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What Next? Or, Insuring The Decline and Fall of the Turd Reich - GNR for Bluesday, November 15th [1]
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Date: 2022-11-15
I’m sure the question you are all asking yourselves this morning is, “What next?” Of course, you might be thinking about the order of your regular ablutions. On the other hand, if puzzling about how to make the world a better place is a part of your daily planning ritual, you are in the right place.
The ugly truth is that whatever owns the republican party is still out there, promoting profit over equality, science, honesty, justice, and health, perverting religions, and generally acting against the best interests of pretty much every American. They won’t go away on their own — we’ll have to make them.
We have a choice. We can rest on our laurels or we can keep working. Laurel resting leads to complacency. Complacency leads to lower turnout. Lower turnout leads to (R)s in office. (R)s in office leads to places we don’t want our country to go. That means getting our asses up off of those pointy laurel leaves (avoiding painful butt punctures is a bonus benefit) and continuing to work for a better America. I don’t think we need to keep up the same intense level of effort (except in Georgia) we’ve been putting out for the last several months, but we do need to remain engaged and committed to our vision for a better America.
With the freedom from immediate pressure, one thing we can do is more one-on-one outreach. We’ve learned that spending time with a hardcore Magaot is like talking to a rock, except the rock is more rational and amenable to reason. The evangelical republican is even harder to reach. They’ve already forsaken their savior for an orange calf. That leaves a few voter pools to target.
(R) leaning Independents (R)s fed up with MAGA Nation third party voters non-voters infrequent voters
Each of these groups necessitates a different approach.
For the Independents, a calm recital of actual facts about crime, the economy, and health, with pointers to supporting references is a good place to start.
For the reluctant (R)s some deprogramming may be needed. Pointing out the drift of the republican party away from the values they hold is the first step. Getting agreement on the importance of honesty, integrity, decency, compassion, and justice is a way to bond. Following up with, “Those values you cherish are what today’s Democratic party is all about,” is a hard sell, but it’s doable.
Third party voters can be swayed by pointing out the danger of diluting the vote against republicans, allowing some really nasty people to sneak into office.
For the non-voters it’s all about convincing them that both parties are not the same, and that the republican party is out to screw them. Walking the edge between being inspirational and hyperbolic is the tricky part.
Infrequent voters are much like non-voters. The task is to convince them of the importance of regular participation. Perhaps, a call to duty approach can give some traction here.
If each of us activists works on adding one or two voters to Team Blue each month, we can make gerrymanders and voter suppression efforts fail all across the nation. We’ll be able to flush away the all those Magaots floating in the punchbowl.
In summary, the 2022 election is [mostly] over; let the work to salvage the future continue.
GET OUT THE VOTE in GEORGIA!
We have the power. We have the ability. We can and we will do this.
Slava Ukraini!
Remember the Children
Screw you, Samuel Alito
Stephen was pretty happy about Democrats retaining control of the Senate and the related frenzy of republican finger pointing.
x YouTube Video
He also had an extended interview with Michelle Obama [23:28].
Seth had some fun with republican prognostications and the fallout from their failures [12:52].
x YouTube Video
We shouldn’t forget Jimmy Kimmel’s review of Tiffany’s wedding [12:41].
There’s not a lot of news about the House today. 20 House races remain uncalled. There is other news.
Another Part of the Aqueous Red Mirage, a Lake Recedes in Arizona
Buh, bye Kari, you worthless sack of hate and lies.
NBC News: Allan Smith: Democrat Katie Hobbs defeats MAGA favorite Kari Lake in high-stakes race for governor in Arizona
Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs has defeated Republican Kari Lake in Arizona's race for governor, NBC News projected Monday. Hobbs' victory is key for Democrats in a presidential battleground state and a rebuke to a prominent election denier — although the closeness of the contest left the result up in the air for nearly a week. “I am honored to have been selected to serve as the next Governor of Arizona,” Hobbs said in a statement Monday night. “I want to thank the voters for entrusting me with this immense responsibility. It is truly an honor of a lifetime, and I will do everything in my power to make you proud.”
And there’s even a not so subtle knife twist to go with her loss.
The Hill: Olafimihan Oshin: Liz Cheney trolls Kari Lake for losing Arizona governor’s race: ‘You’re welcome’
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) appeared on Monday to troll Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake after she was projected to lose in her race for governor. In a tweet on Monday, Cheney quoted a tweet from Lake from late last month that included a letter that mockingly thanked the congresswomen for her “anti-endorsement.” Cheney had weighed in on the race by urging voters to cast a ballot against her fellow Republican. “You’re welcome, @KariLake,” Cheney said in her tweet Monday.
x I know everyone is interpreting this as Kari Lake refusing to concede but I prefer to think of it as her confession about why she lost. pic.twitter.com/tIj1r2xBC5 — Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) November 15, 2022
Tweet text:
Daniel W. Drezner: I know everyone is interpreting this as Kari Lake refusing to concede but I prefer to think of it as her confession about why she lost. Kari Lake: Arizonans know BS when they see it.
Bang, Down Comes the Final Gavel
Another day, another spurious republican appeal goes up in smoke. As expected, Clarence “The Coke Pubes Guy” Thomas, failed to recuse himself and tried to protect his wife.
AP: High court rules against Arizona GOP leader in records fight
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has cleared the way for the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol to get phone records belonging to the leader of the Arizona Republican Party. The high court on Monday rejected GOP state chair Kelli Ward’s request to halt the turnover of records while a lawsuit proceeds. The court lifted a temporary order that had been put in place by Justice Elena Kagan that had paused anything from happening while Ward’s emergency request was at the Supreme Court. Ward has said her First Amendment rights would be chilled if investigators were able to learn whom she spoke with while trying to challenge former President Donald Trump’s 2020 election defeat. Ward attorney Alexander Kolodin said he had not yet seen the order and had no immediate comment.
There’s more. [spoiler alert] Clarence failed.
Huffington Post: Paul Blumenthal: Clarence Thomas Again Moves To Block Jan. 6 Inquiry That Could Implicate His Wife
In an unwritten dissent on Monday, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas showed that he would have blocked enforcement of a subpoena issued by the House Jan. 6 Committee for the phone and text records of Arizona Republican Party Chair Kelli Ward. The committee is seeking Ward’s records related to her role in former President Donald Trump’s effort to steal the 2020 election as a fake elector casting ballots in the Electoral College for Trump.✂️ Thomas previously was the lone justice to dissent from the court’s refusal to block the release of White House records held by the National Archives to the Jan. 6 Committee. It was later revealed in March that his wife had been in communication with White House officials about Trump’s machinations to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory.
Republican Cloud Nine Has Been Abandoned (and It Hasn’t Got a Silver Lining, Either)
Coming into this election, republicans were expecting a red wave. It receded before it ever hit shore. That’s causing some recriminations and blamestorming. The treason caucus is not happy, and that’s a good thing.
Salon: Heather Digby Parton: GOP in massive turmoil — and it's delicious: Can Mitch and Kevin survive?
I've seen some circular firing squads in my time observing politics, but never anything like what is going on in the Republican Party right now. Usually it's the Democrats ripping each other apart over an election loss, running around in circles casting blame, rushing to avoid responsibility and otherwise making everything worse. But they look like rank amateurs compared to the GOP, which is in the throes of the angriest political tantrum I've ever seen. I must confess to a full-blown case of schadenfreude over it. The unexpected run of Democratic victories — they've already held the Senate, will come within a whisker of holding the House and have won a bunch of state-level races too — has shaken the foundations of both MAGA World and what used to be known as the Republican "establishment," although the difference between the two is not readily discernible these days. It's only in times of Trump scandal or electoral catastrophe that we can still glimpse some daylight between them. There's generally a round of hand-wringing and public disavowal from some of their important thought leaders and elected officials until they get word from the base that Donald Trump is still their daddy and they fall back into line. ✂️ Recriminations are coming in fast and furious from the right-wing media establishment, starting with the Murdoch empire. The Fox News celebrities haven't all abandoned Trump quite yet — they're no doubt waiting for the smoke to clear before they decide their next moves. But there's a shiny new candidate on the scene who also says he was called by God to lead the nation. Many in the GOP have turned their lonely eyes to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, hoping he can save the day. That of course has finally uncorked Trump's resentment against the man he sees as his creation, which has reportedly been boiling up for years now. Trump even claimed in a post on his Truth Social platform that he had ordered the FBI and Department of Justice to intervene in DeSantis' very close 2018 election to ensure his win. (Trump's former chief of staff John Kelly, has said that's not true.) ✂️ As you can see, the Republican Party is in serious disarray. As if that weren't enough, Donald Trump himself says he will make a "major announcement" on Tuesday night to pour more gasoline on the fire. Word is that he will make a "very professional, very buttoned-up" speech, rather than his usual unhinged rally rant, which I have to admit is a savvy move. Trump understands that being unpredictable gets him attention and I can just see all the TV pundits declaring that he is a changed man, more sober and serious after the election debacle.
Saving Democracy at the Ballot Box
After what happened in my home state of Pennsylvania, I’m happiest about the Secretary of State contests. Keeping traitors away from being in charge of counting the votes in the next election was incredibly important. We should be quite proud we did that.
Mother Jones: Ali Breland: Election-Denying Secretary of State Candidates Got Crushed
Are you an election-denying secretary of state candidate? In a key battleground state? Then you might be having a difficult election year. Election deniers running to oversee state elections did particularly poorly in the 2022 midterms—even in comparison to the underwhelming performance of the Republican Party more generally. Almost the entire America First Coalition, for example, lost their elections. This MAGA-aligned group comprised more than a dozen secretary of state candidates who insisted the 2020 election had been stolen from Donald Trump. They included Arizona candidate Republican Mark Finchem and Nevada Republican Jim Marchant, both of whom lost last week. In addition, election-denying gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano was soundly in Pennsylvania, where the governor appoints the secretary of state. The only member of the group who won the general election was Diego Morales, in solidly red Indiana.
It Doesn’t Like Elon Has a Clue
Rather than turning Twitter into a Mecca for hate speech, Musk appears to be writing a book, Destroying a Social Media Platform for Dummies. He couldn’t have screwed this up worse if he’d set out to purchase Twitter in order to destroy Twitter. The Verge did a deep dive into just how badly Musk is tanking Twitter. There’s lots more in the article, including Musk’s firing of a couple of engineers who pushed back on Musk’s apologies for slow responses in some countries.
I had been worried about the amount of damage an unmanaged Twitter could do. Watching Musk shooting himself in the foot, while stepping on his balls, means it’s not currently as much of a concern.
The Verge: Casey Newton, Zoe Schiffer: Elon Musk ignored Twitter’s internal warnings about his paid verification scheme
On Thursday evening, after a full day of chaos on the timeline, Elon Musk’s Twitter halted new enrollment into its $8-a-month Blue subscription offering. Offering anyone the chance to slap a “verified” badge on their account had led to widespread impersonation of government officials, corporations, and celebrities. The resulting mayhem, which led to memorable hoaxes from accounts misrepresenting themselves as Eli Lilly, Tesla, Lockheed Martin and others, had triggered an advertiser pullout and a general sense that the platform had descended into chaos.✂️ On Saturday afternoon, a week after an initial round of layoffs had cut Twitter in half, Platformer was the first to report that a second massive wave of cuts had hit the company. This time, the cuts were aimed at Twitter’s contract workers. And on a percentage basis, these losses were even more severe: by the next day, we reported, about 4,400 of 5,500 or so contractors — 80 percent of the team — had lost their jobs.✂️ On Monday morning, at around 1:45 AM, Twitter engineers were called into an emergency meeting. A new order had just come down from Musk: freeze all production changes on Twitter systems, effective immediately.✂️ As with the list of product recommendations prepared by trust and safety for the Blue rollout, advertisers appear to have a better understanding of what Twitter needs than Musk does. Massive cuts to the content moderation team, a paralyzing code freeze, and open hostility between the “goons” and the pre-Musk Tweeps have created a company that continues to court a larger crisis.
Mar-a-Lago Motions — Where Bad Lawyers Go to Get Disbarred
Have any of the bottom of the barrel barristers representing tfg made a single cogent, non-frivolous legal motion during the entirety of tfg’s attempts to overthrow the government and steal secret documents? At some point these legal lummoxes need to be sanctioned for wasting the court’s [and our] time. There’s lots of bad news for tfg (good news for us) breaking just in time for him to announce his candidacy for president of cell block D tonight.
Daily Beast: Shan Wu: Donald Trump’s Latest Mar-a-Lago Filing Is a Game of Pretend
The latest filing by former President Donald Trump’s legal team reads more like a children’s game of “let’s pretend” than a legal filing. Trump’s lawyers made the filing in response to Special Master Raymond Dearie’s request that Trump and DOJ brief him on so-called “global issues” in the case, meaning broad legal issues that can help guide Dearie’s slog through the thousands of documents recovered in the FBI search warrant executed at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence. Trump’s lawyers evidently interpreted “global” as license to make legal arguments so broad that they would render the Presidential Records Act (PRA) as well as the legal doctrines like executive privilege meaningless. A good example of the child-like “let’s pretend” nature of Trump’s case is his argument that the PRA cannot apply to any of the documents he took because they are personal documents. Trump’s brief quotes the PRA as requiring that “materials produced or received by the President … shall, to the extent practicable, be categorized as Presidential records or personal records upon their creation or receipt” but concludes that Trump’s failure to take any steps to categorize the documents is the same as his having categorized the documents as personal.
Salon: Frederick Baron, Dennis Aftergut: Trump's lawsuit against Jan. 6 committee is a sideshow — they've already nailed him
On Nov. 11, to absolutely no one's surprise, Donald Trump sued the House Jan. 6 select committee to avoid having to testify or provide documents in response to its subpoena. That was just the latest chapter in Trump's long history of deploying lawsuits to stall — this time as the clock runs out on the current Democratic majority in Congress and its Jan. 6 committee. Little matter: The committee has already won the war.✂️ The committee's subpoena of Oct. 26 invited Trump to tell his story under oath. The committee surely knew the former president would decline the invitation. After all, he took the Fifth Amendment 450 times on Aug. 10 when deposed in New York Attorney General Letitia James' civil case against the Trump Organization.✂️ The committee's powerful case became an important backdrop to last week's surprising midterms. Testimony before the committee demonstrated to any fair-minded person that Donald Trump was the central actor in the conspiracy to end our democracy. That was on the ballot and so was he. Democracy won. Trump lost.
Salon: Samaa Khullar: Ex-Mueller prosecutor: DOJ case against Trump “gets stronger and stronger” after latest filing
Former President Donald Trump mixed documents marked classified with other communications after his presidency, according to court filings that described materials seized by the FBI in their ongoing criminal investigation. Trump kept one document marked "secret" and another marked "confidential" in a desk drawer of his Mar-a-Lago home office, according to the filing, The Guardian first reported. Other documents found were dated after he left the White House, including three communications from a book author, a religious leader and a pollster. The records could add to evidence that Trump knowingly held onto classified materials after his presidency ended. He is also being investigated for concealment of government records, unauthorized possession of national security materials and obstruction.
x One of the key questions in the Mar-a-Lago investigation has been whether Trump just retained classified docs—or whether he has accessed/used them in his post-presidential life. The intermingling of classified docs with communications after Biden took over suggests the latter.
https://t.co/dgC8oTe7wT — Lisa Rubin (@lawofruby) November 14, 2022
..
x But another way to show how willful Trump's retention of documents -- including those that were and remain classified -- was is to show that he didn't just take and forget about them, but purposefully went through them *after* he knew the feds had demanded their return. 8/ — Lisa Rubin (@lawofruby) November 14, 2022
Tweet text:
Lisa Rubin: One of the key questions in the Mar-a-Lago investigation has been whether Trump just retained classified docs—or whether he has accessed/used them in his post-presidential life. The intermingling of classified docs with communications after Biden took over suggests the latter. Hugo Lowell: New: Trump retained two documents marked classified with communications dated after his admin in his Mar-a-Lago office, per DOJ filing — suggesting Trump commingled the docs when no longer president. @GuardianUS
https://theguardian.com/us-news/2022/nov/14/donald-trump-handled-records-marked-classified-after-presidency-court-filing-alleges Lisa Rubin: One way to do this is through testimony of those who interacted directly with Trump, like Kash Patel, whose testimony was compelled, or other aides including Walt Nauta and Will Russell, both of whom reportedly have declined DOJ's overtures to speak again or at all. 7/ Lisa Rubin: But another way to show how willful Trump's retention of documents -- including those that were and remain classified -- was is to show that he didn't just take and forget about them, but purposefully went through them *after* he knew the feds had demanded their return. 8/
Raw Story: Matthew Chapman: George Conway shreds Trump's latest 'ridiculous' defense
On Monday's edition of CNN's "The Situation Room," conservative attorney and longtime Donald Trump skeptic George Conway took down the former president's latest defense of his classified document stash in Mar-a-Lago in a clash with the Justice Department this week. Trump is now claiming, among other things, that his decision to transport records from highly classified storage facilities at the White House to his resort in Palm Beach, including Iranian weapons secrets, means he implicitly designated these as "personal" documents — a claim that Conway, the husband of a former Trump adviser, derided as absurd. "In the Mar-a-Lago investigation, what do you make of the Trump legal argument that you just heard about?" asked anchor Wolf Blitzer. "It is not a legal argument, it is a ridiculous argument," said Conway. "The notion that personal records, that he could just define what a personal record is, it is just fallacious. It is contrary to the statute that defines presidential records that were prepared for or given to the president in the course of his duties, and if that is true then their presidential records and he can't say by stealing them, I am making them personal records."
A Double Dose of Andy to Help Get You Through the Day
If one Borowitz article is good, two must be better — right?
The New Yorker: Satire from the Borowitz Report: Trump Claims Melania Supported Oz Because She Is Attracted to Men Who Are Unfit to Govern
PALM BEACH (The Borowitz Report)—After laying the blame on his wife for recommending that he endorse Dr. Mehmet Oz for the United States Senate, Donald J. Trump explained his wife’s actions by revealing that she is attracted to men who are totally unfit to govern. “It’s a weird thing with her,” he said in a phone call to “Fox & Friends.” “If she sees some loser who is in no way qualified to hold office, she goes weak.” Further explaining his wife’s visceral attraction to obviously unfit candidates, Trump added, “It could be some clown on TV who’s never held office in his life, and she’s, like, ‘I’d go for him in a big way. In a big way.’ ”
The New Yorker: Satire from the Borowitz Report: Elon Musk Accidentally Includes Himself in Latest Round of Mass Layoffs
SAN FRANCISCO (The Borowitz Report)—Elon Musk’s decision to slash Twitter’s workforce had an unintended consequence, as the billionaire found himself accidentally included among the thousands laid off. Musk got a sense that something was amiss on Monday morning, when he attempted to log on to the company’s Slack and found that he had been locked out. Panicking, he jumped into his Tesla and raced to Twitter headquarters, only to discover that his key card no longer functioned.
A Story Selected Specifically for Chloris
For those of you who don’t know, our very own chloris creator wrote a novel starring crows. Comprehending recursion is a big deal. I taught a college course where more than half the class never managed to grasp the concept.
Scientific American: Diana Kwon: Crows Perform Yet Another Skill Once Thought Distinctively Human
Crows are some of the smartest creatures in the animal kingdom. They are capable of making rule-guided decisions and of creating and using tools. They also appear to show an innate sense of what numbers are. Researchers now report that these clever birds are able to understand recursion—the process of embedding structures in other, similar structures—which was long thought to be a uniquely human ability. Recursion is a key feature of language. It enables us to build elaborate sentences from simple ones. Take the sentence “The mouse the cat chased ran.” Here the clause “the cat chased” is enclosed within the clause “the mouse ran.” For decades, psychologists thought that recursion was a trait of humans alone. Some considered it the key feature that set human language apart from other forms of communication between animals. But questions about that assumption persisted. “There’s always been interest in whether or not nonhuman animals can also grasp recursive sequences,” says Diana Liao, a postdoctoral researcher at the lab of Andreas Nieder, a professor of animal physiology at the University of Tübingen in Germany.✂️ The discovery that crows can grasp center-embedded structures and that they are better at doing so than monkeys “is fascinating,” says Giorgio Vallortigara, a professor of neuroscience at the University of Trento in Italy, who was not involved in the work. These findings raise the question of what non-human animals might use this ability for, he adds. “They do not seem to possess anything similar to human language, thus recursion is possibly relevant to other cognitive functions," he says. One speculation is that animals might use recursion to represent relationships within their social groups.
Musical Interlude
Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here performed by Afro Fiesta ft. Twanguero & I-Taweh as part of Playing for Change’s Live Outside series.
x YouTube Video
Music from Ukraine
Dakh Daughters give us a modern twist on a 14th Century French folk song, Sept Verres, performed in French and an old Provençal dialect with a uniquely Ukrainian flavor. Nina, the drummer/cello player shared with DhakaBrakha, had so much fun with this, she fell over. A key lyric:
always the mess/we thought he would be the ideal man/but it's always the same jackal
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On the Lighter Side
Mark Sumner reported this in one of his Ukraine updates back on November 3rd. It’s too good to just let it fade away into history.
x A US military plane "painted a penis" in the sky near a Russian airbase, La Repubblica.
A KC-135 Stratotanker refueling plane remained for almost two hours east of Cyprus on Tuesday, in front of the Syrian base of Tartus, a stronghold of Moscow.
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/SCs0QZhUMV — MAKS 22🇺🇦 (@Maks_NAFO_FELLA) November 2, 2022
Closing Notes
Today, we’ll close out with a Fire on the Mountain from 1987. That year Mickey Hart coproduced a documentary on World Music in Schools, including parts of a benefit concert at the Petaluma Veteran’s Auditorium The rhythm section features Mickey Hart, Baba Olatunji, and The Drums of Passion. Hamza el Din plays Oud (a lute precursor). The guitarists are Jerry Garcia, Carlos Santana, and Bobby Vega.
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