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Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Good Day, Sky Dancers!You may have noticed that JJ and I have been doing the posts recently. BB took ill with Covid-19. We were hopeful that a few doses of Paxlovid would have her back in no time. However, she has been in the hospital now since Monday. She developed mild pneumonia and will probably have more days in hospital before they release her. We all wish her the very best on her road back to health.
My mother used to love watching the A-Team back in the day. I didn’t watch it much, but I did love Mister T, and “I pity the fool” who didn’t love him calling out a “Jive Turkey.” One of Maya Angelou’s words of wisdom was, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” Today, I have a long list of Jive Turkeys showing us exactly who they are.
A jive turkey is someone who is unreliable, makes exaggerations or empty promises, or who is otherwise dishonest. The phrase is so associated with 1970s culture.
Okay, so Jive Turkey number one is Judge Aileen Cannon. This is from Politico‘s Josh Gerstein. “How one judge is slowing down one of Trump’s biggest criminal cases. The May 2024 trial in Trump’s classified documents case appears headed for a politically precarious postponement.”
Judge Aileen Cannon seems to be in no hurry.
On paper, she has scheduled a trial to open next May in the case charging Donald Trump with hoarding national security secrets at Mar-a-Lago.
In reality, she has run the pretrial process at a leisurely pace that will make a postponement almost inevitable, according to experts on criminal prosecutions related to classified information.
Delaying Trump’s trial until after the November election would have a momentous implication: It might mean the trial never happens at all. If Trump wins the election and the case is still pending, he’s expected to order the Justice Department to shut it down.
Even a shorter delay would be fraught: Pushing the trial into the summer or fall could run headlong into the Republican National Convention or the heart of the general election campaign.
For now, Cannon, a Trump-appointed federal district judge in Florida, is officially sticking with the May 20 trial date she announced four months ago. She even recently denied Trump’s bid to push it back. But in a series of more technical rulings, Cannon has postponed key pretrial deadlines, and she has added further slack into the schedule simply by taking her time to resolve some fairly straightforward matters.
“It could be seen as a stealth attempt to delay the ultimate trial date without actually announcing that yet,” said Brian Greer, a former Central Intelligence Agency attorney.
“There’s pretty much no chance they could go to trial on May 20 with the current schedule,” he added.
David Aaron, a former DOJ national security prosecutor, agreed, saying a May 20 trial is unlikely “unless a lot of discipline is imposed.”
You may read the exact steps she’s taken to delay justice for the American people at the link above. Multiple Jive Turkeys are dissing our wonderful Vice President Kamala Harris. Dean Phillips, an obscure congressman from Minnesota, is challenging President Biden in the Democratic Presidential primary. This is from Tommy Christopher at Mediaite. “Biden Rival Comically Backtracks When Confronted On CNN For Attacking VP Kamala Harris: ‘I Don’t Recall Saying Those Words’.”
Congressman and longshot Biden presidential rival Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN) did a comical bit of backpedaling when CNN anchor Abby Phillip confronted him for attacking Vice President Kamala Harris in another interview.
Rep. Phillips — who is polling at or below the margin of error in most polls since launching a primary challenge against Biden — lobbed a series of attacks at the VP in an Atlantic interview, couched as repetitions of criticisms from unnamed others:
“Is Kamala Harris prepared to step in if something happened to Biden?” I asked Phillips.
“I think that Americans have made the decision that she’s not,” he said.
I replied that I was interested in the decision of one specific American, Dean Phillips.
“That is not my opinion,” Phillips clarified. He said that every interaction he’s had with the vice president has been “thoughtful” and that “I’ve enjoyed them.”
“That said …” Phillips paused, and I braced for the vibe shift.
“I hear from others who know her a lot better than I do that many think she’s not well positioned,” he said of Harris. “She is not well prepared, doesn’t have the right disposition and the right competencies to execute that office.”
Phillips also noted that Harris’s approval numbers are even worse than Biden’s: “It’s pretty clear that she’s not somebody people have faith in.”
But again, Phillips is not one of those people: “From my personal experiences, I’ve not seen those deficiencies.”
The exchange even nonplussed the interviewer, Mark Leibovich, who compared it to “Trumplike ‘many people are saying’ attributions.”
Stay classy Congressman. You may want to read up on misogynoir.
The Kingpin Jive Turkey is, of course, Donald Trump. This is also from Mediaite. “MSNBC’s Claire McCaskill Claims Trump ‘Even More Dangerous’ Than Hitler and Mussolini.” It’s reported by Ken Meyer.
‘The Turkey is a noble bird.” Benjamin Franklin’s character in the musical 1776, John Buss @repeat1968
MSNBC political analyst Claire McCaskill posited that Donald Trump is “even more dangerous” than Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler because the only thing he cares about is himself, and he lacks any other kind of political center.
The former senator joined Alicia Menendez on Tuesday for Dateline, where the panel was discussing the New York Times’ analysis of Trump’s most recent rhetoric against his political enemies. With Trump’s increasing levels of vitriol, aggression and thirst for vengeance, the Times pointed to the valid comparisons between the former president and various fascist leaders and dictators.
As McCaskill was invited to discuss Trump stoking violence and political extremism in America, she noted that “A lot of people have tried to draw similarities between Mussolini and Hitler and the use of the terminology like ‘vermin’ and the drive that those men had towards autocracy and dictatorship.”
The difference, though, I think makes Donald Trump even more dangerous, and that is he has no philosophy he believes in. He is not trying to expand the boundaries of the United States of America. He is not trying to overcome a neighboring country like Putin is in Ukraine. He is not going for a grandiose scheme of international dominance. All he wants is to look in the mirror and see a guy who is president. All he cares about is selfish self-promotion. That’s the only philosophy he has.
McCaskill argued this makes Trump “even more dangerous because he’s actually said out loud that it would be okay to terminate the Constitution to keep him in power.”
“He actually said those words,” she said. “And the irony is all of these supposed conservative folks that have populated the Republican party all stood around with their thumb in their mouth going ‘well, yeah okay.’ It’s bizarre.”
Les Dindons, 1877, Claude Monet
Peter Stone of The Guardian wrote this analysis. “‘Openly authoritarian campaign’: Trump’s threats of revenge fuel alarm. ‘Openly authoritarian campaign’: Trump’s threats of revenge fuel alarm. .”Trump’s talk of seeking to ‘weaponize’ the DoJ and ‘retribution’ for opponents poses a direct threat to the rule of law and democracy in the US should he win a second term, experts say.”
Donald Trump’s talk of punishing his critics and seeking to “weaponize” the US justice department against his political opponents has experts and former DoJ officials warning he poses a direct threat to the rule of law and democracy in the US.
Trump’s talk of seeking “retribution” against foes, including some he’s branded “vermin”, has coincided with plans that Maga loyalists at rightwing thinktanks are assembling to expand the president’s power and curb the DoJ, the FBI and other federal agencies. All of it has fueled critics’ fears that in a second term Trump would govern as an unprecedentedly authoritarian American leader.
Trump is currently the overwhelming favorite to win the Republican nomination for 2024 and has long maintained hefty polling leads over his party rivals. At the same time a slew of recent polls has also shown him ahead of president Joe Biden, including in key battleground states.
But scholars and ex-justice officials see increasing evidence that if they achieved power again Trump and his Maga allies plan to tighten his control at key agencies and install trusted loyalists in top posts at the DoJ and the FBI, permitting Trump more leeway to exact revenge on foes, and shrinking agencies Trump sees as harboring “deep state” critics.
Ominously, Trump has threatened to tap a special prosecutor to “go after” Biden and his family.
Trump’s angry mindset was revealed on Veterans Day when he denigrated foes as “vermin” who needed to be “rooted out”, echoing Fascist rhetoric from Italy and Germany in the 1930s.
“I’m hard pressed to find any candidates anywhere who are so open that they would use the power of the state to go after critics and enemies,” said Steven Levitsky, a Harvard government professor and co-author of How Democracies Die.
“This is one of the most openly authoritarian campaigns I’ve ever seen. You have to go back to the far-right authoritarians in the 1930s in Europe or in 1970s Latin America to find the kind of dehumanizing and violent language that Trump is starting to consistently use.”
Republican Freedom Caucus Jive Turkeys are trying to pin January 6th on a false flag operation led by the FBI. This was denied by FBI Director Christopher Wray in a Congressional hearing and is an absolutely insane conspiracy theory. This is from Amanda Marcotte writing for Salon. ‘Marjorie Taylor Greene and Mike Lee get Jan. 6 footage — but trying to blame the FBI could backfire. Whatever, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Mike Lee — no one actually thinks the FBI was behind January 6.”
No surprise from a guy who took the lead defending Donald Trump’s attempted coup, but the newly appointed Speaker of the House, Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., moved quickly to abuse his power in an effort to spread lies and disinformation. He’s pretending to do so under the guise of “transparency,” by releasing over 40,000 hours of security footage from the January 6 insurrection online this week. Of course, Johnson does not actually expect people to watch the footage, especially as pretty much every American already knows what happened that day: attempted murder, vandalism, bashing cops, and limitless jackassery from people dumb enough to listen to Donald Trump. But of course, the MAGA movement — now indistinguishable from the Republican Party — wants to rewrite history in gaslight, claiming that our lying eyes deceived us and that the Capitol riot was merely a tickle.
The purpose of this release is not subtle. Propagandists can soon cherry-pick a few moments where rioters were not beating up cops, and pretend that somehow negates the rest of the time that they were beating up cops. As I noted in Tuesday’s newsletter, the tactic is familiar to anyone who has survived a trash boyfriend, the kind who whined, “Why don’t you talk about all the days I didn’t cheat on you?”
Relitigating a day that makes Republicans look like fascists and cowards doesn’t seem like the smartest electoral strategy. But the GOP now is primarily composed of professional trolls who cannot turn down an opportunity to spew noxious gases online. Sure enough, some of the most annoying people in Congress tweeted conspiracy theories about the footage in language so fevered you could practically hear them panting as they typed. Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, a man who is only spared from being the biggest dweeb in the Senate by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, retweeted an image of a Capitol rioter with captions falsely implying he was an undercover FBI agent. “I can’t wait to ask FBI Director Christopher Wray about this at our next oversight hearing,” Lee wrote, with a junior high student’s enthusiasm for being annoying to adults.
And, of course, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., repeated the same obviously silly story, because the woman never met a conspiracy theory she doesn’t like.
No Jive Turkey Trot would be worth its salt if it didn’t include Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. This is from A.G Gancarski’s Florida Politics. “In attempt to reboot New Hampshire campaign, Ron DeSantis rolls out food drive. Hungry Floridians won’t benefit, but the Governor’s 2024 campaign will.”
While Floridians who are dealing with food insecurity this week may be on their own, it’s heartening to know Gov. Ron DeSantis is organizing a food drive.
That’s the good news.
The bad news for them is that it’s in another state.
“We are doing a big canned food drive today in New Hampshire. We’re going to be donating to the New Hampshire Food Bank. So I would just say Americans as they enjoy their Thanksgiving, there’s a lot of people that are struggling with this economy so we want to step up and do our part,” DeSantis said on Tuesday’s “Fox and Friends.”
Though Florida has been rocked by inflation that rivals anywhere in the country, DeSantis is strategically limiting his cost-of-living concerns to states where he needs votes more imminently. He has bemoaned spiraling prices in Iowa also.
“I’m going around and talking to voters across the country. I’ll have a family in Iowa tell me, you know, now they go and check out at the grocery store and it rings up so high, so quick they’ve got to take things out of their shopping cart,” DeSantis said in September on the Fox News Channel’s “America Reports.”
For the DeSantises, economic concerns are a family affair: First Lady Casey DeSantis has also talked about troubles in the economy, blaming “Bidenomics” for her need to buy her children’s “$2 t-shirts” at Walmart.
The Governor is spending Tuesday in the Granite State, where he will be the main attraction during a noon town hall event in Manchester, at the Executive Court Banquet Center, with Gov. Chris Sununu on hand. From there, his next stop will be a second town hall in Keene, a 6 p.m. start at Tempesta Restaurant.
Gov. DeSantis only has room to improve in New Hampshire generally, but his problems are especially acute in the Manchester metropolitan area, where he had just 2% support in a a recent survey from the University of New Hampshire.
He’s below 10% in recent polls of the state, including a drop to fifth place in the new Washington Post-Monmouth survey of New Hampshire GOP Primary voters. With 7% support, the Florida Governor finds himself behind Vivek Ramaswamy (8%), Chris Christie (11%), Nikki Haley (18%), and Donald Trump (46%).
The plumpest Social Media Jive Turkey of them all is getting support for Republicans. This is a Washington Post Op-Ed by Greg Sargent “Elon Musk’s silly lawsuit offers a glimpse into the Musk-MAGA alliance.”
Elon Musk’s new lawsuit against Media Matters, which X Corp. filed late Monday, has been dismissed by legal experts as a frivolous effort to bully a prominent critic into silence. But some Republicans apparently see this as a feature, not a bug: They are allying themselves with Musk’s effort for precisely this purpose.
Musk’s suit charges that Media Matters deliberately and deceptively harmed X (formerly Twitter) with a widely-publicized investigation showing that posts containing pro-Nazi content appeared on X alongside advertisements from leading companies. That, along with a surge in antisemitic content, has advertisers fleeing the site, sparking a slide in ad revenue.
Republicans are eagerly rushing to Musk’s rescue — and not just rhetorically. Two GOP state attorneys general — Ken Paxton in Texas and Andrew Bailey in Missouri — have responded by announcing vaguely defined investigations into Media Matters.
Meanwhile, Trump adviser Stephen Miller is urging Republican law enforcement officials to probe Media Matters for “criminal” activity. And Mike Davis, who is touting himself as Donald Trump’s next attorney general, has declared that Media Matters staff members should be jailed.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Texas, doesn’t deny that the juxtapositions between ads and pro-Nazi postings are real. Rather, it accuses Media Matters of creating an account following only fringe content and endlessly refreshing it until it finally generated the juxtapositions. Those are “extraordinarily rare,” the suit says, but were deliberately engineered to disparage X, harm its revenue stream and interfere with its contracts with advertisers.
It’s a weak case, as experts point out. The Media Matters article said it had “found” the juxtapositions, which X calls “false,” insisting they were “manipulated” into existence. But even if you question Media Matters’s presentation of the facts, it still wouldn’t show that it did “all of this to harm X’s market value,” said Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
Well, next November we get to see how all of this shakes out. If you’re not convinced the Republicans have gone Fascist by now, there’s not much hope for you.
Happy Thanksgiving!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?