tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38568372024-03-19T04:48:06.122-04:00No More Mister Nice BlogSteve M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/11963290427258439242noreply@blogger.comBlogger21779125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3856837.post-31848671644218784682024-03-18T09:52:00.002-04:002024-03-18T09:52:45.132-04:00THE NEW YORK TIMES STILL WON'T SHOW MARK ROBINSON'S TRUE CHARACTERA couple of weeks ago, North Carolina's sewer-mouthed lieutenant governor, Mark Robinson, won the state's Republican gubernatorial primary. As I <a href="https://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2024/03/new-york-times-sanitizes-sewer-mouthed.html" target="_blank">told you</a> just after Primary Day, <i>The New York Times</i> responded to Robinson's victory with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/05/us/politics/mark-robinson-north-carolina-governor.html" target="_blank">two</a> mealy-mouthed <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/06/us/politics/north-carolina-governor-mark-robinson.html" target="_blank">articles</a> that offered only a faint glimpse of the candidate's character and ignorant opinions.<br>
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Today, the <i>Times</i> seems intent on making up for that oversight -- but <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/18/us/politics/mark-robinson-north-carolina.html" target="_blank">the new <i>Times</i> story</a> isn't much better than the two that preceded it.<br>
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I see what happened. A decision was made to answer the question "How would Robinson govern?" rather than "What kind of person is Mark Robinson and is he fit to be governor?" The story implies that those who care about Robinson's character and fondness for extremely online verbal bomb throwing are focusing on the wrong things:
<blockquote>Mr. Robinson’s long history of inflammatory statements has generated a torrent of headlines since he became the Republican standard-bearer in this year’s most closely watched race for governor. But underlying his combative proclamations on race, abortion, education and religion is an exceptionally right-wing worldview — with deep roots in modern evangelical Christianity — that would make him one of the most conservative governors in America if elected.</blockquote>
News readers should be given a sense of how Robinson would govern if elected. But part of knowing how he would govern is knowing how he responds to cultural phenomena he disapproves of, since responding to cultural phenomena loudly and publicly has been such a huge part of his life. Saying he'd be a very conservative governor makes him seem like a normal politician -- maybe a Greg Abbott -- rather than the unserious Internet rage monster he actually is.<br>
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This piece, like the two that preceded it, provides a small taste of Robinson's rage without ever revealing it in full -- as if reading the <i>Times</i> is like going to a Hamptons cocktail party and quoting Robinson at length would be rude to the guests.<br>
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We're told:
<blockquote>[Robinson] has made comments widely seen as antisemitic. He once quoted Adolf Hitler on Facebook. He described the Parkland school shooting survivors who pushed for gun control as “spoiled, angry, know it all children.”</blockquote>
Let's start with the last example. Robinson didn't just call the Parkland activists "spoiled, angry, know it all children." He also called them "media prosti-tots" and compared them unfavorably to crying babies -- in a Facebook message (which is <a href="https://www.facebook.com/mark.k.robinson.3/posts/pfbid02G8s51gReW3GvPnxKbeCVzQAJ8DvX9Pf5Xnq7ovn92iZ98H7ezfqqn9RVYL2cvufdl" target="_blank">still up</a>) that he posted less than two weeks after <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkland_high_school_shooting" target="_blank">the shooting</a>. Allow me to quote it at some length:
<blockquote>Let me see if I have this correct. A spoiled, angry, disobedient CHILD shot and killed 17 of his classmates, and now spoiled, angry, know it all CHILDREN are trying to tell law abiding ADULTS that we must give up our Constitutional RIGHT to own certain weapons. Cue Rod Serling because this must be an episode of the Twilight Zone? David Hogg and the rest of these silly little immature "media prosti-tots" need to grab a passy [pacifier], have seat in time out, and shut up. The very ideology of conservatism that your liberal mollycoddling string pullers have taught you to despise is exactly what you and your schools have desperately needed to prevent these massacres as well as the multitude of FAILURES that exist in public education. The conservative principles of excellence, hard work, self respect, RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE, and DISCIPLINE are what your schools need. Instead you have the liberal syndrome of rectal cranial inversion mixed with a healthy dose of just plain evil and stupid permeating your hallways. If, two days before this shooting, a hard nosed nonsense conservative had walked into that school and put into place the ideals and principles that would have avoided that massacre, you spoiled little bastards would have kicked and screamed like babies in a crib. That's what you are doing now. In fact you're doing less than that. A baby's cries are useful and necessary. You are simply making irritating noise.</blockquote>
As for the anti-Semitism, it's remarkable that the <i>Times</i> has published three news stories on Robinson since his primary victory and still refuses to quote his most notorious Facebook post (also <a href="https://www.facebook.com/mark.k.robinson.3/posts/10156221260212360" target="_blank">still up</a>):
<blockquote>It is at once funny and sad how African Americans need Hollywood to VALIDATE them. I have been bitting my tongue about this silly Black Panther comic book movie, but I can't any longer. It is absolutely AMAZING to me that people who know so little about their true history and REFUSE to acknowledge the pure sorry state of their current condition can get so excited about a fictional "hero" created by an agnostic Jew and put to film by satanic marxist. How can this trash, that was only created to pull the shekels out of your Schvartze pockets, invoke any pride?</blockquote>
And yes, Robinson did quote Hitler, and that Facebook post is <a href="https://www.facebook.com/804552359/posts/pfbid04LDVopkvCJv6xdJwKtksjcPmq125k1BQ8SARKunpuAWR28k5BoCmshsuCTKo5byhl/?mibextid=cr9u03" target="_blank">still up</a>, too:
<blockquote>History who said it #1;<br>
“Pride in one's own race - and that does not imply contempt for other races - is also a normal and healthy sentiment. I have never regarded the Chinese or the Japanese as being inferior to ourselves... They have the right to be proud of their past, just as we have the right to be proud of the civilization to which we belong.”</blockquote>
In the current <i>Times</i> story, we are told this:
<blockquote>Mr. Robinson has often appeared at evangelical churches, where he espouses some of his most conservative views.<br>
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“That baby in your womb ain’t no clump of cells, and if you kill that child, you’re guilty of murder,” he said in August 2021 at the Upper Room Church of God in Christ in Raleigh.<br>
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The same summer, he told congregants at Asbury Baptist Church in Seagrove, N.C., that “there’s no reason anybody anywhere in America should be telling any child about transgenderism, homosexuality or any of that filth. And yes, I called it filth.”</blockquote>
I sometimes think that the <i>Times</i> represents a sort of upmarket New York pseudo-liberalism -- pro-choice, in favor of rights for lesbians and gay men, but centrist or right-wing on most other issues (the Middle East, crime, taxes, the rights of trans people). What the <i>Times</i> has published on Robinson has done nothing to make me rethink that theory.<br>
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Is Robinson anti-Semitic? Who cares? He's not a pro-Palestinian college student. Is he a Trump-like ignoramus who gets all his ideas from Fox News and other right-wing meme factories? Maybe -- but he might win (<a href="https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/governor/general/2024/north-carolina/robinson-vs-stein" target="_blank">the race is close</a>), so he needs to seem as if he's within the pale or right-wing ref-workers will be angry at the <i>Times.</i><br>
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To his credit, Frank Bruni, a North Carolina native, quoted Robinson's “created by an agnostic Jew and put to film by satanic marxist” remark <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/26/opinion/north-carolina-governor-robinson.html" target="_blank">in a January 2023 <i>Times</i> newsletter</a>. But the politics desk is still pulling its punches.Steve M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/11963290427258439242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3856837.post-87823863721411198782024-03-17T10:34:00.003-04:002024-03-17T10:34:35.184-04:00NO EXTREMIST -- YOU'RE THE EXTREMISTDonald Trump's speech in Ohio last night is getting a lot of attention. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/16/us/politics/trump-speech-ohio.html" target="_blank">Here's the <i>New York Times</i> headline</a>:
<blockquote><b>Trump Says Some Migrants Are ‘Not People’ and Predicts a ‘Blood Bath’ if He Loses</b></blockquote>
Here's an excerpt from the story:
<blockquote>Former President Donald J. Trump ... gave a freewheeling speech in which he used dehumanizing language to describe immigrants, maintained a steady stream of insults and vulgarities and predicted that the United States would never have another election if he did not win in November....<br>
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He added: “Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a blood bath for the whole — that’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a blood bath for the country.”<br>
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... If he did not win this year’s presidential election, Mr. Trump said, “I don’t think you’re going to have another election, or certainly not an election that’s meaningful.”<br>
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... He asserted, without evidence, that other countries were emptying their prisons of “young people” and sending them across the border. “I don’t know if you call them ‘people,’ in some cases,” he said. “They’re not people, in my opinion.” He later referred to them as “animals.”</blockquote>
Notice what's not in these stories: any evidence that Trump is claiming dictatorial powers.<br>
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Trump raised a lot of eyebrows in December when he said he wanted to be a dictator, but only on <a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-hannity-dictator-authoritarian-presidential-election-f27e7e9d7c13fabbe3ae7dd7f1235c72" target="_blank">"day one"</a> of his presidency. I think he knows that made him look like dangerous and scary. So what is he doing? He's focusing on the idea that <i>his enemies</i> are the ones who are dangerous and scary.<br>
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It's reminiscent of the moment in the third general-election debate in 2016 when Hillary Clinton argued that Vladimir Putin wanted Trump to win "because he would rather have a puppet as president of the United States" and Trump <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/full-transcript-third-2016-presidential-debate-230063" target="_blank">replied</a>, "No puppet. You’re the puppet." It's Trump as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lA5UqUyFmT0" target="_blank">Pee-wee Herman</a>: <i>I know you are, but what am I?</i><br>
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Democrats say a second Trump presidency will lead to chaos in America? Trump says it's a Democratic victory that will lead to a "blood bath." Democrats say Trump is a danger to democracy? No, Trump says -- it's Democrats who won't allow any more elections to take place if they win. Crime: all the fault of immigrants, and therefore all the fault of Democrats.<br>
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Can this work? I don't know. Last month, Ezra Klein -- no not in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/16/opinion/ezra-klein-biden-audio-essay.html" target="_blank"><i>that</i></a> column -- <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/02/opinion/biden-trump-democratic-party-future.html" target="_blank">quoted</a> a pollster who thinks this could work for Trump:
<blockquote>Kristen Soltis Anderson, a co-founder of the Republican polling firm Echelon Insights, believes that the Democrats are right that voters are craving stability. But she thinks they refuse to see that Trump is leading in many polls because voters believe that he is the one who might offer it. What Trump is pitching, she said, is a “push for order — ‘I am going to be the one who secures the border. I’m going to be the one that cracks down on crime. I’m going to be the one that tries to stabilize your prices.’”</blockquote>
I'm sure this works for some people, so it's up to President Biden and his team to out-argue Trump on this. At least recognize that the line of argument allows Trump to sound overwrought and even deranged while claiming that he's worked up because he <i>needs</i> to be worked up to stop the chaos, not to create it. If you buy what he's selling -- and it's possible that some of the people who buy it won't be MAGA cultists -- then this justifies his personal style. So Democrats have to make the case all over again that he <i>will</i> be a chaos agent. They can do it, but they have to recognize that they need to. <i>Trump = chaos</i> might not be obvious to every persuadable voter.Steve M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/11963290427258439242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3856837.post-54458880775057367312024-03-16T10:26:00.006-04:002024-03-16T12:27:52.288-04:00YOUR REGULAR REMINDER THAT WE KNEW ABOUT KATHLEEN PARKER'S BIGOTRY YEARS AGO<i>The Washington Post</i>'s Kathleen Parker thinks Democrats should dump Kamala Harris. That's a fairly common pundit opinion, but most anti-Harris pundits don't Go There. Harris decides to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/03/15/kamala-harris-quit-biden-2024/" target="_blank">Go There</a>:
<blockquote>The Democratic Party’s indulgence of identity politics has proved successful in building a diverse organization, but its strategy of courting (and pandering to) minority voters is the road to ruin....<br>
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The Kamala conundrum comes down to this: She was picked because she was Black and female, a combo tantamount to job security. Now that she has become a burden to the Democratic ticket, Biden can’t fire her. He can’t risk alienating his base. Full stop. </blockquote>
The "and female" part of "She was picked because she was Black and female" conceals Parker's real point here, which is to attack the Democratic Party for "its strategy of courting (and pandering to) minority voters" (women aren't a minority group). <i>Harris was picked for her race</i>, Parker says, <i>and you can't fire Those People, amirite?</i><br>
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But we shouldn't be surprised at this. Remember <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20080520081406/http://www.jewishworldreview.com/kathleen/parker051408.php3" target="_blank">what Parker wrote about Barack Obama</a> in 2008:
<blockquote>"A full-blooded American."<br>
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That's how 24-year-old Josh Fry of West Virginia described his preference for John McCain over Barack Obama. His feelings aren't racist, he explained. He would just be more comfortable with "someone who is a full-blooded American as president."<br>
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... Full-bloodedness is an old coin that's gaining currency in the new American realm. Meaning: Politics may no longer be so much about race and gender as about heritage, core values, and made-in-America. Just as we once and still have a cultural divide in this country, we now have a patriot divide.<br>
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Who "gets" America? And who doesn't?<br>
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... It's about blood equity, heritage and commitment to hard-won American values. And roots.<br>
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Some run deeper than others and therein lies the truth of Josh Fry's political sense. In a country that is rapidly changing demographically — and where new neighbors may have arrived last year, not last century — there is a very real sense that once-upon-a-time America is getting lost in the dash to diversity.</blockquote>
(That last sentence especially infuriates me. Parker seems to accept immigrant group who arrived here "last century" -- but a century ago, those immigrants were the new Americans ... and Parker would have thought <i>they</i> weren't "full-blooded Americans." They include my ancestors, who came to this country from Italy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Parker would consider me a real American, but I don't want her to feel that way about me when she obviously despises the current newcomers just the way so many Americans despised people like my grandparents and great-grandparents. And I'm not sure what this has to do with the native-born Barack Obama in any case.)<br>
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A couple of years later, in 2010, we found out that certain other Americans <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/11/AR2010051104341.html" target="_blank">aren't fully American to Parker</a>:
<blockquote><b>Elena Kagan is miles away from mainstream America</b><br>
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The magnificent author and son of the Great Santini, Pat Conroy, began "The Prince of Tides" with these words: "My wound is geography. It is also my anchorage, my port of call."<br>
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... What is Kagan's geography? What is her anchorage, her port of call?<br>
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Coincidentally, she shares the same home town as the other two women on the court. Assuming Kagan is confirmed, all three women will hail from New York. Kagan grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Sonia Sotomayor is from the Bronx and Ruth Bader Ginsburg is from Brooklyn.<br>
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If diversity on the court is our goal, we may be missing a region or two.<br>
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These facts ultimately may be more anecdotally interesting than significant in terms of how a justice might perform. Then again, spending one's formative years walking past the infamously crime-riddled Murder Hotel en route to school, as Kagan did -- and, say, walking past the First Baptist Church to ballet class -- are not the same cultural marinade.<br>
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The latter hypothetical is proffered only for the sake of contrast and metaphor. It seems remote to unlikely that a woman whose life has involved Baptist churches and ballet slippers would find herself on a track to today's Supreme Court....</blockquote>
<i>These Catholics and Jews ... they're perfectly nice people, don't get me wrong, but we're overrun with them!</i> (And I would remind Parker that the person most responsible for packing the Supreme Court with Catholics is the Republican Party's judicial commissar, Leonard Leo. When he picked a woman for Donald Trump, it was Amy Coney Barrett, who's everything Parker wants except Catholic instead of Baptist.)<br>
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This is the genteel, moonlight-and-magnolias version of the Great Replacement Theory. At times Parker tried to suppress this side of herself, but it's always an inch below the surface, and it just rose up again.
Steve M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/11963290427258439242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3856837.post-78609287900254176482024-03-15T14:38:00.003-04:002024-03-15T14:38:17.561-04:00THE WILLIS DECISION SEEMS LIKE HUR REPORT 2.0NBC <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/fani-willis-trump-georgia-rcna139810" target="_blank">reports</a>:
<blockquote>A Georgia judge ruled Friday that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis should not be <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/happens-fulton-county-da-fani-willis-disqualified-trump-racketeering-c-rcna139035" target="_blank">disqualified</a> from prosecuting the <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-indicted-georgia-racketeering-rcna74912" target="_blank">racketeering case</a> against former President Donald Trump and several co-defendants — with one major condition.<br>
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Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee found the "appearance of impropriety" brought about by Willis' romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade should result in either Willis and her office leaving the case — or just Wade, whom she'd appointed to head the case.<br>
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The choice is likely to be an easy one: If Willis were to remove herself, the case would come to a halt, but having Wade leave will ensure the case continues without further delay.</blockquote>
<i>The Washington Post</i> <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/03/15/fani-willis-trump-georgia-case/" target="_blank">calls this</a> "a significant legal victory for Willis." Marcy Wheeler <a href="https://www.emptywheel.net/2024/03/15/judge-mcafee-orders-fani-willis-to-get-rid-of-nate-wade/" target="_blank">says</a>, "The prosecution will go forward." But will it? And will Willis stay on?<br>
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Trump's lawyers clearly want to appeal the ruling:<br>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Sounds like Trump's lawyers will ask the Judge for permission to appeal his ruling that Willis isn't disqualified. <a href="https://t.co/gI8mgV8b8g">pic.twitter.com/gI8mgV8b8g</a></p>— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) <a href="https://twitter.com/JoyceWhiteVance/status/1768660331792924916?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 15, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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And by astonishing coincidence, Georgia's governor just so happens to have signed a law this week that <a href="https://apnews.com/article/georgia-fani-willis-donald-trump-kemp-prosecutors-2cf16b27b33955b6a4355a96a23bde19" target="_blanGeorgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed a law Wednesday that lets a state commission begin operating with powers to discipline and remove prosecutors, potentially disrupting Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ prosecution of former President Donald Trump.k">could be used to remove Willis</a>:
<blockquote>Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed a law Wednesday that lets a state commission begin operating with powers to <a href="https://apnews.com/article/brian-kemp-georgia-prosecutor-district-attorney-remove-7987cd538ab3ccdc713ae4d2b2aec32b" target="_blank">discipline and remove prosecutors</a>, potentially disrupting Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ prosecution of former President Donald Trump.</blockquote>
Meanwhile, the fact that this decision frees Willis to proceed for now but <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global/2024/mar/15/fani-willis-ruling-key-takeaways-trump-georgia" target="_blank">criticizes</a> Willis "tremendous lapse in judgment" and "the unprofessional manner of the district
attorney’s testimony during the evidentiary hearing" reminds me of the Hur Report's <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/4456879-special-counsel-describes-biden-as-elderly-man-with-a-poor-memory-in-eye-raising-report/" target="_blank">conclusion</a> that Joe Biden mismanaged classified documents but couldn't be successfully prosecuted because he comes off as an "elderly man with a poor memory." It also reminds me of the original FBI report that <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2016/07/05/politics/fbi-clinton-email-server-comey-damning-lines/index.html" target="_blank">cleared</a> Hillary Clinton in the summer of 2016 while chastising her for "extremely careless" email handling. In each case, Republicans were able to continue complaining about pro-Democratic bias even as a Democrat's actions were condemned in a very public manner. Democrats get hobbled; Republicans get to continue playing the victim card. Rinse and repeat.Steve M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/11963290427258439242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3856837.post-59221424158812439092024-03-14T09:38:00.002-04:002024-03-14T09:38:20.793-04:00VACCINE TRUTHER WHO IS ALSO A SANDY HOOK TRUTHER IS A 9/11 TRUTHERCNN revealed yesterday that <a href="https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/packers-aaron-rodgers-admits-he-misled-public-media-by-saying-he-was-immunized-against-covid-19/" target="_blank">proud COVID vaccine critic</a> Aaron Rodgers, the NFL quarterback who <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/12/us/politics/rfk-jr-aaron-rodgers-jesse-ventura.html" target="_blank">appears to be</a> at the top of Robert Kennedy Jr.'s running mate short list, is also a <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/13/politics/aaron-rodgers-sandy-hook-conspiracy-theories/" target="_blank">Sandy Hook truther</a>:
<blockquote>... in private conversations [Rodgers] shared deranged conspiracy theories about the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting not being real.<br>
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CNN knows of two people with whom Rodgers has enthusiastically shared these stories, including with Pamela Brown, one of the journalists writing this piece.<br>
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Brown was covering the Kentucky Derby for CNN in 2013 when she was introduced to Rodgers, then with the Green Bay Packers, at a post-Derby party. Hearing that she was a journalist with CNN, Rodgers immediately began attacking the news media for covering up important stories. Rodgers brought up the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2013/06/07/us/connecticut-shootings-fast-facts/index.html" target="_blank">tragic killing of 20 children and 6 adults</a> by a gunman at Sandy Hook Elementary School, claiming it was actually a government inside job and the media was intentionally ignoring it.<br>
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When Brown questioned him on the evidence to show this very real shooting was staged, Rodgers began sharing various theories that have been disproven numerous times....<br>
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CNN has spoken to another person with a similar story. This person, to whom CNN has granted anonymity so as to avoid harassment, recalled that several years ago, Rodgers claimed, “Sandy Hook never happened...All those children never existed. They were all actors.”</blockquote>
But we already knew that in addition to believing conspiracy theories about COVID vaccines and Sandy Hook, Rodgers has also Done His Own Research on 9/11, as <i>Sports Illustrated</i> <a href="https://www.si.com/nfl/2022/11/29/packers-deshone-kizer-aaron-rodgers-once-asked-him-if-he-believes-in-9-11-conspiracy-theories" target="_blank">reported</a> in 2022:
<blockquote>During a recent interview, former Packers quarterback DeShone Kizer said that Aaron Rodgers once asked him whether he “believes in 9/11,” referring to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, during his first quarterbacks meeting with the team in ’18.<br>
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“The first thing that comes out of Aaron Rodgers’s mouth was, ‘You believe in 9/11?’” he said on <i>The Breneman Show</i> podcast. “‘What? Do I believe in 9/11? Yeah, why wouldn’t I?’”<br>
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To which Kizer said that Rodgers simply responded with, “Should read up on that.” Kizer said Rodgers wanted him to do research on some of the conspiracy theories around the event.</blockquote>
Kizer continued:
<blockquote>What it ended up being was just like a real thought experiment where he wanted me to go back and look into some of the conspiracies around it and provoked a lot of great conversation, and we really bonded over that, and we started sharing some books and talking about some other things, and got into history and business and finance.</blockquote>
"History and business and finance"? I bet I know (((where that conversation went))).<br>
<br>
Kizer continued:
<blockquote>“Inner Earth, moon landing, reptile people,” he said. “Y’all are laughing. Go do your research, I’m telling you. Go do your research.”</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">This Deshone Kizer interview by Adam Breneman has some absolutely buck-wild stories about Aaron Rodgers and conspiracies <a href="https://t.co/lr2gsjdiIn">https://t.co/lr2gsjdiIn</a> <a href="https://t.co/Pp4Wm2Meq4">pic.twitter.com/Pp4Wm2Meq4</a></p>— Arif Hasan, but NFL 🏈 (@ArifHasanNFL) <a href="https://twitter.com/ArifHasanNFL/status/1597436975023169536?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 29, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<br>
Last month, Rodgers and Joe Rogan expressed their mutual admiration for Alex Jones. You might have seen the excerpted transcript at <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/joe-rogan-experience/joe-rogan-and-aaron-rodgers-praise-sandy-hook-truther-alex-jones" target="_blank">Media Matters</a>:
<blockquote>JOE ROGAN (HOST): That weird stuff, it used to be so easy to dismiss but now, you know it's the Alex Jones was right meme. Like you realize how many times that guy has been right? Like Jesus Christ, like how is he so good at predicting all of these things that are happening? Because the guy is balls deep in it all day long.<br>
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AARON RODGERS (GUEST): Yep.<br>
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ROGAN: You could call him right now and it's like "I'm doing a document uh I'm reading research right now this is sick. Here's what they're doing here's the plan." I talk to him all the time. We text each other. Every time something's crazy I'll text him, like what is this? And he'll send me all these documents."<br>
<br>
RODGERS: He's talking about uh, I saw something he said the other day about, you know, how you gotta have your shit ready in case they turn the power off, turn the water off.</blockquote>
What that excerpt doesn't tell you is that this came up in the context of a discussion about the death of Stanley Kubrick, a long-time <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=stanley+kubrick+smoker&rlz=1C1RXQR_enUS1066US1066&oq=stanley+kubrick+smoker&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOdIBCDk5MDRqMGo3qAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#ip=1" target="_blank">chainsmoker</a> who <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Kubrick#Death" target="_blank">died of a heart attack at age 70</a> shortly after completing the conspiratorial film <i>Eyes Wide Shut.</i> There are those who believe that Kubrick was "murdered by way of a Masonic Satanic poisoning in line with the subjects of the film," as <a href="https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/stanley-kubrick-murdered-eyes-wide-shut/" target="_blank"><i>Far Out Magazine</i></a> tells us. Of course Rodgers and Rogan take the conspiracy theory seriously. Listen:<br>
<br>
<iframe src="https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4016465/embed/embed" class="" height="200" width="480" scrolling="no" allowfullscreen=""></iframe><br>
<br>
Rodgers also appeared on <i>The Pat McAfee Show</i> last year, when he was recovering from Achilles tendon surgery, and claimed that part of his healing process involved <a href="https://nypost.com/2023/09/15/aaron-rodgers-thinks-dolphin-sex-may-help-him-heal-achilles-surgery/" target="_blank">dolphin sex</a>.
<blockquote>“There’s ideas that some of the noises from the dolphins when they’re love-making, the frequency of that is actually healing to the body,” Rodgers said.</blockquote>
It was also on McAfee's show that Rodgers slandered Jimmy Kimmel by <a href="https://variety.com/2024/tv/news/aaron-rodgers-jimmy-kimmel-epstein-list-1235860868/" target="_blank">suggesting without evidence</a> that the comedian would be found on a list of Jeffrey Epstein's guests. (Kimmel wasn't on the list.)<br>
<br>
So what's the latest from the man Robert Kennedy Jr. reportedly wants to put a heartbeat away from the presidency, in the unlikely event that he's elected president?<br>
<br>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Aaron Rodgers is down in Costa Rica, preparing for an ayahuasca trip as all completely normal, super serious VP candidates tend to do before they're rolled out.<br><br>This is <a href="https://twitter.com/RobertKennedyJr?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@RobertKennedyJr</a>'s campaign and who he is touting as a potential running mate. <a href="https://t.co/d0PDhrXIDf">https://t.co/d0PDhrXIDf</a></p>— Lis Smith (@Lis_Smith) <a href="https://twitter.com/Lis_Smith/status/1767958939063185411?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 13, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<br>
I wouldn't take any of this seriously except for the fact that <a href="https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/trump-vs-biden" target="_blank">Donald Trump's lead</a> over Joe Biden in the polls <a href="https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/trump-vs-biden-vs-kennedy" target="_blank">doubles</a> when Kennedy is included in the polling. Kennedy is polling in double digits, and even if that's three times his vote total in November, he could easily score in the mid-single digits and throw the race to Trump. The FiveThirtyEight polling average says Kennedy has a <a href="https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/robert-f-kennedy/" target="_blank">net favorable rating of +7.8</a>. (<a href="https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/donald-trump/" target="_blank">Trump is at -10.2</a>, while <a href="https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/joe-biden/" target="_blank">Biden is at -14.7</a>.) The Biden campaign appears <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/dnc-war-third-party-candidates-rcna143290" target="_blank">ready to go after Kennedy</a>, but it's a shame he hasn't been attacked all along. He's nutty and dangerous, and I hope every voter understands that by November.
Steve M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/11963290427258439242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3856837.post-19594479858929673082024-03-13T17:33:00.003-04:002024-03-13T17:33:55.281-04:00I'LL SAY IT AGAIN: TRUMP'S NARCISSISM MIGHT BE THE REASON HE DOESN'T DESTROY AMERICADavid Graham of <i>The Atlantic</i> <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/03/rnc-leadership-michael-whatley-lara-trump/677731/" target="_blank">thinks</a> Donald Trump is making the same mistake Barack Obama made:
<blockquote>[Monday] night, Trump’s handpicked leadership of the RNC took charge and conducted a purge. The new regime ... fired about 60 employees—about a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/us/politics/rnc-trump-layoffs.html" target="_blank">quarter</a> of the staff—as part of “<a href="https://www.axios.com/2024/03/12/rnc-trump-team-fires-staff-reports" target="_blank">streamlining</a>.” ...<br>
<br>
But some things that are good for Trump are not good for the Republican Party over the long run. This is where Obama offers a cautionary tale.<br>
<br>
... Upon winning the presidency, he <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2008/06/obama-moves-quickly-to-reshape-dnc-011045" target="_blank">moved key DNC functions to Chicago</a>, his hometown and political base, despite the protests of party insiders who worried that downballot efforts would be overshadowed by Obama’s reelection campaign. He also created a group outside the DNC, Organizing for America, to support his political movement.<br>
<br>
The result was a badly weakened DNC. The national focus led to a neglect of other elections....<br>
<br>
As Matt Yglesias <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/10/14211994/obama-democrats-downballot" target="_blank">calculated</a> in 2017, the Obama years saw Democrats lose 11 Senate seats, 62 House seats, and 12 governorships. The damage was especially bad at the state level. Democrats lost nearly 1,000 seats in state legislatures, the worst loss since Herbert Hoover dragged down the GOP. Republicans captured 29 separate chambers and gained 10 new trifectas—control of both chambers of the legislature and the governor’s mansion....<br>
<br>
Echoing Obama’s Chicago move, the RNC is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/us/politics/rnc-trump-layoffs.html" target="_blank">reportedly</a> already moving most of its operations to Palm Beach, Florida, near Trump’s Mar-a-Lago headquarters. All of this makes sense. Trump is a narcissist who can’t and won’t separate his self-interest from the party’s or the nation’s.<br>
<br>
Slashing the national footprint of the RNC may weaken the party at lower levels. </blockquote>
Trump's approach seems like Obama's, but pushed to an extreme Obama never approached. Obama may have changed the emphasis of the DNC <i>to some extent</i>, but Trump wants the RNC to be devoted to his interests <i>exclusively.</i><br>
<br>
Which leads me to a point I've made here in the past. It's widely assumed that Trump will gut the federal government if he's elected in 2024. An <a href="https://www.axios.com/2024/03/13/trump-rnc-makeover-2025-plan-government" target="_blank">Axios story</a> sees a link between Trump's RNC purge and his reported plans for the presidency:
<blockquote>President Trump's ousting of a huge chunk of the <a href="https://www.axios.com/2024/03/12/rnc-trump-team-fires-staff-reports" target="_blank">Republican National Committee's staff</a> is a preview of what he plans to do with federal agencies if he's re-elected in November....<br>
<br>
Trump has promised to gut the federal workforce by reintroducing an executive order known as <a href="https://www.axios.com/2022/07/22/trump-presidency-schedule-f-federal-employees" target="_blank">Schedule F</a> if he wins a second term.<br>
<br>
<a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/11/13/trump-loyalists-2024-presidential-election" target="_blank">As Axios has reported</a>, a consortium of Trump allies are spending tens of millions of dollars to install a pre-vetted, pro-Trump army of up to 54,000 loyalists across government if he's elected.<br>
<br>
The idea would be to rip off the restraints imposed on the previous 46 presidents and empower Trump to wield unprecedented power.</blockquote>
Yes, but the "consortium of Trump allies" -- the Heritage Foundation and similar organizations -- might be wrong to believe that Trump will use these powers to implement <i>their</i> agenda. What we're seeing at the RNC suggests that Trump will expect these newly installed bureaucrats to work for <i>him,</i> not the conservative movement. Do the members of the consortium want to <a href="https://www.project2025.org/training/the-administrative-state-the-regulatory-process/" target="_blank">dismantle the administrative state</a> and <a href="https://buckscountybeacon.com/2024/03/shocking-online-manifesto-reveals-project-2025s-link-to-a-coordinated-christian-nationalism-project/" target="_blank">turn America into a Christian nationalist country</a>? If so, they shouldn't assume Trump is on board. Trump cares about Trump. If he does to the federal government what he's doing to the RNC, he'll turn it into a machine for doing <i>his</i> bidding, not the Heritage Foundation's.<br>
<br>
At least that's my guess. It'll be bad, but not because it's the fulfillment of the conservative movement's darkest wishes. It'll be bad because it'll be a product of Trump's narcissism, not a right-wing extremist group's master plan. Trump doesn't really care about the extremists' theories of government. He just wants subordinates who are completely loyal and do what he wants.Steve M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/11963290427258439242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3856837.post-70179355348822016122024-03-12T11:12:00.002-04:002024-03-12T11:12:32.512-04:00YOU DON'T THINK THE ROT GOES DEEP BECAUSE YOU DON'T BOTHER TO DIGThe conventional wisdom about the Republican Party tells us that it barely exists, and then only as a vehicle for the ambitions of Donald Trump. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/06/opinion/trump-republican-party.html" target="_blank">Here was that argument being made last week</a> by the editrorial board of <i>The New York Times</i>:
<blockquote>The Republican Party ... has become an organization whose goal is the election of one person at the expense of anything else, including integrity, principle, policy and patriotism.... when an entire political party, particularly one of the two main parties in a country as powerful as the United States, turns into an instrument of that person and his most dangerous ideas, the damage affects everyone.</blockquote>
But the Republican Party is trying hard to elect <i>many</i> party members with extremely bad ideas, not just Trump. Yesterday, <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/qanon-conspiracy-theory/michele-morrow-gop-nominee-head-north-carolinas-schools-qanon-conspiracy" target="_blank">Media Matters told us</a> about one awful candidate who hasn't otherwise received national scrutiny:
<blockquote>Michele Morrow, the Republican nominee for state superintendent of public instruction in North Carolina, frequently promoted the QAnon conspiracy theory in newly unearthed social media posts. She also referenced a QAnon-fueled conspiracy theory to suggest that actor Jim Carrey drinks the blood of children.<br>
<br>
Morrow['s] ... <a href="https://www.rawstory.com/raw-investigates/michele-morrow-north-carolina-election/" target="_blank">history</a> includes <a href="https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article265600446.html" target="_blank">marching</a> in Washington, D.C., on January 6 (Morrow said that she didn’t storm the Capitol) and <a href="https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/election/article286325695.html" target="_blank">attacking</a> public schools as “socialist indoctrination centers.” She <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/michele-morrow-north-carolina-superintendent-of-public-instruction_n_65e8985ce4b0170871fc97dd/amp" target="_blank">espouses</a> anti-LGBTQ views, <a href="https://x.com/nckhui/status/1666239987921178624?s=46&t=PN52ydwTvFusTeuJ-h77RA" target="_blank">such as</a> <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4017463" target="_blank">saying</a> during Pride Month in June 2023: “As a nurse, I want you to understand something: There is no pride in perversion.”<br>
<br>
Morrow is <a href="https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/election/article286325695.html" target="_blank">also</a> <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/michele-morrow-north-carolina-superintendent-of-public-instruction_n_65e8985ce4b0170871fc97dd" target="_blank">anti-Muslim</a>: She has written that the country should “ban Islam” and “ban Muslims from elected offices.”<br>
<br>
... Morrow frequently engaged with the [QAnon] conspiracy theory in the lead up to the 2020 election.<br>
<br>
One of the movement’s hashtags is WWG1WGA (“where we go one, we go all”). In 2020, Morrow posted the QAnon hashtag at least seven times....<br>
<br>
Additionally, in <a href="https://twitter.com/_stand_firm/status/1243626145590972417" target="_blank">2020</a> she promoted the <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/qanon-conspiracy-theory/jim-caviezel-pushes-qanon-bizarre-media-blitz-new-anti-trafficking-movie" target="_blank">QAnon-fueled</a> <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-qanon-became-obsessed-with-adrenochrome-an-imaginary-drug-hollywood-is-harvesting-from-kids" target="_blank">adrenochrome</a> <a href="https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/pseudoscience/qanons-adrenochrome-quackery" target="_blank">conspiracy</a> <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2022/02/03/fact-check-qanons-adrenochrome-conspiracy-theory-baseless/9268681002/" target="_blank">theory</a> in response to a post about actor Jim Carrey and added the hashtag “JusticeIsComing”. The conspiracy theory essentially claims that elites are harvesting and drinking the blood of tortured children to extend the drinkers’ lives.<br>
<br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiziiUt5L1Fad4zh0nTyfCKffNc1BQ61iDrfM_d2TiWsqZ_CCSGbQZxQPCicKnvuOTtVlMnKLbCNUyKY5GVLPAXOH6P8kZ2y_BXitbfxQbhEF5wGAopk_7tN9MMhLjSQCl9Ppuv4TTbkHctRdzp_k_vRQ2OiLWitiqwGT_Q0UL7dMRTsPZTRg/s587/michelemorrow-jimcarrey.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="582" data-original-width="587" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiziiUt5L1Fad4zh0nTyfCKffNc1BQ61iDrfM_d2TiWsqZ_CCSGbQZxQPCicKnvuOTtVlMnKLbCNUyKY5GVLPAXOH6P8kZ2y_BXitbfxQbhEF5wGAopk_7tN9MMhLjSQCl9Ppuv4TTbkHctRdzp_k_vRQ2OiLWitiqwGT_Q0UL7dMRTsPZTRg/s400/michelemorrow-jimcarrey.jpg"/></a></div></blockquote>
Remember that some national media outlets <a href="https://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2024/03/new-york-times-sanitizes-sewer-mouthed.html" target="_blank">couldn't be bothered to present a complete portrait of Mark Robinson</a>, the anti-Jewish, anti-Black, anti-LGBT candidate who won the GOP gubernatorial primary the same day Morrow won her primary. So it's predictable that she's not getting national coverage.<br>
<br>
Please note that Donald Trump has never been in the vanguard of QAnon propagandists -- he plays to the QAnon crowd at times, but QAnon developed without his input, although it has invoked him regularly. This is a reminder that Republican messaging isn't always about Trump. The widespread, ongoing belief in a massive global celebrity pedophile ring focused on adrenochrome doesn't depend on Trump at all, even if he's been seen as the man who'll save civilization from it.<br>
<br>
It should be national news when a candidate for statewide office is a conspiracy-believing crackpot, especially in a battleground state and especially when she's running for a position involving the education of children. But the conventional wisdom in our media is that all the rot in the GOP is directly linked to Trump, so nobody cares about downballot candidates in far-flung states.<br>
<br>
And now here's a story about a Republican student organization at UCLA that <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/kevinmkruse.bsky.social/post/3kngnqjw3m32l" target="_blank">got social media attention</a> yesterday but isn't national news:<br>
<br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvmzFta9G_vaSO_1FOBDIEcyQ5FVKVS44UddQjhSUUO-g5fPJKY0uNAArC8XptlX7kyvFO83wT1dan1tIMKJrJk9LRlQeZRbQhFALpvCPUHYe46gegraUUJ-wOgs6VJP_abecJfGLhBFwGcn3o1lbvxRCQQxTSFuQ9Oml2H52nq7WiQ1mc2Q/s877/Screenshot%202024-03-12%20102701.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="700" data-original-height="877" data-original-width="540" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvmzFta9G_vaSO_1FOBDIEcyQ5FVKVS44UddQjhSUUO-g5fPJKY0uNAArC8XptlX7kyvFO83wT1dan1tIMKJrJk9LRlQeZRbQhFALpvCPUHYe46gegraUUJ-wOgs6VJP_abecJfGLhBFwGcn3o1lbvxRCQQxTSFuQ9Oml2H52nq7WiQ1mc2Q/s400/Screenshot%202024-03-12%20102701.png"/></a></div>
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This is a step beyond Trump's anti-immigrant message -- which, let's not forget, was the GOP vanguard's message in George W. Bush's second term, when nativists prevented a president of their own party from revising America's immigration laws. At a time when the mainstream media gets the vapors every time an elite Acela Corridor university's student body flirts with anti-Semitism (or even questions Israeli policy in Gaza), shouldn't <i>this</i> bigotry also receive saturation coverage? But it's not happening on the East Coast between Cambridge and D.C., so it didn't really happen.<br>
<br>
Dig a bit and you find that the Bruin Republicans Twitter feed <a href="https://twitter.com/BruinGOP" target="_blank">is a cesspool</a>, and not always in a Trumpian way. The Bruin Republicans are <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=china%20%28from%3Abruingop%29&src=typed_query" target="_blank">very fond of Xi Jinping's China</a>, for instance, mostly because it's authoritarian and anti-gay. And today the Bruin Republicans feed is full of praise for Andrew Tate, the Anglo-American ex-kickboxer and (alleged!) sex trafficker, who was <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/online-influencer-andrew-tate-detained-romania-handed-uk-arrest-warran-rcna142912" target="_blank">arrested again</a> in Romania yesterday:<br>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxAXOEqRzOE66NFvjAyDGamF4nvNAi05qhw-frAixy-i2aalLzoHjcq9INY6y0KyNNOvBjNRZ5pXxgNBT2b1QMQih-LDz2KywCTovCjD9dCLyRVhnhNip8io3fdPee31dCM2WTFkpZ9uIZcyIv2NTZRVNzmFffvxphQGnBCXuIDm0ZVRJFhA/s765/Screenshot%202024-03-12%20103912.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="650" data-original-height="765" data-original-width="537" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxAXOEqRzOE66NFvjAyDGamF4nvNAi05qhw-frAixy-i2aalLzoHjcq9INY6y0KyNNOvBjNRZ5pXxgNBT2b1QMQih-LDz2KywCTovCjD9dCLyRVhnhNip8io3fdPee31dCM2WTFkpZ9uIZcyIv2NTZRVNzmFffvxphQGnBCXuIDm0ZVRJFhA/s400/Screenshot%202024-03-12%20103912.png"/></a></div>
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And here are the Bruin Republicans using the language of the "manosphere"/incel culture to denigrate women at their school. (<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/12tleid/how_many_bodys_makes_a_female_ran_thru_why/" target="_blank">"Ran-through"</a> is a particularly repulsive term referring to the physical damage manosphere members believe women suffer when they have sex with multiple partners.)<br>
<br>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">How do so many women at UCLA manage to be ugly, fat, ran-through, and liberal all at the same time?<br><br>And all of this while the majority of the men here are homosexuals<br><br>SAD!</p>— Bruin Republicans at UCLA (@BruinGOP) <a href="https://twitter.com/BruinGOP/status/1750367460367474804?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 25, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<br>
This is the future of the Republican Party, and if the press wanted to cover it -- and express horror about the state of our youth, as happens every time anti-Israel language on an East Coast campus gets heated -- we'd see many, many stories in <i>The New York Times</i> and elsewhere about the Bruin Republicans and similrly inclined GOP youth groups. But the press doesn't care. And so much of America believes that the GOP will be nice and normal once Trump is gone.
Steve M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/11963290427258439242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3856837.post-41869563749799455032024-03-11T10:47:00.001-04:002024-03-11T10:47:07.104-04:00MAYBE THERE ISN'T ONE WEIRD MEDIA TRICK THAT WILL SAVE US FROM TRUMPHi, I'm back. Thank you, Yas, for great coverage of Smokin' Joe.<br>
<br>
And now we turn to Donald Trump. Stephen Robinson of Public Notice thinks the media's Trump coverage is failing us. <a href="https://www.publicnotice.co/p/axios-new-york-times-nbc-trump-fantasy-version" target="_blank">He writes</a>:
<blockquote>Yes, major news outlets, including the New York Times, are now more likely to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/17/us/politics/trump-election-lies-fact-check.html" target="_blank">acknowledge that Trump outright lies</a> than simply makes “false” statements, but the press still resists definitively calling him out for the terrible and dangerous person he is. Because their baseline assumption is that Trump is erratic and malevolent, it’s not generally regarded as big news when Trump does awful things, such as mocking Biden’s speech impediment during a speech over the weekend.</blockquote>
Then Robinson adds:
<blockquote>... it should be mentioned that the NYT published <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/10/us/politics/trump-biden-georgia-rally.html" target="_blank">an article</a> noting that Trump mocked Biden’s stutter.</blockquote>
Yup, and while the <i>Times</i> is frequently awful, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/10/us/politics/trump-biden-georgia-rally.html" target="_blank">this story</a> was not part of the problem:
<blockquote>... former President Donald J. Trump on Saturday blasted President Biden’s State of the Union address as an “angry, dark, hate-filled rant” that was more divisive than unifying.<br>
<br>
He then mocked Mr. Biden’s lifelong stutter, a jab that set the tone for the lengthy speech that followed.<br>
<br>
Over nearly two hours, Mr. Trump lobbed sharp personal attacks at Mr. Biden’s mental and physical health and revived a litany of grievances against political opponents, prosecutors and television executives. He used inflammatory language to stoke fears about immigration, called the press “criminals” and repeated his false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him.<br>
<br>
Mr. Trump told thousands of his supporters gathered at the rally that “everything Joe Biden touches” turns to filth, though he used an expletive to describe the result. “Everything. I tried finding a different word, but there are some words that cannot be duplicated.” (He used the word, or a variant, at least four times in his speech.)</blockquote>
So maybe it <i>is</i> now "regarded as big news when Trump does awful things." Maybe liberal press critics are finally inspiring the <i>Times</i> and other news outlets to pay attention to Trump's malevolent words. Maybe President Biden's State of the Union address had an impact. Maybe Democratic insiders are working the refs behind the scenes.<br>
<br>
But will it matter?<br>
<br>
Robinson <a href="https://www.publicnotice.co/p/axios-new-york-times-nbc-trump-fantasy-version" target="_blank">continues</a>:
<blockquote>Implicit in the media’s ongoing coverage of Trump is the idea that he might suddenly stop behaving like Donald Trump. Case in point was an absurd <a href="https://www.axios.com/2024/03/04/trump-rhetoric-2020-election-fraud-2024" target="_blank">article</a> Axios ran last week from national politics reporter Sophia Cai with the headline, “Top Trump advisers try to steer him off personal drama.”<br>
<br>
... On what was once Twitter, the <a href="https://twitter.com/axios/status/1764676359073178040" target="_blank">caption</a> above Axios’s article read, “Looking to November, Trump tempers his claims about the 2020 election — a little.” ... Cai wrote, “In some recent speeches, Trump has used different terms in describing his typical complaint that the 2020 election he lost was ‘stolen’ — saying, ‘We were interrupted,’ or ‘something very bad happened.’”</blockquote>
But the <a href="https://www.axios.com/2024/03/04/trump-rhetoric-2020-election-fraud-2024" target="_blank">Axios piece</a> in question also includes this:
<blockquote><b>Reality check:</b> In front of right-wing audiences, Trump still rambles on, making the conspiratorial — and false — claims many come to hear.<br>
<br>
* At CPAC's recent meeting outside Washington, D.C., he called 2020 a "rigged election" and accused Democrats of "cheat[ing] like dogs."<br>
<br>
* His rambling speeches to MAGA crowds and others also still include suggestions that he'll "terminate" parts of the Constitution and use the military against protesters. He also casts immigrants in racist terms — as "poisoning the blood" of the country and "speaking languages nobody's ever heard of."</blockquote>
And a <i>Washington Post</i> story published today says <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/03/11/trump-campaign-speech-anatomy/" target="_blank">this</a> about Trump's "rigged election" rhetoric:
<blockquote>He has invoked the rhetoric at each of the 43 rallies he has held since officially kicking off his campaign in November 2022, according to a Post analysis.<br>
<br>
Speaking in Rock Hill, Trump first broached the topic of what he dubbed “a failed election” by warning that “the only way it can end where they win is a rigged election,” before noting — again falsely — that what Democrats “did in 2020 is disgraceful.”<br>
<br>
It was a claim Trump repeated several more times, including when he accused “Joe Biden and his thugs” of “weaponizing law enforcement for high-level election interference.”<br>
<br>
“Joe Biden and the fascists that control him are really the true threat to democracy,” Trump said, taking the charge Democrats have long levied against him and turning it back on his accusers. “Those are the threat to democracy.”<br>
<br>
Later, after a riff mocking President Biden as senile, Trump continued: “The radical left Democrats rigged the presidential election in two-twenty — two thousand and twenty. They rigged the presidential election, and we’re not going to allow them to rig the presidential election of 2024.”<br>
<br>
At this, the crow[d] stood and cheered before breaking into chants of “USA! USA! USA!”</blockquote>
Is it possible that the press is actually giving us an accurate portrait of Trump, and it isn't causing his poll numbers to plummet? Could our problem be that there simply isn't One Weird Trick the media can employ to make the scales fall from Trump voters' eyes, because they know exactly what he says and they don't have a problem with it?<br>
<br>
The media's coverage of Hillary clinton in 2020 was terrible -- but I'm not sure the coverage of Trump was as bad as we remember. We complain that the media gave us a distorted picture of Trump <i>and</i> that the media broadcast hours of uninterrupted Trump speeches. Can both of these things be true? People who watched those speeches heard Trump unfiltered. He was racist, ignorant, and offensive in many ways. Apart from the unedited rallies, we heard and saw his attacks on John McCain, on a disabled journalist, and on Gold Star parents exactly as he delivered them. We heard the <i>Access Hollywood</i> tape unedited. And then millions of people voted for Trump anyway. Maybe those voters are the problem?<br>
<br>
Yes, we should continue attacking the media when it fails us. But we should also consider the possibility that there may be no "right" way to cover the election, if what we mean by "right" is a way that will make Trump lose in a landslide. We can try to pressure the media to change, but maybe we can't change voters who share Trump's hatreds and prejudices, or even the ones who don't think Trump's hatreds and prejudices are a big deal if gas prices are low. Our biggest problem might not be the media. It might be our fellow citizens.Steve M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/11963290427258439242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3856837.post-57540281582262817102024-03-09T21:40:00.001-05:002024-03-09T21:40:57.925-05:00It's Not Hyperbole, Man!<p> </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5SQRc7EqxnmYXMg8jgK4zl23LGyk_TYtuqm2aNyd0uKgXtx7FSzAFKYBGwL1WmU3tMdB6wMS6ABnnWsAZNvuNdlv-yg-Kr02E09DFfLCt7emOASaDnLnriPdyAW5NEcksiP1GMQ6c2-ZYnhWu1MswfKztnsClfrw2UMFS5FLEa3MYUPfidzJ2_MuJp77p/s750/65eba3ae069e5.image.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="750" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5SQRc7EqxnmYXMg8jgK4zl23LGyk_TYtuqm2aNyd0uKgXtx7FSzAFKYBGwL1WmU3tMdB6wMS6ABnnWsAZNvuNdlv-yg-Kr02E09DFfLCt7emOASaDnLnriPdyAW5NEcksiP1GMQ6c2-ZYnhWu1MswfKztnsClfrw2UMFS5FLEa3MYUPfidzJ2_MuJp77p/w400-h266/65eba3ae069e5.image.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Holding babies in Rose Valley, PA. Photo by Andrew Harnik/AP via<span> </span><a href="https://www.chronicleonline.com/news/national/biden-visiting-battleground-states-and-expanding-staff-as-his-campaign-tries-to-seize-the-offensive/article_208c8480-9757-575d-919d-afac662d2e0f.html">Citrus County Chronicle</a>. </td></tr></tbody></table><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://yastreblyansky.blogspot.com/2024/03/joe-did-what-welcome-welcome-welcome.html">As I was saying</a>, the last SOTU of Biden's first term was an extraordinary departure from the SOTU norm, which I've been observing off and on since I was a teenager in the Johnson administration (likely for the first time in 1964, when LBJ announced an "unconditional war on poverty in America"), but I don't think I got all the way to what made it so extraordinary. </p><p>Of course one of the reasons it's different is that there's an overriding purpose to this particular speech tied directly to the presidential campaign, as Josh Marshall explains in his <a href="https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/how-did-biden-do-in-the-sotu/sharetoken/6Fem0W01HMRJ?utm_source=brevo&utm_campaign=Backchannel%20NEW%20TEMPLATE%20278&utm_medium=email">Backchannel</a>:</p><p><span style="background-color: #f8f6f1; color: #111111; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 17px;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="background-color: #f8f6f1; color: #111111; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 17px;">there was one overwhelming sina qua non objective and that was to demonstrate that Biden is vigorous, up to the fight and can deliver on the key requirements of running a national campaign.</span></blockquote><p></p><p>Biden clearly did as well with that as you could have hoped for, showing himself to be sharp, energetic, and a master of the detail, displaying passion, humor, and a very good memory. he's absolutely on top of it, as staff has claimed. Nobody who watched it could say he was frail, out of it, or suffering dementia, and we can be confident as he puts himself out to the public in the coming weeks and months that he'll be able to sustain that and an increasing number of voters will get it. He's plainly capable of doing both jobs, of presidential candidate and president; if there's a problem, whether it's bias against the elderly or Fox News or New York Times propaganda, it won't be because of anything actually wrong with him.</p><p>So that had been a huge worry among all kinds of Democrats, and I thought it should be a big point in the reaction to the speech, which it has been, and that's great.</p><p>But it's not the only point that deserves to be talked about.<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p>It was radically different from the committee-driven laundry list of issues and programs for sale that we've become familiar with in the maturity of the age of television: more like the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-franklin-roosevelts-annual-message-to-congress">SOTU of January 1941</a> he evoked in his first words, in which Franklin Roosevelt warned his audience that the United States would not be able to avoid involvement in the ongoing war in Europe, saying, "this Annual Message is unique in our history." FDR used that fact as an organizing principle for his own speech, expounding the ways in which the nation was already prepared, the ways it needed to prepare materially, the ways it needed to prepare legislatively (assigning Congress its tasks in the war effort), and the ways it needed to prepare spiritually, in what would be a struggle for freedom, introducing his own theory of the Four Freedoms. Biden, in his words—</p><blockquote><span face="nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif" style="background-color: white; color: #363636; font-size: 20px;">Tonight, I come to the same chamber to address the nation. Now, it’s we who face [an] unprecedented moment in the history of the union. And yes, my purpose tonight is to wake up the Congress and alert the American people that this is no ordinary moment either.</span></blockquote><p>—acknowledges a very explicit debt to the 1941 speech, but takes on two different tasks at once, in contrast to Roosevelt's one. Congress needs to be "awakened" to the danger it's unable as a body to recognize coming from where authoritarian powers plot against democracy on the outside, the American people must be "alerted" to the danger on the inside, where venal representatives like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matthew Gaetz plot against democracy right there in the chamber.</p><p>That's what the speech is about. It has all the obligatory elements of the standard Democratic SOTU, the recitation of the administration's accomplishments and the enumeration of programs, some of them pretty new, that mostly won't get enacted unless we elect a better-quality Congress, but the central subject is a list of specific <i>threats</i> laid out in the opening paragraphs: </p><p></p><ul><li>Putin, for his attacks on Ukraine, who will go on to attack elsewhere if he isn't stopped there;</li><li>Trump, for his invitation to Putin to do whatever the hell he wants</li><li>Trump, implicitly for his attacks on NATO</li><li>insurrectionists of January 6, for attack on democracy (in Trump's name)</li><li>Trump, for his lies about the 2020 election</li><li>Trump, for his plots to steal power</li><li>Republicans, for their attacks on IVF following on their successful defeat of <i>Roe v. Wade</i> (engineered by Trump's judicial nominations) and</li><li>COVID-19, </li></ul><p></p><blockquote><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: var(--color-content-secondary,#363636); font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1.25rem; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.875rem; margin: 0px 0px 0.9375rem; max-width: 100%; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline; width: 600px;">Remember the fear, record losses. Remember the spikes in crime and the murder rate, raging virus that took more than one million American lives of loved ones, millions left behind, a mental health crisis of isolation and loneliness.</p><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: var(--color-content-secondary,#363636); font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1.25rem; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.875rem; margin: 0px 0px 0.9375rem; max-width: 100%; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline; width: 600px;">A president, my predecessor, failed the most basic presidential duty that he owes to American people: the duty to care. I think that’s unforgivable.</p></blockquote><p>and that's where Biden moves into the recitation of accomplishments, but not as the conventional laundry list: in the form of a <i>comeback</i> narrative,</p><blockquote><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: var(--color-content-secondary,#363636); font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1.25rem; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.875rem; margin: 0px 0px 0.9375rem; max-width: 100%; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline; width: 600px;">I came to office determined to get us through one of the toughest periods in the nation’s history. We have. It doesn’t make new, news — in a thousand cities and towns, the American people are writing the greatest comeback story never told.</p><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: var(--color-content-secondary,#363636); font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1.25rem; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.875rem; margin: 0px 0px 0.9375rem; max-width: 100%; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline; width: 600px;">So let’s tell the story here. Tell it here and now.</p></blockquote><p>the story more or less of how Biden has worked to <i>save</i> us from the consequences of the predecessor's misdeeds, starting with the pandemic and its ravages on public health, on education, on the economy, which the Biden administration has done so much to fix, and the speech begins to turn gradually into something much more like a normal SOTU. </p><p>But that first 15 minutes is something else, with its litany of accusations against Trump and his friends foreign and domestic. And they're all true, of course, and all things most voters hate, and we never thought he was going to come out and talk about it. Trump and his movement are the crisis he's warning of, they have to be stopped, and Biden has the experience of doing something about it. That's why he's running.</p><p>It was electrifying to me to hear it, and it looks as if he's carrying on now as he hits the campaign trail:</p><blockquote><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-1); font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.55; margin: 20px 0px;">While Biden had referred only to his “predecessor” during Thursday’s speech before Congress, on Friday it was a different story on the campaign trail, as Biden and his wife laid into Trump for raising the deficit, rolling back abortion access and fomenting the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol.</p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-1); font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.55; margin: 20px 0px;">He also blamed Trump for the coarsening of the country’s political discourse.</p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-1); font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.55; margin: 20px 0px;">“When you ride down the street and there’s a Trump banner with an F-U on it and a little 6-year-old kid putting up his middle finger,” Biden said. “Did you ever think you’d hear people talk the way they do? It demeans who we are. That’s not America.”</p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-1); font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.55; margin: 20px 0px;">Biden highlighted threats to in vitro fertilization in Alabama after a recent state Supreme Court ruling. “You know why it happened? I’ll tell you why. One reason: Donald Trump,” Biden said. (<a href="https://apnews.com/article/biden-campaign-strategy-state-of-union-trump-36731990165e47bd451235d6b5ff31ab">AP</a>)</p></blockquote><p>We're on.<br /></p><p>Cross-posted at <a href="https://yastreblyansky.blogspot.com/2024/03/its-not-hyperbole-man.html">The Rectification of Names.</a></p>Yastreblyanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08335868257729063363noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3856837.post-40161714487872900362024-03-08T18:54:00.004-05:002024-03-08T19:05:21.517-05:00Joe Did What? Welcome, Welcome, Welcome<p><br /></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-1zgQOoVFjpb7bcgFtzrYWAVemIPCHmitzGxO7jw2lB2YsvCKxW6Y8q7O1JCBY_zzbhwM4w0tfMF-sJy_0LXvbQpNylCOQVBQbeQUIMR8ELB_E9JfYzxov-J2p34-Two_mWh6W8N9CnA3Ag8f_Ipm2snQ18y2v7XViT_w_0gnSdu9JSGbbB5a8sTKt7so/s1024/GettyImages-2067154625-1024x744.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="744" data-original-width="1024" height="291" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-1zgQOoVFjpb7bcgFtzrYWAVemIPCHmitzGxO7jw2lB2YsvCKxW6Y8q7O1JCBY_zzbhwM4w0tfMF-sJy_0LXvbQpNylCOQVBQbeQUIMR8ELB_E9JfYzxov-J2p34-Two_mWh6W8N9CnA3Ag8f_Ipm2snQ18y2v7XViT_w_0gnSdu9JSGbbB5a8sTKt7so/w400-h291/GettyImages-2067154625-1024x744.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images via<span> </span><a href="https://wisconsinexaminer.com/2024/03/07/state-of-the-union-address-by-president-joe-biden-march-7-2024/">Wisconsin Examiner</a>.<span> </span><a href="https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/3/8/2228286/-Over-75-posts-later-Trump-is-still-fuming-about-Biden-s-State-of-the-Union">Rumor</a><span> </span>has it that when Donald Trump sent out a post "WHAT HAPPENED TO NANCY?" last night it's because he'd forgotten why the guy in glasses was sitting in Speaker Pelosi's chair.</td></tr></tbody></table><p><br /></p><p>Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were—are, I suppose—masters of oratory, in their different ways, artists of the art of public speaking, Clinton charming you into his vision, Obama rousing you to fervency, but their State of the Union addresses were never their best speeches, weighed down with all the exhausting details they felt compelled to include. </p><p>Joe Biden's art is not oratory but the art of governance, of which the State of the Union is a (sort of) constitutional part (of course the Constitution only requires him to send Congress a letter, of which he made a tremendous pantomime last night, passing the Vice President and Speaker their leather-bound copies before bringing his own to the lectern, I've never watched that happening before, but the camera loved it as he was doing it), and that maybe accounts for why they're paradoxically his best speeches, even though they may be his longest; he's so deeply aware that he's not just talking about governance, he's doing it, and democratically drawing us into the process, and the details are a fundamental part of that (and not just the part where, as the pundits like to say, the Devil is). The pleasure he takes in it is so evident that we can't help sharing it, and it rarely gets boring.</p><p>I dwell on it because it's something people often make a mistake about when they're observing Biden: so many times in the course of the Gaza war they've complained that words are not enough, actions are needed, when words are what they're really asking for (the oratorical call for a ceasefire), and actions are what we're getting (the political work of making a ceasefire happen, going on mostly behind closed doors).</p><p>Action was the enveloping theme of last night's speech, surrounded as it was on both ends by scenes of Joe making his way through the crowd of legislators of whom he was one for such a long time, with a joke or a bit of gossip to share with everybody, working that crowd as the expression has it, and action was an important part of the content—instead of saying, "We must fight!" he spent a lot of time landing punches, against Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, against "my predecessor", the otherwise unnamed 45th president of the US, against the radical-right majority on the Supreme Court, and against the House Republican Caucus, and leaping right into debate with congressional hecklers, breaking from his prepared text to engage them. It's startling to see such pugnacity on display from a Democrat, and welcome, especially from one who gives as much space to the clichés of "finding common ground" and "working across the aisle" as he has always done.</p><p>Instead of the traditional opening on the economic state of the Union, he opened with an analogy to Franklin Roosevelt's SOTU of 1941, as a perilous situation comparable to the current set of threats foreign, as represented by Putin, and domestic as represented by Biden's predecessor<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><blockquote><div class="css-53u6y8" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 0px calc(50% - 300px); max-width: 600px; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline; width: 600px;"><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0" style="border: 0px; color: var(--color-content-secondary,#363636); font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1.25rem; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.875rem; margin: 0px 0px 0.9375rem; max-width: 100%; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline; width: 600px;">Now, now my predecessor, a former Republican president, tells Putin, quote, do whatever the hell you want. That’s a quote. A former president actually said that, bowing down to a Russian leader. I think it’s outrageous, it’s dangerous, and it’s unacceptable.</p><p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0" style="border: 0px; color: var(--color-content-secondary,#363636); font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1.25rem; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.875rem; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline; width: 600px;">America is a founding member of NATO, the military alliance of democratic nations created after World War II to prevent, to prevent war and keep the peace. And today, we’ve made NATO stronger than ever. We welcomed Finland to the alliance last year, and just this morning, Sweden officially joined, and their minister is here tonight. Stand up. Welcome. Welcome, welcome, welcome. And they know how to fight.</p></div></blockquote><p>and by the insurrectionists who came out to support the predecessor on January 6, "stormed this very Capitol and placed a dagger to the throat of American democracy." As well as by the House Freedom Caucus blocking aid to Ukraine. Speaker Mikey Johnson, sitting behind the president in the traditional position next to the vice president, rose to his feet to applaud the Ukrainians, forgetting that he himself was responsible for bringing the aid bill to the House for a vote, which it would certainly win, if he disobeyed Trump's orders and did it, and quickly sat down again, confused, as he remained for the rest of the hour, though he was sometimes observed with his hands clapping under the table, where his Freedom members wouldn't see.</p><p>The first takeaway from all this has to be, I think, that Biden is in very good physical and mental shape and can show it. The event may have been "heavily staged", as <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/swin24.bsky.social/post/3kn6vkkywrs26">some</a> caviled on social media, but Biden played a very complex and rangy role, and one that took a lot of improv, and he couldn't have done it if he didn't have the capacity. Tim Franks on BBC asked a Democrat, "But will one speech be enough to convince people?" Really, it ought to be, given how well it was done, but it's clear in any case that from Biden's point of view the campaign just began, after the Tuesday primaries, and there will obviously be more. </p><p><a href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-142422372">David Kurtz/TPM</a> writes,</p><blockquote><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #363737; font-family: -apple-system-ui-serif, ui-serif, Spectral, Georgia, serif; font-size: 19px; letter-spacing: -0.228px; line-height: 1.6em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--page-width);">Republicans who have turned Joseph R. Biden into a caricature of falling-down dementia and drooling incontinence have set the bar so low that anything above a flatline EKG from the president knocks them back on their heels.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #363737; font-family: -apple-system-ui-serif, ui-serif, Spectral, Georgia, serif; font-size: 19px; letter-spacing: -0.228px; line-height: 1.6em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: var(--page-width);">They were left spluttering that Biden’s State of the Union was too loud and too campaign-y.</p></blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM4JZabIqqSGLjkDEMVG6V8BeDOAPlrVla7YOnTV_gnoUPHQGUQ6es7qW0oqWiaDLHTHZ2UezZIZFTjv9ZpSxTaqlzzIhSV_b_4ERCe_fbeGL3-UaRaUq8wIVqVVYQrdjQ73UzKCtZVoWmlenUk9SjpCWFzgL99KQb9O7ziUy4KMUKQk35NIpnD5mK97m8/s2000/bafkreie3s7uoy6rf3bus6nd4mwbxnqj6rgn7cakxtvckub7bedh2ffvf6q.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="707" data-original-width="2000" height="113" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM4JZabIqqSGLjkDEMVG6V8BeDOAPlrVla7YOnTV_gnoUPHQGUQ6es7qW0oqWiaDLHTHZ2UezZIZFTjv9ZpSxTaqlzzIhSV_b_4ERCe_fbeGL3-UaRaUq8wIVqVVYQrdjQ73UzKCtZVoWmlenUk9SjpCWFzgL99KQb9O7ziUy4KMUKQk35NIpnD5mK97m8/s320/bafkreie3s7uoy6rf3bus6nd4mwbxnqj6rgn7cakxtvckub7bedh2ffvf6q.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>And the White House team at The New York Times seems to have felt the same</p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-_R9Tgml9McDHSSqPF1knaY5fU70nl0_Uh9tfYrsGcXkPpw4ugcdN9uxDSN_tuXB6dGmSowgBOTcsc691oCn1Jkk839HrHkPWqbh_2XOKGgtQWIU9hQYnEQ-gjNOYZl9-9YO1d8Fv9mx25ZoQTSUtgqx7zBmlAxKNaQWKQ_StHFvpK4Lcy1QRhcXCsoR0/s1204/Screenshot%202024-03-08%20at%204.13.59%E2%80%AFPM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1092" data-original-width="1204" height="290" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-_R9Tgml9McDHSSqPF1knaY5fU70nl0_Uh9tfYrsGcXkPpw4ugcdN9uxDSN_tuXB6dGmSowgBOTcsc691oCn1Jkk839HrHkPWqbh_2XOKGgtQWIU9hQYnEQ-gjNOYZl9-9YO1d8Fv9mx25ZoQTSUtgqx7zBmlAxKNaQWKQ_StHFvpK4Lcy1QRhcXCsoR0/s320/Screenshot%202024-03-08%20at%204.13.59%E2%80%AFPM.png" width="320" /></a></div></blockquote><p>Though he wasn't just loud, but made a brilliant use of stage whispers too.<br /></p><p>While the rebuttal presented by Senator Katie Britt (R-AL), set in a soundstage kitchen apparently built in 1992 and never used to cook anything, looked like an audition for a high school production of <i>The Crucible</i>, designed to show her emotional range from very smily to deeply concerned, and not showing it well<i>. </i></p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiX-KAFOnZfPF4o4d_Nea7tS6Rih_c-lvuIGPjaMZLOegCD_k8OfJAgUTI7otyjfZadZKIr5h6xzhUHxUTt6yomGo6o64usC-5XKJzar24DbZAgYmyi0lEy-2u-RlfQ9k6a0BdeaCmB8s1M_gfG48QiV01hutl8_5Y4JNjVVChy-jwo7Tb4qE1LTAESZWWq/s620/Screenshot%202024-03-08%20at%202.04.10%E2%80%AFPM.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="620" data-original-width="538" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiX-KAFOnZfPF4o4d_Nea7tS6Rih_c-lvuIGPjaMZLOegCD_k8OfJAgUTI7otyjfZadZKIr5h6xzhUHxUTt6yomGo6o64usC-5XKJzar24DbZAgYmyi0lEy-2u-RlfQ9k6a0BdeaCmB8s1M_gfG48QiV01hutl8_5Y4JNjVVChy-jwo7Tb4qE1LTAESZWWq/w348-h400/Screenshot%202024-03-08%20at%202.04.10%E2%80%AFPM.png" width="348" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Katie sez you can't trust those hardworking parents any further than you can throw them.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p>So much for the theater criticism. I'll try to get on to the substantive issues later.</p><p>Cross-posted at The Rectification of Names.</p>Yastreblyanskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08335868257729063363noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3856837.post-16560681029399794852024-03-07T07:16:00.004-05:002024-03-07T07:16:40.073-05:00GONE FOR A BITI'll be away for a few days. While I'm gone, I think Yas and Tom will be here, so stop by. Be nice to them. You can be nasty to me when I'm back on Monday.Steve M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/11963290427258439242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3856837.post-16337632608072315862024-03-06T10:18:00.000-05:002024-03-06T10:18:02.811-05:00NEW YORK TIMES SANITIZES SEWER-MOUTHED GOP GUBERNATORIAL NOMINEEMark Robinson, the lieutenant governor of North Carolina, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/election/2024/primaries-and-caucuses/results/north-carolina/republican-party/governor" target="_blank">won the state's Republican gubernatorial primary in a landslide</a> yesterday. He'll face off in November against the winner of the Democratic primary, Josh Stein, the state's attorney general.<br>
<br>
I've <a href="https://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2023/05/trump-isnt-only-menace.html" target="_blank">told you</a> about some of the hateful, bigoted things Robinson has said in public and posted on social media. So have media outlets such as <A HREF="https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2024/03/02/mark-robinson-governor-candidate-north-carolina-offensive-comments/"><i>The Washington Post</i></A>, <a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/179566/north-carolina-governor-candidate-mark-robinson-quoting-hitler" target="_blank"><i>The New Republic</i></a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/05/mark-robinson-north-carolina" target="_blank"><i>The Guardian</i></a>, <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/mark-robinson-north-carolina-gop-primary-governor-1234981673/" target="_blank"><i>Rolling Stone</i></a> ("Republicans Just Nominated a Conspiracy Theorist Who Compared Gay People to Maggots"), and <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/03/north-carolina-primary-results-mark-robinson-governor.html" target="_blank">Slate</a>. Last year, Talking Points Memo published a <a href="https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/mark-robinson-north-carolina-facebook" target="_blank">good compilation</a> of his most offensive remarks, of which this is just a small sample:
<blockquote>In 2021, Robinson <a href="https://jewishinsider.com/2021/02/mark-robinson-lieutenant-governor-north-carolina/" target="_blank">sparked outrage</a> from Jewish groups when he published a post filled with Yiddish slurs and references to Israeli currency wherein he declared the “Black Panther” superhero movie was based on a character that was created “by an agnostic Jew and put to film by satanic marxist” in an effort to “pull the shekels out of your Schvartze pockets.”<br>
<br>
... In other missives over the years, Robinson called same-sex relationships a “sin,” a “mass delusion,” a “FILTHY ABOMINATION,” and a “satanic cult of sexual perversion.”<br>
<br>
... “Nothing is more disgusting to me than effeminate males who carry purses and have ear rings in their ears. #stomachturningmadness,” Robinson wrote in August 2016.<br>
<br>
... In one of the two speeches that sparked campaign buzz, ... Robinson touted his status as the “first Black lieutenant governor of North Carolina.” However, on Facebook, Robinson indicated several times that he often doesn’t exactly see himself as part of that community.<br>
<br>
“Someone asked me if I considered myself part of the ‘African-American’ community.<br>
<br>
“I told them NO!” Robinson wrote in 2017. “They asked me why and I said; ‘Why would I want to be part of a ‘community’ that devalues it’s fathers, overburdens it’s mothers, and murders its children by the millions? Why would I want to be part of a ‘community’ that sucks from the putrid tit of the government and then complains about getting sour milk?”</blockquote>
So how does <i>The New York Times</i> cover the possible next governor of North Carolina? Since the polls closed, the <i>Times</i> has published two stories about Robinson, both written by Eduardo Medina, a <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/byeduardomedina/" target="_blank">2020 graduate</a> of Auburn University who was an intern and reporter at several other papers before landing a job with the <i>Times.</i> Medina is very young and has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/by/eduardo-medina" target="_blank">a lot of territory</a> to cover as a reporter. ("My region of coverage includes the Carolinas, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana and Tennessee. I report on news across the region, the cultural trends of the South and how major national issues impact individual lives.") But did the truly inflammatory things Robinson has said never come up when Medina was Googling him? Or is this the <i>Times</i> making an editorial decision to normalize a hatemonger again?<br>
<br>
Here's what we get in Medina's <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/05/us/politics/mark-robinson-north-carolina-governor.html" target="_blank">first story</a>, headlined "Mark Robinson Wins Republican Primary for North Carolina Governor":
<blockquote> His win proved that his blustering, Trump-aligned style is favored by conservatives who are gearing up for what will probably be the most expensive and closely contested statewide race in the country....<br>
<br>
Mr. Robinson’s nomination notched another success in what has been a remarkable rise for the lieutenant governor: In 2018, he was working in furniture manufacturing. A year later, after he drew national attention in conservative circles with a video showing him criticizing gun control at a public meeting in Greensboro, he entered the race for lieutenant governor.<br>
<br>
Now, four years after being elected to statewide office as a political firebrand and newcomer, Mr. Robinson is charging toward the executive mansion in Raleigh with a brand of conservatism that focuses on culture war issues, testing how far right North Carolinians are willing to go in their purple state.</blockquote>
Yes, Robinson is just a "firebrand" who "focuses on culture war issues" -- you know, normal stuff. This is as close as Medina gets to a true sense of Robinson's rhetoric:
<blockquote>Mr. Robinson has characterized the civil rights movement as a communist and socialist plot to “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/11/politics/kfile-mark-robinson-attacked-civil-rights-movement/index.html" target="_blank">subvert capitalism</a>,” <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9GQR7Vd-Cs&t=2s" target="_blank">promised</a> to arrest transgender women who use women’s restrooms and said that Christians are “called to be led by men.” He has disparaged the L.G.B.T.Q. community, made comments widely perceived as antisemitic and called for limiting discussions about racism in public schools.</blockquote>
This makes him sound like a very far-right but within-the-pale conservative Republican. None of his Very Online bigoted trash talk is quoted.<br>
<br>
In Medina's <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/06/us/politics/north-carolina-governor-mark-robinson.html" target="_blank">second story</a>, headlined "Who Is Mark Robinson, the Republican Nominee for North Carolina Governor?," we're told that "His political career was fueled by online support," "He made history as the first Black lieutenant governor of North Carolina," and "His upbringing was difficult." Eventually, we get this:
<blockquote><b>He has long held anti-L.G.B.T.Q. views.</b><br>
Since gaining a political platform, and even before that on his personal Facebook page, Mr. Robinson has hurled disparaging remarks at the L.G.B.T.Q. community, rooting his attacks in his Christian faith.<br>
<br>
He has said that it makes him sick to see a church flying the rainbow flag, describing it as a “direct spit in the face of God.” He also told a congregation that “there’s no reason anybody anywhere in America should be telling any child about transgenderism, homosexuality, any of that filth.”<br>
<br>
In February, Mr. Robinson <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9GQR7Vd-Cs&t=2s&ab_channel=JeremyDodger" target="_blank">said that transgender women</a> who use women’s restrooms “will be arrested,” echoing the so-called bathroom bill that the state legislators passed in 2016. That measure proved to be unpopular because of its negative economic effects, and [then-governor Roy] Cooper signed legislation repealing it in 2017.</blockquote>
This is a tiny glimpse of the real Mark Robinson. But we don't see <a href="https://www.washingtonblade.com/2021/11/21/north-carolinas-north-carolina-lt-governor-mark-robinson-compares-gay-people-to-cow-feces-maggots/" target="_blank">the depths of his hatred</a> for LGBTQ people, as other reporters have:
<blockquote>Speaking to parishioners at the Berean Baptist Church in Winston-Salem ... North Carolina Lt. Governor Mark Robinson attacked the LGBTQ+ community in remarks caught <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7fvQ-zo9FY" target="_blank">on the church’s livestreaming video on YouTube</a>....<br>
<br>
The state’s Republican Lt. Governor then went on to compare being gay to “what the cows leave behind” as well as maggots and flies, who he said all serve a purpose in God’s creation. “If homosexuality is of God, what purpose does it serve? What does it make? What does it create? It creates nothing,” Robinson said.</blockquote>
There's nothing in Medina's story about his other bigotries, including his clear loathing for his fellow Black people. (As <a href="https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/mark-robinson-north-carolina-facebook" target="_blank">TPM notes</a>, Robinson regularly posts images of the Confederate battle flag, expresses support for "white pride," and refers to "the hood" as a "steaming pile of human waste.") We aren't told that he loathes Muslims, or that <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/03/north-carolina-primary-results-mark-robinson-governor.html" target="_blank">he has called</a> Michelle Obama a man (“I’ll be glad when he <a href="https://www.facebook.com/mark.k.robinson.3/posts/pfbid02MBjRmDb76te7jCx9KTrq33YrGkz5UhndpgwSo8zcqkG4y5BAd1p9kquRKzz57z9Dl" target="_blank">takes his boyfriend</a> and leaves the White House”).<br>
<br>
I don't fully blame Medina. He's a young, ambitious reporter who's punching his ticket until the <i>Times</i> or another high-level media outlet gives him a better assignment. I blame Medina's editors, who don't appear to understand that the rot in the Republican Party isn't limited to Donald Trump -- or perhaps they believe that if there's rot outside the Acela Corridor, it don't really matter.Steve M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/11963290427258439242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3856837.post-40340907906921185782024-03-05T10:39:00.005-05:002024-03-05T10:39:33.031-05:00MAYBE DEMOCRATS SHOULD PUT A TEAM ON THE FIELD WHENEVER REPUBLICANS DO -- WHICH IS ALWAYSA couple of days ago, when <i>The New York Times</i> published a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/02/us/politics/biden-trump-times-siena-poll.html" target="_blank">poll</a> showing Donald Trump with a 5-point lead over Joe Biden, many liberals complained about the methodology. There were <a href="https://www.threads.net/@mollyjongfast/post/C4BF6rVuVb1" target="_blank">only 980 respondents</a>! The poll was <a href="https://statuskuo.substack.com/p/status-report-about-that-poll" target="_blank">weighted in favor of the GOP</a>!<br>
<br>
Then when the <i>Times</i> published a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/03/us/politics/biden-age-trump-poll.html" target="_blank">follow-u</a>p with more results from the poll, under the headline "Majority of Biden’s 2020 Voters Now Say He’s Too Old to Be Effective," liberals <a href="https://www.threads.net/@anildash/post/C4El7ykuHQb" target="_blank">griped</a>:
<blockquote>The NYT commissioned this poll; they refuse to commission a poll asking Trump voters whether the rapes he’s committed make him an ineffective leader or could cost him their vote. Which obviously means the NYT thinks age is more disqualifying than committing multiple sexual assaults.</blockquote>
Or maybe it means that Democrats don't even try to force the issue of Trump's sexual violence into the national conversation -- or are waiting until summer or fall to do so. "Relax! It's only March!" seems to be the Democrats' watchword. And then they complain when the <i>Times</i> and other mainstream media outlets focus on the subjects Republicans want them to focus on. How hard are Democrats working to give them an alternative?<br>
<br>
On the subject of Trump's sexual conduct, has any prominent Democratic officeholder, candidate, or official <i>ever</i> used the words "Trump" and "rapist" in the same sentence? And yet <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/07/donald-trump-rape-language-e-jean-carroll" target="_blank">a court of law has determined that Trump is, in fact, a rapist</a>. But hey, maybe Democrats will make note of this fact after Labor Day.<br>
<br>
I'm with <a href="https://www.oliverexplains.com/p/sorry-democrats-politics-is-part" target="_blank">Oliver Willis</a>:
<blockquote>The current media environment is a mess of anti-Biden/Democratic narratives that the right has laid down for longer than the time Biden has served in the presidency. They didn’t just come up with the notion overnight that Democrats are open borders leftist extremists who answer only to coastal elites. It wasn’t this calendar year when the right decided that Biden was either too old to live another day or a Machiavellian socialist/communist/Marxist/mafia kingpin. They have always been in the mode of selling these ideas, no matter how detached they are from reality. Some of them work, some of them go too far and are immediately dismissed by the public at large, but the right is always selling something.<br>
<br>
Democrats wake up from their slumber in February or March of election years, madly in a panic, looking around as if surprised its an election year again. They slowly crank up the creaky electoral machine as if it had been frozen in amber since November of 2022 (it mostly has) and it spends the summer months ratcheting its way back up to full strength (they hope).<br>
<br>
Sometimes it works out just fine. Democrats did great in 2020, outperformed expectations in 2022, and crushed it in 2012. But even when things work out fine, they are more of a mess than they need to be.<br>
<br>
The official Democratic Party drives its diehard supporters to the edges of madness every cycle because the public is buried under a pile of right-wing excrement amplified by the mainstream media. There are few, if any Democratic/liberal counternarratives because there isn’t the pressing desire to make it happen. They can’t be bothered to deal with that until the last possible moment....</blockquote>
Willis is right. the Republican National Committee has been pushing "Biden is too old to be president" since 2019, and didn't put the campaign on pause after the 2020 election:<br>
<br>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">CNN blasts Biden post-debate: “stumbles,” “blows 4 tires,” “how many times can Biden do that”<a href="https://t.co/RvlyLUHC1Q">https://t.co/RvlyLUHC1Q</a> <a href="https://t.co/HrRAgv9o2B">pic.twitter.com/HrRAgv9o2B</a></p>— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) <a href="https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1197374644778606592?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 21, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Joe Biden stumbles, confuses Pelosi with McConnell<a href="https://t.co/QOFOOdJ6F4">https://t.co/QOFOOdJ6F4</a> <a href="https://t.co/ME9Tq21k6s">pic.twitter.com/ME9Tq21k6s</a></p>— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) <a href="https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1267517514201862144?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 1, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Joe Biden stumbles through introducing Germany’s Angela Merkel: “Second largest...longest serving chancellor” <a href="https://t.co/c5Peh1sWfl">pic.twitter.com/c5Peh1sWfl</a></p>— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) <a href="https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1415785548648751115?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 15, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">"Watch me if you think I don't have the energy level or the mental acuity." — Biden, 4 days ago <a href="https://t.co/laLUEzA0Dt">https://t.co/laLUEzA0Dt</a></p>— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) <a href="https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1572707351890915328?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 21, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<br>
Do you want to know why we're talking about Biden's age? Because of these clips, and many, many others like them, which, of course, <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=biden%20mental%20%28from%3Arncresearch%29&src=typed_query&f=live" target="_blank">continue to this day</a>. They go viral. Republicans don't say, "Why bring it up? People don't pay attention to politics until Labor Day of the election year." They just keep campaigning.<br>
<br>
Democrats don't, and <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/179548/poll-voters-trump-dictator-threats" target="_blank">Greg Sargent reports on the consequences</a>:
<blockquote>Some new polling from a top Democratic pollster finds mixed news for Team Biden ... Large swaths of voters appear to have little awareness of some of Trump’s clearest statements of hostility to democracy and intent to impose authoritarian rule in a second term, from his <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2023/12/11/donald-trump-dictator-one-day-reelected/71880010007/" target="_blank">vow</a> to be “dictator for one day” to his <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4168261-trump-called-for-termination-of-parts-of-constitution-in-december/" target="_blank">vague threat</a> to enact “termination” of provisions in the Constitution....<br>
<br>
The survey—which was conducted by veteran Democratic pollster Geoff Garin for the group Save My Country ... polled 400 voters in each of three swing states—Arizona, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.... It omitted respondents who voted for Trump in 2020 and also said Biden didn’t legitimately win.<br>
<br>
In short, the poll was designed to survey voters who are genuinely gettable for Biden. The poll asked them about ten of Trump’s most authoritarian statements, including: the two mentioned above; Trump’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/05/us/politics/trump-immigration-rhetoric.html" target="_blank">claim</a> that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country”; his <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-says-pardon-large-portion-jan-6-rioters-rcna83873" target="_blank">vow</a> to pardon rioters who attacked the Capitol; his <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4045934-trump-vows-to-appoint-special-prosecutor-to-go-after-biden-if-former-president-wins-in-2024/" target="_blank">promise</a> to prosecute the Biden family without cause; his <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/11/12/trump-rally-vermin-political-opponents/" target="_blank">threat</a> to inflict mass persecution on the “vermin” opposition, and a few more.<br>
<br>
Result? “Only 31 percent of respondents said they previously had heard a lot about these statements by Trump,” the memo accompanying the poll concluded.<br>
<br>
The good news for Biden is that when respondents were presented with these quotes, it prompted a rise in Trump’s negatives. For instance, after hearing them, the percentage who see him as “out for revenge” jumped by five points, the percentage who see him as “dangerous” rose by nine points, and the percentage who see him as a “dictator” climbed by seven points.</blockquote>
Democrats could hit this subject harder. They could "work the refs" the way Republicans do, demanding more media attention to these issues. But what's the use? It's not even spring.<br>
<br>
Maybe the <i>Times</i> poll isn't methodologically flawed. Maybe it reflects the state of play <i>Democrats have chosen,</i> with Republicans putting points on the board while Democrats don't even have a full team on the field.Steve M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/11963290427258439242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3856837.post-75753091727104128912024-03-04T13:54:00.002-05:002024-03-04T13:54:23.934-05:00HANDLERS TRY TO REBRAND NARCISSIST INSULT COMIC AS SELFLESS PATRIOTThe Supreme Court, as expected, has <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-rules-trump-cannot-kicked-colorado-ballot-rcna132291" target="_blank">ruled</a> that Donald Trump can't be removed from state presidential ballots. Trump -- a narcissistic hatemonger and wannabe insult comic -- has responded to his victory in a way that surprises me. On Fox News, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68280062" target="_blank">Trump said</a>:
<blockquote>Today's decision, especially the fact that it was unanimous, 9-0, is both unifying and inspirational for the people of the United States.</blockquote>
On Truth Social, <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/112038026037364851" target="_blank">Trump wrote</a>:<br>
<br>
<iframe src="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/112038026037364851/embed" class="truthsocial-embed" style="max-width: 100%; border: 0" width="460" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe><script src="https://truthsocial.com/embed.js" async="async"></script><br>
<br>
On Howie Carr's radio show, <a href="https://twitter.com/HowieCarrShow/status/1764686237686731004" target="_blank">Trump said</a>:
<blockquote>And this is for future presidents. This is not for me. This is for future presidents, all presidents.</blockquote>
At the end of his Mar-a-Lago press conference, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nc7SerrkAP4" target="_blank">Trump said</a>:
<blockquote>I think it's a very big day for America, I think it's a very big day for liberty, and I think it's just a great day for this country. Again, I hope it's unifying like I think, but it is, it's a big step toward unification.</blockquote>
Trump couldn't really keep this up, of course. Most of the press conference was the usual Trump victimization/"lawfare" whining and kvetching -- at length, he complained that all the prosecutors who've pursued him are attacking him because they have an agenda, and because they're coordinating with the White House.<br>
<br>
But clearly, someone has advised Trump to rebrand his victories as wins <i>for all of us</i>, and for a <i>unified</i> America. I don't think they can persuade him to keep this up, but I wonder if they'll continue urging him to be this phony Trump in the future.<br>
<br>
The message, I assume, will be that President Biden is the candidate who's trying to divide the country, while Trump is just a selfless patriot reluctantly pursuing the presidency again for <i>our</i> good, not his own. If he manages to stick to the script, will any swing voters actually buy this? <br>
<br>
Swing voters tend not to bring a lot of previous political knowledge to the table, so ... maybe! But I don't think Trump can set aside his self-absorption for very long. Nevertheless, I'm fascinated to learn that his people want him to try.
Steve M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/11963290427258439242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3856837.post-39170754724119415782024-03-03T12:39:00.001-05:002024-03-03T12:39:04.141-05:00IF THERE'S AN OBVIOUS PRO-TRUMP BIAS IN THE 2024 POLLS, WHERE WAS IT IN 2016 AND 2020?This has been a bad weekend for Joe Biden in the polls. In a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/02/us/politics/biden-trump-times-siena-poll.html" target="_blank"><i>New York Times</i> poll</a>, Donald Trump leads Biden by 5, 48%-43%. A <a href="https://archive.is/4qaUk" target="_blank"><i>Wall Street Journal</i> survey</a> gives Trump a 2-point lead, 47%-45%, and a 5-point lead, 40%-35%, if Robert Kennedy Jr., Jill Stein, Cornel West, and Libertarian Lars Mapstead are included. In a <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/poll-trump-leads-biden-economy/" target="_blank">CBS survey</a>, Trump leads by 4, 52%-48%.<br>
<br>
But I know this is all nonsense. As you readers have repeatedly informed me, all polls are dishonest. The presidential polls we're seeing this year were commissioned by right-leaning news moguls in order to demonstrate a level of support for Trump that can't possibly exist in real life, either because the moguls want Trump to win or because they know Biden is well on his way to a massive landslide victory, and therefore the illusion of a competitive race must be manufactured out of whole cloth.<br>
<br>
There's just one thing I don't understand: Why didn't these evil moguls commission fake pro-Trump polls in 2016 and 2020?<br>
<br>
In 2020, Real Clear Politics listed <a href="https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2020/trump-vs-biden" target="_blank">293 polls</a> of the Trump-Biden race. Of these, 5 had Trump in the lead, 3 said the race was a tie -- and 285 said Biden was winning. Why would the corrupt right-wing moguls who control the so-called liberal media publish polls like this? Many of the polls said Biden was leading by double digits. Where's the pro-Trump, pro-GOP bias in that? I'm confused.<br>
<br>
In 2016, RCP listed <a href="https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2016/trump-vs-clinton" target="_blank">261 polls</a> of the race between Trump and Hillary Clinton. Of these, 29 had Trump in the lead, 11 showed a tie -- and 221 put Clinton in the lead, sometimes by double digits. Why? Even in 2016, it sure looked as if the moguls preferred Trump -- in February of that year, CBS's Les Moonves <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/leslie-moonves-donald-trump-may-871464/" target="_blank">said</a> that Trump's candidacy "may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS." So why were pollsters predicting a victory by Clinton?<br>
<br>
If I didn't know better, I might conclude that most polling organizations are making a good-faith effort to assess the mood of the electorate accurately. (Biden did win the election, as predicted, and Clinton did win the popular vote, also as predicted.) But that would lead me to the conclusion that current polls showing Trump in the lead might conceivably be accurate as well, and all intelligent people know that's categorally impossible, as you, my readers, have frequently informed me.<br>
<br>
So what's the story? Obviously the pro-Trump polls this year are biased and corrupt. So why weren't they biased and corrupt in exactly the same way in the last two election cycles? Were the media moguls less biased and corrupt back then? Were these rich guys conscientious and honest then?<br>
<br>
What gives? I'm sincerely confused. But I'm sure you'll explain it to me.Steve M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/11963290427258439242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3856837.post-17956375885395815392024-03-02T11:13:00.000-05:002024-03-02T11:13:26.173-05:00TRUMP'S SILENCE ABOUT GAZA IS NOT SIMPLY "ANTI-INTERVENTIONIST"<i>The New York Times</i> notices that Donald Trump <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/01/us/politics/donald-trump-israel-gaza.html" target="_blank">isn't saying much</a> about the war in Gaza.
<blockquote>In the nearly five months since Hamas terrorists invaded Israel on Oct. 7, igniting the most divisive foreign policy crisis of the Biden presidency, Donald J. Trump has said noticeably little about the subject.<br>
<br>
<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/11/us/politics/trump-netanyahu-israel.html" target="_blank">He criticized</a> Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, before quickly retreating to more standard expressions of support for the country. And he has made blustery claims that the invasion never would have happened had he been president. </blockquote>
But the <i>Times</i> reports make the same mistake many smart, well-informed people make when assessing this profoundly stupid, poorly informed man: They try to fit him into a politcal-science category.
<blockquote>But his overall approach has been laissez-faire.<br>
<br>
... Mr. Trump’s hands-off approach to the bloody Middle East conflict reflects the profound anti-interventionist shift he has brought about in the Republican Party over the past eight years.... </blockquote>
That's not quite right.<br>
<br>
Trump knows his voter base includes both pro-Israel religious rightists and neo-fascist anti-Semites who complain about "globalism." Trump doesn't want to offend Evangelicals, but undoubtedly he's also being advised by the <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/trump-campaign-ceo-steve-bannon-accused-anti-semitic-remarks-ex-n638731" target="_blank">anti-Semitic</a> Steve Bannon and others not to show too much support for a "globalist war." (Feel free to mentally put triple parentheses around the word "globalist.")<br>
<br>
As the <i>Times</i> story notes, he's had friction with Benjamin Netanyahu, though he's also not a huge fan of Muslims -- he's promised a Muslim ban that's <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-bring-back-travel-ban-muslim-countries/" target="_blank">"even bigger than before"</a> in his second term. However, he does seem to like his family's Saudi patrons (and the Saudis want a two-state solution).<br>
<br>
So it's complicated for him, and therefore he's probably been advised to say nothing. Instead, he says he's strong where Biden is weak, and therefore he'll magically scare every country in the world so much that no one will dare to fight a war when he's president, and he's also such a great dealmaker that he'll instantly end all the wars that already exist. And millions of voters think that's plausible, because they saw him being a strong, tough dealmaker four fourteen seasons on TV.<br>
<br>
The fact that Trump has persuaded millions of Americans that he's smarter than people who are actually well informed is one of his great weapons as a politcal scam artist. It means he never has to master geopolitical complexities -- he just tells us that his dealmaking superpowers would be compromised if he went public with his plans to neutralize conflicts, and that's all his fervent and potential fans seem to require. It's pure bunkum, but it's part of an approach that won him one election and nearly won him a second, so he'll just keep doing it.Steve M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/11963290427258439242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3856837.post-16713613507660436052024-03-01T10:42:00.003-05:002024-03-01T10:42:59.226-05:00I THINK THE SUPREME COURT WILL STALL TRUMP'S TRIALS AND SIGNIFICANTLY NARROW THE CHARGESWhen Donald Trump's lawyers told the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals that he deserved immunity from prosecution for the things he did while he was president, the immunity they claimed for him was absolute. Even if he had <a href="https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4398223-trump-team-argues-assassination-of-rivals-is-covered-by-presidential-immunity/" target="_blank">ordered SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political rival</a>, one of his lawyers said, he couldn't be prosecuted for it.<br>
<br>
The Supreme Court has now decided to hear, at a <a href="https://www.threads.net/@chrislhayes/post/C38JyfFO2Li" target="_blank">less-than-urgent pace</a>, Trump's request for immunity. We're supposed to be reassured by the fact that, as NBC's Lawrence Hurley <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-narrows-lens-takes-trumps-immunity-claim-rcna141155" target="_blank">notes</a>, the Court doesn't believe Trump can do <i>anything</i> and get away with it:
<blockquote>The court indicated in a <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/022824zr3_febh.pdf" target="_blank">brief order</a> Wednesday how it will approach the case by laying out precisely the legal question it will consider: "<a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/022824zr3_febh.pdf" target="_blank">Whether</a> and if so to what extent does a former President enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office."</blockquote>
In a <i>New York Times</i> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/29/opinion/supreme-court-trump-immunity.html" target="_blank">op-ed</a>, Lee Kovarsky assures us that the Supremes can't possibly rule that the misdeeds cited in the indictment are "official acts":
<blockquote>It has already been determined — in a recent <a href="https://www.cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/opinions.nsf/A3464AEB2C1CB89985258A7800537E73/$file/22-5069-2029472.pdf" target="_blank">decision</a> in a civil case, by a separate D.C. Circuit Court panel — that Mr. Trump’s extramural efforts to remain in office were not “official acts.” The D.C. Circuit opinion now subject to review in the Supreme Court expressly cited Mr. Trump’s failed civil immunity claim as a reason to be “doubtful” that the former president could meet the official acts standard in the criminal prosecution. Mr. Trump was acting as an “officeseeker” rather than an “officeholder,” and the private sphere of office-seeking conduct sits outside the scope of official-acts immunity.</blockquote>
But isn't this precisely the kind of "settled" law that this corrupt and biased Supreme Court loves to overturn?<br>
<br>
What is Trump <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-indicted-grand-jury-jan-6/" target="_blank">charged with</a>?
<blockquote>The indictment says of Trump that despite having lost, he "was determined to remain in power." So, for over two months after the election, Trump "spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won," the indictment states, and adds, "These claims were false, and the defendant knew they were false," but "repeated and widely disseminated them anyway."<br>
<br>
... Trump and his co-conspirators allegedly "pushed officials to ignore the popular vote" and "organized <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/detroit/news/what-we-know-about-the-16-fake-electors-charged-in-michigan/" target="_blank">fraudulent slates of electors</a>" in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, according to the indictment. The indictment accuses Trump and his co-conspirators of using "knowingly false claims of election fraud" in organizing the fraudulent slates of electors.<br>
<br>
Prosecutors allege Trump and his co-conspirators also attempted to use the power of the Justice Department to conduct "sham election crime investigations," and attempted to enlist then-Vice President Mike Pence to use <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pence-secret-service-jan-6-capitol-fear-lives/" target="_blank">his ceremonial role</a> in affirming the electoral vote count on Jan. 6 to "fraudulently alter the election results." The indictment also alleges <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/philadelphia/news/pence-aides-detail-trump-effort-to-overturn-election-results-at-jan-6-committee-hearing/" target="_blank">Trump repeatedly pressured Pence</a> to fraudulently reject or return Mr. Biden's electoral votes.<br>
<br>
... In a detailed accounting, the indictment claims Trump watched the [January 6] violence unfolding on television, and ignored pleas to unequivocally condemn the violence. </blockquote>
I think the Court will grant Trump, and all future presidents, "limited" immunity from prosecution for acts committed while in office. I think the Supremes will proclaim that the push for "sham election crime investigations" by the Justice Department was absolutely within Trump's power because he was acting as president rather than as an officeholder. (Republicans, anticipating a Republican presidency, believe that a president is fully entitled to politcize the Justice Department. I'd agree that nothing in the Constitution prevents this.) The Court may also rule that failing to intervene to stop the January 6 riot is also Trump acting as president, and thus covered by presidential immunity.<br>
<br>
It might be a reach to say that attempting to pressure states to overturn election results, or pressure Mike Pence to reject them, was the work of a president rather than a candidate, especially when Smith intends to demonstrate in court that Trump knew he'd lost. The Court would have to rule without seeing the evidence Smith intends to present at trial that Trump <i>wasn't</i> doing this dishonestly, that he thought he was telling the truth and believed he was merely trying to "<a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/article-2/section-3/overview-of-the-take-care-clause#:~:text=The%20Constitution%20provides%20that%20the,of%20Article%20II%3B%20%282%29" target="_blank">take Care</a> that the Laws be faithfully executed." That would be shameless, but I wouldn't put it past these justices.<br>
<br>
I think the Court will grant partial immunity while greatly reducing Trump's legal jeopardy. The Court doesn't want to give presidents blanket immunity because, obviously, that would also apply to Democratic presidents, and we can't have <i>that</i>. The Court will toss out some of the charges because it can, and because fuck you, liberals, that's why.<br>
<br>
I'm sure I'll be told in the comments that I'm excessively cynical about these serious jurists who genuinely revere the rule of law. I'll just laugh.Steve M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/11963290427258439242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3856837.post-87426784369685106702024-02-29T09:02:00.001-05:002024-02-29T09:02:33.999-05:00THE SUPREME COURT PREDICTABLY RULES FOR TRUMP -- AND MIGHT ALSO BE TRYING TO HELP THE REAL DEEP STATEOn February 6, after <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/deadline-legal-blog/trump-immunity-case-ruling-timing-rcna135702" target="_blank">some delay</a>, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that Donald Trump doesn't have legal immunity from prosecution for crimes committed during his presidency. When Trump appealed this ruling to the Supreme Court, very smart legal analysts said that Trump didn't have any real grounds for appeal, which was true, and that the Supreme Court, based on law and precedent, <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2024/02/07/supreme-court-trump-immunity/72494010007/" target="_blank">would have to reject this blatant effort to evade accountability</a>, which was obviously nonsense.
<blockquote>“I think there’s a strong chance the Supreme Court will unanimously uphold this [D.C. Circuit ruling],” Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University's law school, told USA TODAY. "The question to me is not how the court will rule, but when."</blockquote>
Predictably -- I know because <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/stevemnomoremister.bsky.social/post/3kkr2dflrf42t" target="_blank">I predicted it</a> -- the Supreme Court is playing stall ball on Trump's behalf. Slate's Mark Joseph Stern <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/02/supreme-court-donald-trump-trial-january-6.html" target="_blank">reports</a>:
<blockquote>The Supreme Court has all but guaranteed that Donald Trump will not face trial for his efforts to subvert the 2020 election before this November’s presidential election. On Wednesday, after more than two weeks’ delay, the court issued <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/022824zr3_febh.pdf" target="_blank">an order</a> refusing to lift the stay that’s preventing the Jan. 6 trial, prosecuted by Special Counsel Jack Smith, from moving forward. Instead, the court took up the case, scheduling oral arguments for the week of April 22—nearly two months from now. On this timeline, the justices will probably issue a decision near the end of June. That punt gives Trump exactly what he wanted: an extended pause that will make it impossible for Judge Tanya Chutkan to hold a trial in time for the upcoming election.<br>
<br>
... even if a majority rules against Trump, and finishes its work quickly, a single dissenter like [Samuel] Alito can hold up the opinion until the end of June. It will take several more months to prepare for trial, and the Justice Department has a policy of avoiding any action that could affect the outcome of a race within 60 days of Election Day. So here’s how that all boils down: In the absolute best case scenario, both parties <i>might</i> be ready for trial by the fall. At that point, though, Jack Smith will bump straight into the Justice Department’s 60-day rule, and presumably postpone the trial until after November. Moreover, the trial itself will likely take a few months. It is now basically impossible to conceive of the trial concluding, and the jury rendering a verdict, before the election.</blockquote>
I think this is happening for three reasons -- one obvious, one somewhat less obvious, and possibly a third one that isn't obvious at all.<br>
<br>
Obviously, a supermajority of the Court wants Trump, or at least the Republican Party, to win the presidential election. (I imagine some of the Republican justices would prefer a corporatist lickspittle like Nikki Haley or Tim Scott, but Trump will do.)<br>
<br>
Less obviously, I think <a href="https://www.threads.net/@wannatalkabtlauriemetcalf/post/C36eFxTpNoH" target="_blank">they're afraid for their lives</a>:<br>
<br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKNbXfEY0S3KWOdOQL5wrxhGv6dC8zEnrNuy7qu700tIXNseAnbLqjhHHE6S9qAxcx95TVwOeUBVdPzeafdiT0Epxdd3PwdHpcKuIATbf7Wx0ia97TLCHlSxjCK_4ZCReCqM7cJxJGgQe6VKiFjdFYOsBzljw-i0qMKmWNdawarMhfBT1Fcw/s727/Screenshot%202024-02-29%20083709.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="460" data-original-height="231" data-original-width="727" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKNbXfEY0S3KWOdOQL5wrxhGv6dC8zEnrNuy7qu700tIXNseAnbLqjhHHE6S9qAxcx95TVwOeUBVdPzeafdiT0Epxdd3PwdHpcKuIATbf7Wx0ia97TLCHlSxjCK_4ZCReCqM7cJxJGgQe6VKiFjdFYOsBzljw-i0qMKmWNdawarMhfBT1Fcw/s400/Screenshot%202024-02-29%20083709.png"/></a></div>
<br>
In December, before the oral arguments, took place, <a href="https://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2023/12/how-well-get-second-trump-term-by.html" target="_blank">I said this</a> about the Supreme Court's likely response to the Colorado ballot case:
<blockquote>... they don't want to die. Colorado Supreme Court justices are now receiving <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/26/colorado-supreme-court-justices-donald-trump-threat-fbi" target="_blank">death threats</a>, and the members of the U.S. Supreme Court don't want to go through the same experience. They have better protection, so you'd think they'd be less worried, but I think fear will be a major reason they'll rule in Trump's favor.</blockquote>
After oral arguments, <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/02/supreme-court-appears-unlikely-to-kick-trump-off-colorado-ballot/" target="_blank">it became clear</a> that the Court will, in fact, rule in Trump's favor.<br>
<br>
Now, here's a possible third reason that the Court is helping Trump. Consider <a href="https://www.threads.net/@refinetherules/post/C37G4eiujG2" target="_blank">this</a>:<br>
<br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifRMBJLPYRq2DI4aFnxCSLXx7AKiWRATlZykFrVJz9Z-5O6SB-UnAAcegsGMjWTFHQ6evYf6lR7tUg0TvK7xzZ4q4KvSuDu2UuMCfl30bJintdmISaMezFfR-Ky7GJr-wdmHLHzYioFvyNDUy62yBKfr8Tk7MmwU-c34y5QPPZa1nikK8ohw/s762/Screenshot%202024-02-29%20084458.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="460" data-original-height="762" data-original-width="677" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifRMBJLPYRq2DI4aFnxCSLXx7AKiWRATlZykFrVJz9Z-5O6SB-UnAAcegsGMjWTFHQ6evYf6lR7tUg0TvK7xzZ4q4KvSuDu2UuMCfl30bJintdmISaMezFfR-Ky7GJr-wdmHLHzYioFvyNDUy62yBKfr8Tk7MmwU-c34y5QPPZa1nikK8ohw/s400/Screenshot%202024-02-29%20084458.png"/></a></div>
<br>
Early to mid-seventies is actually fairly young for a modern Supreme Court justice to retire. But there might be a couple of strategic retirements in a second Trump presidency -- if one knotty problem can be solved. Remember <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/01/us/politics/trump-2025-lawyers.html" target="_blank">this November story</a> from <i>The New York Times</i>?
<blockquote>... in a striking shift, Trump allies are building new recruiting pipelines separate from the Federalist Society.<br>
<br>
... “The Federalist Society doesn’t know what time it is,” said Russell T. Vought, a former senior Trump administration official who runs a think tank with close ties to the former president. He argued that many elite conservative lawyers had proved to be too timid when, in his view, the survival of the nation is at stake.<br>
<br>
... Hard-right allies of Mr. Trump increasingly speak of typical Federalist Society members as “squishes” too worried about maintaining their standing in polite society and their employment prospects at big law firms to advance their movement’s most contentious tactics and goals.</blockquote>
I think at least some of the Federalist Society SCOTUS justices might be concerned that Trump won't populate the federal bench -- including the Supreme Court -- with jurists who are members of their little secret society, which is part of the <i>real</i> Deep State in America. (I think if you described Leonard Leo to most Americans and said that this man hardly any of them have ever heard of has the degree of power over Republican judicial appointments that he actually has -- or has had until now -- they'd think you were peddling a conspiracy theory.)<br>
<br>
The Republican Supreme Court justices might be trying to get back into Trump's good graces, so he'll reliably appoint Kochite judges from their group in the future. I could be wrong, but I think that's part of the explanation for what the Supreme Court is up to in this case.Steve M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/11963290427258439242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3856837.post-3515838627934609962024-02-28T10:43:00.002-05:002024-02-29T07:10:34.908-05:00MAYBE IT'S TRUMP OPPONENTS WHO ARE SHY NOWI keep thinking about <a href="https://www.threads.net/@ronaldfilipkowski/post/C33_49ytNgJ" target="_blank">this</a>. It's challenging some of my assumptions.<br>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVpHPGmGGDoNyiRAQT8R292Mvm9r_7m62p4Asfzq7z93QJsXczz2BS1Wt3WcTNd9XBWB1MKFiDLoe4RhGl_aq0tIAcHplVnhTgUTo4HkBxJQTZl0U6lC8IsihF2mwqgIDkQXH_TJplI1BxP8YXxb-BNkRqrxDbhMU6N2pMa0OaQMBjQcqyHA/s521/Screenshot%202024-02-28%20101514.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="460" data-original-height="201" data-original-width="521" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVpHPGmGGDoNyiRAQT8R292Mvm9r_7m62p4Asfzq7z93QJsXczz2BS1Wt3WcTNd9XBWB1MKFiDLoe4RhGl_aq0tIAcHplVnhTgUTo4HkBxJQTZl0U6lC8IsihF2mwqgIDkQXH_TJplI1BxP8YXxb-BNkRqrxDbhMU6N2pMa0OaQMBjQcqyHA/s400/Screenshot%202024-02-28%20101514.png"/></a></div>
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Filipkowski is right about FiveThirtyEight, which said Donald Trump was leading Nikki Haley in Michigan <a href="https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-primary-r/2024/michigan/" target="_blank">by 56.9 points</a>. Right now, with 96% of the actual vote counted, Trump is leading Haley <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-primary-elections/michigan-president-results" target="_blank">by 41.6 points</a>.<br>
<br>
There was a time when we talked about <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-19/-shy-trump-voters-re-emerge-as-explanation-for-pollsters-miss" target="_blank">"shy Trump voters."</a> It was believed that pollsters missed many of Trump's voters in 2016 (although the polls did show a late shift to Trump -- he was <a href="https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2016/trump-vs-clinton" target="_blank">supposed to lose the popular vote by 3.2</a>, according to the Real Clear Politics average, and he lost it by 2.1). If there were shy Trump voters, pollsters really seemed to miss them in 2020 -- Joe Biden was<a href="https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2020/trump-vs-biden" target="_blank"> expected to beat Trump by 7.2</a>, but he won the popular vote by only 4.5. It was <a href="https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/11/25/1998220/-If-you-want-to-find-Trump-s-hidden-deplorables-look-to-the-lonely-fringes" target="_blank">theorized</a> that some Trump voters have low "social trust," and thus were afraid to tell mainstream-media pollsters that they planned to vote for Trump, presumably because they feared that George Soros and the Deep State keep a list of Trump voters, or something like that.<br>
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But maybe the Trump voters aren't shy <i>enough</i> these days. Maybe they're now <i>over</i>represented in polls, either because pollsters are overcorrecting to include a disproportionate share of them, or because they're now <i>more</i> eager than other voters to tell pollsters how they plan to vote.<br>
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Obviously, Trump is cruising to victory in the Republican primaries. But there are pockets of resistance, as <i>The Wall Street Journal</i> <a href="https://archive.is/5EorP" target="_blank">notes</a>:
<blockquote>Early results showed Haley did better than her statewide numbers with voters in places with large numbers of college-educated voters, including Washtenaw and Ingham counties, the homes of the University of Michigan and Michigan State. She also outperformed her state percentage in Oakland and Kent—big suburban counties with a higher percentage of college degrees than the state as a whole.<br>
<br>
In previous contests in New Hampshire and South Carolina, Haley showed strength versus Trump with independents and moderates—the kinds of potential swing voters who could help decide the November contest against Biden.</blockquote>
I've been assuming that Haley's slight overperformance is the result of crossover voting by people who usually vote Democratic. But the fact that the polling average in Michigan was off by 15 points suggests that maybe there's more to it than that.<br>
<br>
Trump leads Biden in the RCP polling average <a href="https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/trump-vs-biden" target="_blank">by 2</a> right now. Could it be that Trumpers are overrepresented in general-election polling, too? Could it be that high-school-educated MAGA voters are eagerly agreeing to be polled while college-educated right-centrist Trump skeptics aren't?<br>
<br>
If so, maybe Biden isn't struggling as much as I've been imagining. I still think he needs to win the popular vote by 4 or 5 in order to win the Electoral College. But maybe that's not as much of a reach as I've been thinking it is.Steve M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/11963290427258439242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3856837.post-49239106596927824312024-02-27T11:00:00.002-05:002024-02-27T11:06:06.877-05:00MORE PRO-TRUMP PUSH POLLING FROM MR. NO LABELSMark Penn is the <a href="https://markpenn.com/polling/" target="_blank">chairman</a> of the Harris Poll and the <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/174260/mark-penn-no-labels-no-role-real-imagined" target="_blank">husband</a> of No Labels CEO Nancy Jacobson. He's regarded as a Democratic pollster largely because he's <a href="https://markpenn.com/about/" target="_blank">worked with</a> both Bill and Hillary Clinton, though he later became a <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/person/p/mark-penn" target="_blank">Fox News contributor</a> and <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/08/31/mark-penn-clinton-strategist-mueller-investigation-donald-trump-219622/" target="_blank">Trump apologist</a>. His latest <a href="https://harvardharrispoll.com/" target="_blank">survey</a> has Trump <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4490047-trump-holds-6-point-lead-over-biden-despite-legal-woes-poll/" target="_blank">leading Joe Biden by 6</a> in a two-candidate race, by 7 with Robert Kennedy Jr. in the race, and by 9 with a filed that includes Biden, Trump, Kennedy, Cornel West, and Jill Stein.<br>
<br>
The survey also includes quite a bit of pro-Trump <a href="https://www-archive.aapor.org/Standards-Ethics/Resources/What-is-a-Push-Poll.aspx" target="_blank">push-polling</a>.<br>
<br>
Here's an example: The impeachment case against President Biden effectively collapsed <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/15/politics/former-fbi-informant-charged-biden-burisma/index.html" target="_blank">on February 15</a>, when it was revealed that a key source for Biden allegations, Alexander Smirnov, had been charged with lying about the Biden family's activities involving Ukraine. On <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/20/politics/biden-former-fbi-informant-russian-intelligence/index.html" target="_blank">February 20</a>, we learned that Russian intelligence officials were Smirnov's principal source for these lies.<br>
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Undeterred, Penn's team decided it was still okay to include this survey question:<br>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_ToCz2h5gAi-QoytSlWqN2yGzqlRl9ftkHeBzq45C1GXRHhW_gH8c0YLkHRI1Dx44iv47JTjHDkVMvVhShtPzxl_diR6r3PNBIlLSNyGpLlvOGjJz9fWsn7JW0LACzKHGwqAnmEvoriH3gPO2ef1jdcqM_MfXMe2KfqxYsGHRTgMPp0yBKQ/s347/Screenshot%202024-02-27%20101846.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="460" data-original-height="316" data-original-width="347" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_ToCz2h5gAi-QoytSlWqN2yGzqlRl9ftkHeBzq45C1GXRHhW_gH8c0YLkHRI1Dx44iv47JTjHDkVMvVhShtPzxl_diR6r3PNBIlLSNyGpLlvOGjJz9fWsn7JW0LACzKHGwqAnmEvoriH3gPO2ef1jdcqM_MfXMe2KfqxYsGHRTgMPp0yBKQ/s400/Screenshot%202024-02-27%20101846.png"/></a></div>
<br>
This is one of many questions about alleged Biden misdeeds -- mishandling of classified documents by Joe Biden, as well as unsavory dealings by Joe, James, and Hunter Biden. There are no questions suggesting that the figures pursuing the Bidens might be acting in bad faith. However, when we get to the section about Trump's legal problems, the first question is this, asked one of two ways:<br>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOMSIZm8lpkpuxOx4WdlZnYR91j2te8wGg0nkElWaxhgsuTWg9M11ynyXNo2NtT2TKDLUt_Ul8mQnwlLiDyKNTECwVvCJjl4bkpmdVoRB-oP4zNDvVwGSfqGc_sea_f_KGC-LCtlgXmSwQBhONhIW90QvQFjgbVZhzVc23rzUEox8kvONG3Q/s388/Screenshot%202024-02-27%20102655.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="460" data-original-height="288" data-original-width="388" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOMSIZm8lpkpuxOx4WdlZnYR91j2te8wGg0nkElWaxhgsuTWg9M11ynyXNo2NtT2TKDLUt_Ul8mQnwlLiDyKNTECwVvCJjl4bkpmdVoRB-oP4zNDvVwGSfqGc_sea_f_KGC-LCtlgXmSwQBhONhIW90QvQFjgbVZhzVc23rzUEox8kvONG3Q/s400/Screenshot%202024-02-27%20102655.png"/></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9OTvesJwS4OaV-C1vWSbmQI0d0xNgzYfgEKN3u3hjRfgpvwHKU0EWbe1egIiB-sHRRWKnvHH9HEZ47PgxDLjWse2-9cZ0fFF8oz4iYwho8lcLWXGDX7CW0IIgShYNO3PaWABWrxdtjYtXO-QfFFL22A262UaFHO8c8ETaFjro7p8_T6Xitw/s350/Screenshot%202024-02-27%20102747.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="460" data-original-height="285" data-original-width="350" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9OTvesJwS4OaV-C1vWSbmQI0d0xNgzYfgEKN3u3hjRfgpvwHKU0EWbe1egIiB-sHRRWKnvHH9HEZ47PgxDLjWse2-9cZ0fFF8oz4iYwho8lcLWXGDX7CW0IIgShYNO3PaWABWrxdtjYtXO-QfFFL22A262UaFHO8c8ETaFjro7p8_T6Xitw/s400/Screenshot%202024-02-27%20102747.png"/></a></div>
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Questions about Trump's criminal cases are stripped of all detail. Here, for instance, is the only question about Trump's handling of classified documents:<br>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiGIMM9PJGPDVjfPyCPztx1k5xKzelqYVE4BhbdRzqi8jmzvBJvk9ng8gcT8j_sYdwP4mdzEnpBXDECEyBsZh0N85FINeiJKiCXtnPTfYjoVslO92dMSPK7-pSNTi8wiCQMKy61tZ063-D-I3d9QQus_VE4EPIQYlX8upsn5sKdbY8SMCQhA/s291/Screenshot%202024-02-27%20103151.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="460" data-original-height="291" data-original-width="277" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiGIMM9PJGPDVjfPyCPztx1k5xKzelqYVE4BhbdRzqi8jmzvBJvk9ng8gcT8j_sYdwP4mdzEnpBXDECEyBsZh0N85FINeiJKiCXtnPTfYjoVslO92dMSPK7-pSNTi8wiCQMKy61tZ063-D-I3d9QQus_VE4EPIQYlX8upsn5sKdbY8SMCQhA/s400/Screenshot%202024-02-27%20103151.png"/></a></div>
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Now here's one of several questions about Biden's handling of classified documents:<br>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRzsUd6ustwxV9OTtmhFESlRUxF_gg7iMLFxNiar8EnktOa2wcHnpgyZUjnUiVHaOZv2Nqc8Q-WYwRNXuwgP1f2zfImpi0u4dPwL0NZ5SrQXFpLcM1Abx2aUpgmS_k_8J3q0yP6m7PfwHzVRayEWg8UGxNUVWayTPA7DMiHag_3yKCp8MZQw/s371/Screenshot%202024-02-27%20103335.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="460" data-original-height="307" data-original-width="371" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRzsUd6ustwxV9OTtmhFESlRUxF_gg7iMLFxNiar8EnktOa2wcHnpgyZUjnUiVHaOZv2Nqc8Q-WYwRNXuwgP1f2zfImpi0u4dPwL0NZ5SrQXFpLcM1Abx2aUpgmS_k_8J3q0yP6m7PfwHzVRayEWg8UGxNUVWayTPA7DMiHag_3yKCp8MZQw/s400/Screenshot%202024-02-27%20103335.png"/></a></div>
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When the subject turns to Trump's bank fraud case, Penn's survey argues Trump's case for him:<br>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0TFH2CeM-BDAwuqnEFeHyOsNQrbcpivHecCy7wko0NmrB2G7B8EMuopk6CF3y-mYvZebqq5rOqUlSNuvIGh0lcb2IsuGC1Hn2C8Cahdgb5lrWoXovXGdZ6avwkDyzjvTK8i73HbCwGYfpTP30Ef5N-kw5j-cbfhe5OEV70ayuIhERdSy7Jg/s372/Screenshot%202024-02-27%20105532.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="460" data-original-height="312" data-original-width="372" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0TFH2CeM-BDAwuqnEFeHyOsNQrbcpivHecCy7wko0NmrB2G7B8EMuopk6CF3y-mYvZebqq5rOqUlSNuvIGh0lcb2IsuGC1Hn2C8Cahdgb5lrWoXovXGdZ6avwkDyzjvTK8i73HbCwGYfpTP30Ef5N-kw5j-cbfhe5OEV70ayuIhERdSy7Jg/s400/Screenshot%202024-02-27%20105532.png"/></a></div>
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And there's yet another question arguing that the pursuit of Trump is in bad faith:<br>
<br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjro1kttuU_MJ0Emt3BQl0OhpkZMd_b7shbFF7y02iTNo2sgFv96UO3ZQZVkDguAhS1aKm7jk7CS8_A1TOAFDWcP7f33drKfUj0rr0DJiH-gYpxBwHMOuO7Rsj6tTunBt6mYafkZcK5VrLSG4wjyrLVvVrQn8rDOrybB8ioSC08AFyYLXHTCQ/s426/Screenshot%202024-02-27%20105735.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="460" data-original-height="347" data-original-width="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjro1kttuU_MJ0Emt3BQl0OhpkZMd_b7shbFF7y02iTNo2sgFv96UO3ZQZVkDguAhS1aKm7jk7CS8_A1TOAFDWcP7f33drKfUj0rr0DJiH-gYpxBwHMOuO7Rsj6tTunBt6mYafkZcK5VrLSG4wjyrLVvVrQn8rDOrybB8ioSC08AFyYLXHTCQ/s400/Screenshot%202024-02-27%20105735.png"/></a></div>
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Eventually the survey turns to the subject of immigration. Here's one of several questions:<br>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU5tgPVNwLkxlrNsNFq4M6aDvXCrxPucqeb9b5GWO8KahWnyXrDWhVFA2xAfS9fqNXVANGoeF2Uk7EMML6tUhdPpmijoCQvZncXMPSUXoF_3YxMPE1iYHU-f20G7HnNnYp9kTVxwPpZ5bQ5uoSkCgSCB-WRiGI6SGFdwnkDUZGjCW0hlBKLg/s351/Screenshot%202024-02-27%20104658.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="228" data-original-width="351" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU5tgPVNwLkxlrNsNFq4M6aDvXCrxPucqeb9b5GWO8KahWnyXrDWhVFA2xAfS9fqNXVANGoeF2Uk7EMML6tUhdPpmijoCQvZncXMPSUXoF_3YxMPE1iYHU-f20G7HnNnYp9kTVxwPpZ5bQ5uoSkCgSCB-WRiGI6SGFdwnkDUZGjCW0hlBKLg/s400/Screenshot%202024-02-27%20104658.png"/></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji80dzwNCdooGqjjlWs5ufcepHoJ2bj5Y_wu2DDZ9faAj2zzjczsfY-SdDGlr8iO4RDUPiXJ0ETs5OSuaA37ySHlp9IM42LY1-RjswTT64EciT3rrIrSPWUpHU-TK5hc3fzNFcx_U4Cz7WCuOaSm2XekKDureA_cPRh0arrZyWAjSCsFptdg/s353/Screenshot%202024-02-27%20104807.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="257" data-original-width="353" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji80dzwNCdooGqjjlWs5ufcepHoJ2bj5Y_wu2DDZ9faAj2zzjczsfY-SdDGlr8iO4RDUPiXJ0ETs5OSuaA37ySHlp9IM42LY1-RjswTT64EciT3rrIrSPWUpHU-TK5hc3fzNFcx_U4Cz7WCuOaSm2XekKDureA_cPRh0arrZyWAjSCsFptdg/s400/Screenshot%202024-02-27%20104807.png"/></a></div>
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"The bill would allow up to 5000 migrants to come in each day before [the] new measure kicked in" is a Republican lie that has been <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/does-new-immigration-bill-5000-illegal-border-crossings-per-day-rcna136656" target="_blank">debunked</a> by many <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/05/us/politics/border-deal-immigration.html" target="_blank">fact checkers</a>. As a Poynter Institute fact-check <a href="https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2024/no-the-senate-immigration-bill-does-not-allow-5000-people-to-illegally-enter-the-us-daily/" target="_blank">notes</a> (emphasis added), the bill "compels the Homeland Security secretary to use an emergency authority to bar people from requesting asylum if officials record 5,000 <i>encounters</i> a day over seven consecutive days. But that’s not the same as <i>accepting</i> 5,000 people into the U.S. daily."<br>
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I've been <a href="https://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2022/04/mark-penn-is-push-pollster.html" target="_blank">telling you</a> about the <a href="https://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2021/06/mark-penn-doesnt-get-all-trumpy-poll.html" target="_blank">push-polling</a> of Mr. No Labels for years. He's still at it.Steve M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/11963290427258439242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3856837.post-22315979664806403482024-02-26T13:23:00.001-05:002024-02-26T13:23:34.294-05:00DEMOCRATS COULD NAB A SENATE SEAT IN FLORIDA THIS YEAR (BUT PROBABLY WON'T)I'm usually wary of news stories that read like press releases, but <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/gop-sen-rick-scott-is-uniquely-unpopular-in-florida-can-dems-and-debbie-mucarsel-powell-capitalize" target="_blank">this Daily Beast story</a> about former Florida congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, who's running to defeat Senator Rick Scott this year, has me eager to smoke some hopium.<br>
<br>
As the story points out, Scott seems beatable:
<blockquote> A <a href="https://www.cygn.al/florida-statewide-poll-republicans-hold-firm-leads-presidential-matchups/" target="_blank">November 2023 surve</a>y from right-leaning polling firm Cygnal showed only 35 percent of Floridians have a favorable view of Scott—less than both Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Gov. Ron DeSantis.</blockquote>
And he's not an inherently appealing person:
<blockquote>During Scott’s eight years as Florida governor and five years in the Senate, he’s cultivated a reputation as a staunch conservative <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-rick-scott-became-the-senator-washington-loves-to-hate" target="_blank">who has trouble making friends on Capitol Hill</a>—an <a href="https://time.com/6267826/rick-scott-interview/" target="_blank">advocate for the rich</a> and an <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/fox-news-anchor-john-roberts-calls-bs-on-rick-scotts-spin-over-taxing-the-poor" target="_blank">enemy of the poor</a>. Basically, he’s the perfect Republican boogeyman for Democrats to bash on the campaign trail.<br>
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Influential Florida Democratic donor John Morgan—founder of the Morgan & Morgan law firm—put his assessment of Scott bluntly.<br>
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“He looks bad. He looks like an alien that has just landed here with ET. He’s not a prototypical candidate. He’s very awkward,” Morgan said.</blockquote>
Mucarsel-Powell intends to run against him on issues:
<blockquote>To start, she’s hitting Scott for his hardline stances on abortion. Scott said if he were still governor, he <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/3949607-rick-scott-on-6-week-abortion-ban-if-i-was-still-governor-i-would-sign-this-bill/" target="_blank">would have enshrined a six-week abortion ban</a>. He has also signaled <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/sen-rick-scott-says-s-arguments-abortion-restrictions-federal-level-rcna50020" target="_blank">openness to “reasonable” federal abortion restrictions</a>....<br>
<br>
The very first line in Mucarsel-Powell’s <a href="https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=24d434d1ee6f8031&rlz=1C5GCEM_enUS1079US1079&q=debbie+mucarsel+powell+abortion+ad&tbm=vid&source=lnms&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj0oozKssKEAxUoEFkFHb3_AN0Q0pQJegQICBAB&biw=1386&bih=775&dpr=2#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:c962a1c1,vid:aXOb21q_-Qg,st:0" target="_blank">campaign launch video</a> was a shot at Scott and his abortion stance: “He would strip away women’s rights with a national abortion ban.” <br>
<br>
...Mucarsel-Powell herself called the housing affordability crisis “the biggest issue.” She blamed a <a href="https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/business/2011/05/17/gov-scott-signs-property-insurance/7442914007/" target="_blank">2011 property insurance policy</a> that Scott signed into law as the culprit of the crisis.<br>
<br>
And then there’s Scott’s infamous <a href="https://rescueamerica.com/12-point-plan/" target="_blank">12-point plan to “Rescue America.</a>” The unpopular proposal touched the well-understood third rail of politics—targeting Social Security and Medicare....<br>
<br>
... Mucarsel-Powell hopes running against the guy who wrote the plan on sunsetting Social Security and Medicare will give her an edge—particularly in Florida.</blockquote>
In one summer poll of this matchup -- admittedly <a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/665381981/DSCC-FL-Polling-Memo-51#from_embed" target="_blank">from</a> a Democratic Senate Campaign Committee pollster -- Mucarsel-Powell <a href="https://www.racetothewh.com/senate/24/florida" target="_blank">led Scott 44%-43%</a>. Party polls usually skew a few points in favor of the party's own candidate, but even if you tweak this a bit, it suggests that Mucarsel-Powell could give Scott a run for his money.<br>
<br>
But money is the problem. Scott has boatloads of his own, and the Democratic Party and its donors might not want to spend any on this race:
<blockquote>Morgan, for example, told The Daily Beast his involvement in the Florida Senate race will be “zero.” He doesn’t have plans—at least at this point—to donate to Mucarsel-Powell.<br>
<br>
“I might write a check, but I don’t see myself raising big money. I would have to see a lot more as we get closer,” Morgan told The Daily Beast....<br>
<br>
“We’ll see if she can raise the money,” he added, noting he would also be taking cues from Majority Leader Chuck Schumer....<br>
<br>
As skeptical donors see it, every dollar spent on booting Scott from the Senate is a dollar that Democrats aren’t spending on other competitions.</blockquote>
And she's running under the aegis of the hapless Florida Democratic Party (although the party is under <a href="https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/politics/2023/02/25/nikki-fried-to-lead-florida-democratic-party/69943964007/" target="_blank">new leadership</a> as of last February).<br>
<br>
Mucarsel-Powell probably won't win, or even come close. But it will be painful if she loses because of a lack of investment from the national party, especially if the race is very close. It's still painful to think about the Wisconsin Senate race in 2022, in which Democrat Mandela Barnes lost to the loathsome Republican incumbent Ron Johnson <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_United_States_Senate_election_in_Wisconsin" target="_blank">by 1 point</a>, largely because the national Democratic Party <a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/02/07/mandela-barnes-long-run-pac-democrats" target="_blank">wrote the race off</a>. It's possible that Florida is now irreversibly red -- but it's also possible that it can be turned back into a purple state again with a little effort.Steve M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/11963290427258439242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3856837.post-84299439634356365842024-02-25T11:31:00.002-05:002024-02-25T11:31:51.585-05:00DOES TRUMP IN 2024 = BUSH IN 1992?<a href="https://bsky.app/profile/chathamharrison.bsky.social/post/3kmao625xpc2v" target="_blank">Here's</a> the <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/donmoyn.bsky.social/post/3kmankjpq2t2r" target="_blank">new</a> pundit <a href="https://twitter.com/JillDLawrence/status/1761569100042490197" target="_blank">hotness</a>:<br>
<br>
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<br>
So is Trump effectively an incumbent who's running a weak race? Is he Jimmy Carter in 1980 or George Bush in 1992? Does that mean he'll lose in November?<br>
<br>
Maybe -- but those earlier incumbents aren't exactly comparable. It's not just the fact that they were <i>literally</i> incumbents. It's also the fact that their primary challengers did well despite the fact that few if any voters were crossing party lines to vote for them. There was a real Republican contest in 1980 and a real Democratic contest in 1992. This year, Biden's nomination is inevitable, so there's no real Democratic contest, and so there's significant Democratic and independent crossover voting in the Republican contests.<br>
<br>
After the Iowa caucuses, much was made of entrance poll results indicating that 43% of Haley's voters intend to vote for Joe Biden in November, but <a href="https://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2024/01/no-thats-not-silver-lining.html" target="_blank">as I told you</a> at the time, 39% of Haley voters chose Biden in the <i>last</i> election. In <a href="https://www.cnn.com/election/2024/primaries-and-caucuses/exit-polls/new-hampshire/republican-primary/0" target="_blank">New Hampshire</a>, according to exit polling, Trump won 74% of registered Republicans, while Haley won 88% of registered Democrats and 60% of independents. And here are the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/24/us/politics/trump-haley-south-carolina-takeaways.html" target="_blank">South Carolina numbers</a>:
<blockquote>Mr. Trump was crushing Ms. Haley with 73 percent support among Republicans to her 26 percent. She was still winning 54 percent of independents, but they made up only 21 percent of the electorate, while roughly seven in 10 voters were Republican.</blockquote>
The other reason Trump might not be Jimmy Carter in 1980 or George Bush in 1992 is that a certain percentage of voters don't vote for a <i>candidate,</i> they vote for <i>change.</i> In 1980, voting for change meant voting against Carter; in 1992, it meant voting against Bush. In 2024, it means voting <i>for</i> Trump. According to the <a href="https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/state-of-the-union/direction-of-country" target="_blank">Real Clear Polling average</a>, only 24% of Americans think the country is heading in the right direction; 65.9% think it's heading in the wrong direction. So this really could be a change election.<br>
<br>
In order for Biden to win under those conditions, either the direction-of-the-country numbers need to improve or Biden has to persuade voters that the particular change on offer would be very, very bad. I don't think Biden has much control over the former, but for the latter, he has quite a bit to work with.Steve M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/11963290427258439242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3856837.post-52424146451791784032024-02-24T09:55:00.001-05:002024-02-24T09:55:11.503-05:00WHY IVF SEEMS TO BE THE BIGGEST STORY OF THE WEEKThis week <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/20/politics/biden-former-fbi-informant-russian-intelligence/index.html" target="_blank">we learned</a> that Alexander Smirnov, a one-time informant who's been arrested for lying to the FBI about Hunter Biden, obtained his phony dirt on the president's son from Russian intelligence officials. The number of pieces mentioning Smirnov that have appeared in <i>The New York Times</i> this week? <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/search?dropmab=false&endDate=2024-02-24&query=%22alexander%20smirnov%22&sort=best&startDate=2024-02-17" target="_blank">Six</a>.<br>
<br>
We also learned about Nex Benedict, a nonbinary teenager who was assaulted by fellow students in a high school bathroom in Oklahoma, and who died the next day. The number of <i>Times</i> pieces mentioning Benedict this week? <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/search?dropmab=false&endDate=2024-02-24&query=%22nex%20benedict%22&sort=best&startDate=2024-02-17" target="_blank">Four</a>.<br>
<br>
And we saw an Alabama Supreme Court ruling that defined embryos and blastocysts as children for the purposes of state law, a decision that threatens to make in vitro fertilization unavailable in the state. <i>Times</i> pieces referring to the IVF ruling and its ramifications this week? <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/search?dropmab=false&endDate=2024-02-24&query=%22in%20vitro%22&sort=best&startDate=2024-02-17" target="_blank">Twenty-four</a>.<br>
<br>
All three of these stories matter. <a href="https://presswatchers.org/2024/02/the-hunter-biden-story-has-done-a-total180-but-the-msm-is-in-denial/" target="_blank">Dan Froomkin correctly argues</a> that the press needs to see the House GOP's presidential impeachment effort as corrupt and the party's most prominent politicians as witting or unwitting agents of Russia:
<blockquote>The story is no longer whether Joe Biden committed high crimes and misdemeanors by maintaining relations with his ne’er-do-well son. In fact, there has never been any credible evidence to support that conclusion.<br>
<br>
The real story is that the ludicrous Republican impeachment investigation has now been exposed as a Russian intelligence op. This, even as Republicans do Russian President Vladimir Putin’s bidding by blocking support for Ukraine and only a few short years after Trump aides welcomed Russian moves to help the Trump campaign in 2016.<br>
<br>
But the political reporters at our most esteemed newsrooms who went to great lengths to portray the Biden impeachment investigation as a serious inquiry seem unable to change gears.<br>
<br>
I’m not surprised. It would require them to admit they were wrong. They don’t do that.</blockquote>
In the Oklahoma story, we know that the Twitter account Libs of TikTok, one of Elon Musk's favorites, <a href="https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/2/18/2224306/-Libs-of-TikTok-targeted-a-district-then-a-non-binary-student-was-killed-on-campus" target="_blank">targeted</a> a pro-LGBTQ teacher at Nex Benedict's school a couple of years ago, and we know that the account's founder, Chaya Raichik, was appointed to the Oklahoma Department of Education’s Library Media Advisory Committee. We know that Benedict's family <a href="https://popular.info/p/nex-benedicts-mom-raises-doubts-about" target="_blank">has strong doubts</a> about early reports stating that Benedict's death appeared unrelated to the assault. All of this deserves more mainstream media coverage.<br>
<br>
But it's the IVF story that's getting the most attention at <i>The New York Times.</i> Why? Because it's more relatable to the rich and upper-middle-class folks who decide what goes into the <i>Times</i>, and it's presumed to be more relatable to the paper's upmarket readers.<br>
<br>
IVF is expensive, so it's mostly for an upscale clientele. Often, IVF clients are two-career couples who want children but didn't have them when they were young. Stories about the possible disappearance of IVF are worrisome to this demographic.<br>
<br>
For some reason, the same people aren't worried that they could have a gay, trans, or nonbinary kid who's bullied and brutalized in school. Maybe they think such violence would never take place in their liberal suburban schools. Maybe they think they'd push back if one of their kids said they were trans or nonbinary. Maybe they just flat-out hate trans and nonbinary people, even if they've gotten used to the idea of gay people over the past couple of decades, and consider themselves liberal and open-minded. Or maybe that's just the writers and editors of the <i>Times</i>. Maybe the readers would be more sympathetic.<br>
<br>
The Russia story doesn't seem to matter very much to the writers and editors. Hey, we had a president who was a Russian agent and life was okay. Gas was under $3 a gallon and the stock market was doing pretty well. So who cares?<br>
<br>
IVF matters at the <i>Times</i> because it matters to the people who write and edit the <i>Times</i>, and presumably to the people who read it. Republicans can't get away with consequence-free IVF bans, even in a deep red state. But they can get away with many other outrages because the people who write and read the <i>Times</i> and other mainstream news sources don't believe those things will ever affect them personally.Steve M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/11963290427258439242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3856837.post-20777216741904475262024-02-23T10:57:00.002-05:002024-02-23T10:57:22.600-05:00DO THEY REALLY INTEND TO BAN CONTRACEPTION? CAN THEY GET AWAY WITH IT?A 2023 Heritage Society video clip on the subject of contraception was recirculating on social media in the wake of the Alabama Supreme Court's ruling on in vitro fertilization. Then Christopher Rufo entered the chat:<br>
<br>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">So what? The pill causes health problems for many women. "Recreational sex" is a large part of the reason we have so many single-mother households, which drives poverty, crime, and dysfunction. The point of sex is to create children—this is natural, normal, and good.</p>— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) <a href="https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1760704767771431360?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 22, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<br>
When Rufo publishes a fatwa, it usually means that whatever he's targeting will also be targeted by the entirety of the right. It's happened in the case of critical race theory, diversity programs at corporations and universities, and trans youth. So there's reason to worry.<br>
<br>
But while Democratic politicians are usually too frightened to defend whatever (or whomever) Rufo and his allies are attacking, sex is an area where the public doesn't need to hear from Democratic politicans in order to recognize the threat. And it's not just young left-leaning people who think recreational sex is a good idea -- sex for pleasure has been enjoyed enthusiastically by their parents and grandparents, including many of the Republican ones. And remember, this is <i>heterosexual</i> sex we're talking about. Rufo and Heritage can't tap into homophobia and transphobia in this crusade.<br>
<br>
Republicans don't have a good track record when they've tried to attack normie sexual behavior. In 1992, Vice President Dan Quayle delivered a speech in which he <a href="https://ew.com/article/1992/06/05/dan-quayle-complains-about-murphy-brown/" target="_blank">denounced</a> a fictional TV character, Murphy Brown, for having a child out of wedlock. He'd said and done quite a few embarrassing things, but his laughingstock status was irreversible after that. A few years later, around the time Republicans were impeaching Bill Clinton, there was a drive to establish "covenant marriages" in the states; these marriages would be hard to terminate. The campaign foundered aftrer <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covenant_marriage" target="_blank">only three states</a> made covenant marriages optional.<br>
<br>
Some of the Heritage folks might be sincere about banning contraception, but I think Rufo is a cynic who doesn't really care about any of the issues on which he holds forth. If he's weighing in, I suspect he's trying to lay the groundwork for a future in which the right <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/what-does-comstock-act-a-law-from-the-1870s-have-to-do-with-abortion-pills" target="_blank">uses the Comstock Act</a> to prevent the shipment of abortion pills. If they've got us talking about birth control bans, Rufo and his allies might hope that <i>merely</i> banning abortion pills will seem like a moderate position.<br>
<br>
I also imagine they're planning to start blaming the real or imagined effects of abortion pills for social problems they don't want the government to address, the way right-wingers now routinely blame anti-depressants for school shootings. If there's a rise in poverty or teen pregnancy after an all-GOP government zeroes out federal funds for family planning, blame the Pill! It makes young women crazy!<br>
<br>
And they might be trying to link this sex-should-have-consequences message to the "tradwife" movement, which <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/terriblefacebookmemes/comments/zwy89a/how_the_right_sees_feminists/" target="_blank">denounces feminism</a> and embraces women who stay at home and have lots of babies. This messaging also has links to the culture of incels, many of whom denounce the casual sex they're not getting to enjoy and <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/NotHowGirlsWork/comments/vwropr/on_a_scary_incel_thread_about_wanting_to_marry_a/" target="_blank">dream of marrying virgins</a>.<br>
<br>
And, of course, Heritage and Rufo may see this as a long march: Maybe they'll be able to ban birth control someday, but it will take decades. (That means, of course, that it's a goal they can use in fundraising for decades.)<br>
<br>
I think Republicans could very well manage to ban emergency contraception and IUDs, based on the argument that life begins at conception rather than implantation. But I don't see them successfully banning other forms of birth control right away -- it would be political suicide.<br>
<br>
For the true believers, I suppose the argument that the chemicals in the Pill make women crazy can be used to attack implantable contraception, or the contraceptive foam used with diaphragms, but I don't see how it can be used to ban condoms. (We handed condoms out to GIs in World War II!)<br>
<br>
But these folks are gearing up for a long battle. I don't think they'll win soon, but maybe they don't want to.Steve M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/11963290427258439242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3856837.post-29496426485172017142024-02-22T11:20:00.001-05:002024-02-22T11:20:10.599-05:00A GOOD POLL FOR BIDEN, WITH SOME UNSETTLING RESULTSJoe Biden leads the presidential race by 4, according to <a href="https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3890" target="_blank">a new Quinnipiac poll</a>:
<blockquote>In a hypothetical 2024 general election presidential matchup, President Joe Biden holds a small lead over former President Donald Trump with 49 percent of registered voters supporting Biden and 45 percent supporting Trump, according to a Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pea-ack) University national poll of registered voters released today.</blockquote>
Quinnipiac has been Biden's best poll recently -- he led by 6 in <a href="https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3889" target="_blank">a survey</a> the firm released last month.<br>
<br>
Biden has a 1-point lead in a multi-candidate race:
<blockquote>When the hypothetical matchup is expanded to include independent and Green Party candidates, Biden receives 38 percent support, Trump receives 37 percent support, independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. receives 15 percent support, independent candidate Cornel West receives 3 percent support, and Green Party candidate Jill Stein receives 3 percent support.</blockquote>
Quinnipiac is an outlier -- apart from the firm's two 2024 surveys, <a href="https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/trump-vs-biden" target="_blank">every other poll released this year</a> has Trump in the lead, is a tie, or has Biden up by 1. In most of these polls, Trump is in the lead. But Quinnipiac might be right! Polls have been underestimating the Democrats' strength in most elections since 2020.<br>
<br>
But there are some unsettling numbers here. Yes, this is just one poll, but if it's accurate, it's more evidence that the Democrats' grip on younger voters is slipping. The two-candidate race is effectively even in every under-65 age group, though Biden has a small lead in every non-senior age category. Biden leads by 4 because of a double-digit lead among seniors:<br>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoNCWHlrPKLOKrImrVbdgkT8T8EXY65J3sPg2dnV9p_yBk3KY2X0oH6Q-U1EtjlRqZISib5GgkNsPqSqyQeeh8pJhawAZ6yCote7ZLDFlYPWHuDrDk5tP8eIvpKcaGCdZm4quPrN8isnbJ2enP1bxp72oxyIEY1AZMFTBkp-8Ob0lDFb8wjw/s567/Screenshot%202024-02-22%20104329.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="460" data-original-height="442" data-original-width="567" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoNCWHlrPKLOKrImrVbdgkT8T8EXY65J3sPg2dnV9p_yBk3KY2X0oH6Q-U1EtjlRqZISib5GgkNsPqSqyQeeh8pJhawAZ6yCote7ZLDFlYPWHuDrDk5tP8eIvpKcaGCdZm4quPrN8isnbJ2enP1bxp72oxyIEY1AZMFTBkp-8Ob0lDFb8wjw/s400/Screenshot%202024-02-22%20104329.png"/></a></div>
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Now look at the five-candidate race:<br>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYWJYW0GCN1KjGlPybct-x-GNh5rm_xYwVSz55xdHQcR1FM7v-gqIH2mqsj3sCb-Y7fRpryu-y6L5bmFzLX87b4Q1aAAQsa5pdzq8c2c3GeU0e21llT9f_ijNZlZM1uXRqcSf6ftaGXz_6utWr29qtlJbTpJvcfl093wYKHqH7kGP_qfVKlQ/s577/Screenshot%202024-02-22%20104531.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="480" data-original-height="577" data-original-width="556" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYWJYW0GCN1KjGlPybct-x-GNh5rm_xYwVSz55xdHQcR1FM7v-gqIH2mqsj3sCb-Y7fRpryu-y6L5bmFzLX87b4Q1aAAQsa5pdzq8c2c3GeU0e21llT9f_ijNZlZM1uXRqcSf6ftaGXz_6utWr29qtlJbTpJvcfl093wYKHqH7kGP_qfVKlQ/s400/Screenshot%202024-02-22%20104531.png"/></a></div>
<br>
Trump has a tiny lead in the under-50 age categories -- and the minor-party vote explodes: 36% of 18-to-34-year-olds say they're going to vote for Kennedy, West, or Stein, more than the percentage who say they'll vote for Biden or Trump. The minor-party vote is 25% in the 35-to-49 group, 19% in the 50-to-64 group, and only 13% in the senior group.<br>
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If this is correct, the youngest voters hate the two-party system, or at least the two major-party candidates they've been offered. And although polling tends to overestimate minor-party voting, there'll be a double-digit minor-party vote among the young even if this number is three times the actual minor-party number in November.<br>
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I don't believe Cornel West will be on any ballots in November -- as <a href="https://archive.is/8KCHK" target="_blank"><i>Forbes</i> reported in December</a>, West is effectively broke and running an underfunded, understaffed campaign. I have my doubts about Kennedy, too, after reading <a href="https://www.mediaite.com/politics/the-campaign-is-a-mess-rfk-jr-hit-with-staff-exodus-over-lavish-spending-and-amateurish-leadership/" target="_blank">Mediaite's report</a> on wasteful spending in his campaign. So if neither of these candidates is on most state ballots (and if No Labels doesn't run a candidate, which appears <a href="https://thehill.com/newsletters/campaign-report/4479344-with-manchin-out-no-labels-faces-dwindling-options/" target="_blank">more and more likely</a>), will disgruntled young people vote in surprising numbers for Jill Stein? Will they refuse to vote? Will they conclude that Trump isn't the staus quo and Biden is, so voting for Trump is kinda-sorta like voting for Bernie? Or will they come home to Biden? It'll be some combination of those, but I don't know the proportions.<br>
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Here's another weird result: Biden loses to Nikki Haley 46%-43% -- but if the minor-party candidates are included, Biden beats Haley in a blowout, 35%-27%. How does that happen? Here are the numbers by party:<br>
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Haley gets only 56% of the Republican vote! Kennedy gets 30%! I keep telling you that her fight with Trump has made Haley quite unpopular among Republicans -- right now, her favorable rating among GOP respondents is only 43.3%, with a 37.8% unfavorable rating, according to <a href="https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/nikki-haley/r/" target="_blank">FiveThirtyEight's average</a>. In the Quinnipiac poll, her favorable and unfavorable numbers among Republicans are 42%/32%. Kennedy's numbers among Republicans are 40%/17%. His net favorable rating among Republicans is <i>much</i> higher than hers. (For comparison, Biden's favorable/unfavorable numbers among Democrats are 83%/16%. Among Republicans, Trump's numbers are 87%/13%.)<br>
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That five-candidate race is highly unlikely -- but if it happened, Haley and Kennedy would split the anti-Biden vote, and Biden would cruise to victory. (Another fun fact: Kennedy wins among independents by double digits.)<br>
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Again, this is just one poll. But there are some strange numbers in it.
Steve M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/11963290427258439242noreply@blogger.com0