Month: March 2023

Raj Shah, the Senior vice-president of Fox Corp., is on the record saying of Tucker Carlson’s viewers, “This isn’t an audience that can easily be persuaded and are willing to believe just about anything.” And that seems about right, even it appears to be completely contradictory. The important thing to keep in mind is that they will believe just about anything but the truth.

Suzanne Scott, the CEO of News Corp., put it this way, “I can’t keep defending these reporters who don’t understand our viewers and how to handle stories. The audience feels like we crapped on [them] and we have damaged their trust and belief in us …. We can fix this but we cannot smirk at our viewers any longer.” That’s her way of saying that it’s insulting to provide factual information to an audience that will not believe factual information. In order to show the Fox News viewers proper respect, it’s important to never tell them the truth. If you tell them the truth, it’s almost like making fun of them for believing in things that aren’t real.

Kurt Cobain once sang, “Load up on guns, bring your friends. It’s fun to lose and to pretend…Here we are now, entertain us, I feel stupid and contagious.” That, too, sounds about right for how the Fox News audience treated Donald Trump’s election loss in 2020. At least, that’s what the executives at Fox Corp. thought the moment called for, rather than any dispassionate effort to provide news coverage. Let’s all pretend Trump didn’t lose, no matter how stupid that might be, and no matter how that might metastasize into an actual coup attempt to keep Trump in power.

It’s no great insight that people have an appetite for things they want to hear and want to believe. You can definitely make a good living off that insight, both honestly and dishonestly. But it’s not an appropriate role for news coverage to just lie about who won an election.

This is another thing Trump broke. He lied so brazenly that it broke Fox News. They felt that they had to treat his lies as least potentially true when they knew better. They could carry water for the Republican Party without completely coming apart at the seams as a “news” organization, but they couldn’t find a way to finesse the size of Trump’s election lies.

I hope they lose their defamation case and face a staggering penalty.

 

A long time ago, back when this was still the Booman Tribune, we had a regular who was quite the ABBA fan. That person posted quite a few ABBA videos in the comments of some of these cafe/lounge diaries (as we called them then) for a while. I always hope that particular individual is still lurking here, and that if I post an ABBA tune, I can incite a little active participation.

If you grew up in the mid-to-late 1970s as a preteen/early teen, you couldn’t avoid ABBA if you turned on the radio, or if you got your parents to drop you off at a skating rink to meet up with someone or a group of friends. Admittedly they were not my favorite at the time, but I didn’t dislike their songs either. Their songs were easy to skate to, and they made for pleasant listening. ABBA’s members were enormously talented, and knew how to craft these remarkable pop gems that hinted at some darker psychological undercurrents. That bit is something I’d only appreciate a bit later after some college level psych courses. And let’s face it – they’ve so far stood the test of time. New generations continue to find their music. They’re firmly embedded in pop culture (Community‘s season 2 Halloween episode comes to mind), and their songs have spawned a series of musicals. They even got back together and started recording again a couple years ago (although don’t count on any live tours).

Cheers!

It doesn’t sound like there was much to be encouraged about at the “Never Trump” Principles First Summit at the Conrad Hotel in Washington DC this past weekend. Their panel names told the story: “Looking to 2024: Hope and Despair — but Mostly Despair”, “Can the GOP survive?”

Maybe the one ray of light in the collection of former Iraq War cheerleaders was their determination to debate if Ron DeSantis is possibly a worse potential president than Donald Trump. It is so hard to feel any sympathy for this crowd:

“It turns out that once you let the toothpaste out of the tube, so to speak, demagoguery and bigotry and all that, some people like it. It’s hard to get it back.” [Bill] Kristol said. “You can’t just give them a lecture.”

Jesse Helms and Lee Atwater never bothered these folks, but they think Trump is responsible for their problems.

At least for now, they’re allies of anyone who wants America to stay on the rails, but they’re not the kind of allies you want. They’re pathetically weak and completely lacking in confidence. If their lack of self-awareness is appalling, their trustworthiness is more so. But consider the alternative.

The people who convened at the Conrad have little in common with those who attended the Trump coronation ceremony down the river at CPAC. The latter aired a music video of a song the Jan. 6 defendants recorded from prison. The former gave Michael Fanone, the former D.C. police officer who was brutally attacked on Jan. 6, an award (after which he hung around to sign copies of his new book) and introduced Kinzinger, who was one of two Republicans on Congress’s committee investigating the attacks, as its “patron saint.”

I guess I’m glad they’re trying to get organized. Despite myself, I can’t help rooting for these blind squirrels to find an acorn or two.

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be continuing with the Chincoteague, Virgina scene. The photo that I’m using (My own from a recent visit.) 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 that time I have continued to work on the painting.

Not too much progress this week but I did start the reflection. It has a long way to go.

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.

Despite having a conservative legislature, North Carolina will become the fortieth state to adopt the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion. This is a positive development because the Tarheel State presently has over 900,000 people who don’t have any form of medical insurance, and that will be reduced by more than half a million. The Republicans have had a change of heart, but the explanation is almost funny.

Of course, under Obamacare, the federal government will cover 90 percent of the cost, but that was always the case. The legislature worked out way to pay for the remaining 10 percent by taxing hospitals and insurance companies. So, this is an essentially free decision for the legislators, right? It’s a decision they could have taken years ago, avoiding countless preventable deaths and illnesses.

Well, that’s true. But they needed a little extra nudging.

Another major factor that caused GOP lawmakers to change their minds in 2022: The 2021 stimulus package, signed into law by Democratic President Joe Biden, that offered signing bonuses to states that expanded Medicaid — in North Carolina’s case, the $1.8 billion that [House Speaker Tim] Moore mentioned.

The stimulus bill offered nearly two billion in free money that North Carolina lawmakers can spend however they want, and that was a deal too good to pass up. And look at how pointless the delay was:

Republicans fought [Medicaid expansion], in part because of its association with former Democratic President Barack Obama — Medicaid expansion only exists because of Obamacare — but also because of fears that Republicans in Congress would repeal Obamacare, leaving states on the hook for the extra costs of expansion. After national Republicans failed to repeal Obamacare under President Donald Trump, despite controlling both Congress and the White House, it put local GOP leaders more at ease about the future of the program.

The GOP is the stupidest, most spiteful bunch of goons. How many people were pointlessly harmed because they turned an obviously sweet deal simply because they didn’t want President Obama to be a successful president? They never had an alternate health care plan, but they paralyzed themselves pretending that they did.

It’s just disgraceful, but now they’ve finally done the right thing and Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper can sign the bill and take all the credit.

Thomas Meaney appears to be a good writer but I can find little evidence that he’s a military strategist. I’m not sure why the New York Times has provided him a platform to opine about how to end the war in Ukraine. Let me briefly sum up his argument.

Russia may have originally intended to subsume all of Ukraine into a resurgent empire, but practical reality has interfered and forced them to reduce their goals to maintaining control of the Donbas region and the Crimean peninsula. Ukraine could attempt to dislodge Russia from all of its territory, but will find this impossible without active NATO participation in the war theater. This support will not be forthcoming, so Ukraine is faced with the same problem Russia is suffering from–entrenched lines that preclude offensive advancement. A meat grinder.

However, if a reduced Ukraine could be enticed with European Union and NATO membership, it might be convinced to abandon the ambition to reclaim all its territory. Likewise, Russia might be convinced to the end the war on these terms, since they’re unlikely to do any better in the near term.

Let me start by examining his military assessment:

Absent NATO involvement, the Ukrainian Army can hold the line and regain ground, as it has done in Kharkiv and Kherson, but complete victory is very nearly impossible. If Russia can hardly advance a few hundred yards a day in Bakhmut at a cost of 50 to 70 men, since the Ukrainians are so well entrenched, would Ukrainians be able to advance any better against equally well-entrenched Russians in the whole area between Russia and the eastern side of the Dnipro delta, including the Azov Sea coastline and the isthmus leading to Crimea? What has been a meat grinder in one direction is likely to be a meat grinder in the other.

What’s lacking here is an appreciation for why the Russians were routed near Kharkiv and how they’re conducting their offensive operations near Bakhmut. Their military is dysfunctional. What modest successes it can muster at the moment are the result of human wave attacks that come with appalling casualties. These tactics can pin down Ukrainian defenders but have great difficulty in dislodging them. Russian soldiers can be sent forward into the meat grinder at gunpoint where their tanks are destroyed and they quickly die, but in order to defend they need discipline and courage, as well as effective generalship. This is what they lacked during the Ukrainian counteroffensive around Kharkiv.

In other words, the Russian soldier, operating far from home and poorly led and motivated, is no match to the Ukrainian soldier as a defender of territory. There is a good reason to believe that the supposedly well-entrenched defenses of the Russian lines will not hold when faced with a well-planned and coordinated Ukraine counteroffensive.

Now, maybe Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska is wrong that Russia is on the brink of running out of money and desperately needs foreign support, but it seems wildly optimistic to think it can sustain its current strategy in perpetuity without some kind of military breakthrough. Perhaps that’s why Mr. Meaney believes they can be persuaded to negotiate.

But we’re forced to consider why this war was launched in the first place. The roots go back to the 2013-14 Euromaiden protests that forced President Viktor Yanukovych out of power. And what was Yanukovych’s sin? He backed out of an agreement to integrate Ukraine with the European Union. Putin reacted by spurring an armed separatist movement in the Donbas region and then annexing Crimea. But that wasn’t enough to stem Ukraine’s drift to the West, so he concocted his plan to invade and entirely take over Ukraine.

The point is, setting aside Putin’s dreams of restoring a Greater Russian Empire, the motivation has always been to keep Ukraine out of the European Union, and certainly out of NATO. It’s very hard to see Putin reversing himself on either of those positions. Perhaps, more precisely, there’s no reason to trust any promises he might make in this respect, even if it leads to some cessation of the fighting.

It seems much more promising to pursue almost the opposite tack, which is to promise that if he gives up the territory he’s seized, Ukraine will not join NATO and that some economic agreement can be arranged that falls somewhat short of full integration with Europe. A free and unmolested Ukraine is more valuable than a divided Ukraine under constant threat of further aggression. Let’s not forget that Russian promises have to be credible, and that means that some of their key concerns must be addressed.

What’s particularly loathsome about Meaney’s proposal is that leads both sides to a completely unacceptable result. For Ukraine, they see Russia rewarded with territorial gains and no accountability for their war crimes. Even with EU and NATO membership, the threat of future aggression isn’t eliminated, but would be likelier to result in a direct Russia-NATO confrontation on their soil. This, by the way, is why NATO membership is a dangerous pipe dream.

For Russia, their number one priority to keep NATO at bay and Ukraine outside of the European economic system is kaput, and what do they really have to show for it? How does this affect Putin’s other goal of restoring Russia’s sphere of dominance? It would create a status quo he’d immediately want to break.

One thing should remain constantly in mind, and that’s that Russia has plans to annex Belarus, and that even Poland’s territorial integrity isn’t respected by the Kremlin.

LONDON, Feb 24 (Reuters) – Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said on Friday that the only way for Moscow to ensure a lasting peace with Ukraine was to push back the borders of hostile states as far as possible, even if that meant the frontiers of NATO member Poland.

Russia might be compelled to accept some temporary peace plan in Ukraine, but their ambitions won’t change until there is either a change in leadership or a decisive defeat. A peace plan that doesn’t accomplish either of those things isn’t going to hold.  But if you want to take a risk in the interests of peace, and peace is valuable enough to justify some risk, then at least you can offer Russia an olive branch that precludes EU and NATO membership for Ukraine. That would have some promise for sticking, including for any possible successor government to Putin.

Alternatively, the war can roll on, and it’s likely that Russia will lose more territory and more strength this year. A complete defeat might take longer, but it’s somewhere on the horizon.

As Mark Sumner able explains at Daily Kos, Democrats have good reason to be dissatisfied with and somewhat worried about the culture at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. This has been highlighted again in the latest story from the Washington Post on the lead-up to the execution of a search warrant at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in August 2022, but it’s been a longstanding problem.

There has always been an element within the FBI that has gone out of its way to protect Donald Trump. In the run-up to the 2016 election, as The New York Times was devoting every single column of the front page to the “scandal” of Hillary Clinton’s email server, a story about Trump’s connections between the Trump campaign and Russian agents was consigned to a brief account on an inside page, in part because FBI sources informed the NYT that there was nothing to the story. (Note that The New York Times was well aware that an investigation into Trump’s connections to Russia was underway, but chose not to run the story until well after the election.)

In January, Charles McGonigal, the former chief of counterintelligence at the FBI, was charged with money laundering for a Russian oligarch. McGonigal worked directly with oligarch Oleg Deripaska, who was also a major part of the Trump campaign’s connections to Russia in 2016, and the source of many of the lies about Joe Biden and Ukraine that Rudy Giuliani tried to push in the 2020 election cycle. (Lies that The New York Times published unchallenged.)

In the wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection, top officials at the FBI were warned that “a sizable percentage of the employee population felt sympathetic to the group that stormed the Capitol.” They were also warned that the agency might have difficulty investigating those involved on Jan. 6 because many agents believed that going after the criminals who stormed the Capitol was just “political correctness.”

The FBI is broken. It remains broken.

The Washington Post article focuses on counterintelligence professionals and prosecutors in the Department of Justice who faced strong pushback from elements in the FBI when they sought to search Mar-a-Lago. The short version is that FBI agents in the Washington field office which was responsible for the investigation into Trump’s possession of classified material were extremely wary of executing a search warrant unannounced and wanted, at a minimum, to give Trump’s lawyer Evan Corcoran advanced notice.

On one side, federal prosecutors in the department’s national security division advocated aggressive ways to secure some of the country’s most closely guarded secrets, which they feared Trump was intentionally hiding at Mar-a-Lago; on the other, FBI agents in the Washington field office urged more caution with such a high-profile matter, recommending they take a cooperative rather than confrontational approach.

Now, none of this is particularly surprising, and I’m not ready to ascribe some kind of cultural affinity for Trump within the FBI as the explanation. What’s most notable about the Washington Post piece is that it names names.

Steven M. D’Antuono, then the head of the FBI Washington field office, which was running the investigation, was adamant the FBI should not do a surprise search, according to the people.

D’Antuono said he would agree to lead such a raid only if he were ordered to, according to two of the people. The two other people said D’Antuono did not refuse to do the search but argued that it should be a consensual search agreed to by Trump’s legal team. He repeatedly urged that the FBI instead seek to persuade Corcoran to agree to a consensual search of the property, said all four of the people.

I’m trying to put this all in context. As the article notes, many agents in the FBI were suffering from a Crossfire Hurricane “hangover.” The investigation of Trump’s ties to Russia, led by former FBI chief Robert Mueller, hadn’t been good for the career advancement of many of the agents who participated, and it’s understandable that folks were concerned about the fierce political blowback that would inevitably result from a search of an ex-president’s property. There’s a difference between being pro-Trump and being afraid of Trump, although these things are not mutually exclusive.

The main thing is, I’m wondering why this article is appearing now. Is this story being pushed out by people in the Department of Justice or people in the FBI? And what is their motivation? Who is the target audience?

I suspect this is a signal that special counsel Jack Smith is nearing the end of his investigation and indictments are coming, including of the disgraced ex-president. This is making people nervous, especially at the FBI, and they’re trying to set the narrative ahead of time. Alternatively, however, there has been criticism that the probe into Trump has taken too long and that Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Justice Department has been too cautious. And it’s also perhaps not coincidental that the article appeared on the same day that Garland had to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The truth is, the information about the rift between the FBI and the DOJ cuts many ways, depending on your perspective. If you think the Mar-a-Lago search warrant was an outrage, now you have reason to focus your rage against the DOJ rather the than the organization that actually executed the warrant. If you think Merrick Garland and the Justice Department dragged their feet too long, you now can blame Steven D’Antuono, who was in charge of the FBI Washington field office in the relevant time period.

If you want to undermine the legitimacy of the coming indictments, maybe you want to highlight that the decision to go into Mar-a-Lago was far from a slam-dunk decision but rather was highly controversial even within the administration. On the other hand, if you want to protect against the charge that this is a partisan witch-hunt, maybe you want to emphasize that the search was thoroughly debated and far from a rushed job.

There’s a sense to the article that people have scores to settle with D’Antuono, but he only looks bad to half the population. Sumner, for example, sees this as evidence that “the top law enforcement agency in the nation is coming down on the side of those trying to overthrow the legitimate government.”

The other half of the country, however, will see D’Antuono as the voice of reason who was overruled by overzealous DOJ prosecutors.

I can’t really decide how to pick between these options, but I have a strong feeling that this is being hashed out now because people in the know are expecting the shit to soon hit the fan. Some are worried about themselves and their institutions. Others are just trying to prep the field for how the debate over the indictments will begin.

I don’t see the same cause for alarm that Sumner sees, even if his overall criticism of FBI culture has a lot of merit. I just see the first ripples from the coming tsunami.