The line on Fox News at 5:00 is that the documents seized from Mara-la-go were photographs and unimportant documents. They are laughing and making jokes about the documents.
(Note: “The Five” includes five of the most obnoxious people in the world.)
Trump world has evidently released some document which includes the names of the FBI agents who participated in the raid. This was released to Brietbart and they published it.
The Cincinnati shooter’s postings changed from generalized violence to “we have to shoot FBI agents on sight,” after the search at Mara-lago.
After the Ohio attack, FOX news personality, Kilmeade, released a doctored photograph of Jeffrey Epstein having his feet massaged by that woman (whose name I cannot remember and try not to think about), with the face of the judge who signed off on the search warrant superimposed on Epstein’s body.
Neal Kaytal pointed out that as important as what was found at Mara-la-go is what was not found and was presumably destroyed.
The Espionage Act is cited in the warrant.
The warrant was very broad in terms of what could be searched on the premises.
They had to show fresh probable cause of concealment or destruction.
(Note: Who is the person who helped Trump bring these documents out of the White House? Trump is not smart enough to have selected these documents. In addition, he does not have the mentality capacity to read through documents and understand their import.)
There are documents he could not have declassified without Congress. Declassification is a request.
Somebody went through and hand-picked these documents. (Clint Watts and Harry Litman.)
Clint Watts talked about “nuclear positioning.” This is, where nuclear weapons are positioned. This has been a highly contested issue with Putin.
Heilemann (who is filling in for Nicolle Wallace on MSNBC) is calling Garland “meticulous” AGAIN. Jesus, there is no limit to this faux hero adulation. It reminds me of the Mueller nonsense.
THE MEDIA
Stories that are not receiving the coverage they deserve: 1) the attack on the FBI office in Cincinnati, 2) the attack on Salman Rushdie. Can they seriously not cover more than one story at the time?
John Heilemann, in for Nicolle Wallace, desperately needs a verbal editor. My God, he asks a question, and it takes 5 minutes. Listening to him, my mind is filled with red pen marks through phrases and sentences. Ari Melber is the same way. He has guests on and talks endlessly so that they don’t have a chance to say anything.
BOOK: “Thank you for your Servitude” by Marc Leibovich
This book focuses not on Trump, but on the Trump “enablers” who made it all possible.
Marc Leibovich, a staff writer for the Atlantic Magazine, described the book in this way in an interview on MSNBC (7/11/22): The book is “about the people who allowed it to happen,” and who keep rehabilitating Trump “at every turn.”
Unlike those in the press (Michael Schmidt) who have written excuse-filled books essentially arguing that people like Don McGhan were in a “difficult” position, faced hard decisions, or did a service by remaining because they were the adults in the room, Leibovich is open about his contempt for Republicans who he deems “parasitic suck-ups” “starstruck and desperate to keep their jobs,” on a “thrill ride.” He describes them as “groveling legions,” “hollowed-out men and women who knew better,” the “most supplicant super-careerists, and finally (my favorite) “lapdogs in Trump’s kennel.”
As Leibovich notes: “Without the complicity of the Republican Party, Donald Trump would be just a glorified geriatric Fox-watching golfer.”
Without the complicity of the Republican Party…
In Lebovich’s previous book about Washington he described a town in which “Democrats and Republicans kept coming to Washington, vowing change, only to get co-opted, get richer, and never leave.” Then, Donald Trump was nominated, and things got even worse.
A lot of people could see that Trump was a huckster, a con man, and dangerous for the country. My partner is a life-long Republican. When Trump was nominated, he declined to vote for him. After five years of listening to Trump’s bullshit and learning about the depth of the criminality involved with the administration, he voted Democratic for the first time in his life.
But, the Kevin McCarthys and the Lindsay Grahams of the world had no problem at all jumping on the Trump bandwagon and taking the system for all it was worth to them.
In an article in the Atlantic about the book, Leibovich describes Kevin McCarthy detailing with relish the game of working for Trump. He quotes McCarthy as saying: “This is the tightest tightrope anyone has to walk.” Graham (whose excuse for kissing Trump’s ass was that he was only trying to remain “relevant”) also seemed to relish the game. They were proud of the access, proud of the position proud of the temperamentality of Trump. “There was always a breathless, racing quality to both men’s voices when they talked about the thrill ride of being one of Trump’s “guys,” writes Leibovich. “Relevance,” he adds, “casts one hell of a spell.”
Leibovich also goes into detail describing what a jerk Kevin McCarthy really is. When Leibovich met with McCarthy to do an interview, McCarthy spent his time scrolling through his phone and showing Leibovitz photographs of himself with celebrities. (Note: I could not help thinking that this must be what it’s like to interview Ari Melber).
“Here’s another of me with Trump on Air Force One,” McCarthy said to Leibovich. “What did you ask me again?” These are men who have held some of the most powerful positions in the world. It makes me sick.
Leibovich describes McCarthy as “sensitive to perceptions that he is a lightweight whose career trajectory is owed purely to his Olympian brownnosing and backslapping capabilities.” Graham, he wrote, admired Trump because Trump could get away with anything. Does that sound like a 13-year-old?
Leibovich stated: “I don’t see how they can live with themselves.”
But live with themselves they do, and it appears from Leibovich’s own book, they do so quite happily.
Leibovich concluded: “It’s all a game to them.”
I haven’t read the book, but the best, the very best quote from Leibovich’s article is: “If they’d never stooped this low before, maybe it’s just because no one ever asked them to.”
We are back enmeshed in the minutiae of the Trump soap opera. Crime after crime, scam after scam, move after move to destroy what democracy we have left in this country. And, there are no consequences, none. Trump and his minions continue with the crime spree they have enjoyed for decades. The Democrats wring their hands, the corporate media obsesses over things like whether Biden used the word “abortion” in a statement. It is a country disintegrating before our very eyes. The media has lost interest in the war in Ukraine. Meanwhile the transnational crime network consolidates power.
Turn over to Fox News and you can watch endless discussion of a lawsuit between two spoiled movie stars.
MSNBC: Nicolle Wallace
After saying that Trump was leading the white working class into a dark place, J.D. Vance has now decided to kiss Trump’s a.. He has just won the Republican Senate primary in Ohio. (Note: The corporate press tried to turn Vance into a cultural icon right after the publication of his book and the 2016 presidential race. He was a guest on every prime time show after his book came out.)
“I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine,” says J. D. Vance.
Tim Ryan (Democratic Senate candidate) faces Vance in the Senate race.
The abortion bills are so extreme that doctors could be put in jail for life for performing an abortion.
(Note: Why does MSNBC find it necessary to show examining rooms while talking about the Supreme Court decision on abortion? They love to show women getting mammograms as well. I have never seen a man getting a prostate exam or the instruments for doing so.)
Vance on Fox News: Calls the media and Democrats “obsessed with Ukraine.” Vance is claiming that Democrats are bringing in immigrants because they want to “replace” U.S. workers.
Jeremy Bash: J.D. Vance is “parroting Kremlin talking points.” A major party is going to veer off in a pro-Russia direction. (Note: “going to”? Where has he been?)
Miles Taylor, former Republican: The Republicans will tell people privately that they are part of the good guys. But, publicly they will side with the Trumpers. One in ten Americans thinks that violence would be justified against the U.S. government, according to polls.
UKRAINE UPDATE, 5:00 pm
UKRAINE WORLD
War journalist Oleksandr Makhov died near Izyum.
600 people were killed in the Russian bombing of the Mariupol Drama Theatre.
THE KYIV INDEPENDENT
Lviv mayor plans to nationalize Russian-owned bus plant.
The city has some 80 businesses fully or partially owned by Russians.
Russians tok three-year stock of grain out of Luhansk. 100,000 tons of gain have been either moved out of the war-torn region or destroyed.
Missiles hit Dnipro.
There are three Russian missile carriers currently in the Black Sea, ready to strike in Ukraine.
People injured by mines around Kyiv.
EU plans to block Russians from buying real estate.
Ukrainian government criticizes the Red Cross for close cooperation with the Russian authorities and a lack of communication with Ukraine.
“Belarus said it has begun large-scale drills on May 4 to test its combat readiness while local residents reported spotting columns of military vehicles moving in the direction of Ukraine.
Russia plans to hold military parade in Mariupol on May 9, according to Ukrainian intelligence.
EU proposes sanctioning head of Russian Orthodox Church.
If you haven’t listened to the most recent podcast from “Gaslit Nation,” you need to. The guest, Anne Nelson, details the years of work the right has done to get us where we are.
I am a cynical person. It takes a lot to amaze me. But, twice in the past couple of years I have been utterly and completely astounded by the blatant manipulative nature of the corporate media. I don’t know exactly why this should be so.
Years ago, I wrote a book about ideology, the media and the invasion of Panama. I started off the book relating a story of sitting in my study watching the coverage of the invasion. The invasion. That’s what it was called by the news media in the beginning because that was what it was. It only took a few hours, however, until otherwise respectable news people became cheerleaders for the clearly illegal invasion. And, also within a few hours they started referring to the invasion as “Operation Just Cause.”
I kid you not. Major news anchors would say: “We are covering Operation Just Cause” using the name given to the invasion by the military.
I wouldn’t at all be surprised (although I would be disgusted) if by Monday, the major corporate news outlets started referring to the Biden withdrawal from Afghanistan as “Operation Just Ending to a Forever War.”
Another reason none of this should surprise me is that I sat and watched the outrageous effort on the part of MSNBC news to destroy Bernie Sanders’s candidacy after he won the Arizona primary. I have photos on my cell phone of Joy Reid’s devastated face when she had to report Sanders’s win, a win that was multi-ethnic and that included union members who refused to obey their bosses and voted for Sanders.
After that primary, MSNBC anchors (especially Reid) went into overdrive to help the DNC prevent Sanders from being nominated and promoting Joe Biden. There was nothing subtle about it. Chris Matthews even said on his dreadful nightly show that Bernie Sanders would take people like him (Matthews) out in Central Park and execute them. (We can only wish).
Now, this time, corporate news, especially MSNBC, is busily trying to whitewash Biden’s ill-conceived and disastrously bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan. They are doing it for the same reason they worked to destroy Bernie Sanders – to promote and protect Joe Biden.
Since early last week I have been watching with growing alarm the Taliban take over Afghanistan. Every time I looked at an article with a map of who controlled territory in Afghanistan the Taliban’s control expanded. I had read with shame and disbelief about the decision to abandon Bagram air force base in the middle of the night without even consulting and informing the local governments.
I had read with disgust about the “negotiating” between the Trump administration and the Taliban. Who in their right mind would even think of “negotiating” with the Taliban? But, that was Trump and the dangerously ill religious zealot Pompeo. We had elected Biden to change things.
Then, I watched with utter horror and incomprehension as Joe Biden doggedly continued to pursue a policy of total withdrawal from Afghanistan by a specific date even in the face of mounting evidence that we could not even get all the Americans out much less all the Afghans who fought with us and for us.
I was 24 when the U.S. withdrew from Saigon. I had nightmares about those scenes well into my 40s and I had been an anti-war activist who worked with SDS. I opposed that war.
I opposed the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But, even the most anti-war activist can make a distinction between going into a war and getting out of one. I opposed the war in Afghanistan but once we were there, had been there for 20 years, we owned it. We couldn’t just walk away as if we had never started any of this.
But that was evidently exactly what Joe Biden intended to do. I just could not wrap my mind around it. Who was this precipitous withdrawal intended to please? To what constituency was this supposed to appeal?
Added to this, the behavior of Biden and his administration was so Trumpian it made me sick to my stomach. Biden appeared on television doubling down on his decision to pursue this ill planned and ill conducted withdrawal. He would not even admit that there had been any mistakes. It was a “do you believe me or your lying eyes” strategy. I thought we voted for Biden to stop that kind of behavior. Ned Price (from whom I expected more) and Jake Sullivan spouted bureaucratic-speak nonsense from the podium trying to legitimate the policy. They were both utterly terrible at it. They lied and obfuscated with evasive eye movements and even hostility when they were asked to answer legitimate questions.
It reminded me of the “I’m the smartest person in every room” hubris of the Obama people who have always felt that criticizing or even questioning Obama’s policies or behavior was tantamount to treason and also a personal affront.
On the corporate news, in an attempt to protect Joe Biden, hosts minimized the chaos and the impact of the set of decisions Biden made with regard to this withdrawal from Afghanistan.
As Charlotte Rampell wrote, otherwise rational people seem to be having a great deal of trouble distinguishing between the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the way in which this particular withdrawal was carried out. They are having trouble and they are having trouble for a reason, they wish to protect Joe Biden.
As one former Republican, Matthew Dowd, hosted on several of the programs last week said, Democrats should circle the wagons around Joe Biden, support the president, because that’s what the Republicans would do. So, this guy is treated like an oracle because he is saying was that we should support the leader of our party whatever he does because he is the leader of the party.
As someone tweeted recently: You can unwaveringly support your ethics and morals or you can unwaveringly support the leader of your party, you can’t do both.
Dereck Chauvin put his knee on the neck of George Floyd, stared into the camera and dared us to do anything about it.
Donald Trump did exactly what Chauvin did – he put his knee on the neck of democracy, decency, legality. He stared into the camera and dared us to do anything about it.
Putin has done exactly what Chauvin did – he has put his knee on the neck of Navalny, stared into the camera and dared us to do anything about it.
These are lessons, authoritarian lessons. They are demonstrating to us that that they can do whatever they want. They can even murder one of us right in front of our very eyes and we can’t do a damn thing about it.
We have won tonight, in the Chauvin case. We have won because of the mobilization of millions of people putting pressure on the system to live up to its ideals. We have won because of the courage and discipline of a group of witnesses. We have won and we can win again.
We must stand together and stand up to the boot of authoritarian rule on our necks. We stopped them with the Chauvin verdict. That’s why the legal system avoids jury trials if at all possible, especially for powerful defendants. We can, and we must stop them again. We must demand that the participants in the corrupt crime spree that was the Trump administration are held to account. We must demand that dangerous men like Putin and the oligarchs that surround him are held to account.
If we do not see, truly see that these actions are preparations for authoritarianism, they will come back for us. They are obviously not phased in the least by the electoral defeat in 2020. The tidal wave of voter suppression being orchestrated by the Republicans is just another way to take power because they cannot win it legitimately. It is their way back in power. We must take them seriously or we will find ourselves in 2022 and 2024 with another authoritarian take-over of the governmental process. If we flirt with that possibility, we may never recover.
That look you saw on Chavin’s face when he was kneeling there, crushing the life out of a man, is the same look you would see on the face of Bill Barr, Donald Trump, Jared Kushner, Roger Stone, Steve Bannon, Pompeo, Pence, Steven Miller, Manafort and many others while they crushed the life out of anyone who opposed them if they thought for one minute they could get away with it. If we let them get away with it, they will crush the life out of democracy and our lives will be unalterably changed. If we don’t take them seriously, if we don’t fight them we will find ourselves living under that knee being given the same compassion and respect Dereck Chavin gave George Floyd.
It has been days since I have watched corporate TV news. I have been reading, writing, painting and binge-watching Dickens, Trollope, and Austen on Amazon Prime.
Every time I turn on the corporate news I find CNN hosts interviewing other CNN hosts about their new books. On MSNBC, I find people like Jason “Island of misfit black girls” Johnson, pontificating and acting like he’s something other than a vicious attack dog there to repeatedly blame the progressives in the Democratic Party for all the failures of the party establishment.
Morning Joe has turned into a prayer meeting with Joe Scarborough spending whole segments lecturing viewers on what a “true Christian” is. This is the news? Mika Brzezinski relentlessly promotes her “know your worth” marketing/money making strategy. She actually seems to think that people are going to believe this from a woman who “knew her worth” to such an extent she had an adulterous affair and then married her boss. She defers to him, babies him, allows herself to be regularly demeaned, interrupted and ridiculed by him. This is women knowing their worth.
In the afternoons, former Senator Claire MacCaskill has taken obsequious behavior to new heights, fawning over Nicolle Wallace at every turn, baking cakes for Wallace and lighting candles on the cake while lauding Wallace’s journalism. This is the news?
MacCaskill does this while the other members of the panel (including the other prime ass-kisser, Jason Johnson) clap their hands like school children. It is just nauseating.
There is no, no international news anymore on either CNN or MSNBC. The amount of information being communicated is almost nil. It’s like a televised circle-jerk, reporters interviewing other reporters, promoting each other’s books or (worse still) interviewing members of Congress, as if any member of congress is going to say anything either interesting or informative. There are only a handful of people in the entire Congress who say ANYTHING that is not a collection of focus-group tested nonsense.
The corporate media is, in short, like a toy my friend told me she bought her grandson a couple of years ago. I couldn’t even grasp what she was talking about as she described this gadget. It was a mechanical thing that had no purpose except to move. It was called a “fidget spinner.” The corporate news media is an intellectual fidget spinner – words and words and words and interview after interview after interview filling up space, for no reason except to make money for somebody and create the impression that things are under control. As Scarborough says the “institutions are holding.”
Meanwhile, the institutions are not holding. The criminal enterprise that was the Trump administration has gone without accountability or punishment, and will continue to do so. The legal system works to prosecute, hold accountable, and punish only the poor. We are repeatedly treated to an orgy of spectacle creating the impression that the powerful will be held accountable only to watch the whole sorry exercise collapse.
The Supreme Court which has sold democracy down the tubes with decisions such as Citizens’ United, is poised to further structure the legal system to favor the wealthy and powerful. The Congress is afraid of its shadow. If the Biden administration does not do away with the filibuster, alter the Supreme Court, fight for ordinary Americans, and ensure election fairness and security, the Trump/McConnell crime family will be back in power partially in two years, and totally in four.
All you have to do it look at the flood of voter suppression laws that have been passed in Georgia and other states to see that Republicans are going to make sure that the Democrats lose control of the Congress in 2022 and the presidency in 2024. They are circling like sharks. All four years of Trump did for them was to give them the smell of blood and demonstrate how easily they could turn this into an authoritarian Christian nationalist state.
Meanwhile, Ari Melber makes jokes, quotes banal rap lyrics (of sexist rap stars) like they were great literature and/or philosophy and interviews celebrities, barely keeping himself from peeing his pants with glee at his proximity to fame. It is all just really disgusting.
And, then there’s today. A 21-year-old man has murdered eight women and was on his way to murder more. But, as the Georgia Sheriff’s office spokesman said, he “had a bad day.” There are so many things wrong with this story and the coverage of it and the people involved, I don’t know where to begin.
I feel like my mother when she first started watching the O.J. Simpson trial. She watched for a couple of hours. “What do you think?” I said. “I think they should all be put in prison now,” she replied getting up in disgust to go and read. “Who?” I asked. “All of them.” She said. “Simpson, the judge, the prosecutors, the defense attorneys, the reporters, all of them.” She was, of course, right.
That’s precisely what I feel about everybody involved in this murder case in Atlanta.
The Georgia Sheriff and CNN are talking about “sex addiction” as if sex addiction was something real. Law enforcement, politicians and the corporate media are actually mouthing the ludicrous sex equivalent of the “Twinkie Defense” for this Long guy. The Cherokee Sheriff’s office guy, Baker, found it his responsibility to provide an excuse for a man who walked into businesses that employ women (at starvation wages) to cater to the perverted pleasures of men and murder them. What is this Baker, Long’s defense attorney? Official law enforcement provides a narrative for the future jury pool excusing this man because of his “sex addiction.”
“Sex addiction?” There is no such thing as a sex addiction. It’s a fake con devised by the rehabilitation industry to make money. No serious person would even allow those two words together to come out of their mouth. A male reporter on CNN said that the young man “had issues.” ISSUES?////// ISSUES?????????
He hates women, that’s the issue, he hates and despises women and has racist exploitive sexual fantasies about them that he felt entitled to act out. It has nothing to do with addiction. Long is not mentally ill, that we know of. He is just the same kind of oppressive, abusive, exploitive, violent bastard that this culture turns out by the millions. He’s just like Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, that old man who used to be a comedian who doped and then raped women (I’m 70. I can’t remember his f…ing name), Weinstein, Cuomo, and God knows how many more.
But, we can’t talk about that. We can’t talk about a culture that makes the hatred of women fundamental, trades in the commodification of women’s bodies at every turn, provides a market for sexual perversion of every sort and then blames the impoverished women who are forced to participate in it for their own destruction at the hands of the very men they are forced to service.
This guy “had a bad day.” That’s what Baker, the Sheriff’s Office guy, said. He had a “bad day” and “issues” and “a sexual addiction.” No, the women who were killed and their families had a bad day, a tragic day. This guy acted out his violent racist sexual perversions, violent sexual perversions that are fed every day by the media and the entertainment industry and politics.
Just listened to a podcast, Skullduggery, hosted by Michael Isikoff. This episode was recorded before the coup attempt. He was talking with someone and they were saying that Trump was likely to just fade away. Why do we have journalists, not just celebrity “journalists”, people who should know better, dismissing Trump and his movement?
• At the beginning of the pandemic, because of the total lack of a federal plan to deal with the problem, New York spent $1.1 billion for supplies to deal with the crisis. According to the New York Times (NYT) Both the state and city governments entered into contracts rushing to try to deal with the pandemic. Now they are trying to avoid paying vendors who they say didn’t deliver on time, and making void contracts now that the crisis has abated. The New York Times called the behavior a “frantic buying spree.” But, this buying “spree” was the result of the lack of a federal plan and the decision to allow states to bid against each other for emergency supplies. (See NYT, 12/17/20)
• Several health care workers in Alaska have had severe reactions to the new vaccine. There is no coverage of the idea that rational people may be reluctant to have a vaccine because it was developed under the Trump administration. There are almost weekly stories about the Trump administration’s successful influence over the CDC. The corporate media is filled with stories about how black people and reluctance to get the vaccine. To give you an idea of how in touch these corporate media people are, one commentator noted that black people were reluctant to get the vaccine because of the Tuskeegee “airmen.” (NYT, 12/17/20)
• The Judiciary is time bomb waiting to explode. (NYT, 12/17/20) The NYT reviewed more than 10,000 published decisions and dissents during the first three years of the Trump administration. Trump appointees were “more likely…to disagree with peers selected by Democrats…” and “more likely to agree with their Republican colleagues.” The “published opinions from the nations’ appeals courts this year show that Trump appointees stand out from other judges…” The “conservative imprint” is only deepening. One of the reasons we managed to escape another Trump term is the federal judiciary. But, that is the reason Mitch McConnell is packing the federal courts with “right-thinking” judges. Next time, these judges may side with even the most outrageous lawsuits to maintain the power of the Republican party. McConnell has encouraged federal judges to retire to make room for these more radical colleagues. (NYT, 12/17/20)
• The new version of the stimulus bill doesn’t include the get out of jail fee card for corporations wanted by McConnell (NYT 12/17/20)
“Six days after President Donald Trump lost his bid for reelection, the U.S. Department of Agriculture notified food safety groups that it was proposing a regulatory change to speed up chicken factory processing lines, a change that would allow companies to sell more birds. An earlier USDA effort had broken down on concerns that it could lead to more worker injuries and make it harder to stop germs like salmonella.”
Propublica 11/25/20
This is what Republicans stand for. There’s no reason to ask why Republicans “went along” with Trump. They didn’t go along, they happily colluded with him because he delivered policy changes that they had advocated for decades.
Trump most likely lost because of mail in ballots. So…
The Georgia state senators pledged on Tuesday to eliminate no-excuse absentee voting, require a photo ID to obtain a ballot, outlaw drop boxes and scrap a court agreement to quickly tell voters about signature problems on ballots so that they could be fixed…new york times.
Law, Power and Justice 