Month: September 2022

I don’t really have strong feelings about Maggie Haberman. I’ve noted that she’s getting some glowing press from her colleagues as she rolls out her new book on Trump: Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America. In these pieces, the widespread criticism she faces as an “access reporter” are muted when they’re not outright dismissed.

One thing I know is that her editors at the New York Times have little to complain about. She’s incredibly productive, often averaging more than more one byline per day. Her stories are very well-read, contributing significantly to the overall circulation of the newspaper. And she breaks a lot of news.

I think she’s still temperamentally and professionally more of a tabloid reporter than the Times would like, but it’s her background with the New York Post and New York Daily News that prepared her to navigate the tabloid madness of Trump world.

She’s very good at what she does, primarily because she does a far better than average job of cultivating sources, but also because she outworks her competitors. Having said that, maintaining a level of trust with the MAGA crowd necessary comes with some questionable compromises.

There are a lot of reporters guilty of hoarding newsworthy scoops for books, and Haberman is certainly one of these. I think fairness requires that we examine these decisions on a case by case basis. In some instances, sources won’t talk for an article that will be published in a few hours but will open up if they understand it’s for a book that won’t be completed for months. Sometimes a reporter has to make these kind of unsavory agreements.

Has Haberman withheld vital information that the public needed to know? Has she shaded her coverage to protect her access? I think she’s been guilty of both practices at times, but not notably more than her top competitors. I think she’s come in for stronger criticism than was warranted, in some cases out of jealousy or sexism, and in some cases because people want Trump held accountable so badly that anyone that stands in the way or isn’t similarly committed to that goal is going to be upbraided. Haberman is a reporter, not an anti-Trump political operator, and it shows.

I think a lot of the problems people have with Haberman are really problems with how reporters interact with sources in general. If you want unfettered moral clarity, you need to look for it in people who analyze the news, not those who need to make sure Roger Stone answers their calls.

I wish Haberman made different choices sometimes, but I recognize the quality of her work, too.

I understand why opponents of the Iranian regime want to compare it to the Taliban but I think it’s really deceptive to describe the recent crackdown against women’s rights as the “Talibanization” of the government there. I think the Taliban, although made up of radical Sunnis rather than Shiites, took a lot of inspiration of Iran’s Islamic Revolution. Whatever the causal direction, both political movements are in love with the hijab.

As director of the Center for Middle East Studies Nader Hashemi explains, over the years enforcement of Iran’s 1983 women’s dress code has been enforced with varying levels of severity.

Reformist governments discouraged the morality police—the Gasht-e Ershad or “Guidance Patrol”—from harassing women, while hard-liners did the opposite, viewing this show of force against women as a non-negotiable principle of Iran’s theocratic regime.

As of late, hijab enforcement has been at or near an all-time high. This, in turn, has spurred an increase in civil disobedience. These developments predated the murder of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, a Kurd visiting Teheran, who was beaten to death by the morality police for “insufficient hijab.”

No one could have predicted when she left her home in Iran’s northern Kurdistan province earlier this month to visit relatives in Tehran that her death would lead to national protests, rocking the Islamic Republic to its core while generating massive international media coverage…While the precise timing of the protests in Iran was unpredictable, on closer examination, a societal explosion of this nature should have been expected.

Iranian opponents of the compulsory hijab tend not to argue against the hijab in general but insist it should be a matter of personal choice. I think that’s correct both as a strategy and on the merits. However, dress codes are not the only area of concern for women’s rights in Iran. As Mr. Amini details at some length, women are strongly discouraged from engaging in many activities, including playing music and dancing.

American and British meddling in Iran helped bring about the 1979 Islamic Revolution, so as an American I’m reluctant to tell Iranians how to rid themselves of this terrible regime. Still, I hope they succeed, and not primarily because it might benefit America. I want them to succeed because I want Iranians to have a better life.

The people taking to the streets now won’t benefit from open American support, but the whole world should be sympathetic to their cause. The Islamic government of the Iran has always been a far worse influence than the Taliban.

Pharoah Sanders passed away over the weekend. He’d had a long and creative life that included being part of John Coltrane’s last band from about 1965 through 1967. First time I heard him was on a Coltrane LP, and he was the guy who was really freaking out on the sax. It was epic, and I had to find out more about Pharoah Sanders as a consequence. He knew when to be loud and chaotic and when to be chill. Either way was always a treat.

This video is one I enjoy a great deal. I hope you do too.

Cheers!

I’m not exactly rooting for Donald Trump to win in court since I think he should have his fortune confiscated and be incarcerated for the rest of his life. I also consider anyone who agrees to give him legal representation to be a fool, not only because they might not be paid in full but because Trump doesn’t fucking listen to good legal advice.  When Chris Kise was brought on as a lead attorney on the stolen classified documents case,  he took care of the former problem by getting $3 million in advance: “The retainer fee, paid upfront, raised eyebrows among other lawyers on Trump’s team, given the former President has a developed a reputation for not paying his legal fees.”

In contrast to the disgraced ex-president’s other lawyers, who seem to have been selected by throwing darts at a phone book, Kise has important experience in the relevant legal field, as well as in the Florida federal courts. It looked like Trump was going to get competent representation for a change. But CNN reports that the Kise is already off the case.

The newest addition to former President Donald Trump’s legal team, Chris Kise, has been sidelined from the Mar-a-Lago documents investigation less than a month after he was brought on to represent Trump in the matter, two sources familiar with the move tell CNN.

Kise is expected to remain on Trump’s legal team but is not leading the work related to the federal government’s investigation into how the former President handled 11,000 documents seized from his Florida home in August following a lengthy effort by the government to retrieve them. The reason for the shift in Kise’s role remains unclear and he may instead focus his efforts on the other investigations Trump is facing, which range from his business practices to the January 6 insurrection.

Here’s a real kicker. Kise actually quit his law firm, Foley & Lardner, to take the job at Trump’s attorney. He’s got three mil in his pocket and nothing to do. There’s no evidence, as of yet, that he’s active in any of the other court cases plaguing Trump, but presumably he’ll be slotted in somewhere if only so he can earn some the windfall Trump has already paid him.

Of course, the immediate speculation is that Kise isn’t working the Mar-a-Lago case anymore because Trump wouldn’t follow his guidance. It would obviously surprise me if Trump did take his advice, but there’s another possible reason. He recently represented the Venezuelan government.  He was actually a registered foreign agent of the Venezuelan government.  This is from 2020:

Chris Kise, the attorney who turned over key documents in the ethics case against former Tallahassee [mayor] Andrew Gillum, is now representing a member of the Nicolás Maduro government according to documents reviewed by Florida Politics.

Kise is listed on a Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) form to work on behalf of Venezuelan Attorney General Reinaldo Muñoz Pedroza. Muñoz Pedroza was appointed Attorney General by Maduro, though the United States no longer recognizes Maduro’s government as legitimate.

Since Venezuela is considered to have an adversarial relationship with the United States, it’s possible that Kise cannot get the extremely high-level security clearances he needs to effectively represent Trump in the case.

In truth, I’m not sure any Trump lawyer will ever see the content of the top secret documents he squirreled away at Mar-a-Lago, but it’s possible that the Kise hire has run into a security clearance snafu. If so, Trump will surely regret paying him upfront.

In an election driven mostly by economic factors, Italians have elected a far-right fascist anti-migration coalition. This follows the Swedish election in which a right-wing coalition was elected that will include Neo-Nazis. Sweden’s debate hinged more on “crime and social issues popularly associated with immigrants, such as gang violence, sexual assault and welfare benefits dependency.” Hungary and Poland now have some company in Europe for their brand of extreme conservatism.

I rarely find myself in agreement with Damon Linker, but I have to acknowledge that he’s identified the most worrying trend. In Europe, as well as America, the center-left has been increasingly boxed in as the party for highly educated, secular voters, while the poorly educated now identify strongly with the far right and the middle classes tilt enough to the right to decide elections. As Linker concludes, “Until the center-left figures out a way to win back the working- and middle-class, as well as the nominally religious, it will continue to lose precious political ground to the populist and nationalist right.”

Even in a country like America that originally needed as many immigrants as possible and had no means to regulate their inflow, we have seen a recurring cycle of backlash and restriction followed by more permissive policies. Politically, immigration requires periodic periods of slow digestion. The backlash isn’t necessarily tied to actual flows of immigrants, as nativism trends up in bad economic times and bad economic times can occur when immigrant flows are low. On the other hand, when the global economy is having difficulties, it can lead to a sharp rise in people seeking to enter the United States.

We’re currently in a situation where immigrant flows are high and the global economy is struggling, so immigration is at a peak in political saliency. Unfortunately, this benefits very far right parties that are also extreme in other areas, including on civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, and voter’s rights.

If you want a sense of the power of the moment, look no further than the latest results from the Washington Post-ABC News poll. They find the seemingly incomprehensible result that the majority (52 percent) of the American people think Donald Trump should be prosecuted and “if the 2024 race is again between Biden and Trump, 48 percent of registered voters say they would support Trump while 46 percent would support Biden.”

Think about how out of touch you need to be to have the people prefer someone who they think should be in prison.

Of course, I’ve long insisted that the left must represent people in every community, from our immigrant-rich cities and coasts to our mostly white small-town and rural interior. I’ve grown hoarse explaining that fascism thrives when the ethnic majority group has no left-wing populist alternative. My focus has not been on immigration or trimming on social issues, but on revitalizing small-town and rural economies through tough anti-trust enforcement.

What I know for sure, is you can’t just do more of the same. Fascism is on the rise and if you can’t defeat it politically, you have the most costlier job of defeating it with arms.

Because the people in my life know I pay a lot of attention to politics, I frequently have the experience of someone sending or mentioning an alarming news article or editorial or clip from cable news to get my opinion on whether it’s something to be concerned about. Frequently, I have to tell them that it’s not.

The bill passed one chamber but it will never become law. Or it will be vetoed. The court ruling will get overturned. Yes, even the conservative Supreme Court of the United States is never going to go along with that bullshit. Actually, that’s not what was said in context, or it’s not what was meant. The politician actually did say that, but they didn’t mean it. And so on.

My point is that I have a lot of experience with people on the left buying into bad analysis, clickbait, and rage politics. They can be talked down, but only by people they trust. And there’s a subset that can’t be talked down. They’re happier believing the worst.

This isn’t to say that I’m always purveyor of reassurance. In recent years, I’ve frequently been far more alarmed about things than most people you see on MSNBC. In a lot of ways, the absolutely fucked condition of the country is something I foresaw and predicted, and I did it for a long time feeling very isolated and alone. It’s a weird feeling to look at the news today on the climate, on reproductive rights, on Russia, on the United Kingdom, on the Republican Party, and see articles and analysis that five years ago I had to fight to convince editors weren’t unhinged Chicken Little rantings. Hell, Hillary Clinton just noticed that MAGA rallies are indistinguishable from Adolf Hitler’s Nazi rallies.

So, it’s not that things aren’t really so bad. It’s that people aren’t that great at figuring out what’s a real threat and what’s not, and they’re susceptible to believing bullshit so long as it’s bullshit slung from their own side of the political aisle.

I don’t mention this to make another “both sides” argument, but people are people. On the right, the problem is worse and the reason is twofold. The first is that there are many fewer rich people than non-rich people, and many more ordinary workers than executive workers. This means the billionaires who fund the Republican Party are constantly trying to find ways to bullshit people into supporting the policies they want because they’re at a natural disadvantage. It turns out the shortest way for these elites to get low taxes and the right to pollute the environment is to rile up a bunch of conservative Christians about prayer at football games. The thing is, in the process, a significant segment of the right that is supposed to know better actually winds up believing the bullshit that was intended only for the rubes. They’re uncritically consuming the crap that the Mighty Right-Wing Media Wulitzer churns out, and it’s rotting their brains.

The second reason the right has a worse bullshit problem than the left is that a critical mass was reached during Trump’s candidacy for the president where the rubes actually expected action rather than the mere promise of action. A wall was actually supposed to be built at the southern border. Abortion was actually supposed to be outlawed. Elections really were rigged, and violently challenging the fraudulent results was a duty. Some people call this Frankenstein’s monster, where the inventor loses control of his invention. The Democrats do not have this problem.

This is in part because the alarmists on the left were correct. That’s why the mainstream of the Democratic Party impeached Trump twice. It’s why the Justice Department raided his home. It’s why the New York attorney general just sued the entire Trump family for fraud. These are the kind of actions that the fringe of the left might have demanded in the past, only to be dismissed as extremists. So there’s an alignment now on the left between the establishment and the fringe, at least with respect to the threat represented by the Republicans and how to react, that’s pretty rare. And, for the most part, this alignment is based in reality. It’s not a matter of gullible partisans on the left believing a bunch of hype, but more a matter of the Democratic establishment (really, the whole establishment) finally understanding that the left fringe was right and they were wrong.

It’s easy to see this if you just look back to early days of the blogosphere when left-wing bloggers were completely antagonistic toward the mainstream press and the party leadership. We were trying to get them to wake up and they thought we were unruly children. But today we have basically everyone in agreement that the Republicans are completely out of control, that Trump must be imprisoned, and our very system of government is in grave peril.

I’d like to call that progress, but it feels more like futility.

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be starting a new painting. It is Bodiam Castle in the UK. The photo that I’m using is seen directly below.

I’ll be using my usual acrylic paints on a 5×7 inch canvas panel.

When last seen the painting appeared as it does in the photo seen directly below.

Since last time I have had limited progress. The castle has now received a preliminary layer of paint. More next week.

The current state of the painting is seen in the photo directly below.

I’ll have more progress to show you next week. See you then.0

It looks like Florida congressman Matt Gaetz will avoid prosecution for child trafficking and other lesser charges, primarily because the U.S. Attorneys looking into the case realize that their primary witnesses have some big credibility issues. That’s how it goes sometimes. I’d call it a lucky break, but Gaetz will no doubt call it vindication.

The biggest break Gaetz was his choice of co-conspirator.

…Joel Greenberg, a former tax collector for Seminole County, Fla…pleaded guilty last year to sex trafficking of a minor and a host of other crimes as part of a cooperation deal with authorities…

Greenberg was first charged in 2020 with fabricating allegations and evidence to smear a political opponent, but prosecutors continued to investigate and added additional charges to his case. He ultimately agreed to plead guilty to six criminal charges, including sex trafficking of a child, aggravated identity theft and wire fraud…

…It was in exploring Greenberg’s conduct that investigators came upon evidence potentially implicating Gaetz in sex trafficking, people familiar with the matter have said. Prosecutors had been exploring whether Greenberg paid women to have sex with Gaetz and whether the two shared sexual partners, including the 17-year-old girl at issue in Greenberg’s case, these people said…

…Greenberg’s credibility would be a significant challenge for any prosecution of Gaetz, in part because one of the crimes Greenberg admitted to was fabricating allegations against a schoolteacher who was running against him to be a tax collector. Greenberg had sent letters to the school falsely claiming the teacher had an inappropriate sexual relationship with a student — a similar allegation to the Gaetz case.

Before you find someone guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, you need a witness who hasn’t in the past made false accusations of a similar nature. Greenberg’s testimony was never going to be good for anything more than substantiation of other more credible evidence.

The other primary witness against Gaetz was supposed to be an ex-girlfriend, but prosecutors found felt her “testimony has issues that…would not pass muster with a jury.”

I’m not privy to the other evidence collected in the case, but I trust the prosecutors to know when they have a rock solid case and when they don’t. What we know for certain is that Gaetz was so worried about going to prison that he was aggressively seeking a preemptive pardon from Donald Trump in the last weeks of his presidency.

To be fair, I wouldn’t put someone behind bars on a born liar like Gaetz’s say-so, so it’s not a surprise that it’s hard to put him in jail on the say-so of his shady friends.

I predict it will not be long before he runs afoul of the law again, and the next time he may face justice.

Donald Trump’s support is weak, but it’s stubborn. Surveys indicate that he has a high floor that won’t budge. But Trump isn’t a problem that can be solved through moving public opinion. If he were, losing an election would have gone a long way toward removing his ability to damage the country, but he continues to wreck the joint even out of office.

What’s needed is action. Investigations are fine, but they must lead somewhere. Impeaching him twice was warranted, but two acquittals were the result. At this point, he probably gathers strength every time a new allegation is made that doesn’t result in any consequences.

At this point, it seems too late to create consequences before the midterm elections, but New York Attorney General Tish James at least took some action. The civil complaint she announced on Wednesday did one valuable thing immediately, which was to expose Trump as far less wealthy than he’d like us to believe. This was demonstrated by showing how he has outrageously inflated the worth of just about every known asset he owns, and even claimed assets that he doesn’t own. The complaint shows a laundry list of fraudulent acts, but the simplest one to understand is that he’s been lying about his wealth. That hits him in one of the few places where he’s capable of giving a shit and feeling some real pain. That’s a consequence, and it’s bad for his image.

I don’t know if the case will even reach trial. Trump wanted to reach a settlement, which would have inevitably involved some huge fines and crippling sanctions. But James isn’t gunning for something survivable. First and foremost, she wants some prosecutors to get off their asses and charge Trump and his children with serious crimes. That’s why she shamed the Manhattan prosecutor and made referrals to the Internal Revenue Service and the attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York.

Failing that, she wants to assure that the Trump Organization is utterly ruined, and if she wins this case that will be the likely result. And she appears to be in a good position to win, although it’s hard to say if she’ll get anything close to the punishments she seeks.

That punishment would involve the recovery of a quarter billion dollars in ill-gotten gains, and bar Trump and his children from making any real estate acquisitions or running any corporations in New York. They wouldn’t be able to obtain the licenses to operate in the state and they wouldn’t be able to borrow money from any bank that operates in the state. This would almost certainly kill the Trump Organization as they’d have no money to pay their debtors, some of which would call in their loans ahead of schedule, and no way of reorganizing the debt.

Given these risks, Trump really has little choice but to attempt to get James to settle for something less draconian, but she’s already turned him down once. If her case were weaker, and if Trump hadn’t taken the Fifth Amendment rather than cooperating during his deposition, she might be satisfied with an admission of guilt and penalties that allow the Organization to live another day. But she gets more out of forcing Trump to wriggle on the line.

He will see his position deteriorate every day that this is hanging over his businesses, and that’s a consequence. That’s action.

It’s only when his supporters see Trump suffer for his crimes that they’ll stop seeing the accusations against him as political witch hunts. That could be because he’s imprisoned, but it can also be because he’s lost his company.

Hi everyone. Late post tonight. It’s been that busy of a week, so far. It’s still technically the last day of summer, so I thought I’d share a song by The Cure that at least has the last day of summer in its title:

In the meantime, I am ready to welcome the Autumnal Equinox and hopefully some milder days and evenings.

Cheers!