Monitoring Biden and other Contemporary Events

“Caravans” of migrants to our southern border are once again headline news on the Fox News Channel, but while these anti-immigrant stories divert attention from news that those on the right would like to bury, as usual, they also establish a larger pattern.

Whipping up fears of immigration is standard for authoritarians trying to convince followers to support the loss of civil liberties in order to promote law and order. One of those who rose to power with just such an argument is Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, a figure those on the right are championing these days. Fox News Channel personality Tucker Carlson broadcast from Hungary appreciatively earlier this year, presenting Orbán’s government, which has systematically dismantled democracy, as enviable. The American Conservative Union is planning to have its 2022 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Hungary, as well.

This backstory gave disturbing context to today’s news from the Government Accountability Office. The GAO is a government agency within the legislative branch (most of the ones you’re used to hearing about are in the executive branch) that audits, investigates, and issues reports for Congress. Known as the congressional watchdog, the GAO tries to cut through spin to do honest, thorough, and nonpartisan evaluations of government issues.

Today, the GAO reported that actions of the Trump administration had undermined U.S. goals in the Northern Triangle countries that are currently driving immigration to the southern border. Since 2008, the U.S. has funded development projects in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras to promote economic development, provide security, and combat corruption. This investment was designed, in part, to slow the movement of immigrants escaping the violence and economic dislocation of the region to the U.S. border.

In March 2019, the Trump administration abruptly halted promised money, and that freeze continued until June 2020. Today’s GAO report documented how that suspension hurt 92 of the 114 projects underway under the control of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and 65 of the 168 projects operating under the State Department.

Migration to the border soared, right before the 2020 election.

While Trump Republicans were trying to convince white American voters that immigrants threatened them, another story today suggests the real goals of the Trump machine.

The Guardian revealed that several members of the secretive Council on National Policy (CNP) claim that they were the ones behind the 2017 tax cuts on corporations and wealthy Americans. Wealthy right-wing Christian activists organized the CNP in 1981 to push the country toward religious and libertarian policies.

Also today, the Washington Post Magazine ran a long story about CNP, calling it “the most unusual, least understood conservative organization in the nation’s capital.” CNP is registered as a charity, but it is essentially a central planning center for right-wing activists across the country. Washington Post reporter Robert O’Harrow, Jr., explained how CNP members, who initially opposed Trump, swung behind him when he promised to combat abortion.

Members of CNP are a who’s who of wealthy conservative or political figures, including Leonard Leo, a leading light of the Federalist Society, which advocates for a conservative judicial system; Steve Bannon, a key Trump adviser; David Bossie, who headed the group Citizens United and who was Trump’s deputy campaign manager; and Kellyanne Conway, a White House adviser. Their goal, they say, is to create a moral America.

So, it appears, the fearmongering about immigrants helped to give power to a secret group of wealthy Americans who lobbied for huge tax cuts for the richest Americans.

The stories about CNP suggest its members have focused on keeping emotions high and Trump in power. The CNP was instrumental in opposing business closures and mask mandates to combat the coronavirus. A number of members, including Cleta Mitchell—the lawyer who was on the phone with Trump during his infamous call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, asking him to switch the state into the Trump column although Biden had won it—and Ginni Thomas, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife, backed “Stop the Steal” efforts.

Their efforts, we have increasing evidence, were promoted by Facebook, the giant social media company. Starting last Friday, 17 different news outlets have been publishing the “Facebook Papers” based on internal company documents provided to Congress and the press by whistleblower Frances Haugen. The stories allege that Facebook prioritized profits over truth and safety, deliberately amplifying right-wing voices and dividing the country.

Facebook denies the allegations.

Reports of migrant caravans might well be attempts to divert attention from the service of the Republicans to the wealthy, as well as from the story of January 6, which is becoming clearer as information continues to come out. Today, the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol interviewed Steve Bannon associate Dustin Stockton. Stockton was one of the organizers of the Women for America First rally on January 6 that got taken over by the unpermitted Stop the Steal rally which led to the attack on the Capitol.

According to a piece by Joshua Kaplan and Joaquin Sapien in ProPublica last June, Stockton was so concerned about the Stop the Steal people that he urged Amy Kremer, another leader of the Women for America First rally, to contact her associate Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, in the days before January 6 to warn him things were getting out of hand. The committee has subpoenaed Kremer to testify on October 29. There are signs that Kremer or an associate might have been a source for yesterday’s Rolling Stone article, suggesting that someone from Women for America First is willing to cooperate with the committee.

The Rolling Stone article, which provided names of lawmakers allegedly involved in planning the January 6 rally, refocused attention on the fact that it was Representative Paul Gosar (R-AZ) who was speaking at length as the mob broke into the building. His speech delayed the evacuation of the House chamber for 15 minutes, so that the House members were still present when the mob, including Ashli Babbitt, tried to get at them. A police officer shot and killed Babbitt as she broke through the doors.

Last night’s Rolling Stone story also identified Republican Lauren Boebert (CO) as a participant in planning meetings for the events of January 6. Today she said in a carefully worded statement: “I had no role in the planning or execution of any event that took place at the Capitol or anywhere in Washington, DC on January 6.”

Today, once again, President Joe Biden refused to claim executive privilege to prevent the January 6 committee from seeing documents Trump wants to hide.

Meanwhile, the Democrats in Congress continue to try to move the country forward, hammering out their infrastructure measure. They hope to have it finished before President Biden leaves for meetings with European leaders later this week.

Council for National Policy (CNP)

Youngkin Ad Features Mom Whose Son Was Terrified By Toni Morrison Novel

Mom I’m Scared

Virginia GOP gubernatorial nominee Glenn Youngkin put out a 60-second ad yesterday of a Very Concerned Mother who somberly recounts how her son showed her his school reading material, and how her “heart sunk” because the reading was “some of the most explicit material you can imagine.”

Lawmakers’ “faces turned bright red” upon reading the material when the mother, Laura Murphy, brought it to them, she claims.
Curiously enough, the ad never mentions which book it was or how old Murphy’s son was at the time.

It turns out the book was Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel “Beloved,” according to the Washington Post’s 2013 report on Murphy’s plight. It was assigned to her son in his AP English class when he was a high school senior, and Murphy attempted to get the book banned.
The student told the Post at the time that the book had given him nightmares because it was “disgusting and gross” and “hard for me to handle.” He is now an associate general counsel for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

“If you think about what our Declaration of Independence says, it says to overthrow tyrants,” Greene said. If past is prologue, we shouldn’t be surprised if this catches on.

The GOP’s attempt to rewrite the history of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot has come full circle.

Initially, pretty much everyone agreed it was very bad to violently try to overturn an American election. Then some Republicans said that it wasn’t an insurrection at all — and that most of the people who stormed the U.S. Capitol were something akin to overzealous, persecuted tourists exercising their constitutional rights.

Now, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has offered a rather novel take on all of this: Yes, maybe it was indeed a riot seeking a violent re-installation of Donald Trump as president, but that’s what America was founded upon.

We probably shouldn’t undersell how insidious this could be, especially if past is prologue.

During an appearance on conservative outlet Real America’s Voice, Greene repeated a frequent GOP talking point that the real focus of congressional investigators should be violence at Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. But while doing so, she essentially suggested the Capitol riot comported with our Founding Fathers’ vision.

“[The racial-justice protest violence] was an attack on innocent American people, whereas Jan. 6 was just a riot at the Capitol,” she said. “And if you think about what our Declaration of Independence says, it says to overthrow tyrants.”

Greene added: “So there’s a clear difference between Jan. 6 and the Marxist-communist revolution that antifa, BLM, Democrat ground troops waged on the American people in 2020.”
[... ... ...]
The point is that these things have a tendency to catch on. They do so because GOP leaders are reluctant to rebuke those in their midst who might hold a view that only a passionate minority of the party base holds. They do so because acknowledging the reality of Jan. 6 can’t help but legitimize Congress’s investigation of it, which Republicans don’t want for transparently political reasons.

And suggesting the Capitol riot was in line with our founders’ vision for the country dovetails neatly with all of the above — especially the effort to excuse or downplay the actions of the Capitol rioters. The problem, of course, is that when you tell people that such things are okay or patriotic, you kind of encourage them to do it again.

It’s also worth emphasizing that, after the Capitol riot, the likes of Greene explained that their pre-riot comparisons of Jan. 6 to 1776 weren’t literal calls to arms. That’s a little more difficult to accept now.

man, she is one vile creature...

Region Philbis wrote:

man, she is one vile creature...

She is indeed. Unfortunately, she is speaking to that 5% of the American people who see nothing wrong with the crap that Trump and the Republican Party are throwing at our Republic.

The really bad thing about that is...that Republicans know they cannot win a fair election without the help of that tiny minority of nut cases. So...the have decided that being nuts along with the is the best way to go.

Because of these traitors, we may be seeing the end of our nation.

Is Don Trump Jr. Selling Merch Mocking Alec Baldwin’s On-Set Shooting Tragedy?

Americans going into the poorhouse thanks to Biden.

Granted, last year the cost of a Thanksgiving dinner for 10 was the lowest it had been since 2010, according to the American Farm Bureau, whose annual survey of large dinners will be released Nov. 18. But because of the pandemic, fewer people bought for big gatherings, and turkey prices were kept low to entice shoppers. This year, turkey prices are likely to hit record highs, and the cost of many foods has jumped sharply.

There is no single culprit. The nation’s food supply has been battered by a knotted supply chain, high transportation expenses, labor shortages, trade policies and bad weather. Inflation is at play, too. In September, the Consumer Price Index for food was up 4.6 percent from a year ago. Prices for meat, poultry, fish and eggs soared 10.5 percent.Packaged dinner rolls will be pricier because the cost of almost all of the ingredients that commercial bakers use has gone up. Canned cranberry sauce will cost more because domestic steel plants have yet to catch up after pandemic shutdowns, and China is limiting steel production to reduce carbon emissions. As a result, steel prices have remained more than 200 percent higher than they were before the pandemic.

The heftier price tag on that turkey-friendly California pinot noir reflects a 25 percent surge in energy costs, expensive delays related to labor shortages and the cost of glass bottles stuck on cargo ships coming from China. The average end-to-end shipping time from China to the United States was 73 days in September, up from 40 days two years earlier, said Katheryn Russ, a professor of economics at the University of California at Davis. And shipping expenses, she said, have tripled.

Extreme weather has made Thanksgiving ingredients cost more, too. A late-spring drought in the Midwest damaged the sugar beet crop, which had already been hurt by freezing weather in 2019. Hurricane Ida shut cane-sugar refineries in the South. Grape, nut and citrus crops in California have suffered under this year’s drought. Brazil, which supplies the world with more coffee than any other country, has endured severe drought and then a surprise July frost, resulting in less coffee and higher prices.

Even the basic materials — like wooden pallets and cardboard containers — that farmers need to get their crops from the field to distributors are either hard to find or much more expensive.