Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Anyone with a passing knowledge of the history of reproductive rights in America had heard of the antediluvian Comstock Act but I doubt most of them ever thought it would actually be back in use in the 21st century. The notorious “anti-vice” laws from 1873 banned the shipment of “lewd” written materials, contraceptives and any “instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing” for the purpose of abortion, had not been in force for many decades since the passage of various laws and the recognition of a constitutional right to abortion in 1973’s Roe v. Wade. Nonetheless, it remained on the books and leave it to the radicals putting together Project 2025 to exhume it the minute Samuel Alito and company gave them the green light.

My Salon colleague Amanda Marcotte wrote about the Comstock Act in depth a few months ago in the wake of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals Mifepristone ruling (access to which was thankfully affirmed (for now) by the Supreme Court this month.) The original decision relied heavily on the Comstock Act to justify the decision to ban the drug, an issue which was left unresolved by the Supreme Court when they threw out the lawsuit on the basis of standing rather than the merits. So the Comstock Act remains on the books and is now theoretically constitutional since the reversal of Roe v Wade, at least when it comes to contraception and abortion. Other aspects of the law regarding obscenity are still unenforceable as they are protected under other precedents.

The Comstock Act is what’s known as a “zombie law” which is a law that has been neutered by subsequent High Court decisions that have found a constitutional prohibition against enforcing them but they remain on the books sometimes for centuries lurking around like the undead (hence the name) waiting for a chance to be reanimated by the Supreme Court overturning one of its own decisions. There are a lot of them which we just saw in a number of states that had draconian 19th century laws go into effect when the Court handed down the Dobbs decision.

In Arizona after Roe was overturned, the conservative state Supreme Court revived a near-total ban on abortion, invoking an 1864 law that only allowed abortion to save the mother’s life and gave prison time to doctors who perform them. The state legislature went through tremendous gyrations to finally repeal that 1864 law but the status of the state’s abortion laws remain in limbo and doctors and patients remain confused and anxious about the law’s requirements. A similar story has played out in all the states that had these zombie laws on the books.

The Comstock Act is a federal law, however, and it is still in effect and is ripe for the picking by anti-abortion zealots and others who want to further restrict reproductive freedoms, including contraception. From the moment the Dobbs decision came down legal experts and activists recognized the danger it posed with this radical right wing judiciary and they immediately started to work on repealing it. At the time a number of abortion rights groups asked them to stand down because of cases already in the pipeline that would have been affected. As Notus reported:

“There’s a lot of litigation playing out that’s specific to this that many of the reproductive rights groups are in the middle of. They’re actually wanting to, they’re not wanting to see [the Comstock Act] change in the middle of that litigation. So that was at the request of Planned Parenthood and other reproductive freedom groups that have been fighting this for a long time,” Democratic Representative Pat Ryan said.

That came as something of a surprise but the Democrats in congress complied with the request. However with the Mifepristone case decided they have decided to make the move.

According to the Washington Post, Democrats are now introducing legislation to repeal the abortion provisions of the Act with the backing of those major abortion rights groups. (They will apparently leave in some of the obscenity laws on which bans on child pornography are based.) The Senate bill has 20 co-sponsors, including Sens.Tina Smith, D-Minn., Elizabeth Warren, D-Ma., and Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev. and Reps. Becca Balint, D-Vt. and Cori Bush, D-Mo. introduced the legislation in the House. Although they haven’t spoken out, the assumption is that the Democratic leadership is supportive.

The Post article suggests that there may be some reluctance by the White House but the reasons are unclear although other unnamed Democrats fear that it will somehow distract from other issues, which is typical but foolish. I hope that’s not the case. The Comstock Act is a 19th century monstrosity that should be repealed because is grotesque and we are watching it be used to roll back Americans’ basic human rights. I

Obviously, the very pious Christian Nationalist Speaker of the House Mike Johnson will not let this pass. The Comstock Act might have been written by him personally. (This is a man who participated in one of those bizarre purity balls with his daughter, after all. ) So there’s no hope of passage this year. But this should be part of the debate going into the election and the Democrats must repeal it the minute they get the chance because we know the Republicans are planning to use it the minute they get theirs.

There are a lot of zombie laws on the books that are likely to be used by the conservative judicial activists in the next few years now that they’ve secured the right wing Supreme Court of their dreams. For instance, there are existing, unenforced laws against adultery, atheism and sodomy which could easily be reanimated under some of the right’s current crusades. Discriminatory housing covenants and outdated draconian drug laws could rise from the dead as well.

They are setting up test cases all over the country with an eye toward overturning precedents to make that happen. Just this week Louisiana passed a new law requiring that all schools display the Ten Commandments in every classroom (using a large font!) They hope to get it to the Supreme Court which has shown every inclination to destroy the separation of church and state. Any zombies from the 1950s will immediately go back into effect if they uphold this law as constitutional.

Democrats in state legislatures and at the national level would be wise to survey all the laws and repeal these dead ones wherever they can as soon as possible. If they don’t, there’s every chance the right’s various culture crusades will end up bringing them back to life.

With a heaping helping of retribution

Gov. Tim Walz (D) of Minnesota on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” this morning gave a tight “elevator speech” contrasting Democrats’ approach as caretakers of these United States versus the grievance and retribution agenda of a second Trump administration (transcribed so you don’t miss any of it in the X condensation):

You’re seeing the contrast in this when you get a Democratic governor versus a Republican governor. We don’t have the Ten Commandments posted in our classrooms, but we have free breakfast and lunch. Those are policies that the Biden-Harris administration are talking about going nationally. It makes a huge difference. We use what we learned during the pandemic on the child tax credit. Minnesota’s going to reduce childhood poverty by a third. We already have one of the lowest numbers. Those are things that make a real difference in people’s lives, money back in the pockets of the middle class, policies that are making a difference in our schools. There’s a big contrast. What do you hear from the Trump administration other than grievance, retribution? “Esteemed epidemiologist” Donald Trump did nothing during COVID. Now he’s going to solve the Middle East crisis and climate change on the first day? Immigration? Not going to happen.

It’s not the first time you’ve seen twisted souls reject partaking in the fruits of this country’s bounty rather than share them with people they hate, even if it means their own children go without.

Trump and MAGA Republicans don’t want to govern. They want to rule. They don’t want Americans to flourish. They want the “wrong” kind to shut up, obey, and remain marginalized. They serve up grievance and retribution neither they nor their children can eat.

If you cannot read Project 2025’s 900 pages, listen to John Oliver’s 25-minute summary.

Listen to Mark Robinson, North Carolina Republican candidate for governor in 2024, scream, “Christian patriots of this nation will own this nation and rule this nation.” Share the video.

Check out this condensed quote from Stephen Wolfe’s “The Case for Christian Nationalism“:  “The issue here centers on whether a Christian minority can establish a political state over the whole without the positive consent of the whole. I affirm they can. … Non-Christians living among us … are not entitled to political equality, nor do they have a right to deny the people of God their right to order civil institutions to God and to their complete good. … The Christian’s posture toward the earth ought to be that it is ours, not theirs, for we are co-heirs in Christ.”

One reviewer described the Christian nationalist project as “being for your own people-group, and keeping your people-group distinct from other people-groups,” calling it a “segregationist” policy and “sacralized white supremacy.”

The ideas behind Project 2025 and Christian nationalism are as old as feudalism and just as irredeemably un-American.

We can choose that or choose an America where schoolchildren have enough to eat and the opportunity to flourish, an America where freedom means freedom, not enforced religious conformity.

A yard sign I passed yesterday while canvassing read, “Dictatorship or Democracy. Choose wisely.”

Gov. @Tim_Walz: You're seeing the contrast when you elect Democrats over Republicans. We're not forcing the Ten Commandments to be posted in classrooms, we're feeding kids free breakfast and lunch. Those are policies the Biden-Harris administration wants to take nationally. These… pic.twitter.com/rhD4e68zcN

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) June 20, 2024

Update: Had to add the image from this church tweet. It fits.

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Reggie Jackson takes sports fans to school

Listen to “Mr. October” describe his experiences as a Black professional baseball player beginning in the mid-1960s after passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts. As Elie Mystal tweets, this is history that many people want buried.

This is why Republicans work so hard to keep history out of schools. They don’t want white children to know what their parents and grandparents did. https://t.co/N63z2eJ8h0

— Elie Mystal (@ElieNYC) June 21, 2024

The Washington Post fills in context:

Brought onto a set Thursday to share memories of playing at a historic baseball stadium in Alabama, MLB Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson expressed raw, unsparing thoughts about the racism he experienced decades ago.

“I walked into restaurants and they would point at me and say, ‘The [n-word] can’t eat here.’ I would go to a hotel and they would say, ‘The [n-word] can’t stay here,’” the 78-year-old told a Fox Sports panel that featured recently retired major league stars Alex Rodriguez, David Ortiz and Derek Jeter.

The comments came ahead of an MLB game between the St. Louis Cardinals and San Francisco Giants staged at Birmingham’s Rickwood Field. Billed as the country’s oldest ballpark, it was home to the Negro Leagues’ Black Barons as well as the minor league Birmingham Barons.

“I wouldn’t wish it on anybody,” Jackson said several times.

The former slugger for the A’s, Orioles, Yankees and Angels credited a number of White teammates, plus then-manager John McNamara, with helping him get through that period. Jackson said he spent several nights a week for many weeks sleeping on their couches until they received threats to “burn our apartment complex down” if he didn’t leave. Jackson added that his Birmingham teammates — including Rollie Fingers and Joe Rudi, who went on to win three World Series with him in Oakland — saved him from getting into physical confrontations with Southern racists.

“I’d have got killed here, because I’d have beat somebody’s a–,” Jackson said Thursday, referring to the history of lynchings of Black people by White mobs. “You’d have saw me in an oak tree somewhere.”

“If that doesn’t hurt to listen to, you’re missing something as a human being,” responded X-user Greg Cantwell.

The same sort of people who want this history disappeared fueled the Redeemer movement, enforced Jim Crow laws, and kept alive the Lost Cause for well over 100 years to keep from confronting the sins of their grandparents, great-grandparents and great-great grandparents. They gave a new meaning to the term “whitewash.” It continues to this day. The legacy of slave patrols continues to this day.

Should our republic survive the fascist movement spreading here and abroad, people now engaged in the MAGA movement will put equally strenuous efforts behind burying the history of their seditious participation and that of their parents and grandparents. Just as before.

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Generally, I don’t tear up every time I hear news of an actor’s passing. But this is one of those times:

With a heavy heart, I tell you that my father, Donald Sutherland, has passed away. I personally think one of the most important actors in the history of film. Never daunted by a role, good, bad or ugly. He loved what he did and did what he loved, and one can never ask for more… pic.twitter.com/3EdJB03KKT

— Kiefer Sutherland (@RealKiefer) June 20, 2024

Never daunted by a role, good, bad or ugly. Sounds about right. He was fearless, alright. And what a resume…where do you even start? Donald McNichol Sutherland was born in Saint John, Newfoundland/Labrador on July 17, 1935. I’ll admit that on occasion, I have completely forgotten that he was Canadian-born. But Sutherland himself certainly never forgot about his roots. From today’s obituary by the CBC:

Though he found international success, the actor maintained a professional and personal connection to Canada throughout his life. He narrated two documentaries for the National Film Board in the ’80s, lent his voice to the 2015 Canadian animated film Pirate’s Passage and returned to Toronto theatre — where he got his start — in the early 2000s. He was awarded a star on Canada’s Walk of Fame in 2000.

“I’m a Canadian. The thing about Canada is that you go from east to west, from Nova Scotia to Vancouver. I go away, I will go and live in Paris or I will go and live in London or whatever — [and] even in the United States — but my humour, what I am as a person is here, is rooted here,” he said during an interview with CBC News in 1985.

Indeed, his comedic roles (and they were many) were infused with that uniquely Canadian style of deadpan anarchy.

While a large portion of the films he is most well-known for were U.S. -produced box office hits (especially in his later years), he was also a notable player in world cinema throughout his career. He worked with filmmakers like Bernardo Bertolucci, Federico Fellini, Claude Chabrol,  Nicolas Roeg, and John Schlesinger.

I admired him for his political activism, which began in earnest when he joined Jane Fonda for her 1972 “FTA” (“Fuck the Army”) Vietnam War protest road tour that she organized for troops (as antithesis to the traditional rah-rah Bob Hope USO shows). It probably won’t come as a shock to Hullabaloo readers that his antiwar activism earned Sutherland a place on the NSA’s “watch list” for a period in the early 70s.  He even  joined the political blogosphere for a spell; writing some pieces for Huffington Post during the 2008 election.

As his son Kiefer wrote this morning, He loved what he did and did what he loved, and one can never ask for more than that. A life well lived.  All I can add to that is that ultimately, the work of an artist speaks for itself. Bearing that in mind, here are some of my favorite Donald Sutherland performances (with additional “must-sees” listed below).

The Day of the Locust – Equal parts backstage drama, character study, and psychological horror, John Schlesinger’s 1975 drama (with a Waldo Salt screenplay adapted from the eponymous novel by Nathanaeal West) is the most unsettling Hollywood dream-turned nightmare this side of David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive.

Set in 1930s Los Angeles, the story revolves around a Hollywood newbie (William Atherton) who works in the art department of a major movie studio. He rents a cheap apartment housed in a complex chockablock with eccentric tenants, including an aspiring starlet (Karen Black) who lives with her ailing father (Burgess Meredith), a former vaudevillian who wheezes his way up and down hilly streets eking out a living as a door-to-door snake oil salesman.

The young artist becomes hopelessly infatuated with the starlet, but it quickly becomes apparent that, while she’s friendly toward him, it’s strictly a one-sided romance. Nonetheless, he continues to get drawn into her orbit-a scenario that becomes increasingly twisted, especially once she impulsively marries a well-to-do  but socially inept and sexually repressed accountant (Donald Sutherland). It all culminates in a Grand Guignol finale you may find hard to shake off.

A  gauzy, sun-bleached vision of a city (shot by ace cinematographer Conrad Hall) that attracts those yearning to connect with someone, something, or anything that assures a non-corporeal form of immortality; a city that teases endless possibilities, yet so often pays out with little more than broken dreams.

Don’t Look Now – This is a difficult film to describe without risking spoilers, so I’ll be brief. Based on a Daphne du Maurier story, this haunting, one-of-a-kind 1974 psychological thriller from Nicholas Roeg (Walkabout, The Man Who Fell to Earth) stars Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie as a couple who are coming to grips with the tragic death of their little girl. Roeg slowly percolates an ever-creeping sense of impending doom, drenched in the Gothic atmosphere of Venice.

JFK –  Be forewarned: Oliver Stone’s controversial 1991 drama about President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 assassination is not the place to look for a definitive portrait of JFK’s assassin (or “assassins”, plural), because, not unlike Agatha Christie’s fictional detective Hercule Poirot, Stone suspects no one…and everyone.

The most misunderstood aspect of the film, I think, is that Stone is not favoring any prevalent narrative; and that it is by the director’s definition a “speculative” political thriller. Those who have criticized the approach seem to have missed that Stone himself has stated from the get-go that his goal was to provide a “counter myth” to the “official” conclusion of the Warren Commission (usually referred to as the “lone gunman theory”).

Stone’s narrative is so seamless and dynamic, many viewers didn’t get that he was mashing up at least a dozen *possible* scenarios. The message is right there in the script, when “Mr. X” (Donald Sutherland, who delivers a riveting 15-minute monologue that nearly steals the film) advises New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner), “Don’t believe me. Do your own work…your own thinking.”

Kelly’s Heroes –The Dirty Dozen meets Ocean’s Eleven in this clever hybrid of WW2 action yarn and heist caper, directed by Brian G. Hutton. While interrogating a drunken German officer, a platoon leader (Clint Eastwood) stumbles onto a hot tip about a Nazi-controlled bank with a secret stash of gold bullion worth millions.

Eastwood plays it straight, but there’s anachronistic M*A*S*H-style irreverence on hand from Donald Sutherland, as the perpetually stoned and aptly named bohemian tank commander, “Oddball”.

Also with Telly Savalas, Don Rickles, Carroll O’Connor, Gavin MacLeod and Harry Dean Stanton. Mike Curb (future Lt. Governor of California!) composed the  theme song, “Burning Bridges”.

Klute – In the fullness of time (good god, I’m old) it’s easy to forget that respected Hollywood icon Jane Fonda toiled away in films for nearly a decade before she began to be taken seriously as an actor (her starring role in then-husband Roger Vadim’s 1968 sexploitation sci-fi trash classic Barbarella certainly didn’t help), There were two pivotal star vehicles that signaled that transition for Fonda as a creative artist – They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969) and this lauded 1971 Alan J. Pakula film.

Fonda is “Bree”, a New York City call girl trying to transition out of the game. She becomes reluctantly embroiled in an investigation being conducted by an amateurish private detective named Klute (Donald Sutherland). Klute has been hired by a Pennsylvania-based CEO (Charles Cioffi) who wants him to track down an employee (and friend of Klute’s) who never returned from a business trip. The only clues Klute has is a stack of intimate letters written to Bree by the missing man.

While there is a definite mystery-thriller element to the story, the film is ultimately a two-character study of Bree and Klute as they develop a tenuous romantic relationship. Fonda and Sutherland are both excellent; Fonda picked up a Best Actress in a Leading Role Oscar that year for her work.

Little Murders – This dark, dark comedy from 1971 is one of my all-time favorite films. It was directed by Alan Arkin and adapted by Jules Feiffer from his own self-described “post-assassination play” (referring to the then-relatively recent murders of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy). That said, it is not wholly political; but it is sociopolitical (I see it as the pre-cursor to Paddy Chayefsky’s Network).

Elliot Gould is at the peak of his Elliot Gould-ness as a nihilistic (and seemingly brain-dead) free-lance photographer who is essentially browbeaten into a love affair with an effervescent sunny side-up young woman (Marcia Rodd) who is bound and determined to snap him out of his torpor. The story follows the travails of this oil and water couple as they slog through a dystopian New York City chock full o’ nuts, urban blight, indifference and random shocking acts of senseless violence (you know…New York City in the 70s).

There are so many memorable vignettes, and nearly every cast member gets a Howard Beale-worthy monologue on how fucked-up American society is (and remember…this was 1971). Disturbingly, it remains relevant as ever. But it is very funny. No, seriously. The cast includes Vincent Gardenia, Elizabeth Wilson, Doris Roberts, Lou Jacobi and Donald Sutherland (a hoot as a secular minister). Arkin casts himself as an eccentric homicide investigator.

Also recommended:

1900

Alex in Wonderland

Crackers

The Dirty Dozen

Eye of the Needle

Fellini’s Casanova

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

M*A*S*H

National Lampoon’s Animal House

Ordinary People

Panic

Start the Revolution Without Me

Steelyard Blues

The Wolf at the Door

More reviews at Den of Cinema

—Dennis Hartley

Every, single, election this happens. It’s tedious and destructive.

Josh Marshall has a good piece today on the totally predictable phenomenon of Democrats running to the press to clutch pearls and wring hands over the campaign they think should be doing something different than they are. He notes this Axios piece that “presents a picture of a campaign cocooned from outside input, intolerant of dissenters who aren’t confident of a win and largely the work of Biden and top advisor Mike Donilon, who is portrayed as having a strategy that is little more than a preciously naive hope that in the end voters will “do the right thing.”

So typical. Marshall writes:

But the heart of the piece comes at the top with a quote (emphasis added) from someone described as a “Democratic strategist in touch with the campaign.”

“It is unclear to many of us watching from the outside whether the president and his core team realize how dire the situation is right now, and whether they even have a plan to fix it. That is scary.”

I spend a lot of time trying to avoid the twin perils of wallowing pessimism and empty optimism. But when I read this, I at first literally checked to see whether I had done a search of my email that had served up an Axios newsletter from last January. (Literally not kidding about this.) We’ve been reading about these fearful strategists for months.

Purely at a definitional level I don’t get how a tie race can be “dire.” How is that possible, even by the dictionary? Scary, yes. Not ideal, absolutely. But a tie can’t be “dire.” That’s just not what dire means.

Then yesterday evening a new Fox poll came out which showed Biden up by two points nationally. That’s a three point swing since May and a seven point swing since March. Perhaps it was just poor timing for Axios. But there’s something more going on here.

I was actually less surprised and impressed by the Fox poll than most people. After all, it’s just one poll. And that applies just as much for “good” poll results as “bad” ones. But there’s also been a slow but clear trend in Biden’s direction since the beginning of the year. So this wasn’t a huge surprise. Indeed, there’ve been a number of polls with Biden one or two points ahead. They just don’t tend to be the ones that garner lots of press attention, like the Times-Siena poll and the Fox poll.

The RCP average is often squirrelly, because it can give a pretty obvious preference to GOP-aligned ringer polls. But even their trendline is clear. (I use it here but they have a clearer trendline chart going back to the Fall.) This is since the peak back in January with my highly methodologically sound blue arrow added for clarity.

He reiterates that it’s a tie and that nobody should get too excited about that. He could lose. Of course. We all know that.

But this is important.

But I keep coming back to “dire.” There’s something legitimately clinical going on here. Some of it is DC journalists being attached to a narrative, one they’re invested in for various reasons. But Democrats and “Democratic strategists” play a role here too, whether or not they have the initials D and A. I’ve made my argument at some length that runaway pessimism has real world campaign impacts, in addition to simply being an Eeyore-ly and undignified way to live life.

But there is some disconnect here that is worth understanding, worth taking a hard look at quite apart from its potential negative impacts on the election outcome. I wish I could give a good explanation for it beyond the inherent GOP tilt of most national political press coverage and intrinsic Democratic worry-wart-ism, both of which are certainly playing a role. But I can’t. For now I can only point to it as a standout example of the way that certain press and political narratives can remain curiously immune to actual evidence.

I attribute some of it to “insider savvy” and media snotty bitchiness myself. There’s a real bias against earnestness in politics and Joe Biden’s earnest denunciation of the assault on democracy and his comments like “this is the United States of America and there’s nothing we can’t do…” is just eye-rolling to them. On some level they respect Trump for being a liar a cheat and a sore loser. It’s just cooler.

But this happens to some extent in every election. Democrtic garment rending is just expected and the media is well… the media.

Nonetheless, the race shouldn’t be this close because Trump is a monster and an imbecile and all the usual factors that signal a successful re-election are in place. And sure, both the Democratic Eeyoreism and Kewl Kidz journalism have something to do with it. But like Josh, I’m a little bit shocked at the fact that massive numbers of Americans now believe things that just aren’t true. From the MAGA conspiracy theorists who believe all of Trump’s lies to the normie Americans who are convinced that (the rest o)f the country is suffering from a terrible economy and crime is rampant.

It’s vibes, I guess. Pandemic PTSD. Disinformation. People dropping out of the political scene because it’s just too stressful. Maybe it’s a combination of all of that. Let’s hope reality is finally starting to bite.

Has there ever been a quicker descent into obscurity?

There was a time when we couldn’t stop talking about Carlson but the one-time King of Wingnuttia seems to be completely irrelevant to the broader political conversation these days:

For Tucker Carlson, it has to be the ultimate good-news, bad-news moment: A major publishing house has canceled a prominent political journalist’s upcoming biography of the far-right media figure.

The good news, for Carlson partisans, is that the book in question — Hated by All the Right People: Tucker Carlson and the Unravelling of the Conservative Mind, by Jason Zengerle — was likely to be a less-than-fawning look at the former Fox host’s journey from establishmentarian to conspiracy theorist.

The bad news, though, is that the cancellation stems at least in part from the belief that Carlson, once the biggest name on cable, no longer has the kind of cultural footprint to warrant a pricey, complicated book by a top-shelf writer. According to several sources in the publishing industry who have followed the project, a combination of delays and the changes in Carlson’s once dominant media presence caused a loss of enthusiasm on the part of a publishing house going through its own internal tumult.

People really don’t care about him anymore — anywhere:

The right-wing United Australia Party leader Clive Palmer announced in April that he was going to bring Tucker Carlson into the country for a nationwide tour of speaking engagements. The tour is about to begin this weekend through July 1, and ticket prices have been slashed due to lack of interest.

Apparently, he will be doing an “arena tour” this summer with the likes of Kid Rock, Glenn Beck and Marjorie Taylor Greene. I’m sure it will be all kinds of MAGA magic but as the Politico article suggests, that’s a fever swamp kind of event that has very little effect in the broader world.

There was a time when a lot of people were speculating that Carlson would run for president. Today he’s just another blathering celebrity on the wingnut welfare circuit. Good.

His only economic policy plans are tax cuts for the super wealthy and starting a protectionist international trade war. pic.twitter.com/mZESRLoPq4

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) June 20, 2024

Yet business leaders are falling all over themselves to support him.

Meanwhile the projections from the Big Money Boyz are very rosy and the markets are roaring.

JPM DESK, on retail sales:

".. Americans spent more than $700bn last month; in 2019 that number was closer to $500bn.

"The [compound annual growth rate] for retail sales in the 4 years post-COVID is roughly double what it was in the 4 years into COVID. .. This is occurring in a…

— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla) June 20, 2024

Moody's expects inflation to fall from 3% in 2024 to 2.4% in 2025.

But Trump could supercharge it to 3.6% through "higher tariffs, outflow of foreign immigrants, the resulting tighter labor market and more quickly rising labor costs, and tax-cut-fueled fiscal stimulus." https://t.co/TaoIRT946M pic.twitter.com/WouW28CxeT

— Brendan Duke (@Brendan_Duke) June 20, 2024

Why in the hell do these people want to put that imbecile back in the White House? They are asking to kill their own golden goose.

Nothing matters more to them than their personal income taxes, I guess.

Judges Tried To Persuade Cannon To Recuse but she refused

The NY Times has a big scoop on the Mar-a-lago case (gift link from the reporters)

Shortly after Judge Aileen M. Cannon drew the assignment in June 2023 to oversee former President Donald J. Trump’s classified documents case, two more experienced colleagues on the federal bench in Florida urged her to pass it up and hand it off to another jurist, according to two people briefed on the conversations.

The judges who approached Judge Cannon — including the chief judge in the Southern District of Florida, Cecilia M. Altonaga — each asked her to consider whether it would be better if she were to decline the high-profile case, allowing it to go to another judge, the two people said.

But Judge Cannon, who was appointed by Mr. Trump, wanted to keep the case and refused the judges’ entreaties. Her assignment raised eyebrows because she has scant trial experience and had previously shown unusual favor to Mr. Trump by intervening in a way that helped him in the criminal investigation that led to his indictment, only to be reversed in a sharply critical rebuke by a conservative appeals court panel.

The extraordinary and previously undisclosed effort by Judge Cannon’s colleagues to persuade her to step aside adds another dimension to the increasing criticism of how she has gone on to handle the case.

She has broken, according to lawyers who operate there, with a general practice of federal judges in the Southern District of Florida of delegating some pretrial motions to a magistrate — in this instance, Judge Bruce E. Reinhart. While he is subordinate to her, Judge Reinhart is an older and much more experienced jurist. In 2022, he was the one who signed off on an F.B.I. warrant to search Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s club and residence in Florida, for highly sensitive government files that Mr. Trump kept after leaving office.

Since then, Judge Cannon has exhibited hostility to prosecutors, handled pretrial motions slowly and indefinitely postponed the trial, declining to set a date for it to begin even though both the prosecution and the defense had told her they could be ready to start this summer.

But Mr. Trump’s lawyers have also urged her to delay any trial until after the election, and her handling of the case has virtually ensured that they will succeed in that strategy. Should Mr. Trump retake the White House, he could order the Justice Department to drop the case.

As Judge Cannon’s handling of the case has come under intensifying scrutiny, her critics have suggested that she could be in over her head, in the tank for Mr. Trump — or both.

Against that backdrop, word of the early efforts by her colleagues on the bench to persuade her to step aside — and the significance of her decision not to do so — has spread among other federal judges and the people who know them.

Apparently, it’s not uncommon for judges to have such informal conversations with other judges and there’s no requirement that they take the advice.

The two people who discussed the efforts to persuade her to hand off the case spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter. Each had been told about it by different federal judges in the Southern District of Florida, including Judge Altonaga.

Neither of the people identified the second federal judge in Florida who had reached out to Judge Cannon. One of the people confirmed the effort to persuade Judge Cannon to step aside but did not describe the details of the conversations the two judges had with her. The other person offered more details.

This person said each outreach took place by telephone. The first judge to call Judge Cannon, this person said, suggested to her that it would be better for the case to be handled by a jurist based closer to the district’s busiest courthouse in Miami, where the grand jury that indicted Mr. Trump had sat.

At the time, the Miami courthouse also had a secure facility approved to hold the sort of highly classified information that would be discussed in pretrial motions and used as evidence in the case. Judge Cannon is the sole judge in the federal courthouse in Fort Pierce, a two-hour drive north of Miami. The courthouse in Fort Pierce did not have a secure facility when she was assigned the case.

She refused and so the taxpayers had to pay to build one in her courthouse for this one case.

Then the Chief judge gave her a call and said:

It would be bad optics for Judge Cannon to oversee the trial because of what had happened during the criminal investigation that led to Mr. Trump’s indictment on charges of illegally retaining national security documents after leaving office and obstructing government efforts to retrieve them.

She was referring to the special master business which ended up being reversed in a scathing opinion by the 11th circuit court of appeals. Apparently, the Chief Judge thought it looked bad for Cannon to continue on the case under those circumstances and she was right.

“It is indeed extraordinary for a warrant to be executed at the home of a former president — but not in a way that affects our legal analysis or otherwise gives the judiciary license to interfere in an ongoing investigation,” the panel wrote.

Limits on when courts can interfere with a criminal investigation “apply no matter who the government is investigating,” it added. “To create a special exception here would defy our nation’s foundational principle that our law applies ‘to all, without regard to numbers, wealth or rank.’”

Considering what we’re hearing today from Trump’s lawyers and the whole right wing mediaverse, that sounds almost quaint although it must be noted that when Trump appealed the Supremes passed on this one.

As we know, Trump went on to be indicted and the case was randomly assigned to one of the handful of judges in the West Palm Beach, Fort Pierce or Fort Lauderdale divisions and she got chosen.

It appears that everyone knew she was too inexperienced or biased who had no business sitting on this case either way. She had a perfect out and refused to take it. That makes it obvious that she’s more biased than inexperienced.

Trump may be hostile to all the judges in his other cases. But he loves Aileen:

The right’s decades-long plot to destroy public education and replace it with right wing Christian indoctrination is coming to fruition

CNN reports on the latest assault on public education by the extreme right. They never quit.

Near the edge of the Phoenix metro’s urban sprawl, surrounded by a wide expanse of saguaro-studded scrubland, Dream City Christian School is in the midst of a major expansion.

The private school, which is affiliated with a local megachurch where former President Donald Trump held a campaign rally this month, recently broke ground on a new wing that will feature modern, airy classrooms and a pickleball court. It’s a sign of growth at a school that has partnered with a Trump-aligned advocacy group, and advertises to parents by vowing to fight “liberal ideology” such as “evolutionism” and “gender identification.”

Just a few miles away, the public Paradise Valley Unified School District is shrinking, not expanding. The district shuttered three of its schools last month amid falling enrollment, a cost-saving measure that has disrupted life for hundreds of families.

One of the factors behind Dream City’s success and Paradise Valley’s struggles: In Arizona, taxpayer dollars that previously went to public schools like the ones that closed are increasingly flowing to private schools – including those that adopt a right-wing philosophy.

Arizona was the first state in the country to enact a universal “education savings account” program – a form of voucher that allows any family to take tax dollars that would have gone to their child’s public education and spend the money instead on private schooling.

A CNN investigation found that the program has cost hundreds of millions of dollars more than anticipated, disproportionately benefited richer areas, and funneled taxpayer funds to unregulated private schools that don’t face the same educational standards and antidiscrimination protections that public schools do. Since Arizona’s expanded program took effect in 2022, according to state data, it has sent nearly $2 million to Dream City and likely sapped millions of dollars from Paradise Valley’s budget.

Louisiana just passed a law requiring the 10 Commandments to be posted in every classroom.

The desire to siphon off tax payer dollars to right wing Christian schools has been part of the conservative plane since at least the 1950s. They struggled for years but just kept at it. And now they are starting to succeed — with a majority on the high court that’s completely bought in on this idea.

"Here's the bad part: When you do testing to that extent, you're gonna find more people, you're gonna find more cases. So I said to my people, 'slow the testing down please!'" — Trump pic.twitter.com/m5MOV9je70

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 21, 2020

That was the first of many Trump super-spreader events that killed people. It’s the one that killed his former rival turned supporter Herman Cain.

Are we better off than we were then? Of course we are. It’s an absurd question.