The Conversation -- December 9, 2024
Marie: Still no computer, still no heat. But I'm half-sure I'll get my heat back today and, well, hopeful I'll get my computer.
Excellent comments in yesterday's thread about Assad's flight and Trump's, er, NBC "interview."
How the Dictatorship Will Begin, According to Trump. Peter Baker of the New York Times: "... Donald J. Trump outlined an aggressive plan for opening his second term in an interview [with Kristen Welker of NBC News] that aired on Sunday, vowing to move immediately to crack down on immigration and pardon his most violent supporters while threatening to lock up political foes like Liz Cheney. In his first sit-down broadcast network interview since being re-elected, Mr. Trump said that on Day 1 of his new administration next month, he would extend clemency to the hundreds of his backers who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and try to bar automatic citizenship for children born in the United States to immigrant parents. Without giving a time frame, Mr. Trump also indicated that he would fire the F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray, out of personal pique because 'he invaded my home' and was insufficiently certain at first whether Mr. Trump's wound during an assassination attempt this year was caused by a bullet or shrapnel. And he said members of Congress who investigated his role in the Jan. 6 attack should be thrown behind bars....
"At the same time, Mr. Trump seemed to signal that he would not appoint a special counsel to investigate President Biden and his family, as he once vowed. And he signaled that he would not take the most assertive position on several other issues, saying that he would not seek to fire the chairman of the Federal Reserve or restrict the availability of abortion pills." Here's the AP's story on the interview. The NBC News report is here.
The full transcript of the "interview," via NBC News, is here. ~~~
~~~ Dumb & Dumber Rule! Allan Smith and Aria Bendix of NBC News: "... Donald Trump suggested that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his pick to run Health and Human Services, will investigate supposed links between autism and childhood vaccines, a discredited connection that has eroded trust in the lifesaving inoculations. 'I think somebody has to find out,' Trump said in an ... interview with 'Meet the Press' moderator Kristen Welker. Welker noted in a back-and-forth that studies have shown childhood vaccines prevent about 4 million deaths worldwide every year, have found no connection between vaccines and autism, and that rises in autism diagnoses are attributable to increased screening and awareness. 'If you go back 25 years ago,' Trump claimed, 'you had very little autism. Now you have it.' '"Something is going on,' Trump added. 'I don't know if it's vaccines. Maybe it's chlorine in the water, right? You know, people are looking at a lot of different things.' It was unclear whether Trump was referring to opposition by Kennedy and others to fluoride being added to drinking water."
~~~ David McAfee of the Raw Story: "Donald Trump lied about a variety of subjects in his latest NBC interview, according to a report from Rolling Stone.... 'Donald Trump gave his first network interview since the election and spread falsehoods about immigrants, the Affordable Care Act and -- of course -- the 2020 election,' the report states.... The article goes on to call out the moment Trump claimed that the U.S. had '13,099 murderers released into our country over the last three years' who were undocumented immigrants.'... Read the full report here (subscription required)." MB: Without reading the transcript, I can't tell how much Welker fact-checked Trump, but the suggestion from McAfee's account is "not much."
Mark Berman, et al., of the Washington Post: "A coalition of former prison officials, relatives of homicide victims, civil rights advocates and religious leaders are urging President Joe Biden to empty federal death row before he cedes the White House to ... Donald Trump, who staunchly supports capital punishment. Letters to Biden that are slated to be made public Monday ask him to commute all federal death sentences to life without parole, invoking the president's Catholic faith and public opposition to capital punishment, and criticizing the death penalty as arbitrary, unfair and biased."
Here are the New York Times' updates on developments Monday in Syria: "The rebels who ended the Assad family's brutal, decades-long rule of Syria began trying on Monday to bring stability, taking up positions outside banks and public buildings and directing traffic in the capital, Damascus, as enormous questions loomed over the future of the country. The stunning rebel offensive that toppled President Bashar al-Assad and forced him into exile in Russia ended a 13-year civil war and drove out a regime that had used terror and chemical weapons on its own citizens. On Monday, New York Times reporters entering Syria on a highway from Lebanon saw abandoned Syrian military tanks, empty checkpoints and ripped-up posters of Mr. al-Assad littering the road to Damascus." ~~~
~~~ Andrew Osborn & Maxine Rodionov of Reuters: "Syria's former President Bashar al-Assad is in Moscow with his family after Russia granted them asylum on humanitarian grounds, a Kremlin source told Russian news agencies on Sunday, and a deal has been done to ensure the safety of Russian military bases. Russia's Foreign Ministry said earlier that Assad had left Syria and given orders for a peaceful transfer of power, after rebel fighters raced into Damascus unopposed on Sunday, ending nearly six decades of his family's iron-fisted rule." ~~~
~~~ David Sanger of the New York Times on the fall of Assad and what's next (maybe). David Ignatius of the Washington Post on the same.
~~~ Eve Sampson of the New York Times: "The Turkish military fired on U.S.-backed Kurdish forces in northern Syria this weekend, a war monitoring group and a spokesman for the Kurdish group said on Sunday, illuminating the tangle of competing interests and alliances in Syria in the wake of the government's collapse. Fighting erupted on Saturday in Manbij, a Kurdish-controlled city near Syrias border with Turkey, between rebel groups, one backed by the United States and the other by Turkey. At least 22 members of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces were killed in and around Manbij, and 40 others were wounded, according to the Kurdish group. The clashes preceded a call on Sunday between Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and his Turkish counterpart, Defense Minister Yasar Guler."
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Take the RFK Jr Employment Test
"But we do have at least one hint about how the man intends to structure his wing of the executive branch: a test ostensibly designed to locate potential employees for RFK’s reign at HHS. Among other things, Kennedy would like to know if you’ve ever experienced clairvoyance.
journalist Timothy Burke dug into who, exactly, is responsible for this deeply strange audit, he learned that the publishing company is called ExamCorp. ExamCorp’s president? None other than Jordan Peterson, the psychologist turned right-wing gadfly."
Bounties
"New plans are being discussed in Jefferson City [Mo.] this week, including a proposed bounty hunter program for illegal immigrants. The proposed bill would pay people to catch those they believe to be in the United States illegally.
Senate Bill 72 was pre-filed to the Missouri legislature. It is sponsored by House Representative David Gregory. Gregory wants to pay Missourians $1000 to find and detain illegal immigrants in the state."
There's a report out about a mysterious new illness in Africa, and aren't we excited to have Bobbie Kennedy's sweet baby boy in charge. All I know is: it seems similar to Covid, has killed people, and no one knows how it will spread yet. RFK (D...er R...er I) has not addressed how he feels about lockdowns and masking. I know the jackasses on the R are still pissed off about those life-saving measures...
Bounty hunting! That is so cool...s/ Now we know how we can earn shopping money just by expressing "concern" about that guy/family who moved in down the street, and send more Dreamers away from the USA, since they were here for 21+ years through no fault of their own-- There is apparently no bottom to the evil wrought and hoped-for by the usual grunge "congresspeople." Every time we think that the goodness of humanity can possibly shine through, a rule or law appears to stick it to people, and that will start on Day 1 of the World's Worst Administration. Ugh. What toads and snakes. (no offense to the actual animals--)
I haven’t seen it so it may seem as if I’m about to engage in a sport I routinely decry as “criticizing things you don’t know about”, but rather than critique the movie, I have a few ideas about certain elements in “Gladiator II”, specifically what appears to be the flamboyant violence trumpeted in the trailer and movie ads.
Yeah, I know. It’s about gladiators, not Roman poetry, so violence is part of the deal. Okay, but it strikes me that the all out bread and circus staged combat being used to sell the movie is especially endemic in the Age of Trump, where weenie incels who voted for a faux tough guy, revel in such glorified modern bread and circus such as the mixed martial arts mayhem displays once referred to by John McCain (not in any way a Trump-like fake tough guy) as barbaric. Human cockfighting, he called it.
If you haven’t seen some of this stuff, take my word for it. Kicks in the head, rabbit punches, anything goes, especially kicking people while they’re down (a Trump specialty).
The bread and circus stuff of the Roman Empire became much more vicious, voyeuristic, and amoral as Rome began its descent into fail mode. Nepotism (always a thing, but not to the extent it would become) and greed began to hollow out the last vestiges of the glory days of what is now called the Pax Romana, which pretty much ended with the death of the philosopher emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Aurelius was followed by the ignorant and cruel Commodus (sound familiar?), who set the tone for a bunch of loser grifting leaders to follow.
Add to this, the rise of Christianity, which Edward Gibbon in his “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” fingers as a prime suspect in the destruction of Rome.
So let’s see, barbarism, extreme violence, cruel, greedy leaders, unchecked nepotism, extreme religious ideology undermining the empire…
Again, sound familiar?
In the glory days of the Republic, Rome welcomed immigrants and foreigners, seeing the influx of both talent and a tax base as a good thing. But the Republic became an empire and foreigners were seen as a threat to Rome. Enemies of the emperor were banished, imprisoned, killed (Commodus once had a servant chucked into a furnace because he let his bath water get lukewarm).
White House staff should be careful. The emperor Rumpius is coming in hot. Banishments, vindictiveness, violence, ignorance, and greed are right outside the door.
The end of WWII began a period some historians took to calling the Pax Americana. America took its role as a world leader seriously (Albeit not always with a very good outcome). Not anymore.
Momento mori: Pax Americana.
In The Atlantic, Jonathan Chait describes The Bizarre Normalcy of Trump 2.0
"...last night, Trump announced that he will appoint Michael Anton as director of policy planning at the State Department. ...{Anton's appointment] highlights the banal ubiquity of authoritarian thinking in the Trumpified Republican party.
...
Anton’s argument [in an essay published 8 years ago] stood out for its existential tone and hysterical life-and-death metaphor. Now his logic—that permitting Democrats to win a single national election is tantamount to national suicide, the prevention of which justifies any measures, legal or otherwise—is a required belief for service in the power ministries. Once an oddball, Anton is just another Trump bureaucrat who subscribes to the party’s rule-or-perish ideology."
Ali Breland, in The Atlantic, on
'a real shift in ruling-class vibes'
"Of course, the hyperwealthy have always found ways to bend the political system. In a 2014 study, the political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page reviewed thousands of polls and surveys spanning more than 20 years and found that the preferences of the wealthiest Americans were much more likely than those of average citizens to affect policy changes. But influence machines were once subterranean: Few people would have known about the political influence machine that the Koch brothers built in the past several decades if not for the work of investigative journalists.
,,,
The last time elites were this vocal in their influence, Larson said, was during the Gilded Age, when multimillionaires such as William Randolph Hearst and Jay Gould worked to shape American politics."
Laura, not to worry. State's "Policy Planning" office doesn't actually do that. It's a short-term safe perch for a few favored academic types who want to enjoy the black passport and conference travel. A few of them write the Secretary's speeches, and contribute staff gerbils' thoughts to papers that require Secretariat clearance. They're not harmless (they can really screw up someone else's project), but they have no power or authority at all. It used to "be somebody", but that was over 60 years ago. Now it's just a bum.
Global Warming Evidence that the Kennedy's and Trump's may understand.
Guardian
"What we know about the suspect arrested in the killing of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare"
The end of an empire?
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/09/business/media/rupert-lachlan-murdoch-family-trust.html?
The end of an era?
Paul Krugman signs off but assures us he is retirng form the The New York Times, not from the world
Paul Krugman's final column for the NYT
Patrick - thanks for the information. But, in my experience, colleagues who talk in hysterics affect everybody!