The Weekly Sift: June 2024

Monday, June 24, 2024

Something Other

If your version of Christianity wants to put the Ten Commandments in schools but take free lunch out of them, you are worshipping something other than Jesus.

- Zach W. Lambert

This week's featured post is "The Limits of Originalism".

This week everybody was talking about the upcoming debate

So Biden and Trump are scheduled to debate Thursday night on CNN. I am resisting the temptation to do something I often criticize the cable-news talking heads for: speculate. We shouldn't waste our time trying to predict how the debate will go, because in a few days it will happen and we can see.

I will say this: I think the existence of a debate works in Biden's favor. The biggest reason I am optimistic about Biden's chances in general is that the Trump campaign is based on lies: that Biden is senile, the economy is bad, crime is soaring, immigrants are responsible for that soaring crime, we were all better off four years ago, and so on. (CNN found 30 lies in Trump's speech in Wisconsin Tuesday.) Anything that can get voters focused on reality -- like what the candidates are actually like when you watch them live -- works in Biden's favor.

Having had time to mull over his insane sharks-and-batteries story, Trump tells it again, notes that he was criticized for it, and concludes: "It's actually not crazy. It's sort of a smart story, right?"

Biden continues to creep upward in the polls, and currently has a small lead in the 538 polling average. The average includes a Fox News poll from Wednesday, which has Biden up 50-48.

I have been skeptical of the polls that showed Biden behind, and I remain skeptical as he seems to pull ahead (by far less than the margin of error). The trend probably means something, but not the margins.

Aaron Rupar writes sarcastically:

With even Fox News now acknowledging that Biden is pulling ahead, who's writing the big think piece about how Trump should gracefully bow out at the RNC for a younger, fresher candidate?

But of course, you would know nothing about Biden's momentum from the NYT, which publishes only bad news about Biden's candidacy. Friday's story on the campaign was about how Trump is catching up in fund-raising.

Oddly, there seems to be no actual news development that occasioned this article. The FEC has not released any new totals, but the NYT is basing its article on claims made by the campaigns, trusting the Trump campaign to tell it honest numbers. The article also accepts the Trump campaign's claim that they are catching up due to small online contributions, and doesn't mention the $50 million check Trump's super-PAC got from billionaire Timothy Mellon.

The New Yorker does focus on such big-ticket donations, and makes this comment:

Trump’s fund-raising efforts have included brazen solicitation of donations from individuals and business interests that have big stakes in regulatory decisions. Last month, the Washington Post reported on an April meeting that Trump had at his Mar-a-Lago estate with senior executives from the energy industry. According to the Post story, Trump said that if he was reëlected he would reverse Biden Administration policies that have restricted oil and gas drilling in the Arctic and frozen export permits for liquefied natural gas. In pressing the energy executives to donate to his campaign, he told them that “(g)iving $1 billion would be a ‘deal’ . . . because of the taxation and regulation they would avoid.”

Chris Hayes calls attention to additional examples of influence-peddling: Trump wanted to ban TikTok until a major TikTok investor gave his campaign a lot of money. Trump wanted to regulate crypto-currencies, but now he doesn't and is getting millions from crypto interests. He'll even back away from his anti-immigrant position to suit potential donors looking to recruit immigrant talent: He's promising automatic green cards to immigrants who graduate from college.

Little in this campaign is more laughable than the repeated videos of Trump waving to no one, as if a huge crowd were there to greet him.

and the Supreme Court

The featured post covers the Rahimi decision. On the surface it doesn't sound like a big deal, because the Court does the right thing by an 8-1 margin. But five of the six conservative justices recognize that the Bruen decision has caused a mess, and they have to figure out how to fix it within the bounds of their originalist dogma.

Still no word on when we might hear an opinion on Trump's absurd claim of absolute immunity from prosecution. Whether the Court grants his request or not, they've already delayed his January 6 trial by more than six months, which was what he wanted.

and Louisiana

So Louisiana has decided to waste a bunch of court time and lawyer fees so that it can be told to remove the Ten Commandments from its classrooms. This is part of a post-Dobbs push in the red states that amounts to: "Since precedent doesn't matter any more, let's try stuff that is obviously unconstitutional and see if this Court will OK it."

Supporters of the law, in defending the measure, have leaned on the 2022 US Supreme Court decision in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, which gave a high school football coach his job back after he was disciplined over a controversy involving prayer on the field. The Supreme Court ruled that the coach’s prayers amounted to private speech, protected by the First Amendment, and could not be restricted by the school district.

The decision lowered the bar between church and state in an opinion that legal experts predicted would allow more religious expression in public spaces. At the time, the court clarified that a government entity does not necessarily violate the establishment clause by permitting religious expression in public.

But of course, here the state isn't "permitting" religious expression, it's mandating religious expression. Not even this Supreme Court will go for that. And the case they're leaning on was a travesty to begin with.

Anyway, it's just so typical: politicians making a show of their Christianity by doing some symbolic thing that costs them nothing and helps no one. "These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me." - Isaiah 29:13.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz contrasts public schools feeding hungry children (as Minnesota does) versus forcing state-sponsored religion on them.

I'm a two-decade school teacher. We know that full bellies make better learners. But look, 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 the Biden-Harris administration is talking about taking national. It makes a huge difference.

and Willie Mays and Reggie Jackson

Thursday, a major league baseball game was played in a town without a major league team: Birmingham, Alabama. The point of the game was to honor the Negro Leagues, and it also turned into a spontaneous tribute to the great Willie Mays, who had died two days before.

Prior to the game, the usual Fox Sports announcer crew interviewed another Black Hall of Fame player, Reggie Jackson. Reggie comes from the generation after Mays (entering the major leagues in the middle of the 1967 season, 16 years after Mays' rookie year and 20 years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier), and so is not usually thought of as a pioneer. But he had a lot to say about the racism he faced while playing for the minor league Birmingham A's in 1967.

His story is worth the three minutes it will take you to listen to it, because it underlines a point that is often glossed over in upbeat accounts of our civil rights progress, particularly in this age when any honest testimony about American racism is denounced as "critical race theory": Racism isn't something you beat once and then are done with. Twenty years after Jackie Robinson, racism against Black baseball players was still virulent.

Joe and Sharon Rudi, I slept on their couch three-four nights a week for about a month and a half. Finally they were threatened that they would burn our apartment complex down unless I got out. ...

Had it not been for my White friends ... I would have never made it. I was too physically violent. I was ready to physically fight somebody. I'da got killed here, because I woulda beat someone's ass, and you'da saw me in an oak tree somewhere.

and you also might be interested in

This week it was hot in the Northeast, but that was nothing compared with Mecca, which hit 125 degrees (51.8 C). Saudi sources estimate that at least 1300 people died during this year's Hajj.

Pastor Robert Morris, founder of the Gateway Church in Southlake, Texas (ranked in 2023 as the 9th largest church in the US) resigned Tuesday after the "extramarital relationship" from early in his career that he had previously confessed to turned out to be the multi-year abuse of a 12-year-old girl.

Morris, a former member of President Donald Trump’s spiritual advisory committee, had long told a story to his congregation and church leaders about a “moral failure” involving sexual sin when he was a young minister in his 20s.

Last week, Cindy Clemishire, now 54, revealed in a post on the church watchdog site The Wartburg Watch that she was 12 when Morris first sexually abused her in 1982. The alleged abuse continued for more than four years, Clemishire told NBC News on Monday.

If the mention of Southlake rings a bell, it might be because two weeks ago I told you about Mike Hixenbaugh's book They Came for the Schools, which describes the campaign to remove "critical race theory" and so-called LGBTQ "groomers" from the Southlake schools. I didn't talk about Morris and Gateway's role in that campaign, but in a 2023 podcast, Hixenbaugh described how Morris and Gateway campaigned for conservative candidates to take over the school board. To protect the children, of course.

Hardly any Democrat communicates better than Pete Buttigieg. Here, he explains why conservatives' lack of answers on questions like gas prices, prescription drug prices, inflation in general, infrastructure, child care, and taxes (Rick Scott wants to raise taxes on the poor), leads them to their current rhetoric.

So what do they do? They find somebody vulnerable and pick on them -- which at the moment is largely the trans community. And they find something to talk about that can go between the laughable -- is Donald Duck going to make your kid gay? -- to the incredibly dark, which is the suggestion that the very presence of someone who is gender-nonconforming or trans or gay or lesbian or otherwise different -- the very existence of someone like that is an "adult subject". That if my kids in, let's say, the first grade classroom were to mention in passing that over the weekend they had a great time going with their dads to the zoo, that they would have somehow, by saying that, uttered something age inappropriate. And get us really fired up about that fight.

and let's close with something fictitious

The environmentalist website Grist did something creative: sponsored a "climate fiction" contest. Contestants were challenged to "imagine 2200" and "offer vivid, hope-filled, diverse visions of climate progress". From over a thousand entries, the judges chose three winners and nine finalists. You can read the stories here.

Monday, June 17, 2024

Like a Duck

When I see a bird that walks like a duck, swims like a duck,
and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck.

- Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor,
explaining why bump stocks turn AR-15s into machine guns

This week's featured post is "This Week's Legal Decisions".

This week everybody was talking about the courts

The featured post covers the Supreme Court's ruling on the mifepristone case and the bump-stock ban, as well as a district court ruling overturning Florida's ban on gender-affirming care.

But the other case in the news was Hunter Biden's conviction on three felony counts related to purchasing a handgun and lying about his drug use.

In this situation, President Biden has done something Trump has never been able to conceive of: He has drawn a line between his personal life and his role as president. He loves and supports Hunter the way a Dad should. But as president, he stayed out of Hunter's case, and he's not going to give Hunter a pardon.

Trump was never able to compartmentalize the presidency like this. Presidential power was his power, to use for whatever purpose he desired. If he liked somebody, or needed to repay them for their silence, he pardoned them, regardless of the merits. Rod Blagojevich, for example, got his sentence commuted because he'd been a contestant on Celebrity Apprentice.

One clear difference between the Trump trial and the Biden trial: Hunter's jurors have already begun going public. Trump's jurors didn't dare, for fear of violent retribution.

and the weather

Much of southern Florida flooded this week as up to two feet of rain fell in places like North Miami. But of course, Governor DeSantis is not going to admit that climate change played any role.

This clearly is not unprecedented. I think the difference is, you compare 50 to 100 years ago to now, there’s just a lot more that’s been developed, so there’s a lot more effects that this type of event can have.

The WaPo notes:

The brouhaha over how to characterize the storm came a month after DeSantis signed a bill that removes most references to climate change in state law. The legislation, which is set to take effect July 1, eliminates climate change as a priority in making energy policy decisions, even though Florida routinely faces threats from extreme heat, deadly hurricanes and toxic algae blooms.

... The storm arrived 14 months after another “rain bomb” hit South Florida, dropping 22.5 inches on Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in one day. Last year’s storm knocked the city’s main hospital offline for all but emergency procedures, shorted electrical equipment at City Hall and left thousands of travelers stranded.

Both that system and this week’s deluge bear the fingerprint of human-caused climate change. In a warmer world, the atmosphere can hold more moisture. That means rainfall rates are getting heavier and extremes are becoming more common.

This week, most of the Eastern US is going to roast under a "heat dome". But if all you want to say is "It gets hot in summer", nobody can make you see any larger significance.

and fake videos that "show" President Biden's senility

This cycle's version of Hillary's emails or Obama's birth certificate is the supposed "evidence" that Joe Biden is too old to be president. This week the Republican National Committee released two videos that were picked up by Republican media outlets like the New York Post, and were widely shared on social media. Both seemed to show President Biden being "out of it" during public events. One of these apparent incidents made the New York Post's cover.

In reality, both videos were carefully edited so that what Biden was reacting to was out of the frame, making it appear as if the President were off in a world of his own. The Washington Post's fact checker compared these videos to the same events from other angles and wider perspectives -- views that were also available to right-wing outlets that chose to ignore them -- and awarded the videos four Pinocchios, its rating for the most extreme dishonesty.

In one video, the RNC's version has Biden apparently wandering off during an outdoor photo op for G-7 leaders in Italy, only to be brought back to the group by the Italian prime minister. Outside the frame, but clearly visible in other videos of the same event, is the parachutist Biden had turned to pay attention to, giving him a thumbs-up and exchanging a few words. (As part of the festivities, skydivers had floated down with the flags of the seven nations.) This video, in fact, shows Biden exercising one of his trademark virtues: acknowledging the contributions of people who aren't at his world-leader rank.

In another RNC-edited video, Biden stands still while all the people around him dance during a Juneteenth celebration. A conservative UK newspaper, the Telegraph, then wrote an article implying that Biden was having some kind of episode that caused him to freeze. However, the WaPo notes:

The full video, when it pans, shows other people similarly standing still at the right end of the screen.

I have to wonder if the Biden-not-dancing criticism is intended to deflect the response Trump faces when he tries to dance at rallies and looks ridiculous.

If Biden were really doing as badly as Republicans would have you believe, the evidence would be everywhere; they wouldn't have to manufacture it out of perfectly innocuous events. On the contrary, whenever Biden appears in an event too big to be controlled and packaged for the right-wing echo chamber, the Biden-is-senile narrative gets punctured and outlets like Fox News have to scramble to patch it. That's what happened during the State of the Union, which Trump explained by saying Biden must have been "on drugs".

Republicans are already preparing for Biden's performance in the upcoming debate with Trump, which will undoubtedly conflict with their constructed narrative. Trump is predicting that Biden will be "on drugs" again. In an interview Thursday, Trump said he might lose the debate intentionally so that Democrats won't take Biden off the ticket. (The idea that some behind-the-scenes cabal has the power to replace Biden is widespread on the Right. I've been hearing it for more than a year.)

They know Biden is sharp and will demonstrate that fact during the debate. So they're already planting the seeds of how they'll explain away what viewers will see with their own eyes.

Meanwhile, the evidence that something is seriously wrong with Trump really is everywhere, and doesn't have to be manufactured. While Biden gets roasted in the media whenever he says one word when he means another, Trump frequently goes off into long what-is-he-talking-about riffs like his recent sharks-and-batteries tirade. The Atlantic's Tom Nichols points out the obvious: If a 78-year-old relative did this at a family dinner, you'd be seriously worried about him.

Perhaps the greatest trick Donald Trump ever pulled was convincing millions of people—and the American media—to treat his lapses into fantasies and gibberish as a normal, meaningful form of oratory. ... But Trump is obviously unfit—and something is profoundly wrong with a political environment in which he can now say almost anything, no matter how weird, and his comments will get a couple of days of coverage and then a shrug, as if to say: Another day, another Trump rant about sharks.

... [M]any people in the media have fallen under the spell of the Jedi hand-waves from Trump and his people that none of this is as disturbing and weird as it sounds. The refs have been worked: A significant segment of the media—and even the Democratic Party—has bought into a Republican narrative that asking whether Trump is mentally unstable is somehow biased and elitist, the kind of thing that could only occur to Beltway mandarins who don’t understand how the candidate talks to normal people.

Thursday, Trump spoke privately to a group of big-name CEOs like Apple's Tim Cook and Chase's Jamie Dimon. They came out dismayed, according to CNBC anchor Andrew Ross Sorkin.

They walked away from that meeting, I think, a bit disheartened, a bit questioning—I don’t want to say his mental fitness—but questioning just how meandering, how, in some cases, one said to me he could not keep a thought straight. He would go in one direction and then he’d go in another direction and … there wasn’t really necessarily a through line.

Apparently the CEOs expected to see a coherent and rational behind-the-scenes Trump, one who wasn't acting like a carnival performer to entertain his fans. But it turns out that the sharks-and-batteries Trump is the only one available.

Fake videos are OK if they're over-the-top fake. In this hilarious one, Trump's sharks-and-batteries riff is interspersed with reaction shots from the nurses and patients of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

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An unsettling reminder of how easily freedom is lost: "The Apprentice" is a new movie about the relationship between a young Donald Trump and his hard-nosed lawyer Roy Cohn. The film exists, and was screened to an appreciative crowd at the Cannes festival in May.

But you can't see it.

Distributors have bought the rights to “The Apprentice” in Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Japan and many other countries. But the filmmakers have yet to secure a deal to release it here, either in theaters or on streaming services.

Negotiations are ongoing, and domestic distribution could still come together. Yet the possibility that American audiences won’t be able to see “The Apprentice” isn’t just frustrating. It’s frightening, because it suggests that Trump and his supporters have already intimidated some media companies, which seem to be pre-emptively capitulating to him.

... The fear seems to be twofold. Few want to end up in the MAGA movement’s cross hairs the way Bud Light and Disney did. And as one distribution executive told Variety, any company that wants to be sold or to merge with or buy another company would be hesitant to touch “The Apprentice” because of the possibility that, should Trump be re-elected, his “regulators will be punitive.”

When we think about authoritarianism, we picture restrictive laws, police who throw their weight around, and prison camps. But it can be far more subtle than that, working its Leader's will by intimidation rather than overt force. Don Corleone rarely had to make good on the implied threat in "an offer you can't refuse".

Friday, Vladimir Putin issued his conditions for ending the Ukraine War, which amount to Ukraine's complete surrender: Not only must it renounce claims to its eastern provinces and Crimea, but it must permanently drop its bid to join NATO. So even after giving up territory, the remainder of Ukraine would be wide open to some future invasion.

How did I not see this coming? "Book about book bans banned by Florida school board".

The book is Ban This Book by Alan Gratz. And of course, it's the oxymoronic Moms for Liberty who are behind this violation of liberty. (Can anybody come up with an example of Moms for Liberty doing something that promotes or protects liberty? I can't.) Gratz comments:

It feels like they know exactly what they’re doing and they’re somewhat ashamed of what they’re doing and they don’t want a book on the shelves that calls them out.

Kellyanne Conway told Fox News that Trump talked to 8,000 people at a Black church in Detriot. Video makes clear it was a few hundred people, most of whom were White. The point of this kind of deception is not to attract Black voters, but to reassure White Trump supporters that he's not racist.

The NYT's David Leonhardt explains why both theories of Covid's origins -- natural transmission from an infected animal in the Wuhan live-animal market or a leak from Wuhan's virus-research lab -- are plausible. What he doesn't explain (and should) is how implausible the conspiracy version of the lab-leak theory is: Covid wasn't genetically engineered as a bio-weapon and then released for some nefarious purpose. It's hard even to tell that story in such a way that all the major players have some clear motive to do what they're supposed to have done.

Leaving Caitlin Clark off the US Women's Olympic basketball team is the latest chapter in a saga that illustrates the continuing significance of race in American sports.

Clark set scoring records in college, and was arguably (but not obviously) the greatest player in the history of NCAA women's college basketball. She lifted women's college basketball to new heights of public attention, partly due to her personal star power and exciting style of play, but also (let's face it) because she's White, and basketball hasn't had a lot of White American-born heroes since Larry Bird retired.

This spring she started her professional WNBA career, and has similarly been drawing new fans to that league. So far, she's shown some promise, but her team is terrible (that's why they got such a high draft pick) and her quality of play does not yet live up to the level of attention she's been getting. (She scores well, but shoots a low percentage and has a lot of turnovers, as rookies often do.) Veteran WNBA players seem to resent the spotlight on her, and so she's getting pushed around on the court in ways that go beyond the usual rookie hazing.

Again, all of this is drawing national attention, and is fueling racial resentment among fans: To those on one extreme, she's the White underachiever who has had stardom handed to her, and to those on the other, Black thugs are targeting her unfairly.

So now we have the Olympic team. Looking at the roster, I don't see who should be kicked off to make room for Clark, whose WNBA performance so far doesn't justify her inclusion. (Some sources have reported inaccurately that she's been named as an alternate.)

Clark herself seems to be caught in the middle of all this, and is embarrassed by the racist tropes being used to defend her. Laura Ingraham once famously told LeBron James to "shut up and dribble". I suspect Caitlin Clark would be happy if the world would let her do that.

and let's close with something joyful

Be sure to spend a few moments looking at "the happiest dog I've seen in my life". It may improve your day.

Monday, June 10, 2024

In Our Time

In memory of those who fought here, died here, literally saved the world here, let us be worthy of their sacrifice. Let us be the generation that when history is written about our time — in 10, 20, 30, 50, 80 years from now — it will be said: When the moment came, we met the moment. We stood strong. Our alliances were made stronger. And we saved democracy in our time as well.

- President Joe Biden
at the Normandy American Cemetery
June 6, 2024

This week's featured post is "To stop fascism, unite around the old guy".

This week everybody was talking about Israel's hostage rescue

The good news: Four of the approximately 250 Israelis taken hostage in Hamas' October 7 attack were freed Saturday.

The bad news: It appears that the raid killed 274 Palestinians. Palestinian authorities don't try to identify who was or wasn't a Hamas fighter, so we don't know how many civilians were killed. We do know that dozens of children were included in the 274 total.

But only three other hostages have been freed by military force since the start of the war. Another three were mistakenly killed by Israeli forces after they escaped on their own, and Hamas says others have been killed in Israeli airstrikes. ... Over 100 hostages were released during a weeklong cease-fire last year, in exchange for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, and reaching a similar agreement is still widely seen as the only way of getting the rest of the hostages back.

Sunday, Netanyahu rival Benny Gantz followed through on his threat to withdraw from Israel's war cabinet. He had given Netanyahu a three-week ultimatum to produce a plan to end the war, and that deadline ran out Saturday.

President Biden has put forward a peace plan that pairs a full hostage release with a complete ceasefire. But Prime Minister Netanyahu stands by his condition that Hamas be "completely defeated" before hostilities can end. Gantz' protest is related to the idea that no one can define what "completely defeated" means, so Netanyahu's plan seems to be to continue fighting indefinitely.

and more reaction to Trump's felony conviction

Rick Perlstein hangs around in far-right social-media communities -- and he claims that's not why he's depressed -- reporting on "The Republican Id". His article got me thinking about the weird dichotomy we're seeing.

On the one hand, Trump (along with virtually all elected Republicans) are pouring out violence-promoting rhetoric. They're not exactly saying "Go out and kill liberals", but they're definitely hinting in that direction. Trump predicts that seeing him sentenced to jail "would be tough for the public to take. You know, at a certain point, there’s a breaking point."

What are MAGA folks supposed to do when they "break"? He doesn't say.

But he has similarly predicted violence if the Republican convention didn't nominate him in 2016, if Pennsylvania counted all the mail-in ballots in 2020, after the search of Mar-a-Lago, if he was indicted, or went to trial, or was convicted. Other than the convention snub, those events came and went without so much as a major protest. During his Manhattan trial, Trump was so embarrassed by the lack of MAGA demonstrators that he made up an outrageous lie to cover it:

After The New York Times published a story that said Trump was unhappy with the meager crowd he saw when he arrived at the courthouse for opening statements on Monday, Trump posted on social media on Tuesday to deny the story, denigrate a Times reporter and make this claim: “Thousands of people were turned away from the Courthouse in Lower Manhattan by steel stanchions and police, literally blocks from the tiny side door from where I enter and leave. It is an armed camp to keep people away.”

Trump also wrote on social media on Monday that “Lower Manhattan surrounding the Courthouse, where I am heading now, is completely CLOSED DOWN.” And he told reporters inside the courthouse on Tuesday: “For blocks you can’t get near this courthouse.”

He succeeded in inciting a riot once: on January 6. Other than that day, and in spite of all the violent rhetoric on social media and all the death threats against anyone who speaks out against him, his supporters seem to have little appetite for mass action on his behalf.

and the border

President Biden announced a new border policy this week. It's complicated, but the basic idea is to stop letting people apply for asylum when the number of daily border crossings gets too high. Vox elaborates.

The underlying problem at the border can't be solved without congressional action, which Trump and his allies have blocked: The US is obligated by law and treaty to give asylum to refugees who meet certain standards of persecution, but the system that processes asylum claims was not designed to handle the current quantity and is hopelessly jammed. People wait years for a hearing, and what should we do with them in the meantime? As the new executive order puts it:

For the vast majority of people in immigration proceedings, the current laws make it impossible to quickly grant protection to those who require it and to quickly remove those who do not establish a legal basis to remain in the United States. This reality is compounded by the fact that the Congress has chronically underfunded our border security and immigration system and has failed to provide the resources or reforms it needs to be able to deliver timely consequences to most individuals who cross unlawfully and cannot establish a legal basis to remain in the United States.

Executive orders can't create new courts, hire new judges, or ameliorate the conditions that cause people to leave their home countries. They can only change how the backlog is handled. And even then, the Supreme Court may decide that Biden has exceeded his authority. (In recent years, the Court has interpreted Biden's authority far less generously than it did Trump's.)

and the Supreme Court

Still no word on the immunity case that the Court is using to delay Trump's D.C. trial until after the election. The court's term is expected to end later this month.

Meanwhile, there were two new reasons to doubt the conservative majority's honesty and impartiality: First, the neighbor at the heart of Justice Alito's flag controversy has disputed his story, and seems to have a police report to back up her version of the timeline. Watch her CNN interview. (Almost as disturbing as the Alito lie is the neighbor's account of how the Alito's tried to intimidate her.)

And second, Fix the Court has published a tally of all the gifts accepted by the justices who served during the last 20 years. The $4.7 million total is stunning in itself, but the jaw-dropping fact is that more than $4 million went to Clarence Thomas, nearly matching his already-generous salary. Fix the Court says the total is "probably an undercount".

and Hunter's trial

It's been observed many times that Trump and his followers practice projection: Whatever Trump is doing -- trying to steal an election, corrupting the Justice Department, ... -- they claim that his opponents are doing it. Every accusation they make is actually a confession.

Because it has fallen so close to the trial that found Trump guilty of multiple felonies, the Hunter Biden trial is providing a grand opportunity for projection. Here, Fox News' Jeanine Pirro discusses the "mob mentality" of the Biden family and their attempt to intimidate jurors. (To see how a family with a real mob-mentality operates, look at Pro Publica's recent report: "Nine witnesses in the criminal cases against former President Donald Trump have received significant financial benefits, including large raises from his campaign, severance packages, new jobs, and a grant of shares and cash from Trump’s media company." Take care of the Boss, and the Boss will take care of you.)

How are the Bidens carrying out this "intimidation"? First Lady Jill Biden, who has been Hunter's step-mother since he was seven years old, has been showing up at his trial! Her presence, Pirro claims, tells jurors that "We know who you are. We're in the courtroom and we're watching you." (Very scary lady, that Jill Biden.)

And then there's Joe, who spent the entire previous weekend with his son! Another Fox host quotes a New York Post writer suggesting this is a "cynical power play" aimed at sending a "Mafia-like" message to potential jurors: "Screw with my son and you screw with me."

Consider the parallels and contrasts with the Trump trial: Nobody from Trump's family supported him in court until the media started to notice, and neither Melania nor Ivanka ever made an appearance. ("His family is nowhere to be seen. His wife, at least presently, is not to be seen at his side; his children have vanished; his loved ones have melted away.") You know who did show up? Power players: the Speaker of the House, numerous senators and congressmen. (Matt Gaetz ominously tweeted that he was "standing back and standing by, Mr. President". Standing by to do what to who?)

Can you picture Hakeem Jeffries or Chuck Schumer going to Delaware to attend Hunter's trial? What would they do there? Is AOC standing back and standing by?

Trump jurors can only hope they stay anonymous, because Trump's supporters post threats against them (and the judge and his daughter) daily. But if you're a Biden supporter, you probably can't name the judge in Hunter's trial, or any of the judge's family members. I know I can't. I have no interest in finding out who Hunter's jurors are, and I don't know anybody who does. Those people are all safe from us, no matter how the trial comes out.

But yes, Fox News, tell me more about the Biden family's "mob-like" approach to Hunter's trial.

The Bidens have gone to great lengths to communicate to Hunter that no matter what mistakes he has made in life, he is still their son and they love him. How sinister of them! How unlike the Trump family.

Meanwhile, the House committee that failed to find any evidence linking Joe Biden to whatever sketchy business deals brother James and son Hunter might have had going has taken its next step: The committee refers James and Hunter to the DoJ, claiming that they lied to the committee about Joe not having anything to do with their business deals.

See the logic? The complete lack of evidence is the clearest sign that the conspiracy is working.

and you also might be interested in ...

Three Trump allies have been charged with forgery for their role in the Wisconsin fake elector plot.

Steve Bannon is finally going to jail. He will start a four-month sentence for contempt of Congress on July 1. During that time he will probably go to trial for his role in conning contributors to his We Build the Wall fund.

Trump has pardoned Bannon for his role in stealing from Trump supporters, but New York state has decided to pursue charges. His accomplices are already in jail.

AP examines videos that are deceptively edited to make Biden look mentally incompetent. If he's so lost to dementia, why can't his critics just use real videos?

In a strong hint that the Sandy Hook parents he slandered may finally see some money, Alex Jones has changed his bankruptcy filing. Originally he filed for a Chapter 11 reorganization, but he has changed that to a Chapter 7 liquidation.

I mentioned Trumpists' projections above. Here's more: The Federalist's Erika Andersen thinks Dolly Parton isn't really Christian and Newmax' Greg Kelly worries that Taylor Swift fans are practicing "idolatry", which "is a sin".

Just before the guilty verdict in Trump's Manhattan trial was announced, Maryland Republican senate candidate Larry Hogan made a statement that would be uncontroversial in any other era of American life. He asked people to "respect the verdict and the legal process".

That pro-civic stance has just about gotten him run out of the Republican Party, which appears to be ready to sacrifice the Maryland senate seat in order to enforce MAGA discipline.

Tuesday, Hogan's campaign confirmed that he will not attend the Republican Convention in Milwaukee next month. That should avoid some nasty confrontations.

On a similar note, former Republican congressman Ken Buck told Jon Stewart:

I left because I couldn’t tell the lie. The 2020 election wasn’t stolen. The Jan. 6 defendants aren’t political prisoners...There’s a lot of life out there besides arguing about nothing and telling lies. I made a choice to go enjoy what I’ve got left.

A book you might want to read: They Came for the Schools by Mike Hixenbaugh. It's the story of how the model suburb of Southlake, Texas began to recognize it had a racism problem and tried to deal with it, until a backlash led to a right-wing takeover of the school board.

You may have seen news stories about Southlake in the last few years. It was the testing ground for the conservative campaign against "critical race theory" and for the idea that teachers and librarians were trying to "groom" children to become gay or trans. I had been loosely following that story, but seeing everything laid out in one narrative is pretty amazing.

The big thing I glean from this story is that the conservative cultural project doesn't work without lying. Parents need to be convinced that schools are teaching things nobody is actually teaching, and they need to believe that members of their community not just wrongheaded, but are engaged in unimaginable evil.

As I've said before, I don't see how this happens without the flaws in Christianity. You have to believe in a Devil to make these kinds of conspiracy theories plausible.

Justin Rosario tells the story of his wife's two miscarriages in 2006. Her situation (both times) was very similar to that of women in red states who very nearly bleed to death, and sometimes suffer permanent consequences, because of abortion bans. But Justin's wife got the medical care she needed and survived to have two children. (If you have the time, read the comments on this post. Many are by women telling their own miscarriage stories.)

Recently, friends told me a similar story about a miscarriage suffered by their daughter, a girl I watched grow up. Similarly, she was in a blue state and is fine now, probably planning her next attempt at motherhood. But what, they wondered, might have happened to her Texas or Missouri?

Rosario:

What if the next time, [my wife's] miscarriage had stalled and become septic like [a woman in Texas]'s? Numerous women have had this happen to them throughout Republican-controlled states already. They’ve lost the ability to have children. Some of them have possibly died.

If you’re wondering why these stories have not been massive front-page headlines for weeks on end, you should know the answer by now. Doing so would require discussing why these women are suffering and dying and that would require pointing the finger, unerringly, at Republicans.

But we don’t do that in America’s press. We will run hundreds of above-the-fold articles about a “crisis” at the border to terrorize racist white people but talk about how Republicans are literally maiming and killing women? No, thank you. That would be biased.

This strikes me as a revealing clip from Fox News: Interviewers ask Trump a question submitted by a viewer: "What's your relationship with God like and how do you pray?" He never answers. Instead he talks about how well he does with Evangelical voters and how many people are praying for him. Eventually he goes off on a tangent about how people who don't believe in God have no reason to be good.

I can't decide: Is he dodging? Or does the question make no sense to him because he has no inner life to report on?

and let's close with something natural

racooned.com collects photos of animal striking humanlike poses. Here, raccoons seem to be gossiping.

Monday, June 3, 2024

Dividends of Democracy

This trial could never have happened in the countries Trump admires. No
one can hold Xi, Putin, Orban, Erdogan, Lukashenko, or any other of
these vile strongmen accountable. This is why we invest in democracy and
work to uphold it when it is being attacked.

- Ruth Ben-Ghiat

This week's featured posts is "Trump is Guilty".

This week everybody was talking about the Trump verdict

I cover that in the featured post. There are a few common questions I didn't get to.

Can Trump continue running for president now that he's a felon? Yes. There's precedent: In 1920, Socialist candidate Eugene Debs got a million votes for president while he was in prison. He was serving a 10-year sentence for an anti-World-War-I speech he gave in 1917, which the government claimed violated the Espionage Act.

Could he take office? I don't see why not. The Constitution's list of qualifications for the presidency is pretty short and says nothing about being a criminal. (The Founders certainly imagined the possibility of a criminal getting elected president -- hence the provision of impeachment -- but I doubt they pictured someone whose criminality was already known getting elected.)

No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

Could this actually help him? These days, MAGA folks tend towards confident bluster and Democrats tend towards doom-saying, so people from both sides are likely to predict that conviction will give Trump a boost. But I doubt it. If Trump getting convicted makes you like him more, you were probably already voting for him.

About half the country didn't expect him to get convicted, and those are the people to watch. Particularly important are the folks who hadn't been paying a lot of attention to the Trump trials. To a lot of them, I imagine this had been sounding like the usual political attacks: something opponents say that never comes to anything, like the Biden impeachment effort in the House. This actually arrived at a conviction, which makes it a bit different. It also should make people re-evaluate the other charges against Trump: Maybe they're true too.

In particular, the idea that Blacks will be more attracted to Trump now that he's a felon seems based on a stereotypic and demeaning view of Black people.

Yesterday on Meet the Press, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries was asked a simple question and (in contrast to Republicans asked about the Trump verdict) gave a simple answer.

PETER ALEXANDER: Congressman Jeffries, Donald Trump's attorney, as you've certainly heard, said that they will appeal the verdict. If it is overturned on appeal, will you accept that result?

REP. HAKEEM JEFFRIES: Yes.

and Justice Alito

To no one's surprise, Justice Alito announced in a letter to Senators Durbin and Whitehouse that he will not recuse himself from January 6 related cases. He responded to both of the recently-revealed flag incidents by putting the responsibility on his wife ("My wife is fond of flying flags. I am not.") and claiming that

A reasonable person who is not motivated by political or ideological considerations or a desire to affect the outcome of Supreme Court cases would conclude that this event does not meet the applicable standard for recusal.

Josh Marshall comments:

This is not how federal ethics guidelines work. They make very clear that the appearance of a conflict of interest or impropriety, for these purposes, counts as much as actual ones. They also make clear that the actions of a spouse count toward creating such appearances even though, certainly in the early 21st century, a judge can’t dictate a spouse’s actions. The ethics guidelines specifically deal with the spouse issue. And they say “it’s my spouse, not me” isn’t a defense. ... Alito is a smart guy. He knows this.

So while Alito's wife has every right to express her political views, even treasonous ones, her actions have consequences for her husband. Alito is refusing to accept those consequences. (Imagine the outcry if Justice Jackson drove to court displaying a Black Lives Matter bumper sticker, and then said, "It's my husband's car.")

In addition, Marshall notes, Alito has now told multiple versions of the flag story, at least some of which must be lies. In responding to the controversy, he sought out a friendly reporter at a partisan venue (Fox News) -- something a politician might do, but a justice shouldn't.

Alito’s reaction to this controversy has been sullen, defensive, mendacious and overtly partisan. Those are all total nonstarters for how a justice is supposed to conduct himself or herself. He does it because he’s corrupt and he’s confident in his impunity.

In an idealistic vision of the judiciary, recusal is not that big a deal: Your responsibility to rule impartially passes to the other justices, who presumably are also impartial. But this clearly is not Alito's vision: He is a member of a political faction, and it is important that he be there to deliver his vote.

and other legal news

A federal judge just struck down a New Hampshire law that comes out of the same conservative flurry that gave us Florida's Don't-Say-Gay and Stop-WOKE laws.

New Hampshire prohibited public employees, including public school teachers, from promoting "divisive concepts" related to race or gender. A parent who felt the law had been violated could sue, and offending teachers could lose their licenses to teach in the state.

In April 2022, a New Hampshire parent complained that Alison O’Brien, a high school social studies teacher, violated the divisive concepts law by showing two videos — “Formation” by Beyoncé and “This is America” by Childish Gambino — as part of a unit on the Harlem Renaissance. ... The parent who complained claimed the music videos were "offensive," too focused "on the oppression of just one group," and "not a balanced view of history.”

Fortunately, a federal judge has objected.

[District Judge Paul J.] Barbadoro, citing the experience of O'Brien and other teachers, ruled that the law was unconstitutionally vague. The law represents "viewpoint-based restrictions on speech" but does not "provide either fair warning to educators of what they prohibit or sufficient standards for law enforcement to prevent arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement." As such, it violates the due process protections of the 14th Amendment.

Since May 21, Trump has been claiming that when the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago in August, 2022, they were really there to assassinate him, a claim Politifact has rated as a pants-on-fire lie.

Special Counsel Jack Smith is concerned about the danger this and similar lies pose to the FBI agents involved in the search, some of whom would be witnesses in the Mar-a-Lago documents trial, assuming Judge Cannon ever allows that trial to take place. (The process Smith worries about is called stochastic terrorism, which Wikipedia defines as "when a political or media figure publicly demonizes a person or group in a way that inspires supporters of the figure to commit a violent act against the target of the communication".)

Last week, Smith filed a motion asking Cannon to amend Trump's terms of release, to prevent him from making this claim. Cannon denied that motion on procedural grounds. Smith has now refiled it in a way that satisfies Cannon's objections.

Predictably, Cannon is slow-walking the motion.

Another Trump-appointed judge is slow-walking Steven Bannon's prison sentence. Bannon has been convicted of contempt of Congress and sentenced to four months in prison. He was released pending his appeal, which has now been rejected. But the judge still hasn't ordered him to report to prison.

and two thought-provoking articles

Rick Perlstein is the leading historian of the modern conservative movement, from Barry Goldwater to (so far) Ronald Reagan. He has an article in The American Prospect that is interesting both for its ideas and for what it says about the current political mood.

The interesting idea concerns the question: Why does conservatism keep getting worse? There could be a long discussion about what "worse" means in this context, but intuitively you already know: Barry Goldwater lost graciously. Dick Nixon's administration was a mixture of good and bad. (For example, he signed the Clean Air Act.) Ronald Reagan generally maintained a high level of decorum. George W. Bush tried to avoid a post-9-11 pogrom against American Muslims. And so on. I've had many moments when I looked at something Trump was doing and wished I had one of those past conservative leaders back.

Perlstein thinks the reason is something he calls "the authoritarian rachet".

Its axioms are that the basic thing conservatism promises to its adherents, a return of society to a prelapsarian state, is impossible; but that this impossible thing, in the logic of conservatism, is also imperative to achieve, lest civilization collapse, and good people suffer a kind of living death.

So each time conservatives win, they nonetheless fail, because the impossible things don't happen. (Donald Trump did not bring back the "great again" era of the 1950s or the 1920s or whenever you thought America was greatest.) So the next time conservatism gains power, it will have to try even harder.

This is why I now describe the history of conservatism as a ratchet. It must always move in an invariably more authoritarian direction, with no possible end point but an apocalyptic one.

Just listen to any recent Donald Trump speech: The redemptive promises he makes are more insanely fantastical with each passing day. Imagine the disappointment their serial failures will bring in their wake, which can never redound on him. (Conservatism never fails …) They must instead be blamed on the Enemy.

Which is us.

That is why another Trump term—or the potential insurgency after a Trump defeat—may be traumatic beyond our poor powers to imagine it.

But Perlstein's article is also about his personal depression, which he claims is brought on by the Left, not the Right: Perlstein is frustrated by his inability to convince progressives to put aside their very real differences with Biden in order to avoid the catastrophe of a second (and necessarily worse) Trump administration.

What it comes down to, I guess, is this. If I of all people can’t convince people on the left to fight right-wing authoritarians who consider them veritable Untermenschen, then what the hell have I been wasting half my life on this work for?

The other article I want to call your attention to is Cory Doctorow's "A Major Defeat for Technofeudalism" from last fall. (It sometimes takes a while for me to notice things.)

Ostensibly, he's writing about patent trolls, the people who claim ownership of basic technological ideas that nobody else had thought to patent, and then harass anybody who uses those ideas, looking for royalty payments. But the article is more interesting for its theoretical framing: Doctorow calls attention to a piece of the class struggle we ordinarily don't think about: not the battle between capital and labor, but the battle between two factions in the ruling class: capitalists and rentiers.

Basically, capitalists make money by producing things to sell at a profit, while rentiers make money by owning things they can charge rent on. What defines feudalism, for Doctorow, is the domination of society by rentiers.

Perversely, even as capitalism replaces feudalism, capitalists aspire to become rentiers. They want to achieve a monopoly or near-monopoly position in some market that allows them to charge what is essentially rent.

In his new book Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, the economist Yanis Varoufakis argues that a new form of capital, “cloud capital,” has taken over the real economy, allowing a small number of feudal companies to insert themselves between capitalists and their customers. Amazon takes 45–51 percent out of every dollar its sellers generate, Google and Apple take 30 cents out of every dollar an app maker generates.

and you also might be interested in ...

If you've been worrying about the "weaponization" of the Justice Department by Democrats against Republicans, Hunter Biden's trial began today. Like Trump, he also will have his future decided by a jury.

The bribery trial of Democratic Senator Bob Menendez is ongoing.

DoJ seems to be focused on people who break the law, not on Republicans or Democrats.

Seven Negro leagues operated between 1920 and 1948. As became apparent after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in major league baseball in 1947, the players in those leagues were quite good. This week major league baseball recognized this fact by including players from these Negro leagues in the official statistics.

The biggest impact will be on the all-time-best lists. For example, Josh Gibson (.372) now replaces Ty Cobb (.367) at the top of the all-time career batting average list.

For most of us, this rectifies a longstanding injustice. But if you're a white supremacist, it's one more example of America being taken away from you. You can be offended on behalf of Ty Cobb, and resent that what you learned as a kid is now obsolete.

Basketball great Bill Walton died. The most interesting tribute came from his friend and rival Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Walton's place on the list of great players is hard to pin down, because he played at a very high level for a very short time before injuries brought him down. You could put him in the top 10 or leave him out of the top 50.

and let's close with something deep

A surprising number of impressive sculptures are under water. Some sank there, like those from the lost Egyptian city of Heracleion. Others, though, like this statue of Poseidon's wife Amphitrite, were intentionally placed where only divers can see them.