Month: January 2024

Happy midweek! And now it’s time for a Closer Look:

Have a great remainder of your week.

Cheers!

Steve M., who briefly and generously cross-posted his pieces at Booman Tribune, is one of the best and most indefatigable bloggers ever born, and he’s written another great post, this time on the right’s freakout over the relationship between Taylor Swift and professional football player Travis Kelce of the Super Bowl-bound Kansas City Chiefs.  I’ll say up front that I don’t love Steve’s effort to dub this phenomenon “Tay-Anon,” but I suppose it’s significant enough to warrant some kind of name.

One reason Steve chose to use an “Anon” moniker is that he’s making a larger point that Donald Trump dominates discourse on the right but he absolutely does not drive or encompass the totality of crazy. It’s a subject he also touched on in a previous post titled “It’s a Cult, but Is It a Trump Cult?“. As he notes, Trump has dabbled at times with QAnon language and themes, but he didn’t originate or really drive the movement.

Whether it’s extremism or conspiratorialism, the right seems to be led not by Trump exclusively, but by whoever is the edgiest edgelord. Often it’s a group of edgelords — for instance, there’s no single leader of the COVID denialist movement, but it drives Republican thinking on the virus, in defiance of Trump’s continued support for vaccination. Trump echoed QAnon for a while, but he wasn’t its leader, or even one of its main propagandists. And now we have Tay-Anon, which is independent of Trump.

If you don’t know the term, Merriam-Webster defines an ‘edgelord’ as “someone who makes wildly dark and exaggerated statements (as on an internet forum) with the intent of shocking others.” In that sense, Donald Trump used Twitter to become the biggest edgelord on the planet, but he’s far from the only one working in the service of America’s reactionary right.

The latest conspiracy is that NFL games were fixed to ensure that the Kansas City Chiefs appear in the Super Bowl. The reason is because Swift supports the reelection of Joe Biden and since she has been conspicuously attending most of the Chiefs’ games this year, this will allow her a huge platform to endorse Biden, perhaps at halftime of the big game. In the fuller version, the San Francisco 49ers were selected as the opponent specifically because the city’s former mayor and California’s current governor, Gavin Newsom, is going to be substituted for Biden at the Democratic National Convention as the party’s presidential nominee.

I wouldn’t be completely shocked if Newsom does wind up substituting for Biden, but that’s not why the Detroit Lions blew a 24-7 halftime lead to the 49ers and lost their chance to oppose Kelce’s Chiefs in the Super Bowl. I’ll also note that the Chiefs are the defending NFL champions and they don’t need help winning football games. But the theory that this matchup has been manufactured to help the Biden ‘regime’ only has plausibility because Swift is influential enough to affect the outcome of the presidential election.

A survey by Morning Consult said 53% of American adults are Swift devotees. There are almost as many men as women, almost as many Republicans as Democrats. And they include baby boomers, millennials, Gen Xers and young adults from Gen Z.

An analysis of Google Trends data for 2023 found that Swift had dominated Google searches more than anyone. Yes, including Trump.

She was Newsweek magazine’s “Person of the Year.” She has more than 500 million social media followers worldwide, 279 million on Instagram alone…

…Last year, in a single Instagram post, Swift suggested that her fans register to vote and directed them to the nonpartisan nonprofit Vote.org. According to the organization, that single post brought in more than 35,000 registrations.

Last summer, the Federal Reserve actually credited Swift’s concert tour with significantly improving the national economy. Republicans are terrified of her reach for good reason. As for the misogynist men’s rights faction of the right, they’re just appalled that Swift is dating an NFL player. And Kelce isn’t just any NFL player. He’s a future first ballot Hall of Fame football player who had a monster game to help the Chiefs reach this year’s Super Bowl. Even worse, he’s done a commercial encouraging people to get vaccinated against COVID-19, which has earned him the nickname “Mr. Pfizer” in the anti-vaccine crowd. It’s too much to handle for many of Biden’s opponents which is why the edgelords have gotten to work.

It’s particularly galling that Swift is canoodling with a football player (and a pro-vaccine football player at that), because right-wingers tell themselves that they have a monopoly on masculinity, and that men who hang out with liberals and feminists are beta males and soy boys. Kelce’s Chiefs can’t possibly have made it to the Super Bowl on their own merit.

Many people, including EJ Montini of the Arizona Republic, believe attacks on Swift will backfire.

The dumbest thing the MAGA cult and its media enablers have done (this week, anyway) is to turn against Taylor Swift.

Most recently, they’re pushing a looney conspiracy that the AFC Championship game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Baltimore Ravens was rigged to make the Chiefs win as part of some Democratic propaganda plan in which Swift and her Chiefs’ boyfriend, Travis Kelce, will somehow use the Super Bowl to promote the campaign of President Joe Biden.

This follows other wackadoodle notions, like when a Fox News host suggested Swift could be “a front for a covert political agenda.”

This kind of venom is just … not smart.

For Steve M. the point isn’t whether or not it’s smart to attack Swift and Kelce, but rather that this kind of insanity exists independently of Trump and so can be expected to outlive his political career. It’s a depressing argument, but Steve is not wrong.

One of the things I discuss with Brendan and MikeinOhio on the 9th episode of the Progress Pondcast is the prospects for a foreign/military aid bill for Israel, Taiwan and Ukraine to pass through Congress. The effort is working its way through the U.S. Senate led by Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma and Democrat Chris Murphy of Connecticut. The trick is that the foreign/military aid is tied to a tough border bill. This was supposed to be the price the Republicans extracted from the Biden administration for agreeing to stand up to Vladimir Putin. But that was always a highly dubious offer. I know I never took it seriously.

It’s been obvious forever that Trump is in the pocket of Putin and will do anything he can to help Russia subjugate Ukraine. He’s also very transparently planning on running on immigration, so a bipartisan deal that addresses the flood of southern border crossings is bad for Trump. It takes away his biggest issue and makes Biden look competent and moderate. So, why would the Republicans ever agree to this kind of deal?

It’s a bit complicated because Speaker of the House Mike Johnson told his Senate colleagues that he needed a border deal or he couldn’t get Ukraine aid through the House, and perhaps Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell believed he’d keep his word on that deal. I can’t really say, except I do know that McConnell is sincere about helping Ukraine.

As we discuss on the pondcast, McConnell looks like he want to press forward and at least pass the border/aid bill in the Senate. But he’s taking a ton of flak for it because Trump has been very clear that he opposes the effort. And his wishes are being heeded. Consider that the Oklahoma GOP censured Sen. Lankford over the weekend merely for attempting to negotiate a border bill.

The Oklahoma Republican Party approved a resolution censuring Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., and attacking the Republican lawmaker for negotiating with Democrats on a potential border deal.

The resolution, shared by Oklahoma State Sen. Dusty Deevers on X, formerly Twitter, accuses Lankford of “playing fast and loose with Democrats on our border policy.”

…The resolution, approved Saturday, also calls on Lankford to “cease and desist jeopardizing the security and liberty” of Americans.

The immigration deal – which has not yet been finalized – would reportedly make it harder for migrants to claim asylum, make it easier for U.S. officials to deport migrants who have remained in the country illegally, expand detention capacity and add Border Patrol staff.

Incredibly, the censure was approved prior to the proposed text of the bill even being released. The sin here is that Lankford was willing to even enter into negotiations on a border bill, which the Republicans argue is among the most urgent issues facing the country. The purpose of the censure is clearly to send a shot across the bow of any Senate Republicans who are considering defying Trump’s demand that no deal be made.

The thing is, McConnell and other conservative supporters of the border bill rightfully recognize that they’re in position to win concessions from the Biden administration and the congressional Democrats that would never ordinarily be on offer. For example, if the deal dies and Trump is elected, the Democrats in the Senate would surely filibuster an immigration bill that is as tough as the one currently under consideration. So, it’s simply not the case that a Trump presidency would result in a stronger border bill.

The argument against passing the bill in the Senate, in addition to it being opposed by Trump, is that it divides the Republicans and might not even be taken up by the House. Why make senators take a tough vote on a bill that isn’t going anywhere? And if the House were to take it up, it would also be a tough vote for their Republican members, which is something to be avoided.

The last factor here is the possibility of a Plan B for the foreign/military aid. If the effort to tie it to a border bill fails, is there some kind of backup plan or Ukraine screwed? And what about Israel and Taiwan?

So, here is where things stand:

Lankford called out his colleagues for bowing to political pressure, noting that four months ago Republicans refused to grant funding for Ukraine, Israel and the southern border until there were policy changes.

“So we actually locked arms together and said we’re not going to give you money for this. We want a change in law,” Lankford said. “When we’re finally going to the end, they’re like, ‘Oh, just kidding. I actually don’t want a change in law because it’s a presidential election year.’ We all have an oath to the Constitution and we have a commitment to say we’re going to do whatever we can to be able to secure the border.”

We have a treat in Episode Nine of the Progress Pondcast. As our first ever guest, we have longtime Booman Tribune and Progress Pond commenter MikeinOhio who joins us to talk about a wide array of topics. He’s great for providing a blue guy in a red state perspective, and he has a fabulous radio voice.

We talk about Vince McMahon’s perversions, Cincinnati chile versus Philadelphia cheesesteaks, and Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump being taken down to the studs. We also talk about the anti-Trans bill in Ohio and the difficulty conservatives have with empathy until the moment that something personally affects them. Then there’s Ron DeSantis’s cowardly dropout of the presidential campaign and subsequent endorsement of Trump. And we discuss all these prominent GOP leaders in Florida, Arizona and Colorado who keep resigning their leadership posts.

I was kind of amazed to realize that I’ve known MikeinOhio since January 2007, but then I can say the same about a lot of you readers. I hope you tune in to check it out.

Stormy Daniels’ brief tryst with Donald Trump was free and consensual, but it wound up costing the disgraced ex-president $130,000. That’s the amount Michael Cohen paid Daniels to stay mum about the sexual encounter during the 2016 election. Unfortunately for Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, she was successfully sued by Trump for $121,000 in lawyers fees after she lost a defamation suit against him. So, at least financially, the whole thing was close to a wash. Of course, Trump was arrested and faces trial for making the $130,000 payment. We’ll see how that turns out. The trial is currently scheduled in March.

But E. Jean Carroll’s sexual encounter with Trump was not consensual. She has now won not one but two defamation cases against him, and it’s adding up to a lot of money.

A New York jury on Friday ordered former President Donald Trump to pay a total of $83.3 million to E. Jean Carroll for ruining her credibility as an advice columnist when he called her a liar after she accused him of sexual assault.

The jury awarded Carroll $65 million in punitive damages, $11 million for the damage to her reputation and another $7.3 million.

That’s on top of the $5 million Carroll was awarded in the first defamation case. She definitely is doing her part to take Trump down to the studs. He will want to appeal this ruling but that requires him to post a bond in the full amount. The New York Times says he can borrow money for this purpose rather than pay the full amount up front, but he might have trouble finding a lender eager to take that on. After all, any day now Judge Engoron, who oversaw his New York fraud trial, is likely to ask him to cough up in excess of $350 million in ill-gotten gains, and also prevent him from ever doing business in the state again. He’s not exactly a good credit risk right now.

I particularly enjoyed how Trump refused to offer a defense in the first Carroll defamation case and was quickly found guilty on what was actually an impossible to prove charge. And then he decided he needed to defend himself in the second defamation case only to discover it was too late and his guilt was already established. What a complete tool and fool this man is! And, on top of it, he could have got off with a $5 million penalty, but that’s now grown to nearly $90 million. That’s a hefty price for stupidity.

His only hope now is that the public is even stupider than he is, which actually appears to be the case.

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be continuing with the painting of the Cape May, New Jersey 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.

I’ve now begun the vast sandy area of the scene.

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.

Reuters/Ipsos has Donald Trump as a solid favorite to win the election in November. That would be lights out for Ukraine. Probably for Moldova, too. And later on, who knows, maybe for Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania. Don’t forget Poland!

But the truth is that the Trump doesn’t need to win the election in order to help Russia’s imperial program succeed. All he has to do is prevent the current Congress from passing any new money for Ukraine’s defense. In this, he is on track. While CNN reports many Republican senators are seething about Trump’s interference, that doesn’t mean Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell can prevent a successful filibuster of any Ukraine funding.

What’s odd about this whole situation is that aid for Ukraine somehow got hard-linked to a rather large immigration bill that focuses on the southern border. If you want to understand how this happened, Jonathan Chait has a fairly good explainer at New York magazine.

Basically every Democrat in Congress, along with many Republicans, wants to continue giving military aid to Ukraine so it can defend itself against Russia’s ongoing invasion. But because the issue splits the GOP, and Republicans control the House, passing this aid isn’t easy. House Speaker Mike Johnson can block Ukraine aid from coming to the floor, even though a majority in both chambers favors this aid.

When anti-Ukraine Republicans articulated their opposition to helping Ukraine, they usually framed it as having something to do with the American border. “Critics asked how Biden could justify rushing thousands of troops to assist Ukraine and defend the borders of NATO, yet stubbornly neglect the chaos at our border,” wrote the Heritage Foundation in 2022. “We should be protecting our border, not the border of Ukraine,” said Marjorie Taylor Greene.

In reality, not even Marjorie Taylor Greene is stupid enough to think there is a direct trade-off between helping Ukraine and reducing the surge of asylum claims in the United States. It is simply a rhetorical conceit to avoid admitting that anti-Ukraine Republicans either don’t care about or actively support Russia’s goal of crushing Ukraine, using a facile rhetorical conceit that both issues can be described with the word “border” to create a false choice.

Nonetheless, pro-Ukraine Republicans, led by Mitch McConnell, decided to take these “arguments” at face value. Their clever-sounding plan was to hold up aid to Ukraine — aid they themselves support — unless Democrats agreed to secure the border.

That’s half the story. The other half is that the Biden administration went along with this plan, essentially because they saw no better option. In the process, the administration agreed to a very lop-sided border bill agreement. That didn’t make important parts of the Democratic coalition feel too good, but it’s the reason one GOP senator anonymously told CNN that without Trump’s opposition, this border/Ukraine deal would have “overwhelming support within the conference.” It’s the kind of deal the Republicans would not ordinary get. In fact, McConnell explained this to the conference behind closed doors, predicting that even if they won the presidency and both chambers of Congress, they couldn’t overcome a Democratic filibuster next year to pass a bill as good as the one on offer from Biden right now.

But this doesn’t matter. Trump doesn’t want Ukraine to get any money because he’s a tool of Vladimir Putin. And he doesn’t want a tough, bipartisan border bill to pass because he wants to use the border against Biden in the election. Most importantly, the Republicans in Congress are afraid to stick up to Trump because it looks like he’s going to beat Biden.

McConnell seems to alternate between resignation and defiance. For now, he says he hasn’t given up on a deal, but the deal appears dead. His deputy John Thune of South Dakota says there is a Plan B for Ukraine funding, but there’s no plan for Ukraine that Trump won’t oppose.

As Dan Diamond points out in the Washington Post, for the third consecutive year Obamacare has hit a record level of enrollment. On Wednesday, the Biden administration announced that over 21 million people have signed up for a plan in Affordable Care Act marketplaces.

The enrollment figures reflect a roughly 80 percent surge in sign-ups for the ACA since President Biden took office in 2021 and expanded the subsidies available to consumers.

“[T]he American people have made it clear: they don’t want the Affordable Care Act weakened and repealed — they want it strengthened and protected,” Biden said in a statement.

It’s a very successful program. Trump promised to kill it but he failed. Now he’s coming back like a zombie promising to kill it if he’s elected president for a second term.

“I don’t want to terminate Obamacare, I want to REPLACE IT with MUCH BETTER HEALTHCARE. Obamacare Sucks!!!” Trump wrote in a November 2023 post on Truth Social, his social media platform.

Sixty percent of Americans have a positive view of the Affordable Care Act and Republican strategists don’t want to mess with it. But Trump doesn’t have very many legislative priorities, and he’s committed to blotting out President Barack Obama’s signature achievement.

Even if he can’t repeal the law, he will definitely reverse the trend in record enrollment. Everything Trump touches turns to shit.

Hi everyone. I’ll give you all another Closer Look segment:

It appears, as a side note, that Jon Stewart is coming back to The Daily Show on a weekly basis, at least through the election season. I look forward to putting some of those segments on once that happens. See you all next week. Cheers!

The stupid Republican primary in New Hampshire is over and now we all wait a full month until February 24 in South Carolina for another contest. This kind of stuff used to fun for political junkies, but there’s nothing interesting or suspenseful going on in either party’s nominating races.

Republicans in South Carolina like Trump much better than their own former governor, so Nikki Haley has no chance whatsoever of winning the next contest. There’s very little she can do to even try to change her fate, but it’s possible that fate can still smile on her campaign.

It all depends on whether the courtroom can begin to chip away at Trump’s support. Pretty soon, we’ll find out how much more money Trump will owe to E. Jean Carroll for raping and defaming her. This will be the second multimillion dollar award to Carroll, and since he simply won’t stop defaming her, the price tag could be staggeringly high and perhaps even include a third trial.

I think what will be more impactful however is the ruling in Trump’s fraud case in New York. Judge Engoron has promised to bring the shithammer down on Trump, his two nitwit sons, and the Trump Corporation by January 31. When last we saw Engoron, he has dealing with a MAGA bomb threat called in about his home. I expect the judge to chop up Trump’s business and have it sold off.

Naturally, Trump will appeal. He will eventually lose that appeal, but the fire sale of Trump Tower won’t take place before Election Night. I get that. I still see it as pretty damaging to his cult status to be pauperized by Letitia James. The truth is, Trump doesn’t win in court, almost ever. He has some success delaying things sometimes, but that’s it.

That’s why Haley needs to stay in the race, because eventually we’re going to get to one of Jack Smith’s two cases against Trump, either of which could send him to prison for the rest of his life. Now, it could be that both of Smith’s cases are pushed back past the Republican convention or even the election itself. In that case, Haley never had a chance.