The Conversation -- May 26, 2024
Lauren Egan of Politico: "President Joe Biden delivered the commencement address at the United States Military Academy on Saturday, leaning into themes about the importance of protecting democracy. Speaking on a sunny spring morning in an outdoor stadium..., Biden called the graduating class 'guardians of American democracy' and stressed that maintaining freedom required 'constant vigilance.'... Biden never mentioned ... Donald Trump by name. But his emphasis on duty, democracy and protecting the Constitution had clear political undertones and underscored a central message of his reelection bid." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Tyler Pager of the Washington Post: "President Bidenreminded the graduating class of the U.S. Military Academy on Saturday that their oath is to the Constitution, not any political party or president, delivering an implicit rebuke of ... Donald Trump. In his 22-minute commencement address, Biden ... made clear that he was referring to his Republican opponent by pointing to a letter that was a clear reprimand of Trump's leadership. The open letter, signed by more than 1,000 West Point alumni, was addressed to the graduating class of 2020 before Trump delivered the commencement address here. It came just days after military police helped forcibly clear peaceful protesters outside the White House ahead of a Trump photo op. The alumni reminded that year's graduating class that they pledge service to 'no monarch; no government; no political party; no tyrant.' 'Remember what over 1,000 graduates of West Point wrote to the class of 2020 four years ago,' Biden said. 'The oath you've taken here "has no expiration date," they said.'" (Also linked yesterday.)
Presidential Race
If you want to know why President Biden is behind in the polls, you need only look at the results of this survey, also linked here last week: ~~~
~~~ Lauren Aratani of the Guardian: "Nearly three in five Americans wrongly believe the US is in an economic recession, and the majority blame the Biden administration, according to a Harris poll conducted exclusively for the Guardian. The survey found persistent pessimism about the economy as election day draws closer. The poll highlighted many misconceptions people have about the economy, including: 55% believe the economy is shrinking, and 56% think the US is experiencing a recession, though the broadest measure of the economy, gross domestic product (GDP), has been growing. 49% believe the S&P 500 stock market index is down for the year, though the index went up about 24% in 2023 and is up more than 12% this year. 49% believe that unemployment is at a 50-year high, though the unemployment rate has been under 4%, a near 50-year low."
Trump Booed & Heckled. Michael Gold & Rebecca O'Brien of the New York Times: "Donald J. Trump's appearance before the Libertarian Party on Saturday was without modern precedent: the presumptive nominee of one party addressing the convention of another.... Mr. Trump's speech was delivered to an audience that included supporters wearing red MAGA hats, as well as Libertarians who were resentful of his presence at the convention where they will select their own presidential nominee. Throughout his remarks, the room's warring factions tried to drown each other out.... By and large, any moments of concord were eclipsed by raucous dissent..... Mr. Trump appeared irked by the chaotic atmosphere. He seemed to rush through his speech, appearing to stick to prepared remarks...." Reuters' report is here.
Maggie Haberman of the New York Times on how Donald Trump is still stuck in the greed-is-good '80s.(Also linked yesterday.)
RAS was wondering last week why it took more than three years to learn that Insurrectionist Sam & his Little Missus were flying a symbol of the January 6 rioters just days after the attempted coup. Well, that seems to be because the Washington Post decided not to tell us about it. So far, in all of our (okay, two) encounters over the years with Mrs. Alito, we have found that she is a highly-strung sort of person who does not handle questions well, so not well-suited to be the spouse of a public figure. ~~~
~~~ Signs of Distress. Justin Jouvenal & Ann Marimow of the Washington Post: "The wife of Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. told a Washington Post reporter in January 2021 that an upside-down American flag recently flown on their flagpole was 'an international signal of distress' and indicated that it had been raised in response to a neighborhood dispute. Martha-Ann Alito made the comments when the reporter went to the couple's Fairfax County, Va., home to follow up on a tip about the flag, which was no longer flying when he arrived. The incident documented by reporter Robert Barnes, who covered the Supreme Court for The Post for 17 years and retired last year, offers fresh details about the raising of the flag and the first account of comments about it by the justice's wife. The Post decided not to report on the episode at the time because the flag-raising appeared to be the work of Martha-Ann Alito, rather than the justice, and connected to a dispute with her neighbors, a Post spokeswoman said. It was not clear then that the argument was rooted in politics, the spokeswoman said....
"Barnes ... encountered the [Alitos] coming out of the house. Martha-Ann Alito was visibly upset by his presence, demanding that he 'get off my property.' As he described the information he was seeking, she yelled, 'It's an international signal of distress!' ... Alito intervened and directed his wife into a car parked in their driveway.... The justice denied the flag was hung upside down as a political protest, saying it stemmed from a neighborhood dispute and indicating that his wife had raised it. Martha-Ann Alito then got out of the car and shouted in apparent reference to the neighbors: 'Ask them what they did!' She said yard signs about the couple had been placed in the neighborhood. After getting back in the car, she exited again and then brought out from their residence a novelty flag, the type that would typically decorate a garden. She hoisted it up the flagpole. 'There! Is that better?' she yelled.... One resident ... said the flag flew for between two and five days." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ digby: "Thomas and Alito are letting their wives do their blatant partisan activism for them while they use their lifetime appointments to enact their agenda from the bench. Just as Trump is using his surrogates to get around the gag order, these two wingnuts are using their wives to circumvent the rules and the laws they are supposed to be protecting. And since they're completely shameless, they are daring anyone to do something about it."
~~~ Marie: Martha-Ann's over-the-top response to a question I expect was delivered in a respectful manner is such that it merits reporting no matter what expressed sentiments Martha-Ann let fly in her extended melodramatic tantrum. And the Post's excuse for not reporting the story is as good as the media's for not reporting JFK's sexcapades or FDR's long love affair with Lucy Mercer, his useless legs or his failing health. It's a throwback to the good ole days of "journalism," when it was not "gentlemanly" to report inconvenient facts. ~~~
~~~ Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Chris Geitner, the Law Dork: "In a series of paragraphs that are up there as being among the most shocking I have read in my journalistic career, the Post acknowledged on Saturday -- dropped in the middle of the holiday weekend, more than a week after the Times's report -- that they had known about the flag since at least January 20, 2021, and had not revealed knowledge of it until May 25, 2024.... The explanation given by the Post for failing to report the story in 2021 -- in the days after the insurrection -- is unacceptably vague and woefully inadequate for a paper whose motto is 'Democracy Dies in Darkness.' ... Who made that decision, and do they still have any role at the Post? And who all knew about it?... Perhaps most astonishing to me, why was this not reported in March 2022, when The Washington Post broke significant news about Ginni Thomas's texts to Mark Meadows urging him to take action to overturn the election.... Worse still, why did the Post still withhold this story from the public in its day-two follow-up report from Barnes himself, along with Marimow, about the ethics of a justice's participation in cases relating to January 6 when his wife had supported those efforts."
~~~ Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times: "If flying one of these two [insurrectionists'] flags was enough, along with his sympathetic posture toward the insurrectionists in recent oral arguments, to raise suspicions about Alito's allegiances, then flying both is as close as we'll likely get to clear confirmation that he stands, ideologically, with the men and women who tried to overturn the Constitution for the sake of Donald Trump." (Also linked yesterday.)
What do you do if on your busiest work days, you find yourself sitting between Clarence Thomas & Neil Gorsuch: ~~~
~~~ Abbie VanSickle of the New York Times: "Some days, after Justice Sonia Sotomayor listens to the Supreme Court announce its decisions, she goes into her chambers, shuts the door and weeps.... The comments about the challenges of being a liberal on a court dominated by conservatives came at the tail end of a public conversation with her friend and law school classmate, Martha Minow, a former dean of Harvard Law School and human rights scholar. The justice set a tone of optimism even as she voiced frustration with some of the court's rulings, a possible signal that the end of the term, when the most high-profile decisions typically land, could bring more conservative victories. She urged a long-term view of pushing for the values she views as guiding principles -- equality, diversity and justice."
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California. Kim Bellware of the Washington Post: "Over 17 hours of police interrogation, detectives falsely claimed Thomas Perez Jr.'s father was dead, suggested his dog would be euthanized when Perez went to prison for killing him, denied him anxiety and blood pressure medications, and extracted a confession for a murder that never happened, according to court records and video of the questioning. The 2018 interrogation by Fontana, Calif., police kicked off a years-long legal battle that appeared headed for trial before the city agreed to settle Perez's federal lawsuit for nearly $900,000. The city council in Fontana, about 46 miles east of Los Angeles, approved the agreement this month."
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Israel/Palestine, et al. CNN's live updates of developments Sunday in the Israel/Hamas war are here: "Protesters clashed with police in Tel Aviv Saturday night, following a day of rallies calling for a ceasefire and the return of hostages. One video showed horse-mounted police and water cannons trying to clear demonstrators. Ceasefire and hostage talks are set to resume in Cairo on Tuesday, an Egyptian official told CNN.... At least 10 people, including children, died in northern Gaza on Saturday after a drone strike hit a school they were sheltering in, health workers said. Fighting continues across Gaza, including in areas Israel previously said it controlled. Spain's defense minister has said that what is happening in Gaza is a 'real genocide.' Spain was one of three European countries to announce plans to recognize a Palestinian state, further piling pressure on Israel."
News Lede
CNN: "Tornado-spawning storms tearing across parts of the Central United States caused injuries, damaged homes, left thousands in the dark and fueled calls to seek shelter overnight in North Texas and Oklahoma as severe weather continues to disrupt Memorial Day weekend. More than 110 million people across broad swaths of the US are under threat of large hail, damaging winds and a fierce twisters Sunday, mainly throughout the mid-Mississippi, Ohio and Tennessee River valleys."
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Robert Barnes spent 17 years reporting on the Supreme Court. That should be the aha moment. As we have seen in the last few years the reporters on the Supreme's beat did little other than reading the rulings and explaining some of the law and maybe a few real life repercussions. It doesn't sound like Barnes even bothered to talk to the neighbors even after the deranged reaction from Mrs Alito. He just went through the motions and did the bare minimum of looking into the people behind shaping our society.
"Joe Biden and the Inversion of Reality"
Texas
"Republican Party of Texas delegates voted Saturday on a platform that called for new laws to require the Bible to be taught in public schools and a constitutional amendment that would require statewide elected leaders to win the popular vote in a majority of Texas counties.
Other proposed planks of the 50-page platform included proclamations that “abortion is not healthcare it is homicide”; that gender-transition treatment for children is “child abuse”; calls to reverse recent name changes to military bases and “publicly honor the southern heroes”; support for declaring gold and silver as legal tender; and demands that the U.S. government disclose “all pertinent information and knowledge” of UFOs.
Perhaps the most consequential plank calls for a constitutional amendment to require that candidates for statewide office carry a majority of Texas’ 254 counties to win an election, a model similar to the U.S. electoral college.
Under current voting patterns, in which Republicans routinely win in the state’s rural counties, such a requirement would effectively end Democrats’ chances of winning statewide office. In 2022, Gov. Greg Abbott carried 235 counties, while Democrat Beto O’Rourke carried most of the urban, more populous counties and South Texas counties. Statewide, Abbott won 55% of the popular vote while O’Rourke carried 44%."
It’s can be a sketchy task to diagnose people you’ve never met, but immense power invested in Supreme Court (in)Justices warrants at least a shot at considering the apparently unhinged anger that informs or at the very least color decisions that affect millions of Americans.
Einstein, responding to the new fangled ideas from young whipper snappers in the physics world, once described the theory of quantum entanglement (the seeming ability of a pair of entangled particles to share physical states despite being separated by millions of miles) as “spooky action at a distance” (despite Albert’s skepticism, experimentation has determined that entanglement is, in fact, a thing).
The not so quantum entanglement of a couple of Supreme pairs, might be described as scary action in proximity, and it’s no quantum leap to see how those actions fracture ethics, norms, precedence, the rule of law, and the direction of the country.
First entangled state: anger. It’s no secret that Injustice Alito and Injustice Thomas are angry guys. They’re pissed. Things aren’t they way they want them to be, people don’t just do what they’re told. They want equality, they want judicious rulings that consider precedence, established law, and the needs of all Americans. And they don’t want religious authoritarians telling them what to do. And their wives are angry. I don’t care if some neighbor had a “Fuck Trump” sign up in their yard. You don’t have that kind of instant reaction to a simple question unless you’re terrifically angry all the time, angry to the point of hatred. Both couples seem motivated by anger, anger and arrogance. Not the sort of combination that guarantees judicial restraint or thoughtful jurisprudence.
And it’s not just anger. Second entangled state is their shared sense of victimhood and self-righteousness that ensures a distinctly toxic solipsism on the rulings, informed by lives lived in the bubble of right-wing animosity and conspiracy theories (like a stolen election).
And they’re not the only ones. Bart was the poster boy for crying, whining, red-faced vituperation. Gorsuch is pissed that mom lost her job to the “deep state”. Barrett seems to have moments where she can see through the dense clouds of hatred, but she’s still a Christianist Bible beater at her core.
It can’t be healthy to live in a bubble of anger, hatred, entitlement, and arrogance, each particle of the entangled pair affecting the other. And that would be fine if they were the neighborhood grumps who refuse to throw the kids’ ball back when it lands in their yard, who shout at the mail lady and give neighbors the finger. But when that couple gets to make or break the laws we all live with, that’s an entanglement we might not survive.
Something the libertarians and me can agree on.
Marie directs our attention to a new Harris poll that indicates a level of ignorance and stupidity that pins the needle.
It might be helpful, as Harold Meyerson points out, in the “The American Prospect” to note the source:
“To be sure, Harris is run by Mark Penn of No Labels, who is notorious for releasing push polls that make Biden look bad, and any poll of his should be taken with a large grain of salt. That said, the results are not that far off other polls asking similar questions.
At any rate, this isn’t a Biden vs. Trump poll per se, but it sure doesn’t augur well for Biden’s prospects. Rather, it records public opinion on the state of the economy, and even if its margin of error were 20 percentage points, its findings should come as a shock.”
Push polls, as you know, don’t ask questions like “What do you think of the state of the economy?”, they ask “Don’t you think Joe Biden is a demented loser?”
But this isn’t the only poll spelling bad news for Biden, and for a realistic, fact based view of the state of the nation, and there’s a big reason for that.
“The first is the substitution of social media for traditional media. Social media has a built-in bias for the negative, the apocalyptic, the unedited and uncurated. It’s a magnet for the expression of discontents, both real and imagined. And as the presence of traditional media in Americans’ lives has dwindled, social media has become the place for news, also both real and imagined. It’s no friend to good news and no friend to Joe Biden.
But Biden’s own shortcomings as a communicator, which are partly a function of his age, have also played a role in the vibe-cession, enabling his critics to create a public perception of him that he’s been manifestly unable to overcome.”
And how about this?
“A steady stream of clips showing high gas prices or rubble in Gaza or students being arrested is bound to lead the consumer of said clips to some dark conclusions about the country teetering on the knife’s edge of chaos and collapse, which, once formed, facts are powerless to dislodge.
There’s another recent survey, one of the most depressing and telling I’ve seen this year, that seems to confirm this too. This was an NBC News poll that divided respondents based on where they got their news. Pay attention here. Among people who don’t follow political news at all, Trump led Biden 53–27. Among social media users, Trump led 46–42. But among people who actually read newspapers, Biden led—ready?—by 70–21.”
70-21. Holy shit.
But the disparity also points to the lack of interest on the part of millions who consume their “news” from uncorroborated, specious sources in critical thinking. No wonder the Party of Traitors hates education that teaches critical thought processes. All the better for people to get their information from Russian troll farms and pro-Trump sites (a perfect overlay on a Venn chart).
“News”, no critical thinking, steady streams of conspiracy minted bullshit equals Trump 2.0.
Duh. For some reason today I posted this in yesterday's comments:
"Mock Paper Scissors" blog copied from Axios a list of To-Do priorities for DiJiT's 2nd (Turd?) term. Authors note that it contains no items concerning the economy, even though that subject is clearly high on many voters' anxiety charts.
If I were a debate coach for President Biden, I would use this or a similar list from which to choose topics to get DiJiT to display his ignorance and malevolence. Each item comes from DiJiT's word-like public utters, so he can be charged with defending and explaining them. So for instance, "You said you'd round up, encamp and deport over ten million people. Would you put those camps all in the border states, or spread around like defense contracts and federal prisons providing local jobs?"