Sunday, December 22, 2024
Friday, December 20, 2024
Reasons Why Hegseth Should Not Be Confirmed as the Secretary of Defense
“Each of us swore an oath to support and defend the
Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. We did not swear it to
an individual or a party. American elections and the peaceful
transfers of power that result are hallmarks of our democracy.”
They wrote, before the events on January 6 took
place, that “this year should be no exception.” Of course, tragically, it was.
At the time the Post published their letter, all sorts of alarm bells were
already going off for anyone who was paying attention (unlike in FBI
headquarters). The former civilian leaders of our military were deeply
concerned, so much so that they went to press with it.
They referred to senior defense leaders who they quoted as
weighing in to say, “‘there’s no role for the U.S. military in determining the
outcome of a U.S. election.’ Efforts to involve the U.S. armed forces in
resolving election disputes would take us into dangerous, unlawful and
unconstitutional territory.”
They admonished Chris Miller, the acting secretary who
had assumed his post most unusually after Trump lost the election in 2020, with
his chief of staff, Kash Patel, at his side that “They must
also refrain from any political actions that undermine the results of the
election or hinder the success of the new team.” Just days later, the two were
in place as rioters overran the Capitol.
Our country has a proud tradition of a civilian-led military,
designed by the Founding Fathers to avoid the risk of a coup by the military.
The Secretary of Defense doesn’t come to the job from active duty, and waivers
have to be obtained from Congress for those out of uniform for less than seven
years, as President Biden did for Lloyd Austin and Donald Trump did for James Mattis.
The irony, then, was that in 2020 it was that same civilian
leadership of the military that in no small part was responsible for preventing
a president from being the one to insinuate the takeover.
Donald Trump has nominated Pete Hegseth to be the Secretary
of Defense. It's a nomination that should have been ended by allegations of financial mismanagement—Hegseth denies
them—of an organization whose budget ran into tens of millions, not the $783 billion dollar budget he would oversee at the Pentagon.
And, of course, there are the other criticisms that have been
leveled at Hegseth, of misogyny and sexual assault, which he also denies, and of excess drinking, of which he
says he won’t drink if he’s confirmed.
Politico reported on Thursday that a dozen
senators, both Democrats and Republicans, have taken the unusual step of asking
for his FBI background investigation. The report relates this interesting
detail, “Some Republicans, such as [Maine Republican Sen. Susan] Collins and
North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, say the claims are serious enough to warrant
greater access to the findings.
While it’s unlikely the FBI findings would be made public,
they could still give Republican senators political cover to vote against
Hegseth or support his defense.” Hegseth has said he has nothing to hide and
welcomes the FBI background process, so if everyone’s in agreement, let’s get
that report into the senators’ hands!
You may recall from the whole affair with Justice Kavanaugh that the FBI does background investigations aren’t always as fulsome as the seriousness of confirmation proceedings suggest they should be.
As in that
case, there’s also the possibility that a report could whitewash serious issues
by, for instance, failing to speak with all of the witnesses who have
information to offer or neglecting leads so that the process can be completed
quickly. But the fact that even Republican senators are asking for the report
shows that this is a nomination that deserves far greater scrutiny than Donald
Trump and his followers want it to get.
As we saw in January of 2021, it’s one of the most important
jobs in government. It’s about leading the military, but it is also, in times
of great stress, about upholding the Constitution and the rule of law. The
secretary of defense is supposed to lead the military and serve the people, not
the president. Right now, it’s only the Senate, and let’s be blunt, Republican
senators, who can ensure that this next pick is up to the job.
Can you imagine Pete Hegseth signing on to a letter like the
one that was written by Ashton Carter, Dick Cheney, William Cohen, Mark Esper,
Robert Gates, Chuck Hagel, James Mattis, Leon Panetta, William Perry, and
Donald Rumsfeld? Can you imagine him heeding the kind of advice his
predecessors, if he’s confirmed, are likely to offer him?
It’s not often that you see a group that consists largely of
former politicians from both parties, including a Vice President (Cheney),
coming forward to make a definitive statement like the one in the Post that
January morning. It’s not that it was controversial; perhaps it’s that it
wasn’t, but that it desperately needed to be said, nonetheless, in that moment.
At his confirmation hearing, Pete Hegseth needs to be asked,
among many other things, if he agrees with the sentiment expressed by the men
who held the job he aspires to. If the answer isn’t an unequivocal yes (and
it’s unlikely it will be given the context), it’s just another reason he’s not
fit to serve.
We’re in this together,
-Joyce Vance
Thursday, December 19, 2024
MAGA Extremists
Yesterday,
Representative Barry Loudermilk (R-GA) released an “Interim Report on the
Failures and Politicization of the January 6th Select Committee.” As the title
suggests, the report seeks to rewrite what happened on January 6, 2021, when
rioters encouraged by former president Donald Trump attacked the U.S. Capitol.
Loudermilk
chairs a subcommittee on oversight that sits within the Committee on House
Administration. The larger committee—House Administration—oversees the daily
operations of the House of Representatives, including the Capitol Police. Under
that charge, former House speaker Kevin McCarthy permitted MAGA Republicans to
investigate security failures at the Capitol on January 6.
Loudermilk
was himself involved in the story of that day after video turned up of him
giving a tour of the Capitol on January 5 despite its being closed because of
Covid. During his tour, participants took photos of things that are not usually
of interest to visitors: stairwells, for example. Since then, he has been eager
to turn the tables against those investigating the events of January 6.
Loudermilk
turned the committee’s investigation of security failures into an attack on the
House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S.
Capitol, more commonly known as the January 6th Committee. Yesterday’s report
singled out former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY), who has taken a strong
stand against Trump’s fitness for office after his behavior that day, as the
primary villain of the select committee.
In
his press release concerning the interim report, Loudermilk said that Cheney
“should be investigated for potential criminal witness tampering,” and the
report itself claimed that “numerous federal laws were likely broken by Liz
Cheney” and that the FBI should investigate that alleged criminality.
The
report seeks to exonerate Trump and those who participated in the events of
January 6 while demonizing those who are standing against him, rewriting the
reality of what happened on January 6 with a version that portrays Trump as a
persecuted victim.
Trump’s
team picked up the story and turned it even darker. At 2:11 this morning,
Trump’s social media account posted: “Liz Cheney could be in a lot of trouble
based on the evidence obtained by the subcommittee, which states that ‘numerous
federal laws were likely broken by Liz Cheney, and these violations should be
investigated by the FBI.’ Thank you to Congressman Barry Loudermilk on a job
well done.”
To
this, conservative writer David Frum responded: “After his successful
consolidation of power, the Leader prepares show trials for those who resisted
his failed first [violent attempt to overthrow the government].”
Liz
Cheney also responded. “January 6th showed Donald Trump for who [he] really
is—a cruel and vindictive man who allowed violent attacks to continue against
our Capitol and law enforcement officers while he watched television and
refused for hours to instruct his supporters to stand down and leave.”
She
pointed out that the January 6th committee’s report was based on evidence that
came primarily from Republican witnesses, “including many of the most senior
officials from Trump’s own White House, campaign and Administration,” and that
the Department of Justice reached the similar conclusions after its own
investigation.
Loudermilk’s
report “intentionally disregards the truth and the Select Committee’s
tremendous weight of evidence and instead fabricates lies and defamatory
allegations in an attempt to cover up what Donald Trump did,” Cheney wrote.
“Their allegations do not reflect a review of the actual evidence and are a
malicious and cowardly assault on the truth. No reputable lawyer, legislator or
judge would take this seriously.”
CNN
aired clips today of Republican lawmakers blaming Trump for the events of
January 6.
Last
night, Trump also filed a civil lawsuit against pollster J. Ann Selzer, her
polling company, the Des Moines Register, and its parent company
Gannett over Selzer’s November 2 poll showing Harris in the lead for the
election. Calling it “brazen election interference,” the suit alleges that the
poll violated the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act.
Robert
Corn-Revere, chief counsel for the Foundation for Individual Rights and
Expression, told Brian Stelter, Katelyn Polantz, Hadas Gold, and Paula Reid of
CNN: “This absurd lawsuit is a direct assault on the First Amendment.
Newspapers and polling firms are not engaged in ‘deceptive practices’ just
because they publish stories and poll results President-elect Donald Trump
doesn’t like. Getting a poll wrong is not election interference or fraud.”
Conservative
former representative Joe Walsh (R-IL) wrote: “Trump is suing a pollster and
calling for an investigation of [Liz Cheney]. Don’t you dare tell me he’s not an
authoritarian. And don’t you dare look the other way. Donald Trump is
un-American. The resistance to him from Americans must be steadfast &
fierce.”
This
afternoon, Trump’s authoritarian aspirations smashed against reality.
The
determination of the MAGA extremists in the House to put poison pills in
appropriations measures over the past year meant that the Republicans have been
unable to pass the necessary appropriations bills for 2024 (not a typo),
forcing the government to operate with continuing resolutions. On September 25,
Congress passed a continuing resolution that would fund the government through
December 20, this Friday. Without funding, the government will begin to shut
down…right before the holidays.
At
the same time, a farm bill, which Congress usually passes every five years and
which outlines the country’s agriculture and food policies including
supplemental nutrition (formerly known as food stamps), expired in 2023 and has
been continued through temporary extensions.
Last
night, news broke that congressional leaders had struck a bipartisan deal to
keep the government from shutting down. The proposed 1,500-page measure
extended the farm bill for a year and provided about $100 billion in disaster
relief as well as about $10 billion in assistance for farmers. It also raised
congressional salaries and kicked the government funding deadline through March
14. It seemed like a last-minute reprieve from a holiday government shutdown.
But
MAGA Republicans immediately opposed the measure. “It’s a total dumpster fire.
I think it’s garbage,” said Representative Eric Burlison (R-MO). They are
talking publicly about ditching Johnson and voting for someone else for House
speaker.
Trump’s
sidekick Elon Musk also opposed the bill. Chad Pergram of the Fox News Channel
reported that House speaker Mike Johnson explained on the Fox News Channel that
he is on a text chain with Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, both of whom are unelected
appointees to Trump’s proposed “Department of Government Efficiency” charged
with cutting the U.S. budget.
Johnson
said he explained to Musk that the measure would need Democratic votes to pass,
and then they could bring Trump in roaring back with the America First agenda.
Apparently, Musk was unconvinced: shortly after noon, he posted, “Any member of
the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be
voted out in 2 years!” Later, he added: “No bills should be passed Congress
[sic] until Jan 20, when [Trump] takes office.”
This
blueprint would shut down the United States government for a month, but
Musk—who, again, does not answer to any constituents—seems untroubled. ″‘Shutting down’ the government (which doesn’t actually shut down critical
functions btw) is infinitely better than passing a horrible bill,” he tweeted.
Pergram
reported that Musk’s threats sent Republicans scrambling, and Musk tweeted:
“Your elected representatives have heard you and now the terrible bill is dead.
The voice of the people has triumphed! VOX POPULI VOX DEI.”
But
Trump and Vice President–elect J.D. Vance seem to recognize that shutting down
the government before the holidays is likely to be unpopular. They issued their
own statement against the measure, calling instead for “a streamlined bill that
doesn’t give Chuck Schumer and the Democrats everything they want.”
Then
Trump and Vance went on to bring up something not currently on the table: the
debt ceiling. The debt ceiling is a holdover from World War I, when Congress
stopped trying to micromanage the Treasury and instead simply gave it a ceiling
for borrowing money. In the last decades, Congress has appropriated more money
than the country brings in, thus banging up against the debt ceiling. If it is
not raised, the United States will default on its debt, and so Congress
routinely raises the ceiling as long as a Republican president is in office. If
a Democrat is in office, Republicans fight bitterly against what they say is
profligate spending.
The
debt ceiling is not currently an issue, but Trump and Vance made it central to
their statement, perhaps hoping people would confuse the appropriations bill
with the debt ceiling. ”Increasing the debt ceiling is not great but we’d
rather do it on Biden’s watch. If Democrats won’t cooperate on the debt ceiling
now”—again, it is the Republicans who threaten to force the country into
default—“what makes anyone think they would do it in June during our
administration. Let’s have this debate now.”
Senator
Chris Murphy (D-CT) explained: “Remember what this is all about: Trump wants
Democrats to agree to raise the debt ceiling so he can pass his massive
corporate and billionaire tax cut without a problem. Shorter version: tax cut
for billionaires or the government shuts down for Christmas.”
President
and Dr. Biden are in Delaware today, honoring the memory of Biden’s first wife,
Neilia, and his one-year-old daughter Naomi, who were killed in a car accident
52 years ago today, but White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre issued a
statement saying:
“Republicans
need to stop playing politics with this bipartisan agreement or they will hurt
hardworking Americans and create instability across the country.
President-elect Trump and Vice President–elect Vance ordered Republicans to
shut down the government and they are threatening to do just that—while
undermining communities recovering from disasters, farmers and ranchers, and
community health centers.
Triggering
a damaging government shutdown would hurt families who are gathering to meet
with their loved ones and endanger the basic services Americans from veterans
to Social Security recipients rely on. A deal is a deal. Republicans should
keep their word.”
Josh
Marshall of Talking Points Memo pointed out the relationship
between Trump’s authoritarianism and today’s chaos on Capitol Hill. Trump
elevated Musk to the center of power, Marshall observes, and now is following
in his wake. Musk, Marshall writes, “is erratic, volatile, impulsive,
mercurial,” and he “introduces a huge source of unpredictability and chaos into
the presidency that for once Trump doesn’t control.”
Ron
Filipkowski of MeidasNews captured the day’s jockeying among Trump’s budding
authoritarians and warring Republican factions over whether elected officials
should fund the United States government. He posted: “The owner of a car
company is controlling the House of Representatives from a social media app.”
—Heather
Cox Richardson
Notes:
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/21/jan-6-riot-trump-capitol-00047018
https://cha.house.gov/2024/12/chairman-loudermilk-releases-second-january-6-2021-report
https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/17/media/trump-lawsuit-des-moines-register-ann-selzer-poll/index.html
https://thehill.com/business/budget/5040567-government-funding-deal-shutdown-deadline/
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/60580
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5046736-government-funding-house-vote-fast-track/
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/12/18/johnsons-spending-gop-problems-2025-00195216
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-musk-2670491497/
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trumps-trump
https://apnews.com/article/congress-budget-trump-musk-johnson-5dc9fd8672f9807189032811d4ab0528
X:
davidfrum/status/1869359704385925446
ChadPergram/status/1869384847673745746
emptywheel/status/1869391339584151948
AccountableGOP/status/1869397789538729999
RpsAgainstTrump/status/1869416953464406483
WalshFreedom/status/1869408028954603983
ChrisMurphyCT/status/1869501953195352408
ChrisMurphyCT/status/1869203329081118983
jakesherman/status/1869448889876832538?s=46
Bluesky:
atrupar.com/post/3ldlz4q7zec2i
ronfilipkowski.bsky.social/post/3ldlz4uawec2m
yasharali.bsky.social/post/3ldm3rqevv22m
ronfilipkowski.bsky.social/post/3ldmj6risy22m
macfarlanenews.bsky.social/post/3ldmouc57vk2t
maxwellfrost.bsky.social/post/3ldmchrizp223
yasharali.bsky.social/post/3ldmdfbihfc22
Thursday, December 12, 2024
Trump Followers Are Misinformed
...The
Republican Great Depression forced reforms to banking that are with us to this
day (although George W. Bush undid some of them, resulting in the Great Theft
that triggered the Bush Crash of 2008). While we still are generally wary of
banks, they’re not Public Enemy Number One in the public’s
mind anymore.
Instead, today there’s
barely an American family that doesn’t have a horror story of being denied
essential healthcare because a giant insurance company refused to pay a claim
or authorize a procedure, test, or medication.
It’s not an exaggeration to point out that Americans’ hatred of health insurance executives today is right up there with my mother’s generation’s hatred of bankers in the 1930s. Which explains why Luigi Mangione is now a folk hero: He’s the John Dillinger of this generation. Donald Trump campaigned as a similar type of [so-called] bad-boy folk hero.
He’s
the guy who was going to take down the Black people, Hispanics, and women who
white Republicans believe have gained their positions by virtue of their skin
color or gender rather than their competence. He’ll give white men their mojo
back by destroying Brown peoples’ lives and tearing families apart. He’s going
to cut our taxes and “drain the swamp.” He’s going to “protect” our kids from
liberals and queer people.
Americans,
after all, know they’ve been screwed. Forty-three years of Reaganism has gutted
the middle class, as I lay out in my new book The Hidden History of the American Dream.
Whether
they know the details or not, working class people intuit that houses cost
twice the average annual income in the 1960s but cost ten times the average annual income today.
Boomers controlled over 21 percent of the nation’s wealth when we were in our
30s, but today’s generation in their 30s only control 4.6 percent of the nation’s wealth. One
paycheck was the price of entry to the middle class 43 years ago; today it takes two or more.
What
the people who support Trump don’t realize, though, is that it was Trump’s own
Party and his own class of extremely wealthy people who did this to them. And
who are now gaslighting them. A Harris poll a few months ago found how badly Trump followers are misinformed:
—
Fully 55 percent of Americans thought the economy was shrinking, although it’d
been steadily growing throughout Biden’s four years in office.
— Half (49%) thought the stock market was down, when it was hitting all-time
highs, up 24 percent in 2023 and over 12 percent in 2024.
— The same percentage believed that unemployment was at a 50-year high, even
though it was below 4 percent, a 50-year low.
— An amazing 72 percent of Americans believed inflation was increasing when, in
fact, it had collapsed from over 9 percent to less than 3 percent.
— As a result of these false beliefs, fully 56 percent of voters thought
America was in a recession on election day when, in fact, the economy was doing
better than any time in the past 50 years.
People
who consumed billionaire-owned right-wing media or got their news from
billionaire-owned social media were actually less well-informed than people who claimed to
follow no news at all.
It’s
a true testament to the gaslighting power of billionaire Murdoch’s Fox “News,”
billionaire-owned social media, and billionaire-owned rightwing hate radio:
they succeeded in convincing virtually the entire Republican base that up was
down. Along with a lot of help from the richest man in the world and his
purchase of the world’s largest social media platform, which he turned into a
sewer of grievance, hate, and lies.
It’s what happens when a man like Musk spends a quarter-billion dollars on deceitful television and other advertising media. And, tragically, it’s also an example of the failure of the Biden administration and congressional Democratic leadership (and the DNC) to simply and daily promote their own successes over the four years of his presidency.
What’s
most relevant here is that Luigi Mangione identified a real villain:
a parasitic, greedy, and psychopathic health insurance industry that does not
exist as it does here in any other developed country in the world.
Donald
Trump, on the other hand, promised to fix a middle class that’s been broken by
40 years of Reaganomics’ austerity and low taxes on the rich…with more
austerity and low taxes on the rich.
Which is going to present a real challenge for Trump when he takes over. He’ll continue to claim he’s fighting for the little guy as he cuts taxes on billionaires, guts Social Security, makes college and healthcare more expensive, increases pollution, and throws the nation into a recession with his deportations and tariffs.
He’s
already trying to position himself as his own version of Luigi Mangione, a
“giant killer” who’ll take on a corrupted system even at the peril of his own
life.
But reality can be problematic. Convincing people that Trump’s efforts are working once he’s back in office is going to be a much bigger lift for rightwing media. They’ll try, of course — throughout his last administration Trump and rightwing media repeatedly proclaimed the “best economy in American history” when, in fact, he never even got to Obama’s or Biden’s economic numbers.
The
simple reality is that while Trump is a revolutionary, he’s promoting a
revolution that will exclusively benefit the corrupt and the morbidly rich.
He’ll make things worse for average people, just like he did last time; just
like George W. Bush did, and Ronald Reagan did.
All
three had severe recessions, each kicked off by tax cuts, just like Reagan’s
recession after his tax cuts. Clinton, Obama, and Biden — eschewing tax cuts
and instead raising taxes on the rich — never had a recession.
But Donald Trump will go big on shoveling government money to billionaires and thus bring our economy to its knees. Then, and really only then, should CEOs across multiple industries begin to worry as unemployment and inflation both explode while billionaires and massive monopolies make off with another $7 trillion like during his last administration.
Until
that time, the only CEOs who really have a legitimate reason,
based on current public opinion; to look over their shoulders
are in the health insurance industry.
-Thom Hartmann
The
Hartmann Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and
support my daily work to wrest America back from the neofascist billionaires,
please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Wednesday, December 11, 2024
"The terrifying implications of pardoning insurrectionists who killed and maimed…"
This past weekend, in his Meet The Press interview with Kristen Welker,
Donald Trump reaffirmed his intention to pardon the people who attacked our
Capitol, killing five civilians and three police officers and sending more than
140 cops to the hospital.
“I’m going to be acting very quickly. First day,” Trump said of pardoning Jan. 6 killers. “They’ve been in
there for years, and they’re in a filthy, disgusting place that shouldn’t even
be allowed to be open.”
Most media and political observers and commentators appear to
be of the opinion that this is simply Trump’s way of thanking the people who
made what he considers a heroic effort to keep him in office through violence.
That would be bad enough, but experts at The Critical Internet Studies Institute are
worried that there may be a much more sinister explanation.
If they’re right, it would also go a long way toward
explaining his picks for Attorney General, Defense Secretary, and FBI director.
This theory, increasingly shared among counterterrorism
experts and people who monitor violent rightwing extremist groups, suggests
that the real reason Trump would do the pardons (and is unafraid of discussing
them) is because he’s recruiting. And you don’t need to go back to 1930s Europe
to find examples of how that could work.
Russia’s dictator Vladimir Putin, for example, has often used non-state actors to intimidate and even kill his political enemies. The most well-known is the Night Wolves Motorcycle Club, aka “Putin’s Angels,” run by a man who calls himself “the Surgeon.” They helped Putin invade Crimea and Ukraine, but most of their activity is against protestors, “communists” (anybody opposing Putin), and the queer community in Russia.
Similarly, five years and one week before Trump
applauded the “Jews will not replace us” Nazis who rallied in Charlottesville
and murdered Heather Heyer, a group of some 700 right-wing
Hungarian “patriots” held a torchlight parade that ended in front of the homes
of Hungary’s largest minority group, chanting, “We will set your homes on fire!”
Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán’s police watched the thugs,
laughing and refusing to intervene, as Roma families fled their homes in
terror. In 2013, Zsolt Bayer, one of the founders of Orbán’s party, had called
the Roma “animals… unfit to live among people.”
Language strikingly similar, if not milder, to Trump‘s way of
describing Black people, immigrants, and liberals.
Orbán refused to condemn Bayer or the violence, and life has
become more and more difficult for racial, ethnic, and religious minorities.
Not only are they routinely excluded from job markets but are also frequently
subject to violence at the hands of all-white, Orbán-supporting Hungarian
militias.
Armed rightwing militia groups in the United States have been
on a recruiting jag of their own in anticipation of Trump’s presidency,
according to press reports and terrorism experts. For example, Reuters notes:
“The Proud Boys are back. Four years after the failed effort
to overturn Trump’s 2020 electoral defeat, the violent all-male extremist group
that led the storming of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, is rebuilding and regaining
strength as Trump campaigns to return to the White House, according to
interviews with eight Proud Boys, two U.S. law enforcement officials and four
experts who track the group’s online activity.”
Similarly, Wired magazine reports that Scott Seddon, the Pennsylvania-based
founder of the American Patriots Three Percenters (APIII), is preparing for
something like war:
“’This is not going to just go away. We need to become
fuckin’ strong, fuckin’ lions,’ says Seddon. ‘Start reaching out to individuals
in your state that are trustworthy, that have the like-minded vision of local
strong communities, to hold down the fort, just in case [of] war, or for when
shit hits the fan.’”
El Pais tells the story of armed militia groups who are looking forward
to action on America’s southern border when Trump allows it. Referencing them,
Tom Homan, who Trump has appointed as his “Border Czar,” told Fox “News”:
“There are thousands of retired agents, border patrols,
retired military personnel who want to come and volunteer to help this
president secure the border and do deportation operations.”
They also cite a Wired article that quotes Tim Foley, head of Arizona Border Recon, a white “civilian patrol group,” as saying they’re doing outreach: “We’re in talks with a few different people. We have a better lay of the land than the federal agents do.”
It’s worth remembering that the people Trump says he wants to pardon not only include almost exclusively white men who killed civilians and police officers, but who also tried to hang the Vice President and murder the Speaker of the House of Representatives. These are actions that typically only happen in countries experiencing a live civil war. Which is exactly what Trump’s Defense nominee Pete Hegseth has argued we’re on the verge of.
In his 2020 book American Crusade, Hegseth described leftists as the nation’s “internal adversaries”: “The military and police, both bastions of freedom-loving patriots, will be forced to make a choice,” Hegseth further wrote. “It will not be good. Yes, there will be some form of civil war.”
More recently, in his 2024 book “The War on Warriors,” Hegseth asserted that because of Democrats “America today is in a cold civil war,” claiming that the country is “under siege by confederacy radicals.” Donald Trump himself has said that he expects his plan to deport millions of undocumented workers in America to be “bloody.”
Our timid national media refuse to even consider such a
savage scenario, but America should brace itself as Trump has not let up on his
violent rhetoric and neither have his followers. As former federal prosecutor
Joyce Vance told MSNBC’s Ari Melber:
“You know, when you listen to these comments and watch these videos, what you are forced to consider is the message that Donald Trump is sending, because it is not just to the January 6th defendants. It is to the people he hopes will support him in this next term, and the message is: ‘Support me at all costs, use violence, commit crimes, I will take care of you.’ I find that to be deeply frightening.”
January 6th taught us that Trump and some of the people following him are deadly serious and willing to use violence and even murder to achieve their goals. America needs to get ready. President Biden should be preparing (or reassuring) us. And, if the latter, explaining why.
-Thom Hartmann
Trump's Immunity Argument
Yesterday, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg made it
clear he had no intention of going quietly. No obedience in advance from the
office that obtained the only criminal conviction against Donald Trump before
his election win ran out the clock on the three other criminal cases against
him.
After delays to assess Trump’s claim that the case should be
dismissed or at least he could not be sentenced because he was about to assume
the presidency, the District Attorney flatly rejected Trump’s argument that the
Supreme Court’s immunity ruling impacts their case and asked Judge Juan Merchan
to proceed to sentencing. Nothing, the DA writes, prevents Trump from being
sentenced before the inauguration.
Trump floated a series of arguments that had no relevance to
the question of whether this case could proceed, including:
- Hunter
Biden got a pardon, so the case against him can’t proceed (irrelevant for
so many reasons, including the fact that Biden’s case was a federal
prosecution where the president had the authority to issue a pardon after
a defendant was adjudicated guilty).
- The
Justice Department sent a lawyer to the Manhattan DA’s office to prosecute
him (not true).
- DA
Bragg is ignoring violent crime in the city (not relevant; not true).
The one argument Trump made that needed consideration,
because of the uniqueness of this situation, is whether Supremacy Clause issues
that could make it inappropriate to continue the case once Trump is in office
apply before his inauguration as well. This was a typical sort of “give us an
inch and we’ll take a mile” argument from Trump’s lawyers, who claimed a sort
of global, timeless bar to any further action against him, even though Trump’s
crimes predate his first ascension to the presidency, and he is currently not
the president.
Bragg reached a clear conclusion in the time he requested
from the court to review the issue. The is no special rule for people who will
become, but aren’t yet, the president. He relied on the Supreme Court’s ruling
in Trump v. U.S. that “presidential immunity under Article II
of the Constitution does not extend to the President-elect. Article II vests
the entirety of the executive power in the incumbent President,” to reach the
conclusion that “The President-elect is, by definition, not yet the President.
The President-elect therefore does not perform any Article II functions under
the Constitution, and there are no Article II functions that would be burdened
by ordinary criminal process involving the President-elect.”
Trump’s argument, and immunity itself, is based on the
concern that prosecution would interfere with the performance of a president’s
duties. So Bragg’s argument, which undercuts this rationale, is both persuasive
and compelling. Trump has no duties to perform, so he has no excuse to avoid
sentencing in a case in which he has already been convicted.
Trump, of course, tries to argue that sentencing would
interfere with the transition. But as the DA underscores, Trump’s convictions
are based on unofficial, pre-presidency conduct that does not merit immunity.
His “request that this Court create a doctrine of pre-presidential immunity
under Article II that attaches before a President-elect becomes President—and
that applies where the defendant’s criminal conduct is wholly based on
unofficial, not official, acts—has no grounding in Article II of the Constitution.”
Bragg asked Judge Merchan to reject Trump’s request to
dismiss the case, arguing, “There are no grounds for such relief now, prior to
defendant’s inauguration, because President-elect immunity does not exist. And
even after the inauguration, defendant’s temporary immunity as the sitting
President will still not justify the extreme remedy of discarding the jury’s
unanimous guilty verdict and wiping out the already-completed phases of this
criminal proceeding.”
Trump could be sentenced, with service of any custodial
sentence deferred until he leaves office. Bragg argues that there are other
options the court could use, including staying the sentencing until after
Trump’s term in office as president ends.
What happens next is up to Judge Merchan. Trump will almost
certainly try to run out the clock with appeals if he dislikes the ruling. But
sometimes, moral victories are worth it for their own sake. Today, Alvin
Bragg demanded, on behalf of all of us, that Donald Trump face some measure of
the justice he deserves.
The Manhattan district attorney is not powerful outside of
his own jurisdiction. He has little to bring to bear against the president of
the United States. But Alvin Bragg, who won a hard-fought conviction, stood up
for it today and stood up for it against Donald Trump. His courage
should inspire us. It is a measure of the courage we are all capable of. We do
not have to accept Donald Trump and the demise of the rule of law as
inevitable.
We’re in this together,
Joyce Vance
Monday, December 9, 2024
Defending Your Family with a Gun Could Land You in Prison
You'd do anything to protect your family! Hence,
that’s why you have a gun stored safely. However, do you know what could happen
to you if you ever had to fire your gun? First thing you need to know is that
the legal system has set you up, no matter if you
✓ Bought the right gun
✓ Trained to use it
according to the U.S. Constitution
✓ Stored it safely
✓ Prepared yourself for
the worst
There's ONE terrifying gap in your protection
plan, one that could tear your family apart. What happens AFTER you save or
protect them? The truth is, the legal system doesn't care about your good
intentions.
—Your clean record MEANS NOTHING.
—Your responsible ownership DOESN’T MATTER.
—Your family's safety is NOT THEIR CONCERN.
What most responsible gun owners don't realize is
this: the moment you pull that trigger, everything changes for you, even if
your actions are justified. In the eyes of the law, you may face:
—Your defense becomes a criminal case.
—Your life savings is drained by legal fees.
—Your family loses their financial provider.
—Your children will not see you again for a long
time.
Even worse. This isn't about IF you can protect
your family. It's about what happens WHEN you do protect your family. Nevertheless,
there's a way to protect yourself BEFORE you need to defend yourself and your
family, which will ensure that you are prepared AFTER you have protected your
family. Watch the video below. It will show you
✓ How you can defend your
family without risking prison.
✓ What happens AFTER you
pull the trigger.
✓ The crucial step missing
from your protection plan and how to fix it.
The video is free. Protecting your family should not cost you your freedom:
Defending Your Family With a Gun Could Land You In Prison…
United States Conceal Carry Association (USCCA)
Sunday, December 8, 2024
Outside My Kitchen Window
If
you live in North America, chances are you might live near a Cooper’s Hawk. You
might be lucky enough to spot a Cooper’s Hawk darting through trees in search
of prey, or you might see one perched…
Size,
Shape and Color
The
Cooper’s Hawk is a medium-sized raptor, between 14 to 20 inches long from beak
to tail, roughly the size of a rolling pin. They’re a similar size to a crow
and can be found year-round. Adults have a large head with a crown that can
look black in certain lights. Their backs are gray/blue with a white underside,
while their chests have horizontally streaked rufous bars.
Their
long tail has three black bands, while the outer tail feathers are shorter than
the rest, giving the tail a slightly rounded appearance. Apart from size and a
few other characteristics, this long tail can really help distinguish the
Cooper’s Hawk from the Sharp-shinned Hawk, another common American bird of
prey.
Distribution
The
Cooper’s Hawk is wide-spread across the United States, favoring wild deciduous
forests, but is also found in suburban and urban areas. Cooper’s Hawk can be
found across the states and they are the most common accipiter in the USA.
Cooper's
Hawk Male and Female
Males
and females look very similar, but females are about one-third larger than
males. This size difference is not always noticeable in the field. To tell them
apart, remember that adult females can have more orange on their cheeks than
the males. (They put on a little bit of blush!)
Immature
and juvenile birds are brown above with thin brown vertical streaks stretching
from just below their neck to stomach. Cooper’s Hawk have bright yellow eyes
when they’re young and as they grow older, their eyes turn orange, then red.
Flight
In
flight, Cooper’s Hawks exhibit a flap-flap-glide pattern, typical of
accipiters. Even when crossing expansive open areas, they rarely flap
continuously when hunting. During the breeding season, adults often fly with
flared undertail coverts (American Goshawks also do this too).
Diet
When
targeting their prey of small birds, they fly fast and low to the ground, then
up and over an obstruction to surprise their target on the other side. In
addition to a diet of small birds, this species also feeds on small mammals
like squirrels and chipmunks (if they can catch them!).
As
male Cooper’s Hawk are slightly smaller, their prey is predominantly smaller
birds and small mammals. As the females are much larger, they can take down
larger prey, like Mourning Dove and Pigeons.
Vocalizations
The
vocalizations of Cooper’s Hawk are unique. Learning their suite of calls will
allow you to be aware of the bird’s presence even when they are feeling a
little shy. They are often heard giving a rapid series of “kek, kek, kek, kek”.
To listen to the call of the Cooper’s Hawk, find this in Birda’s
Species Guide
You
might be looking for Cooper’s Hawks near you, and the best place to find out is
by heading to the Birda app. If you’re looking for a great app to begin and
track your birdwatching journey, Birda might be just for you. Join challenges,
earn badges, post sessions and connect with other birders. Find out more about
the Birda app. […].
https://birda.org/coopers-hawk-identification/
Saturday, December 7, 2024
Remembering Pearl Harbor. "Will we permit the destruction of American democracy on our watch?"
On the sunny Sunday morning of December 7,
1941, Messman Doris Miller had served breakfast aboard the USS West
Virginia, stationed in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and was collecting laundry
when the first of nine Japanese torpedoes hit the ship.
In the deadly confusion, Miller reported to an officer, who
told him to help move the ship’s mortally wounded captain off the bridge.
Unable to move him far, Miller pulled the captain to shelter. Then another
officer ordered Miller to pass ammunition to him as he started up one of the
two abandoned anti-aircraft guns in front of the conning tower.
Miller had not been trained to use the weapons because, as a
Black man in the U.S. Navy, he was assigned to serve the white officers. But
while the officer was distracted, Miller began to fire one of the guns. He
fired it until he ran out of ammunition. Then he helped to move injured sailors
to safety before he and the other survivors abandoned the West Virginia,
which sank to the bottom of Pearl Harbor.
That night, the United States declared war on Japan. Japan
declared war on America the next day, and four days later, on December 11,
1941, both Italy and Germany declared war on America. “The powers of the steel
pact, Fascist Italy and National Socialist Germany, ever closely linked,
participate from today on the side of heroic Japan against the United
States of America,” Italian leader Benito Mussolini said. “We shall win.” Of
course they would. Mussolini and Germany’s leader, Adolf Hitler, believed the Americans
had been corrupted by Jews and Black Americans and could never conquer their
own organized military machine.
The steel pact, as Mussolini called it, was the vanguard of
his new political ideology. That ideology was called fascism, and he and Hitler
thought it would destroy democracy once and for all.
Mussolini had been a socialist as a young man and had grown
terribly frustrated at how hard it was to organize people. No matter how hard
socialists tried, they seemed unable to convince ordinary people that they must
rise up and take over the country’s means of production.
The efficiency of World War I inspired Mussolini. He gave up
on socialism and developed a new political theory that rejected the equality
that defined democracy. He came to believe that a few leaders must take a
nation toward progress by directing the actions of the rest. These men must
organize the people as they had been organized during wartime, ruthlessly
suppressing all opposition and directing the economy so that businessmen and
politicians worked together.
And, logically, that select group of leaders would elevate a
single man, who would become an all-powerful dictator. To weld their followers
into an efficient machine, they demonized opponents into an “other” that their
followers could hate.
Italy adopted fascism, and Mussolini inspired others, notably
Germany's Hitler. Those leaders came to believe that their system was the
ideology of the future, and they set out to destroy the messy, inefficient
democracy that stood in their way.
America fought World War II to defend democracy from fascism.
And while fascism preserved hierarchies in society, democracy called on all men
as equals. Of the more than 16 million Americans who served in the war, more
than 1.2 million were African American men and women, 500,000 were Latinos, and
more than 550,000 Jews were part of the military. Among the many ethnic groups
who fought, Native Americans served at a higher percentage than any other
ethnic group—more than a third of able-bodied men between the ages of 18 and 50
joined the service—and among those 25,000 soldiers were the men who developed
the famous “Code Talk,” based in tribal languages, that codebreakers never
cracked.
The American president at the time, Democrat Franklin Delano
Roosevelt, hammered home that the war was about the survival of democracy.
Fascists insisted that they were moving their country forward fast and
efficiently—claiming the trains ran on time, for example, although in reality
they didn’t—but FDR constantly noted that the people in Italy and Germany were
begging for food and shelter from the soldiers of democratic countries.
Ultimately, the struggle between fascism and democracy was
the question of equality. Were all men really created equal as the Declaration
of Independence said, or were some born to lead the rest, whom they held
subservient to their will?
Democracy, FDR reminded Americans again and again, was the
best possible government. Thanks to armies made up of men and women from all
races and ethnicities, the Allies won the war against fascism, and it seemed
that democracy would dominate the world forever.
But as the impulse of WWII pushed Americans toward a more just and inclusive society after it, those determined not to share power warned their supporters that including people of color and women as equals in society would threaten their own liberty. Those reactionary leaders rode that fear into control of our government, and gradually they chipped away the laws that protected equality. Now, once again, democracy is under attack by those who believe some people are better than others.
Donald Trump and his cronies have vowed to replace the
nonpartisan civil service with loyalists and to weaponize the Department of
Justice and the military against those they perceive as enemies. They have
promised to incarcerate and deport millions of immigrants, send federal troops
into Democratic cities, silence LGBTQ+ Americans, prosecute journalists and
their political opponents, and end abortion across the country. They want to
put in place an autocracy in which a powerful leader and his chosen loyalists
make the rules under which the rest of us must live.
Will we permit the destruction of American democracy on our
watch?
When America came under attack before, people like Doris
Miller refused to let that happen. For all that American democracy still
discriminated against him, it gave him room to stand up for the concept of
human equality—and he laid down his life for it. Promoted to cook after the
Navy sent him on a publicity tour, Miller was assigned to a new ship, the
USS Liscome Bay, which was struck by a Japanese torpedo on November
24, 1943. It sank within minutes, taking two thirds of the crew, including
Miller, with it.
I hear a lot these days about how American democracy is
doomed, and the reactionaries will win. Maybe. But the beauty of our system is
that it gives us people like Doris Miller.
Even better, it makes us people like Doris Miller.
—Heather Cox Richardson
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)