocracy, in which all these billionaires are running the government in order to rig the rules,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). “So I’m pretty fucking skeptical that this is a legitimate effort.”
Yeah, I’m pretty fucking skeptical too. But progressives seem to be very open to working with him to cut the things they want cut. Please:
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) told POLITICO that “If Elon Musk wants to change government contracting to cut billions of dollars of waste out of the Pentagon budget, count me in.” Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) said that “I’m all in for cutting waste, making our government efficient and delivering for the people of Georgia” and “I’ll work with whomever I have to work with, if I can, to get that done.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) likewise posted on X, “Elon Musk is right. The Pentagon, with a budget of $886 billion, just failed its 7th audit in a row. It’s lost track of billions.”
Do these people really think Elon’s their guy? He’s totally red pilled, and he’s not going back. And he’s an oligarch fergawdsakes!
Populist Democrats lining up to work with the richest man in the world to cut government. My God.
One of the most famous episodes in the Watergate saga 50 years ago was when CBS News reporter Daniel Schorr got a hold of Richard Nixon’s “enemies list” and read it cold on the air, only to find himself listed at number 17.
The Nixon White House actually committed dozens of abuses that came to light during the investigations spawned by the Watergate break in and one of them was the use of the FBI to investigate his enemies list. After discovering the full extent of the former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s overwhelming misuse of the bureau for decades, including blackmail, harassment and persecution, the Congress erected some strong guardrails designed to prevent such things from happening again. The Senate Judiciary Committee report explained:
The purpose of the bill is to achieve two complimentary objectives. The first is to insulate the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from undue pressure being exerted upon him from superiors in the Executive Branch. The second is to protect against an FBI Director becoming too independent and unresponsive.
They added, “it is the great value of the FBI as a criminal investigative agency as well as its great potential for infringing individual rights and serving partisan or personal ambition that makes the office of FBI Director unique.” Indeed it is as the decades of abuse by Hoover so amply demonstrated.
The main constraint they devised was the one ten year term and a requirement that a president has good cause to fire him before that term is up. All presidents since the law was enacted have had to deal with an FBI Director that was chosen by a predecessor and every single one of them, no matter who appointed him, has been a Republican. The idea that any FBI Director or the Institution itself is some bastion of woke liberalism is absurd,.
There have only been two firings over that half century. The first was when Bill Clinton, following an investigation by the George H.W Bush administration, did so due to the Director’s ethical lapses. The second was when Donald Trump fired James Comey using the eye-rolling excuse that his public pronouncements regarding the Clinton email investigation were the reason. (As if that wasn’t Trump’s favorite thing about him.) But it was, as we subsequently found out, done because Comey refused to pledge his personal fealty to Trump and gave the go-ahead for the Russia investigation.
It has long been assumed that Trump would probably fire Comey’s successor Christopher Wray as well if he won the presidency even though he was the one who appointed him in the first place. He was angry with Wray almost from the beginning when he resisted GOP House efforts to declassify a memo that claimed the Russia investigation was politically motivated. Wray rode that out but it soured Trump on him permanently.
Trump was also, as we know, very worked up over the George Floyd protests in 2020 and he blamed Wray for failing to uncover the “funding” of the alleged ANTIFA movement which he believed was responsible for them:
…And I look at them as a bunch of well funded ANARCHISTS & THUGS who are protected because the Comey/Mueller inspired FBI is simply unable, or unwilling, to find their funding source, and allows them to get away with “murder”. LAW & ORDER! https://t.co/yHLzB0RQ8e
He probably would have fired Wray if he’d won in 2020 but it was during his exile in Florida that he came to truly despise him. He complained bitterly about the classified documents search and blamed Wray for it, telling Kristen Welker on Meet the Press “he invaded my home, he invaded Mar-a-Lago.” (The fact that they found hundreds of classified documents being held in a bathroom, a crime that would have had anyone else hauled off in handcuffs, is irrelevant.) And he was livid at Wray for his testimony before Congress about the assassination attempt last summer. Wray said:
There’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel that hit his ear. As I sit here right now, I don’t know whether that bullet, in addition to causing the grazing, could have also landed somewhere else.
Trump told Welker:
I certainly cannot be happy with him. Take a look at what’s happened. And then when I was shot in the ear, he said, maybe it was shrapnel. Where’s the shrapnel coming from? Is it coming from heaven? I don’t think so.
The FBI did confirm that Trump had been hit by the bullet but I think Wray’s comment clinched it for him. Failing to be properly reverent about Trump’s wound is akin to treason in MAGA world.
Considering all that history and Wray’s reputed veneration of the Bureau, it was expected that he would make Trump fire him in order to at least uphold the idea of the independence of the Bureau. He had three years to run on his term and Trump does not have any just cause to fire him as he is required to do under the law. To allow him to dismiss yet another FBI Director because he doesn’t feel he is loyal enough to him personally is an affront to the rule of law and the agency Wray reveres.
So naturally, Wray politely announced that he plans to resign this week in order to make it easier for Trump to break both the spirit and the letter of the law — again. Trump was his usual gracious self, declaring on Truth Social that his resignation is a great day for America:
There is no doubt that Wray understands the threat that Trump and his henchmen pose to the country and the world. He’s seen him up close and probably knows a lot more than the rest of us do. He should have put up a fight even knowing that he would lose. There is great value in people like him standing up for the law and making Trump break it openly rather than facilitating it for him.
One of Donald Trump’s main tools, as the GOP has collapsed into subservience, is the perception of un-stoppability. He’s going to get his way in the end. So why waste your time standing up to him? Thus Lindsey Graham, Nikki Haley, “Little Marco,” and countless others have etched their role in history.
By making it slower and harder for Trump to get his way with the FBI, Director Wray might have protected the institution itself, and its dignity, and its commitment to continued leadership through changes of administration, for that much longer. Crucially, he might have slowed down Donald Trump on other fronts, by inflicting on him another “loss.”
Right now Trump is busily flooding the zone, threatening people, making it seem as if he is a juggernaut who can’t be stopped and any opposition is impotent. That’s just not true. Yes, he has the trifecta and he’s threatening any of his own party who might stand in his way. But there is no reason for people to make it easy for him. Anyone in a position to do so should delay everything they can, fight on any front, and make him work for every single abuse he’s planning to inflict.
Christopher Wray let the country down with this namby-pamby exit. He was in a position to expose Trump’s disregard for the institution he purports to love and demonstrate his disrespect for the law and the constitution and he didn’t do it. Let’s hope we see more passive resistance coming from the rest of the federal employees.
Yes, I know it won’t stop him. But it will slow him down and it won’t be long until he’s officially a lame duck and all those Republicans will have to face the voters again. Then there will be a chance to deprive him of congressional power and reset the system of checks and balances.
The New York Times offers one of its regular “Best of Late Night” installments this morning, “a rundown of the previous night’s … comedy.” Perhaps I’ve missed it before, but the Times suddenly considers Dana Perino funny and the Fox News Channel’s “Gutfeld!” a “comedy” show.
Trish Bendix includes the regular set of quotes from last night’s late-night. Nestled among quotes from Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, and Stephen Colbert are three from George W. Bush’s former press secretary regarding Donald Trump being named Time magazine’s Man of the Year:
“Trump said the honor feels just as exciting as the birth of his child, except he was present for the award.” — JIMMY FALLON
“So it’s the second time he’s had the honor, with the first coming after his presidential win in 2016. That was also the same week Hillary Clinton canceled her subscription and smashed her server with a hammer.” — DANA PERINO, guest host of “Gutfeld!”
“The editorial board mentioned Trump’s historic comeback, his impact on global politics and how we increased his votes from Blacks, Latinos and people named Biden.” — DANA PERINO
“The difference: In 2016, the cover called him ‘President of the divided states of America.’ This year, it’s simply his name, even though there was plenty of room for ‘Cry harder, losers.’” — DANA PERINO
It’s not simply three quotes from Perino, but three in a row, up top, so readers who click away won’t miss their inclusion. A cursory search of past “Best of Late Night” installments suggests including Perino and “Gutfeld!” is something new. Trump 2.0 is coming. The Times is obeying in advance.
If you’re feeling this morning like Alan Bates at the end of King of Hearts, join the club.
There is a nugget of what I’m looking for in the terms below, but none of them quite captures it. I’m not the only one looking for a word to properly describe government by the insane.
plutocracy? : government by the wealthy kakistocracy? : government by the worst people oligarchy? : government by the few kleptocracy? : government by those who seek chiefly status and personal gain at the expense of the governed autocracy? : the authority or rule of an autocrat (such as a monarch) ruling with unlimited authority idiocracy? : a society governed or populated by idiots
When pre-MAGA conservatives like Grover Norquist mused about rolling back the 20th century to the McKinley era, they imagined rule by Gilded Age plutocrats. I don’t think they considered it might mean a return to an age of crippling and disfiguring disease.
But with the Second Coming of Trump, that’s just what they may get (New York Times):
The lawyer helping Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pick federal health officials for the incoming Trump administration has petitioned the government to revoke its approval of the polio vaccine, which for decades has protected millions of people from a virus that can cause paralysis or death.
That campaign is just one front in the war that the lawyer, Aaron Siri, is waging against vaccines of all kinds.
Mr. Siri has also filed a petition seeking to pause the distribution of 13 other vaccines; challenged, and in some cases quashed, Covid vaccine mandates around the country; sued federal agencies for the disclosure of records related to vaccine approvals; and subjected prominent vaccine scientists to grueling videotaped depositions.
WTF? Remember polio? A friend who’s walked with a limp since childhood does. At least she survived hers.
We covered this ground a few weeks ago, but let’s hit it again with this quote from Star Trek graphic designer Michael Okuda:
Go to an old cemetery. See all the baby graves from before the 1950s & 60s? After that, hardly any. That’s when people started vaccinating their children against deadly childhood diseases. If you’re unsure what to do to protect your kids, the answer is literally written in stone.
The vaccine Luddites Trump proposes entrusting with your family’s health are something out of a zombie apocalypse film or 1950s science fiction, maybe A Worm Ate His Brain.
Us oldsters grew up with required vaccinations, some at ages so young we don’t remember getting them. What we also don’t remember (like the Great Depression) are the scourges of plagues modern medicine all but eradicated, like smallpox.
Apologies in advance, but this is smallpox:
This young girl in Bangladesh was infected with smallpox in 1973. Freedom from smallpox was declared in Bangladesh in December, 1977 when a WHO International Commission officially certified that smallpox had been eradicated from that country. (from Wikipedia).
You may not remember your smallpox vaccination, but Samoans remember when Trump’s proposed plague csar visited their islands:
In the small island country of Samoa, lives have been forever altered by an outbreak of the disease in 2019 that caused at least 83 deaths and 1,867 hospitalisations, mostly of babies and young children. Thousands more fell sick. The preventable illness was able to spread through the small, closely knit population of about 200,000 due to record low vaccination rates – stemming from a medical vaccination error, the Samoan government’s public health mismanagement, and fuelled by anti-vaccination sentiment, including by Donald Trump’s pick to lead the US health department, Robert F Kennedy Jr.
Norquist meant to roll back 20th century. Trump and his acolytes mean to take a wrecking ball to it, and not just around vaccines. Federal deposit insurance? What do you need with that Depression Era protection?
UPDATE: Emily Baumgaertner at the Times reminds readers (gift link) of six childhood scourges we’ve forgotten about because vaccines virtually eliminated them.
And welcome to our annual victory celebration of the Great War on Christmas
Yes, it’s that time of year again and the holidays have never been more welcome. If we ever needed a break it’s now.
And here at Hullabaloo it’s the time of year I ask you, my loyal readers, to put a little something into the old stocking to keep us going for yet another year.
This is a tough one, I know. Anyone can be forgiven for tuning out politics and spending their time doing something that doesn’t make them want to put their foot through the TV. Many people have cancelled their subscriptions to this site telling me that they just can’t stand to read about politics anymore and I totally understand it. For the first week after the election I pretty much only watched Netflix and Animal Planet. This is a grim time and we have to do whatever we can to keep our sanity.
But it you are reading this it means that you are still engaging, at least with us, and I want you to know how grateful I am that you are. For me, it’s not possible to stop paying attention for long. It’s just who I am. I can’t look away.
Back in 2002 when I first started this blog, it was also a very grim time. It was just a little bit more than a year after 9/11 and we were about to launch a ridiculous war against a country that hadn’t attacked us. It felt as if the world was on fire. I said at the time that it didn’t look as if there was much we could do to stop it but we had a responsibility to document the atrocities and speak the truth. That was the mission then and it remains so today, even if political culture is as surreal and bizarre as it is today.
Those were heady days for bloggers. It was a new thing and people were intrigued by the idea of citizen journalism on the internet. But it was also a scary time. We all took pseudonyms for a reason — we didn’t trust that this new thing wouldn’t get us into trouble, whether it was with our bosses or the government. Remember, there was a whole lot of spying on Americans going on back then and the White House itself was telling people to “watch what they say.” (The guy who said that was Ari Fleischer, the presidential press secretary.)
I’m not worried as I was back then. I doubt anyone in the government cares about what I write. Trump has bigger fish to fry. But I do have a strong feeling of deja vu about our current circumstances. The capitulation from the media and many of the Democrats to the new Trump regime is less febrile and more resigned but it’s happening nonetheless. Today’s propaganda and disinformation environment is much more sophisticated but it’s also more fragmented and the rise of the tech-bro oligarchy is a much more obvious threat than it was back then. But still, it amazes me that just 22 years later we’re basically facing a similar folding of any institutional resistance in the face of a right wing assault on American values.
I know that’s depressing and I really don’t mean to be. The Trump assault is different and far less competent. We already know that. So this particular Idiocracy version of the right wing assault may not last longer than the first two years. But even if they can’t accomplish the worst of their agenda, it’s going to be a very difficult time.
I appreciate your sticking with us all this time and especially now. I think that once we’ve licked our wounds and recovered from the staggering disappointment of the last election requiring us to deal with that Orange Monster and his cult for another four years, we’ll all be ready to re-engage with the same commitment we’ve had in the past. What choice do we have?
I’m not going anywhere. Deja vu or not, I feel as I did 22 years ago when I started this thing. The perspective of people who are observing all this from outside the DC bubble matters. If you value the work that I do every day, that Tom Sullivan does every day or even if you just want to pop in on Friday to read the Soother or Saturday to see what Dennis Hartley has been watching and listening to, I hope you’ll throw a little something in the old stocking to keep this going through this tumultuous time. We’re all in this together whether we like it or not!
cheers,
digby
And Happy Hollandaise everyone. We’ll get through this!
