The Conversation -- July 7, 2024
The New York Times is liveblogging the results of the French elections: ~~~
Roger Cohen & Aurelien Breeden: "The left was set to surge in legislative elections in France on Sunday and the far right to come up short of expectations, according to early projections, as no party secured an absolute majority. In a surprising performance, the left-wing coalition, the New Popular Front, emerged as a front-runner for the most seats in two early projections, though the final results could change the picture. Several polls had the left and [Prime Minister Emmanuel] Macron's centrist coalition jockeying for the largest number of seats in the 577-seat National Assembly, the lower house of Parliament where most legislative power resides. Five projections had the far right in the third position.... Voter participation at 5 p.m. local time was the highest in over two decades, at nearly 60 percent, the Interior Ministry said." At 3:00 pm ET Sunday, this is the pinned item.
Breeden: "Although the picture is still murky, most early projections by French pollsters put the far-right National Rally in third place. That would be an extremely disappointing result for its supporters -- and a sigh of relief for President Emmanuel Macron, who many critics blamed for calling the snap election that could have brought the far right to power."
Oh, for Pete's Sake. Jordain Carney of Politico: "House Republicans are opening an investigation into President Joe Biden's doctor in the wake of his debate performance -- the latest sign that Democrats' political headaches are only growing. House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) sent a letter to White House physician Kevin O'Connor on Sunday requesting that he appear behind closed doors for a transcribed interview with committee counsel. Comer is giving O'Connor until July 14 to contact staff to schedule the interview." MB: Funny Comer showed no such enthusiasm for investigating Dr. Ronny Jackson (that's Ronny Johnson to the Man with the Very Good Brain) and the Uppers and Downers Pill Dispensary Johnson-né-Jackson ran out of Trump's White House.
Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law. -- U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 3 (emphasis added)
That's unconstitutional! -- John Roberts, Trump v. U.S.
Sunday Reads
Carlos Lozado of the New York Times explores the oscillating meanings of "American exceptionalism" and a "shining city upon a hill." Very much worth a full read, right down to the last graf.
Joyce Vance writes on Substack about Trump's and the Heritage Foundation's attempts to pretend they're totally independent of one another. A good read, including this bit: "Project 2025 doesn't contain overt references to Trump. In that regard, it reminds me of the Supreme Court's opinion in the immunity appeal, Trump v. U.S. The Court pretended it was writing rules for theoretical future presidents. They tried to divorce their decision from the reality that it could let Donald Trump, whom they dismissed without naming him as 'present exigencies,' escape from his effort to overturn the election with no consequences."
The Diabolical Cunning of Donald Trump. Philip Kennicott of the Washington Post homes in on the way Trump is attempting to inoculate the public against outrage at his aggressive deportation plans. "Paraphrased into English, Trump is saying: For every 10 (or 10,000 or 10 million) bad people we deport, the media will fixate on images that depict the suffering of a few good people, perhaps an attractive woman with beautiful children, which will cause outrage and make it difficult to continue the deportation.... He is extending his frequent dehumanization of immigrants -- as animals and criminals -- into what might be called the photographic conscience, the visceral power of images to galvanize public sentiment and reorder the priorities of political life.... [By anticipating disturbing images of migrant suffering, Trump is setting us up, so that] no longer do we see an image of terrible suffering and say, never again. Rather, we imagine the dreadful details of terrible suffering, and then steel ourselves to look away."
Presidential Race
Katie Glueck, et al., of the New York Times: "Numerous officials, lawmakers and strategists in President Biden's own party increasingly see his candidacy as unsustainable -- and their private anxieties are slowly but steadily spilling into public view, interviews with more than 50 Democrats this week showed. Growing swaths of Democrats now believe that by remaining on the ticket, the president is jeopardizing their ability to maintain the White House and threatening other candidates up and down the ballot. The moment is setting up an extraordinary clash between a defiant president of the United States who insists he is not abandoning his re-election campaign and members of his party who are beginning to suggest that he should. 'I have less and less confidence in this campaign's ability to win this race,' Representative Scott Peters, Democrat of California, said in an interview. 'If we know we're going to lose, we would be foolish not to look at another course.'"
Lisa Kashinsky & Kelly Garrity of Politico: "One of Joe Biden's high-profile campaign surrogates is publicly urging him to consider exiting the presidential race. Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, a member of Biden's national campaign advisory board who earlier this spring headlined a big-dollar fundraiser for him in Boston, said in a statement Friday that he should 'carefully evaluate whether he remains our best hope to defeat Donald Trump.'" Also linked yesterday.
Matt Viser & Shane Harris of the Washington Post: "Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.), who is in a competitive race and among the more endangered Democrats, on Saturday morning called on [President] Biden to drop out of the race, saying 'there is only a small window left to make sure we have a candidate best equipped to make the case and win.... Given what I saw and heard from the President during last week's debate in Atlanta, coupled with the lack of a forceful response from the President himself following that debate, I do not believe that the President can effectively campaign and win against Donald Trump,' she said in a statement." Politico's story is here. Also linked yesterday.
Paul Kane of the Washington Post: "Senate Democrats have been a bulwark of support for [President] Biden.... But as Biden's hold on the Democratic nomination has weakened after his poor debate performance against ... Donald Trump, Senate Democrats have grown less boisterous about the president's future. As of late Saturday, not a single Democratic senator had publicly called for Biden to step aside.... That's in stark contrast to the House, where five Democrats have formally asked him to step aside and at least 10 others have raised concerns publicly about whether he should reconsider his plans. But those same Senate Democrats have remained relatively quiet in a manner that could suggest a more ominous future."
Michael Scherer, et al., of the Washington Post: "President Biden's top aides awoke after debate night with a plan to contain the damage: A raucous North Carolina crowd, a message of resilience, a demonstration of vibrancy.... Rather than take [supporters'] concerns head-on, Biden followed the speech and rally by retreating from public view -- a series of private fundraisers awkwardly using his teleprompter, a retreat with his family to take pictures with photographer Annie Leibovitz, short scripted addresses at the White House -- just 32 minutes of combined public comments over five days, none of it off the cuff. Sentiment on Capitol Hill soured, donors organized against him and some public polls showed significant erosion. Independent Democratic strategists circulated plans to build up Vice President Harris. His own advisers and staff began to speak out, alarmed by what one called the 'deafening silence.' Then began the drip-drip of elected and former leaders asking him to step aside."
Biden's Blind Spot Is Shakespearean. Maureen Dowd of the New York Times: "King Lear gave up power too early. President Biden will give it up too late. And that is Joe's tragedy.... Biden's contention that he alone can beat Trump was never true. And now he has lost some moral high ground because he hid the evidence of cognitive deterioration.... We don't know now who is running the country. We only know who shouldn't be -- the president and the former president.... Let's open the convention and check out all the Democratic stars." MB: Dowd doesn't write anything I haven't written since reading the debate reviews and seeing about 30 seconds of Biden's performance. But she writes it better. Also linked yesterday.
Sanjay Gupta of CNN: "The consensus from the doctors reaching out to me ... [following President Biden's debate performance] was that the president should be encouraged to undergo detailed cognitive and movement disorder testing, and those results should be made available to the public." MB: See also Paul Campos in LG&$. (Thanks to RAS for the link.) And see my comment near the top of Saturday's thread. Also linked yesterday. ~~~
~~~ Edward Helmore of the Guardian: "Joe Biden's doctor met with a leading Washington DC neurologist at the White House this year, it was reported on Saturday. The report came after Biden on Friday ruled out taking an independent cognitive test and releasing its findings publicly.... According White House visitor logs reviewed by the New York Post, Dr Kevin Cannard, a Parkinson's disease expert at Walter Reed medical center, met with Dr Kevin O'Connor, a doctor of osteopathic medicine who has treated the president for years. The visit took place at the White House residence clinic on 17 January. Cannard has visited the White House house eight times since August 2023.... Biden has consistently rejected taking any cognitive test, including in August 2020 when he dismissed a reporter's question with: 'Why the hell would I take a test?' He has continued to dismiss the need for one and, according to aides, has not received one during his three annual physical exams during his term in the White House. The Washington Post on Saturday reported a White House aide saying that O'Connor, who has been Biden's doctor since 2009, has never recommended that Biden take a cognitive test." Also linked yesterday. ~~~
~~~ Marie: Okay, it's the New York Post, but the Guardian is willing to accept the reporting, so maybe the Post didn't just make up the story out of whole cloth.
Michael Kranish & Dan Diamond of the Washington Post: "Since winning the White House, [President] Biden has continued to dismiss the need for a cognitive exam, and aides have said he has never taken one as president -- not in three annual physical exams, and not in the week since a halting debate performance raised more urgent questions about the now-81-year-old's mental acuity. That decision has been overseen by a key figure largely unknown to the public: Kevin O'Connor, the physician to the president, who has grown extraordinarily close to Biden since becoming his personal doctor in 2009. A White House official said O'Connor has never recommended that Biden take a cognitive test.... Unlike some physicians to a president, O'Connor, 58, a doctor of osteopathic medicine and a retired Army colonel, has not appeared at the White House podium to take questions about Biden's annual physicals and other medical events....
"Three of O'Connor's former colleagues in the White House medical unit, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe confidential relationships, said Biden's debate performance suggested to them that the president should undergo cognitive screening. In addition, Ira Monka, the president of the American Osteopathic Association, who visited with O'Connor at the White House this year, also told The Post that he thinks Biden's performance should prompt an initial cognitive review to see if more tests are needed." Also linked yesterday.
Michael Shear of the New York Times: "The questions asked of President Biden by two radio interviewers this week were provided in advance to the hosts by members of Mr. Biden's team, one of the hosts said Saturday morning on CNN.... And yet, despite knowing the questions in advance, Mr. Biden still stumbled over some of them.... Andrea Lawful-Sanders, the host of 'The Source' on WURD in Philadelphia, said Biden officials provided her with a list of eight questions ahead of the interview on Wednesday. 'The questions were sent to me for approval; I approved of them,' she told Victor Blackwell ... on CNN. Asked if it was the White House that sent the questions to her in advance, she said it was. 'I got several questions -- eight of them,' she said. 'And the four that were chosen were the ones that I approved.' Lauren Hitt, a spokeswoman for the Biden campaign, said it was actually campaign aides, not White House officials, who sent the list of questions.... Ms. Lawful-Sanders said later on Saturday that she 'never once felt pressured to ask certain questions' from the campaign." A Mother Jones story is here. Also linked yesterday.
Brian Schott of the Salt Lake Tribune: "On Friday evening, Utah Sen. Mike Lee used his personal X/Twitter account to amplify a baseless claim that President Joe Biden was having a 'medical emergency' on Air Force One.... The claim started with far-right activist and conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, who posted without attribution that 'Joe Biden is reportedly having a medical emergency on Air Force One. Press access has been removed. 'A Community Note, a tool on X ... that empowers people to add context to misleading posts, debunked Loomer's claim, noting journalists traveling with the president reported there was no incident, and Biden exited the plane on his own.... After Loomer's false claim made its way to [MB: right-wing] podcaster Monica Crowley, Lee ran with it. A few hours after helping to spread disinformation online, Lee attacked the [MB: 'Left-wing'] media for being untrustworthy. He also claimed that Biden was being run like a puppet by former President Barack Obama." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Mike Lee is the worst form of scum. A U.S. senator is supposed to have at least a minimal level of integrity. Instead, after spreading a false story for which he had no credible source, he blamed "left-wing media" for a fake rumor that only righty-right liars promoted. And he never took responsibility for his own actions.
Philip Nieto of Mediaite: "A former staffer on Donald Trump's 2016 campaign revealed bombshell texts claiming that the former president's 2020 campaign 'settled multiple suits' related to gender discrimination and sexual harassment. A.J. Delgado made the revelation as part of her ongoing discrimination lawsuit against the current campaign, alleging she was raped by Trump advisor Jason Miller. The motion she filed Thursday included a thread of texts she claims are between herself and Jenna Ellis, another former Trump staffer.... Read more from The New Republic here." In the text exchange, Ellis says claims settled -- through middlemen -- were against "Boris," possibly Trump pal Boris Epshteyn. ~~~
~~~ Marie: Oh, why or why am I thinking Ellis's blubbery "deep remorse" for her participation in the Georgia election fraud scheme was a dramatic exhibition of crocodile tears.
Delay, Delay, Delay. Alan Feuer of the New York Times: "A federal judge on Saturday postponed a few deadlines in ... Donald J. Trump's classified documents case to allow prosecutors time to respond to his request for a broader pause in the wake of the Supreme Court's ruling this week on executive immunity.... In a brief order on Saturday, Judge [Aileen] Cannon told prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, that they had until July 18 to respond to Mr. Trump's request for a broad delay. In the meantime, she pushed back two approaching deadlines in the case related to filings about expert witnesses the two sides plan to introduce at trial and to the defense's obligation to provide discovery information to the government." Also linked yesterday.
Alan Feuer of the New York Times: "The federal judge overseeing ... Donald J. Trump's classified documents case on Saturday rejected an effort by one of his co-defendants to have the charges he is facing dismissed by claiming that he was the victim of a vindictive prosecution by the government. The co-defendant, Walt Nauta, who works as a personal aide to Mr. Trump, had accused prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, of unfairly indicting him because he declined to help their efforts to build a case against the former president by testifying against him in front of a grand jury. Mr. Nauta's lawyer, Stanley Woodward Jr., also claimed that at a meeting at the Justice Department two years ago, prosecutors had threatened to derail a judgeship he was seeking if he did not prevail on his client to turn on Mr. Trump. But in an order issued on Saturday night, Judge Aileen M. Cannon rejected those arguments, ruling that even though Mr. Nauta had refused to provide testimony against Mr. Trump, there was 'no evidence suggesting that charges were brought to punish him for doing so.'"
Radley Balko in a Substack essay: "Faced with the most potent threat to democracy in more than a century, our most revered institution didn't just fail to hold, it aligned itself with the threat. The Supreme Court's ruling in Trump v. United States is its worst decision of my lifetime. John Roberts's sloppy, arrogant, contradictory majority opinion provides license for any future president to lie, cheat, steal, suppress dissent, and -- if they have the stomach for it -- assassinate. It obliterates a guardrail for executive power that's fundamental to a functioning democracy. So fundamental, in fact, that until the country elected an aspiring autocrat brazen enough to engage in open-air corruption, it was a guardrail few thought necessary to actually define. Of course the president can be prosecuted for actual crimes.... This opinion isn't a stain on Roberts's legacy. It is his legacy. He will be remembered as the 'institutionalist' who destroyed the legitimacy of the institution entrusted to his care." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Balko is a seasoned journalist whose political ideology is all over the map.
Marie: Speaking on MSNBC this morning, Jill Wine-Banks pointed out perhaps the only funny by-product of Supreme Court's presidential* immunity ruling: it blows up the fake purpose of Jim Jordan's infamous House Weaponization Committee where the House was supposed to be investigating how Joe Biden had "weaponized" the Justice Department and other federal agencies. Why? Because the Supremes made all that supposed weaponization (which, admittedly, is a right-wing fiction) is now totally legal. Thanks, Supremes!/p>
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California. Shannon Osaka of the Washington Post: "At first glance, one of the world's oldest living organisms doesn't look like much -- a collection of shrubs nestled atop a hill in a rocky gully. But those shrubs are just the crown of a giant, spreading oak tree, 90 feet long and 30 feet wide. Most of the tree is underground. Estimated to be 13,000 to 18,000 years old, the tree -- known as the Jurupa Oak -- is older than almost any other plant on Earth. It has survived an ice age and rapid climate warming. Its leaves may have brushed against saber-toothed cats and 500-pound ground sloths. But now, environmentalists and locals worry that the ancient tree is under threat from a more quotidian force in modern California: development. The Planning Commission of Jurupa Valley, a city of 100,000 an hour east of Los Angeles, is poised to approve a 1.4-square-mile development that includes a business park, 1,700 homes and an elementary school. Light-industry buildings would stand just a few hundred feet from the ancient tree.... Environmentalists believe that the construction and resulting development could be deadly to the Jurupa Oak." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Read on. This is so not the type of decision that should be left to local yokels. Ever. The WashPo reporters write, "Jurupa Valley is also not known for its environmental quality: The city is best known nationally for a set of polluted acid pits that catapulted it into the news in the 1980s."
News Ledes
Washington Post: "Former hurricane Beryl ... is gearing up for its third and final landfall, this time in Texas. The forecast is tricky, but meteorologists are expecting the tropical storm to come ashore as an intensifying hurricane Sunday night into Monday. The National Hurricane Center is projecting Beryl to make landfall as a Category 1 hurricane along the lower or middle Texas coast. That's where it warns of 'a danger of life-threatening storm surge inundation,' and 'damaging hurricane-force winds.'"
New York Times: "Millions of people across the Western United States were broiling under record-breaking heat on Saturday, with little relief in sight over the coming days, according to forecasters. From Oregon to California to the deserts of Arizona, several cities have seen stifling temperatures in recent days. Jacob Asherman, a forecaster for the National Weather Service's Weather Prediction Center, said the blistering temperatures were being fueled by a ridge of high-pressure air that had parked over much of the West, preventing hot air near the surface from rising higher in the atmosphere."
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Though it's Sunday, I'll forego God and take myself out to a ballgame. Maybe I'll get back to God in a couple of weeks.
This week's contribution to the local newspaper:
It was a balls and strikes weekend in Seattle. Our ten-year-old grandson played in three tournament baseball games over three days, losing his Friday game, winning on Saturday, and playing a loser out game on Sunday. The weather was perfect, the kids’ skill level was surprisingly high, and because they were All Star games, they were officiated by professional umpires.
As I watched the games, I couldn’t help but think about those professional umpires in black robes who sit on the Supreme Court and who, as Chief Justice Roberts said, were there to call balls and strikes for the nation.
Their latest and most eagerly anticipated call would be announced on Monday, the last day of this year’s Supreme Court session. Is a president immune from prosecution or not? Those who had been paying attention to their variable strike zone did not have a good feeling about what they would hear. Although a three-judge panel of the Washington, D.C. District Court had unanimously rejected Trump’s claims of absolute immunity for actions performed while in office, the conservatives on the Supreme Court has already signaled they might have another opinion.
Many of this court’s previous decisions depended on who was at bat. Two years ago, they had overturned 80 years of precedent, saying that the right to abortion was no longer federally protected and was now in the hands of individual states. For some of its reasoning, the Court reached back to a 17th century English jurist who executed witches and wrote a treatise defending marital rape (nbcnews.com). For the pro-choice team the strike zone was suddenly very wide. No wonder they struck out.
During the current term, the Court also took a hammer to the past practice of allowing agencies freedom to decide the meaning of regulatory laws they were supposed to enforce. While it would be nice if Congress always detailed its regulatory intentions and if its legislation always kept pace with a rapidly changing world, with our dysfunctional Congress such hope is sheer fantasy. In effect, then, the “Loper Bright Enterprises” decision was an open invitation to those who don’t like regulation of pollution, workplaces, food and health safety, of anything at all, to sue, delay enforcement, until the courts, not the agencies, eventually decide.
While many doubt that courts have more expertise on regulatory matters than the agency experts agencies themselves and therefore see more, not less, regulatory confusion down the road, there is little doubt the “Loper Bright Enterprises” decision will provide more work for judges and lawyers as courts, not the executive branch of government, assume the role of regulators. This time, the strike zone for those who don’t like regulations was expanded to include the entire regulatory field.
Those who have been watching the conservative court evolve over the years had good reason to be concerned about the “Trump vs. the United States” outcome. For a group of supposed “originalists,” who claimed adherence to the Founders’ intent and a respect for precedent, the past has offered little guidance when it interfered with their desires.
Voting rights took a hit when conservatives on the Court eviscerated the Voting Rights Act in 2013. More than 100 voter suppression laws have been passed since then in red states (roberatreich.org). The “Citizens’ United” decision, now fourteen years old, had the same harmful effect on free speech. By determining that money is speech, it pitted the David voices of average men and women against the Goliaths of corporate and individual wealth. The current conservative court allows pitchers for the Bill of Rights team a very small strike zone.
They did, however, greatly expand the rights of one person. In the case of “Trump vs. the United States,” brought by the man who encouraged the deadly Jan 6, 2021, riot in the nation’s capital and who hauled hundreds of boxes of public property (some of the material classified as secret) to his home, the Court overturned the District Court’s ruling. It said presidents cannot be prosecuted for crimes committed as “official” acts, leaving it to further court proceedings to determine exactly what those official acts might be. By narrowing the strike zone to near invisibility for anyone attempting to prosecute a president for his crimes, this Court has ruled in their 6-3 decision that one person is indeed above the law.
Our grandson’s Sunday game was a thriller that went into extra innings. They eventually lost by one run in the ninth. On Monday, July 1, 2024, the nation lost the much bigger contest it has been playing against tyranny for nearly 250 years.
Ezra Klein, writing in the New York Times, promotes Jim Clyburn's idea "that if Biden leaves the race, the party should hold 'a mini-primary.'”
Klein continues -
"Democrats have spent so much time imagining what could go wrong if Biden steps down that they struggle to imagine what could go right. But this is a party suffused with talent. This is a party that knows how to win where it needs to win."
It is time to be open to risk
After last week's assault of everything we know and hold dear, I wonder if Democrats CAN get it together and be pro-active. We used to be one nation, indivisible-- I don't even know if we can ever use that word again(misspelled, maybe-- note I have left out "under god" since it was added--). I certainly feel no kinship or attraction or desire to meet together with people I regard as the enemy. I am tired of giving DumpsterFat the power he apparently has over everyone-- wouldn't his father be amazed? And he does grab the spotlight and all the air just by existing. Thanks, crap journalists...
So he has no idea what the Heritage 2025 Bible for Treasonists/Terrorists is? Sure... And he has no idea who produced it? All lies-- they have been working on it for years now.
In our town, two lawyers who filed lawsuits against PA in 2020, working for election deniers and false elector efforts have filed another, this time working for the Board of Elections, which IS the two county commissioners who are blatant trumpists...the lawsuit is again about mail-in ballots, this time in April, about whether or not it is allowed to see mistakes ON THE STUPID ENVELOPE CONTAINING THE BALLOT ITSELF...signatures and dates...and fix them. I think Dems are losing ferociously because we really can't believe how arrogant and evil these people ALL are and what they do.
Must close as I am getting all up again-- there's always something.
Biden should send Comer a short letter, "In the words of John Roberts and as POTUS 'Fuck off'"