The Conversation -- March 3, 2024
Sorry, forgot this: ~~~
~~~ Jonathan Cooper & Summer Ballentine of the AP: "... Donald Trump continued his march toward the GOP nomination on Saturday, winning caucuses in Idaho and Missouri and sweeping the delegate haul at a party convention in Michigan. Trump earned every delegate at stake on Saturday, bringing his count to 244 compared to 24 for ... Nikki Haley. A candidate needs to secure 1,215 delegates to clinch the Republican nomination."
North Carolina Governor's Race. There's this: ~~~
~~~ Hannah Knowles of the Washington Post: "Even in a Republican Party that, under ... Donald Trump's leadership, has often rewarded crude insults, baseless claims and incendiary language, [North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark] Robinson stands out among candidates this year for the volume of his bigoted attacks and vicious diatribes[:]...: The deluge of offensive comments that made such a declaration necessary. There was the time he called school shooting survivors 'media prosti-tots' for advocating for gun-control policies. The meme mocking a Harvey Weinstein accuser, and the other meme mocking actresses for wearing 'whore dresses to protest sexual harassment.' The prediction that rising acceptance of homosexuality would lead to pedophilia and 'the END of civilization as we know it'; the talk of arresting transgender people for their bathroom choice; the use of antisemitic tropes; the Facebook posts calling Hillary Clinton a 'heifer' and Michelle Obama a man. Robinson is heavily favored to clinch the GOP nomination for governor in next Tuesday's primary and, at a Saturday rally with Trump, got the former president's formal endorsement." ~~~
~~~ And there's this:
~~~ Phillip Nieto of Mediaite: "... Donald Trump described North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who is Black, as 'Martin Luther King on steroids,' adding that he was 'better than' the civil rights leader."
~~~~~~~~~~~
Making American Small Again. Dan Balz of the Washington Post: "Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley have spent the first months of this election year fighting losing battles -- separate but related. Their losses highlight the victory of Donald Trump's 'America First' over Ronald Reagan's 'tear down this wall' as the foreign policy doctrine of the Republican Party.... Nowhere ... has [Trump's] influence been more pronounced and potentially consequential than in what has become a full reversal of the internationalism that was central to Republican orthodoxy through most of the post-World War II era."
Presidential Race
The Rantings of a Fascist. Bill Barrow & Jill Colvin of the AP: "... Donald Trump on Saturday further escalated his immigration rhetoric and baselessly accused President Joe Biden of waging a 'conspiracy to overthrow the United States of America' as he campaigned ahead of Super Tuesday's primaries. Trump has a long history of trying to turn attack lines back on his rivals in an attempt to diminish their impact. Biden has cast Trump as a threat to democracy, pointing to the former president's efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Those efforts culminated in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as his supporters tried to halt the peaceful transition of power. Trump, who has responded by calling Biden 'the real threat to democracy' and alleged without proof that Biden is responsible for the indictments he faces, turned to Biden's border policies on Saturday, charging that 'every day Joe Biden is giving aid and comfort to foreign enemies of the United States.'"
Michigan GOP Convention(s). Neil Vigdor & Steve Friess of the New York Times: "... Donald J. Trump capped off a clean sweep of Republican delegates in Michigan on Saturday during a raucous convention, which further exposed a deep fissure in the state party that threatens to fester in one of the most important battleground states. Mr. Trump, the Republican front-runner, amassed at least 90 percent of the vote in all but one of the state's 13 congressional districts against former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina.... A simple majority was needed in each district to win its share of delegates at the caucus-style event, giving Mr. Trump 39, to go along with the 12 that he won in Michigan's primary, which was held on Tuesday. Ms. Haley emerged from that contest with four delegates.... But a protracted fight over the state party's rightful leader spilled over into the proceedings, where an estimated 200 Republican stalwarts from about 20 of Michigan's 83 counties were denied credentials. Two other groups boycotted the event and held breakaway conventions, one more than 100 miles to the north in Houghton Lake, Mich., and another more than 50 miles southeast in Battle Creek, Mich." (Also linked yesterday.) The NBC News story is here.
~~~~~~~~~~
Georgia. Fear of Lesbians! Donald Padgett of the Advocate: "Republican state senators in Georgia on Thursday passed a bill that would force state libraries to cut ties with the American Library Association. Senate Bill 390 was passed by a vote of 33-20 vote with no support from Democratic senators. The bill's supporters cited the ALA's progressive policies and Emily Drabinski, the group's lesbian president, as motivation for the legislation. Several states including Missouri, Montana, South Carolina, and Texas have announced or enacted some form of disassociation from the ALA, but the Georgia bill passed by the Senate yesterday would be the first to effectively ban nearly all association with the group.
Georgia. Fear of Immigrants! Lauren Irwin of the Hill: "The Georgia state House passed a bill that allows for anyone suspected of being in the United States illegally to be arrested. The state House voted 97-74 to approve House Bill 1105, which would allow police to arrest anyone with probable cause who is suspected of being in the U.S. unlawfully and detain them for deportation.... The bill, passed Thursday, would require jailers and sheriffs to report to federal authorities when someone in their custody has been found to not have legal documentation. Local governments could lose state funding or state-administered federal funding if they don't report it, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, which first reported the legislation passing."
~~~~~~~~~~
Israel/Palestine, et al.
The New York Times' live updates of developments Sunday in the Israel/Hamas war are here.
Wafaa Shurafa & Samy Magdy of the AP: "Israel has essentially endorsed a framework of a proposed Gaza cease-fire and hostage release deal, and it is now up to Hamas to agree to it, a senior U.S. administration official said Saturday, a day before talks to reach an agreement were to resume in Egypt. International mediators have been working for weeks to broker a deal to pause the fighting before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins around March 10. A deal would likely allow aid to reach hundreds of thousands of desperate Palestinians in northern Gaza who aid officials worry are under threat of famine. The Israelis 'have more or less accepted' the proposal, which includes the six-week cease-fire as well as the release by Hamas of hostages considered vulnerable, which includes the sick, the wounded, the elderly and women, said the official."
Aaron Boxerman, et al., of the New York Times: "The Gaza aid convoy that ended in bloodshed this week was organized by Israel itself as part of a newly hatched partnership with local Palestinian businessmen, according to Israeli officials, Palestinian businessmen and Western diplomats.Israel has been involved in at least four such aid convoys to northern Gaza over the past week. It undertook the effort, Israeli officials told two Western diplomats, to fill a void in assistance to northern Gaza, where famine looms as international aid groups have suspended most operations, citing Israeli refusals to greenlight aid trucks and rising lawlessness.... Israeli officials reached out to multiple Gazan businessmen and asked them to help organize private aid convoys to the north, two of the businessmen said, while Israel would provide security."
Tara Copp & Seung Min Kim of the AP: "U.S. military C-130 cargo planes dropped food in pallets over Gaza on Saturday in the opening stage of an emergency humanitarian assistance authorized by President Joe Biden after more than 100 Palestinians who had surged to pull goods off an aid convoy were killed during a chaotic encounter with Israeli troops. Three planes from Air Forces Central dropped 66 bundles containing about 38,000 meals into Gaza at 8:30 a.m. EST (3:30 p.m. local). The bundles were dropped in southwest Gaza, on the beach along the territory's Mediterranean coast. The airdrop was coordinated with the Royal Jordanian Air Force, which said it had two food airdrops Saturday in northern Gaza and has conducted several rounds in recent months." (Also linked yesterday.)
Patrick Kingsley of the New York Times: "Israel's reluctance to fill the current leadership vacuum in northern Gaza formed the backdrop to the chaos that led to the deaths on Thursday of dozens of Palestinians on the Gazan coast, analysts and aid workers have said. More than 100 were killed and 700 injured, Gazan health officials said.... The immediate causes of the chaos were extreme hunger and desperation: The United Nations has warned of a looming famine in northern Gaza, where the incident occurred. Civilian attempts to ambush aid trucks, Israeli restrictions on convoys and the poor condition of roads damaged in the war have made it extremely difficult for food to reach the roughly 300,000 civilians still stranded in that region.... But analysts say this dynamic has been exacerbated by Israel's failure to set in motion a plan for how the north will be governed." In areas in North Gaza, where the fighting is essentially over, Hamas has fled and Israel has not taken over governance, so there is no governing group to "keep the peace," remove trash, etc. ~~~
~~~ Marie: Could scenarios like this happen in the U.S.? You betcha. Trump's plan to shrink the federal government will "catch on" in state and local governments, and basic services will stop functioning or will function under the fists of self-appointed thugs. I'm seeing a U.S. that looks like one Rand Paul would run: every person for himself. Unlike Mussolini, Trump will not make the trains run on time. There will be no trains. As for the food aid, maybe it will come from Canada. Or Russia.
News Ledes
New York Times: "Thousands of residents were left without power, and life came to a standstill for many in the Sierra Nevada region on Saturday after a winter storm dumped as much as two feet of snow overnight and created treacherous conditions. About 49,000 customers in Nevada and California were without electricity on Saturday, according to PowerOutage.us. With whiteout conditions in the mountains, ski resorts in the Lake Tahoe area paused operations. And highway officials shut down Interstate 80, the main artery that traverses the Sierra Nevada over Donner Summit, a key trucking route from the San Francisco Bay Area." CNN's story is here.
New York Times: "Fires burning across the plains of Texas, Kansas and Nebraska have hit ranchers hard. Dry, windy weather threatens to make the fires worse.... Scores of cattle ranchers across the Great Plains looking at an uncertain future. Thousands of animals have been killed, and outbuildings and homes have been destroyed.... The Smokehouse Creek fire, near Mr. Homen's ranch outside the town of Pampa, has expanded to more than one million acres and threatens to grow further this weekend with windy, dry conditions expected."
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Reader Comments (9)
The border rant. Guess which one said this and you're then the big
winner:
"We have languages coming into our country, nobody that speaks
those languages. They're truly foreign languages. Nobody speaks them."
Sayeth the monolinguist who obviously doesn't realize that we have
over 350 different languages spoken in the U.S.
Make America Grim Again.
https://newrepublic.com/post/179460/cognitive-decline-trump-rant-
border-immigration
The Oversight Committee released the deposition transcript of Rep.
Eric Swalwell (D-Ca) questioning Hunter Biden and trolling
Donald Trump, via Mediaite.com.
Swalwell: Any time your father was in government, prior to the
Presidency or before, did he ever operate a hotel?
Biden: No. He has never operated a hotel.
Swalwell: So he's never operated a hotel where foreign nationals
spent millions at that hotel while he was in office?
Biden: No, he has not.
Swalwell: Did your father ever employ in the Oval Office any
direct family member to also work in the Oval Office?
Biden: My father has never employed any direct family members, to
my knowledge.
Swalwell: While your father was President, did anyone in the family
receive 41 trademarks from China?
Biden: No.
Swalwell: As President and the leader of the party, has your father
ever tried to install as the chairperson of the party, a daughter-in-law
or anyone else in the family?
Biden: No, and I don't think that anyone in my family would be
crazy enough to want to be the chairperson of the DNC.
Swalwell: Has your father ever in his time as an adult been fined
$355 million by any state that he worked in:
Biden: No, he has not, thank God.
Swalwell: Anyone in your family ever strike a multibillion dollar
deal with the Saudi Government while your father was in office?
Biden: No.
Swalwell: That's all I've got.
Forrest,
Swalell forgot to ask
“Has your father ever raped anybody, then lied about it and repeatedly defamed the woman he assaulted?”
“Has your father ever tried to overthrow the government?”
“Does your father routinely suck up to foreign dictators or ever asked them to please help him win an election?”
“Has your father ever separated immigrant families, put babies in cages, and made sure they would never be able to reunite, out of pure racial hatred and just to win votes with others racists?”
“Has your father ever engaged in decades of fraudulent business practices?”
“Has your father ever fooled around with porn stars then paid them off to keep quiet so he could win an election?”
“Has your father ever declared his intention to be a dictator?”
“Does your father routinely call your mother by some other name or mistake her for some woman he raped?”
“Is your father a traitor?”
Among other things…
@Forrest Morris: See, if a language Donald Trump has not heard of or doesn't recognize when he hears it, it doesn't exist. You're just not up on the Rules of Narcissism. This is just like his "informing" Republicans that "nobody knows" Abraham Lincoln was a Republican. He didn't know it, so nobody else knows it. He'd probably say the same damned thing about Lincoln to a meeting of Americans historians. And about Farsi or Danish to a convention of linguists.
On the many-languages thing, at the border someone probably told El Blimpo that most of those Indios waiting across the river spoke Quechua and only a little Spanish. He assumed Quechua was a sandwich chain and was surprised to learn you spoke it rather than ate it. His brain requires that he speak every-! single-! thought that enters it, hence we got that quote for the ages.
On another subject: there is a lot of print the past few months demonstrating that GOPers in the House (and elsewhere) are Russian sputniki and useful idiots. Perhaps we should stop using address titles "Mr.", "Ms.", "Congressman", etc., and start using the traditional Russian "Gospodin" and Gospozha", or the commie "Tovarisch" and "Tovarishcha". I go for the former, which indicates a modicum of respect rather than fellowship. Minimal modicum.
I'm currently in Norway. Haven't met a single MAGAt. Got into a conversation with some locals last night at an old quaint beer bar. They were all terrified of another term with TFG. They had a hard time understanding how it could be possible that there are so many people willing to vote for him. We explained that hopefully there are many more that won't.
@Patrick: Since I so like to be super-polite, your comment raises a question I've been mulling: Is it appropriate for someone like me, who abhors Putin, to address MTG as "Comrade Greene" or Donnie Short Fingers as "Comrade Trumpinski"? No need to rush an answer; it's unlikely I'll be crossing paths any time soon with either of these Soviet-nostalgic ostensible Americans.
@Marie: I'll see if Patrick has the same answer I do.
Oxford Dictionary: A fellow Socialist or Communist (often as a
form of address). "You're right, comrade."
Then, since you're not a "fellow Socialist or Communist" I would
say that you shouldn't address one as comrade.
Forrest is entirely correct. Although -- we in the US have used the "Comrade" (= "Tovarisch" in Russian) appellation when calling someone a commie, it is really used in Russian between and among commies, and so if we were Russians, and commies, that's what we'd do.
But ... we are not Russians so we can, and do, use that form to insult a fellow Merkin who shows commie (now Russki) sympathy. To add further insult, we use the first name, and even insult-ier, its diminutive. Hence, "Comrade Margie" works just horosho.
Does that work for you Gospozha Burnova?? Pozhaluysta.
Forrest, just recall that Oxford (and the OED?) was a hotbed of com-symp ever since Ivan was terrible, so of course they go with that "comradeship" explanation.