As I write this, CNN is reporting that Trump’s lawyers are meeting with the Special Counsel today as the Grand Jury has convened in DC. Buckle up.
Meanwhile, here’s Trump caterwauling last night. It would appear he knew …. something:
Lol!
“We’ll have fun on the stand with all of these people that say the Presidential Election wasn’t Rigged and Stollen. THE TRIAL OF THE CENTURY!!!” he declared, spelling “stolen” as he often does, as “stollen,” which is actually a popular German Christmastime dessert.
“The Beat with Ari Melber” on Wednesday featured a segment in which astrophysicist Adam Frank offered skeptical commentary on the congressional UFO/UAP hearings. In her wrap-up, MSNBC’s Katie Phang quipped that she got her information on aliens from a “documentary” called Independence Day.
I like a good movie about aliens as much as the next person, but they are movies. The Twitter/Xitter/whatever comments on the hearings were withering. Most ran along the lines of, “So aliens travel here possibly from hundreds of light years away only to crash? Repeatedly?”
Perhaps what we need more than a congressional hearing on UFOs/UAPs is one on the credulity pandemic.
Among the key findings in the University of Chicago Project on Security and Threats (CPOST) report that Kevin Drum references is this:
Continued Widespread Distrust in American Democratic Institutions and Belief in Anti-Democratic Political Conspiracy Theories About 40 percent of Americans share at least one attitude reflecting deep distrust of American democratic institutions – such as elections will not solve America’s fundamental problems and political leaders of both the Republican and Democratic parties are the most immoral people in America – and this deep distrust is shared across the political spectrum. About 20 percent of Americans believe anti-democratic political conspiracy theories about how the country is run, but the exact belief varies across the political spectrum.
The number of Americans who believe the use of force is justified to restore Trump to the White House increased by roughly 6 million in the last few months to an estimated 18 million people, according to the survey conducted by the university in late June and shared exclusively with the Guardian.
Of those 18 million people, 68% believe that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump and 62% believe the prosecutions of Trump are intended to hurt his chances in 2024. An estimated 7% of Americans now believe violence could be necessary to restore Trump to the presidency, up from 4.5%, or 12 million people, in April.
There’s no mention of aliens in the report. (And I thought Trumpers believed the election was stollen.)
North Carolina ain’t Phoenix, but it’s still hot. Especially on the coastal plain. Probably where you are as well. CNN’s Alexandra Meeks issues a warning in her “5 Things” newsletter:
More than 140 million Americans from coast-to-coast are under heat alerts today. Parts of the Northeast will see their highest temperatures this year while temperatures in the Midwest will be up to 20 degrees above normal. The extreme weather has also gripped the country’s southern tier from Southern California to Florida since June. And Phoenix, one of the hardest-hit cities in this summer’s scorching heat, is in its fourth week in a row of temperatures over 110 degrees, smashing a previous record of 18 straight days. President Joe Biden is expected to announce actions to combat extreme weather in a briefing today as the heat wave expands across the US.
“ It happened so fast!” Phoenix parents describe how their toddler was burned by hot sidewalk last week when he wandered into their back yard alone. Doctors at Az Burn Center say this is more common than you’d think & it takes just a few seconds . Story at 5#fox10phoenix#azwxpic.twitter.com/56hSMtIsR6
You thought Florida was too politically hot for trans people? It’s not too safe for wildlife either (NPR):
It’s so hot in Florida right now that the ocean temperature in one area just crossed into the triple digits.
On Monday, a water temperature sensor in Manatee Bay near Everglades National Park recorded a temperature of 101.1 degrees, according to a park spokesperson.
The startling data matched high water temperatures observed elsewhere in the Florida Bay recently, and the scorching conditions could pose a major risk to coral and other marine life, experts warn.
NOAA this week raised its coral bleaching warning system in the Keys to Alert Level 2, its highest heat stress level.
“This is a hot tub. I like my hot tub around 100, 101, (37.8C, 38.3C) That’s what was recorded yesterday,” Yale Climate Connections meteorologist Jeff Masters told Associated News.
Hot tub makers recommend temperatures of 37C-40C (9F8-104F).
I have to wonder if the three Marines who died of carbon monoxide poisoning near North Carolina’s Camp Lejeune over the weekend were running the air conditioner in their parked Lexus to fight the heat:
Deputies from the Pender County Sheriff’s Office found the three men Sunday morning in a privately owned Lexus sedan parked outside a Speedway gas station in the coastal community of Hampstead. Autopsies performed Wednesday by the North Carolina medical examiner’s office determined that all three deaths were the result of carbon monoxide poisoning, according to the sheriff’s office.
Here’s a Fox News audience erupting in applause at RFK Jr. claiming Putin acted in “good faith” but was forced to invade Ukraine because the US “wants war with Russia” https://t.co/vixwSZzWTM
They have brainwashed the right into being pro-Putin and even Sean Hannity can’t stop him.
I’m too tired to go into why he’s wrong about everything so I’ll just let Evan at Wonkette explain:
Legitimate Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was feeling like ending the polarization, so last night he visited Sean Hannity, where the polarization ends, for an exclusive town hall.
That’s what he literally said at the end of the interview when Hannity asked him why he was running for president. He said he would end the polarization by telling the truth. SPOILER: When somebody asks you why you’re running for president, and the beginning of your answer is “I mean …” and then a long pause, you’re definitely about to tell the truth.
That’s how the interview ended, so now we’ll backtrack.
The meat of the interview didn’t do much to end the polarization or spread the truth, unless you’re one of the fluffers in King Putin’s court, in which case the message was exactly what you instructed your propagandists to disseminate to the useful idiots.
This next clip is just astounding for the amount of Kremlin-infused bullshit it contains, and the anti-American lies. We don’t know if Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been literally turned or compromised by Russia, or if his brain is just so unvaccinated against obvious Russian propaganda that he’s always ready and eager to regurgitate it on command. He’s absorbed these lies good.
Hannity couldn’t even put up with it, not that he did an actual good job of pushing back like a real journalist or anything.
It started when Kennedy began babbling that we (America) had “pushed” Ukraine into war with Russia. He has said hallucinatory DSM-V freakshow shit like this before.
“Because of our pushing the Ukraine into the war—” [Kennedy said], before Hannity sought clarification.
“We pushed them into it or did Putin invade?” the Fox host asked.
“Well, let me answer your question,” replied Kennedy Jr., who then accused the U.S. of sabotaging the Minsk agreements in 2014 and 2015, which aimed to end the Donbas war yet largely failed to stop the fighting between Russian separatists and Ukraine’s armed forces.
“Putin, in good faith, began withdrawing troops from the Ukraine. What happened? We sent Boris Johnson over there to torpedo it because we don’t want peace. We want the war with Russia,” he argued, drawing applause from the audience.
“Drawing applause from the audience.” That’s the kind of anti-American fools a typical Fox News audience is full of now. Tucker’s shadow looms large.
Kennedy just babbled out conspiracy theories somebody has syringed into his brain, for instance claiming State Department official Victoria Nuland ordered Zelenskyy not to make peace with Russia. (She was a private citizen at the time Kennedy cited.) Nuland factors into a lot of pro-Russia conspiracy theories, and plays a starring role in the one about secret Ukraine/US biolabs. Guess which other dumb shit believes in that one.
Wonkette has explained why Kennedy’s understanding of the very recent history he tried to explain in the town hall doesn’t speak well to the overall health of his brain.
“Absolutely nothing this clown said is remotely correct,” he tweeted. “The dates, names, places, context, everything was wrong. To anyone who understands this topic he sounds like a complete ignoramus.”
Guess that’s what happens when you’re on the receiving end of a game of telephone that starts with Vladimir Putin’s morning farts.
In this video, Bobby’s just cheering for the home team. You know, if the home team is Russia. He’s furious at even the suggestion that Russia won’t win its genocidal child-raping war against Ukraine, saying it would be like America losing a war to Mexico.
Of course one way to make sure Ukraine does win the war is for the entire western world to rally behind Ukraine and make sure it has every dollar and weapon it needs to fully kick the shit out of Russia, and beat it back all the way to Ukraine’s 1991 borders. And then once the foul stench of the last Russian soldier leaves the country, grant Ukraine full NATO membership to make sure this never happens again.
But something tells us the shame of the Kennedy family wouldn’t like that outcome. Too much winning on the good guys’ side.
Republicans are all saying that this proves Hunter Biden needs to go to jail for the rest of his life. And it means that Joe Biden is the most corrupt leader in the history of the world:
1/ Earlier today, during a hearing when Hunter Biden was expected to plead guilty, the plea deal was scuttled after the judge asked whether he would be immune from prosecution for other possible crimes as a result of the deal.https://t.co/NfCDOF2pGC
3/ As a starting point, the plea deal involved two crimes that are rarely charged as a federal crime— possessing a firearm while addicted to drugs and failing to pay taxes.
5/ So it’s easy to see why the defense agreed to this plea deal. It wasn’t worth contesting these crimes, and if this wrapped up the investigation, it was a good result for their client.
The staffer, Nate Hochman, had retweeted the video over the weekend before he deleted the post, a screenshot shared with NBC News showed. Hochman, a communications staffer who has written for The New York Times, National Review and other outlets, is considered by some to be an up-and-coming thinker on the right.
“Nate Hochman is no longer with the campaign,” a campaign official said. “And we will not be commenting on him further.”
He’s also an up and coming Nazi but the NY Times and National Review don’t have a problem with that. Maybe they should have read the Tim Miller profile of this fine young man from last March:
Hochman, a conservative writer who has earned more ink by the age of 25 than anyone this side of Justin Bieber, has garnered a reputation as a young MAGA whisperer. The New Republic tagged him as one of “the radical young intellectuals who want to take over the American right.” He’s written for the Dispatch, National Review (where he was on staff), the Claremont Institute’s American Mind (where he interned), and more. Heck, even the Gray Lady turned to Hochman for a think piece about the secular culture war.
But like every MAGA intellectual (or “intellectual”) before him, Hochman, has found it necessary to cozy up to the movement’s gutter-dwelling racists in order to climb the ladder of influence.
As first reported by the Dispatch last year, Hochman participated in a Twitter Space with white nationalist virgin Nick Fuentes—and lavishly praised him. “We were just talking about your influence and we were saying, like, you’ve gotten a lot of kids ‘based’ and we respect that for sure,” Hochman said. “I literally said, I think Nick’s probably a better influence than Ben Shapiro on young men who might otherwise be conservative.”
The film captures the race against the Nazis to develop the first atomic bomb, and…
He went on to discuss the merits and demerits of one of America’s most vile humans, saying the fact that he has said “super edgy things means that there’s a pretty strong ceiling to what you can actually accomplish in politics.”
When the Dispatch asked him about his Fuentes remarks, Hochman acknowledged that he said some “really stupid things, which I don’t actually believe”—but did not apologize.
In the intervening time The Bulwark was provided with the audio from the Twitter space—and it turns out that complimenting a white nationalist was not the only stupid thing Hochman uttered that day.
During his naked attempt to get Fuentes to think he was also based, Hochman says “when the man’s right, he’s right” in response to Fuentes’s claim that “women are goofy, okay, they should have no authority, they should have no authority over men.” Then, after Fuentes says that women “just really have no business in politics,” Hochman repeats his response: “When the man’s right, he’s right.”
Hochman later asked Fuentes how he plans to deal with the fact that “50 percent of American whites are, like, shitlibs now” if he wants to be successful in advancing white identity politics.
Women are goofy and shouldn’t be allowed in politics.
Half of white people are shitlibs.
Ron 2024.
As Miller wrote:“Nate Hochman’s hiring sends a signal of what the Florida governor wants for his campaign.” He knew what he had. He liked it.
Others have made the point but it’s important to remember: the people who testified about Trump’s efforts to overturn the election were some of his staunchest defenders. They went along with all his unethical behavior but finally drew the line at a coup. They will make good witnesses because of it.
Pay no attention to those pundits behind the curtain
Attempts on the right to vilify teachers and public schools have long infuriated me. As I’ve indicated time and again, it’s about the money. An investor class bent on privatizing public schools wants to turn those not-for-profit abominations into another rent-seeking extension of Wall Street. Teachers and school adminstrators stand between them and their money. Christian right parents are their useful idiots.
Chalkbeat’s Matt Barnum cites data that refutes the notion that parents of school-age children are unhappy with their kids’ public education:
“Contrary to elite or policy wonk opinion, which often is critical of schools, there have been years and years worth of data saying that families in general like their local public schools,” said Andy Smarick, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank.
“It would be natural to assume that in 2020, 2021, parental support for schools would have cratered,” said Smarick. “But it didn’t.”
And recall that Gallup survey showing satisfaction with public school is at 20-year low — guess what it is a *20 year high*? The gap between parents' perspective of their children's school and the public's views about American schools. https://t.co/VIwg7fCUAopic.twitter.com/bjoTtwF0Nn
You might not know that from that narrative advanced in the press. Naysayers tend not to have kids in school. “Most Americans” are not most parents:
Surveys actually show that it’s people without school-age children who are especially dissatisfied with public schools.
A recent EdChoice survey found that 57% of parents said their local school district was moving in the right direction, which was 10 percentage points higher than in January 2020, before the pandemic. (This is a bit different from the other parent surveys in that it was not asking about parents’ own experiences directly.) But among non-parents, only 29% said the local schools were on a positive trajectory.
This same gap between parents and non-parents has also showed up in polls by Education Next and the New York Times. The views of those without school-age children may be shaped by news coverage, which has advanced the narrative that schools are in disarray and parents are upset.
Education writer Diane Ravitch responded to Barnum’s Xitter thread:
Declining public support for public schools is the result of 40 years of propaganda, starting in 1983 with release of Reagan’s fraudulent “Nation at Risk.” 90% of US kids go to public schools . We have a great country. Thank a teacher.
