Monitoring Biden and other Contemporary Events

The narcissistic authoritarianism on the Right loves to exaggerate their own power, ability or influence—especially on the larger culture. Many were quite confident their childish tantrums would destroy the Barbie film at the box office.

Over at Cinemaphile some anonymous right-winger said. “Barbie is gonna flop” and Warner Bros. will have to sell off everything. Another anonymous individual said, “It’s a feminist movie that shits on men.” A writer from the socially authoritarian Heritage Foundation at The Daily Signal gleefully said the film did poorly in China and producers had to “watch the film come in sixth place in opening-day ticket sales in China.”

She cited a Hollywood Reporter article that said, based only on opening day sales it might come in sixth. It was a projection. Box Office Mojo reported opening weekend sales in China made it number 1, not 6th. Though I do find it odd conservatives try to make their case by looking at a dictatorship.

The absurd misnamed hate group One Million Moms told followers — a handful of evangelical preachers and some of their congregations — that Barbie was absolutely unfit for children. By unfit for children it tends to mean anything unfit for them!

Their leader urged her few followers:

“TAKE ACTION: Please join us in telling Mattel, Inc. and Warner Bros. Pictures that we are not buying what they are selling. Sign our pledge and commit to boycotting the new movie, ‘Barbie.’

After you sign the pledge, please share this warning on your social media pages. Help 1MM spread the truth about this Warner Bros. film today!”

The increasingly unhinged and not-very-closeted authoritarian, Elon Musk, attacked the film for opposing patriarchy while the whiny Ben Shapiro warned outraged fans, “All you need to know about #BarbieTheMovie is that it unironically uses the word ‘patriarchy’ more than 10 times.” I guess in his circle other children call that a “big word.”

Shapiro was so outraged in his own masculine insecurity he went out and purchased Barbie and Ken dolls so he could film himself burning them before launching into a sermon about how evil the toys are. Far right Jack Posobiec said the film is a “man-hating Woke propaganda fest” and “possibly the most anti-male film ever made.”

The very fragile John Nolte at Breitbart said “Let’s hope Hollywood believes woke sells and starts producing more woke movies because watching these movies flop is much more entertaining than anything Hollywood’s produced in years.” While other right-wing types were screaming the film was blatantly woke Nolte said “Woke is so hated ‘Barbie had to hid it.” So it was hidden and blatant at the same time!

In his review he said, “I haven’t seen Barbie, and I will never see Barbie because of the gay stuff.” So he knows all he needs to do to form an opinion based on nothing at all. He dismisses the idea of equality for women with such zingers as “Ever seen a girl up on a roof slinging shingles.” He might check before he blows hot air.

Even as he’s weeping in public he claims the film is “Barbie’s woke crybabying.” The more insecure the Right becomes the more they accuse others of being fragile; the more they demand strict compliance with their politics the more they denounce “political correctness,” and anything they dislike is woke — a term they can’t and don’t define. Imaginary monsters are better tools with which to scare the herd into stampeding.

According to Nolte, Warner Bros. knew it had to hide the woke, “had to bury the feminist crybabying, and sold it as something else entirely — as girly fluff. … This tells me Hollywood has finally conceded that woke equals box office poison. Now we will just have to see how long the industry gets away with more bait-and-switches or, as I mentioned above if Barbie becomes the secret recipe for successfully selling a crybaby ideology to the masses.”

The major flaw in that claim is, even if they “hid” their evil feminism, once the film is released the cat is out of the bag. And the far Right has been loud and downright rabid in announcing these alleged flaws to the world. It’s just no one of any significance is paying attention to them or most sane people simply don’t care! Most actual adults have better things to worry about than a fiction film about a child’s toy!

I’ve seen a lot of crybaby antics but none of it was coming from Hollywood, the Left or even women. So far the weepy ones have been right-wing male professional snowflakes who regularly have meltdowns over the “culture war” they started. With conservative men it’s a blizzard of fragility.

What they call the “culture war” is almost entirely other people demanding for themselves the same and equal rights white males have claimed for themselves. Of course the problem with that is conservatives think they have a natural right to rule society and make rules for everyone else while they get special exemptions.

A drag performer makes them sexually insecure, especially one they find attractive, so they do their damnedest to make them illegal — after being enjoyed publicly for centuries. Their hates tell us more about them than it does about what they hate. I’m not fond of authoritarian Baptist preachers but wouldn’t support making them illegal. They should be laughed at, not arrested. That’s called live and let live, but too many conservatives believe in rule or be ruled.

For the record Barbie, as of Sunday, pulled in a bit over three quarters of a billion dollars in ticket sales. It is likely to reach $1 billion by the end of the week. Only one film in history did that in 10 days or less. What the whiny Right doesn’t understand is they have been uintentionally hyping the film, not harming it.

A Super Pac affiliated with Robert F Kennedy Jr, the anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist running for president as a Democrat, owes half its cash to a longtime Republican mega-donor and Trump backer, according to campaign finance reports filed on Monday.

The group, American Values 2024, reported receiving $5m from Timothy Mellon, a wealthy businessman from Wyoming, according to NBC News and Politico. It registered with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) in April, days before Kennedy officially launched his campaign, according to FEC records.

There have been more developments today surrounding yesterday’s indictment of former president Trump for conspiring to defraud the United States, conspiring to disenfranchise voters, and conspiring and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding as he tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election and install himself in office over the wishes of the American people.

Observers today called out the part of the indictment that describes how Trump and Co-Conspirator 4, who appears to be Jeffrey Clark, the man Trump wanted to make attorney general, intended to use the military to quell any protests against Trump’s overturning of the election results. When warned that staying in power would lead to “riots in every major city in the United States,” Co-Conspirator 4 replied, “Well…that’s why there’s an Insurrection Act.”

The Insurrection Act of 1807 permits the president to use the military to enforce domestic laws, invoking martial law. Trump’s allies urged him to do just that to stay in power. Fears that Trump might do such a thing were strong enough that on January 3, 2021, all 10 living former defense secretaries signed a Washington Post op-ed warning that “[e]fforts to involve the U.S. armed forces in resolving election disputes would take us into dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional territory.”

They put their colleagues on notice: “Civilian and military officials who direct or carry out such measures would be accountable, including potentially facing criminal penalties, for the grave consequences of their actions on our republic.” Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo recalled today that military leaders told Congress they were reluctant to respond to the violence at the Capitol out of concern about how Trump might use the military under the Insurrection Act.

Political pollster Tom Bonier wrote: “I understand Trump fatigue, but it feels like the president and his advisors preparing to use the military to quash protests against his planned coup should be bigger news. Especially when that same guy is in the midst of a somewhat credible comeback effort.”

On The Beat tonight, Ari Melber connected Trump Co-Conspirator John Eastman to Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX). Just before midnight on January 6, 2021, after the attack on the U.S. Capitol, Eastman wrote to Pence’s lawyer to beg him to get Pence to adjourn Congress “for 10 days to allow the legislatures to finish their investigations, as well as to allow a full forensic audit of the massive amount of illegal activity that has occurred here.” On the floor of the Senate at about the same time, Cruz, who voted against certification, used very similar language when he called for “a ten-day emergency audit.”

An email sent by Co-Conspirator 6, the political consultant, matches one sent from Boris Epshteyn to Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, suggesting that Epshteyn is Co-Conspirator 6. The Russian-born Epshteyn has been with Trump’s political organization since 2016 and was involved in organizing the slates of false electors in 2020. Along with political consultant Steve Bannon, Epshteyn created a cryptocurrency called “$FJB, which officially stands for “Freedom. Jobs. Business.” but which they marketed to Trump loyalists as “F*ck Joe Biden.” By February 2023, Nikki McCann Ramirez reported in Rolling Stone that the currency had lost 95% of its value.

Since the indictment became public, Trump loyalists have insisted that the Department of Justice is attacking Trump’s First Amendment rights to free speech. Indeed, if Giuliani’s unhinged appearance on Newsmax last night is any indication, it appears that has been their strategy all along. Aside from the obvious limit that the First Amendment does not cover criminal behavior, the grand jury sidestepped this issue by acknowledging that Trump had a right to lie about his election loss. It indicted him for unlawfully trying to obstruct an official proceeding and to disenfranchise voters.

Today, Trump’s former attorney general William Barr dismissed the idea that the indictment is an attack on Trump’s First Amendment rights. Barr told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins: “As the indictment says, they're not attacking his First Amendment right. He can say whatever he wants. He can even lie. He can even tell people that the election was stolen when he knew better. But that does not protect you from entering into a conspiracy. All conspiracies involve speech. And all fraud involves speech. Free speech doesn't give you the right to engage in a fraudulent conspiracy.”

Rudy Giuliani has his own troubles in the news today, unrelated to the attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. His former assistant Noelle Dunphy is suing him for sexual harassment and abuse, and new transcripts filed in the New York Supreme Court of Giuliani’s own words reveal disturbing fantasies of sexual domination that are unlikely to help his reputation. (Historian Kevin Kruse retweeted part of the transcript with the words, “Goodbye, lunch.”)

The chaos in the country’s political leaders comes with a financial cost. According to Fitch Ratings Inc., a credit-rating agency, the national instability caused by “a steady deterioration in standards of governance over the last 20 years” has damaged confidence in the country’s fiscal management. Yesterday it downgraded the United States of America’s long-term credit rating for the second time in U.S. history.

Fitch cited “repeated debt-limit political standoffs and last-minute resolutions,” “a complex budgeting process,” and “several economic shocks as well as tax cuts and new spending initiatives” for its downgrade. The New York Times warned that the downgrade is “another sign that Wall Street is worried about political chaos, including brinkmanship over the debt limit that is becoming entrenched in Washington.”

The timing of the downgrade made little sense economically, as U.S. economic growth is strong enough that the Bank of America today walked back earlier warnings of a recession. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen noted that the key factors on which Fitch based its downgrade had started in 2018 and called the downgrade “arbitrary.” The editorial board of the Washington Post called the timing “bizarre.” But the timing makes more sense in the context of the fact that House Republicans could not pass 11 of 12 necessary appropriations bills before leaving for their August recess.

The White House said it “strongly disagree[d]” with the decision to downgrade the U.S. credit rating, noting that the ratings model Fitch used declined under Trump before rebounding under Biden, and saying “it defies reality to downgrade the United States at a moment when President Biden has delivered the strongest recovery of any major economy in the world.” But it did agree that “extremism by Republican officials—from cheerleading default, to undermining governance and democracy, to seeking to extend deficit-busting tax giveaways for the wealthy and corporations—is a continued threat to our economy.”

Army Chief of Staff General James McConville, the 40th person to hold that position, retired today. Because Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) has put a hold on military promotions for the past 8 months, there is no Senate-confirmed leader to take McConville’s place. There are eight seats on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the group of the most senior military officers who advise the president, homeland security officials, the secretary of defense, and the National Security Council. Currently, two of those seats are filled by acting officials who have not been confirmed by the Senate.

Politico’s defense reporter Paul McLeary wrote that as of today, there are 301 senior military positions filled by temporary replacements as Tuberville refuses to permit nominations to go through the Senate by the usual process. Two more members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff will retire before the end of September.

Politico’s Pentagon reporter Lara Seligman illustrated what this personnel crisis means for national security: “U.S. forces are on high alert in the Persian Gulf,” she wrote today. “As Tehran attempts to seize merchant ships in the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. is sending warships, fighter jets and even considering stationing armed troops aboard civilian vessels to protect mariners. Yet two of the top senior officers overseeing the escalating situation aren’t where they’re supposed to be.”

Two days ago, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin wrote in a memo that the “unprecedented, across-the-board hold is having a cascading effect, increasingly hindering the normal operations of this Department and undermining both our military readiness and our national security.” Today he reiterated: “The failure to confirm our superbly qualified senior uniformed leaders undermines our military readiness.” He added, “It undermines our retention of some of our very best officers. And it is upending the lives of far too many of their spouses, children and loved ones.”

Tuberville, who did not serve in the military, likes to say "there is no one more military than me.” And yet, thanks to him and the Republican conference that is permitting him to hold the nominations, we are down two chiefs of staff tonight.

Meanwhile, on July 26, when soldiers took charge in Niger, a country central to the fight against Islamic terrorists and the security of democracy on the African continent, the U.S. had no ambassador there. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) was blocking the confirmation of more than 60 State Department officials the same way that Tuberville was blocking the confirmation of military officials.

Paul claimed he was blocking State Department confirmations because he wanted access to information about the origins of COVID, but Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the department had “been working extensively” with Paul, providing the documents and other information he had requested. “But unfortunately, he continues to block all our nominees.” Paul complained that he had been only given private access, and wanted to “take those documents out.”

As of July 17, the current Senate had confirmed only five State Department nominees. On that day, Blinken wrote to each senator to express “serious concern” about the delays. He told reporters that he respects and values the Senate’s “critical oversight role…but that’s not what is happening here. No one has questioned the qualifications of these career diplomats. They are being blocked for leverage on other unrelated issues. It’s irresponsible. And it’s doing harm to our national security.”

Ambassadors “advance the interests of our country,” he said, and not having confirmed ambassadors “makes us less effective at advancing every one of our policy priorities—from getting more countries to serve as temporary hubs for [immigrant visa] processing, to bringing on more partners for global coalitions like the one we just announced to combat fentanyl, to support competitive bids for U.S. companies to build…critical infrastructure projects around the world.”

Our adversaries benefit from these absences, not only because they offer an opening to exploit, but also because “[t]he refusal of the Senate to approve these career public servants also undermines the credibility of our democracy. People abroad see it as a sign of dysfunction, ineffectiveness—inability to put national interests over political ones.”

Blinken noted that “in previous administrations, the overwhelming majority of career nominees received swift support to advance through the Senate by unanimous consent. Today, for reasons that have nothing to do with the nominees’ qualifications or abilities, they are being forced to proceed through individual floor votes.” More than a third of the nominees had been waiting for more than a year for their confirmation.

Late on July 27, the day after the conflict began in Niger and the day before the senators left for their summer recess, Paul lifted his hold, tweeting that the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), an independent agency that administers foreign aid, had agreed to release the documents he wanted. The Senate then confirmed career diplomat Kathleen A. FitzGibbon as ambassador to Niger, as well as ambassadors to other countries including Rwanda, the United Arab Emirates, Georgia, Guyana, Ethiopia, Jordan, Uganda, and Italy.

But FitzGibbon did not arrive in Niger before the U.S. government on Wednesday ordered “non-emergency U.S. government personnel” and their families to leave the country out of concerns for their safety.

The attack on our nation by individual Republicans seems to be a theme these days. After yesterday’s arraignment on charges that he conspired to defraud the United States, conspired and attempted to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspired to overturn Americans’ constitutionally protected right to vote, Donald Trump today flouted the judge’s warning not to try to influence jurors. He posted on social media: “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!”

Prosecutors from the office of Special Counsel Jack Smith tonight alerted the court to Trump’s threat when they asked the court for a protective order to stop him from publishing information about the materials they are about to deliver to his lawyers. They expressed concern that publishing personal information “could have a harmful chilling effect on witnesses” or taint the jury pool by telling potential jurors too much before the trial.

Quote:

Donald Trump today flouted the judge’s warning not to try to influence jurors. He posted on social media: “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!”

A court in Russia has extended Alexei Navalny’s prison sentence by 19 years, and sentenced him to a special regime with the harshest prison conditions in the country.

Navalny, 47, once led street protests against the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, built a nationwide political opposition, and revealed salacious details of Kremlin officials’ corrupt lifestyles. As revenge, Russia has sentenced him to a cumulative three decades in prison, a term that will most likely keep the Kremlin critic behind bars and out of politics for as long as Putin remains alive.

Navalny attended the sentencing, which was handed down on Friday in a closed hearing inside a penal colony auditorium, in a black prison jumpsuit. Journalists and members of the public have been barred from attending the trial.

He was found guilty on six counts, including inciting and financing extremism, creating an illegal NGO, the rehabilitation of Nazism, and inciting children to dangerous acts. He and his supporters have rejected the charges as being politically motivated.

Judge Andrey Suvorov said he had delivered a “definitive penalty” against Navalny, whom he described as a “recidivist” in the ruling.

The verdict sentenced Navalny to a special prison regime that will limit his ability to meet visitors or write or receive letters for years after his term begins. The conditions will further limit his ability to direct the opposition movement that he founded in Russia and that he has continued to try to manage from behind bars since being jailed in 2021.

“They are going to make it almost impossible for him to communicate with the outside world and to have an impact on the outside world,” said Yevgenia Albats, an independent Russian journalist who communicated regularly with Navalny.

“They are trying to silence him. To make him dead for the outside world.”

Daniel Kholodny, a TV technician working for Navalny’s YouTube channel, stood trial alongside him and was found guilty of organising an extremist group. His lawyer told the independent Novaya Gazeta newspaper that Kholodny was sentenced to eight years in prison.

Navalny was already serving an 11-and-a-half year sentence for fraud and other charges that he has described as spurious. His supporters have been tracked down and arrested for supporting his “extremist” movement.

After Friday’s verdict, Navalny said that the official length of the sentence was not important. “I perfectly understand that, like many political prisoners, I am sitting on a life sentence. Where life is measured by the term of my life or the term of life of this regime,” he said in a message passed to his lawyers and posted online.

In the message, Navalny called on Russians to resist the Kremlin, saying the purpose of the new prison sentence was “to intimidate you, not me”.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, judges have begun handing down extremely long prison sentences to Putin’s critics and others accused of betraying their country.

Vladimir Kara-Murza, another Russian opposition critic, was recently sentenced to 25 years in prison for treason and other charges tied to his criticism of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Navalny said: “We know for sure that if one in 10 of those outraged by the corruption of Putin and his officials took to the streets, the government would fall tomorrow. We know for sure that if those who are against the war took to the streets, they would stop it immediately.”

His trial was held behind closed doors at the IK-6 penal colony in Melekhovo, about 145 miles (235km) east of Moscow. The opposition leader appeared thin but defiant in his first appearance on a closed circuit television feed. But a judge quickly closed the trial to the public, limiting publicity and making it nearly impossible to follow the proceedings.

State prosecutors had requested that Navalny get a further 20 years on the six criminal charges.

In a closing statement at his trial, Navalny said: “For a new, free, rich country to be born, it must have parents. Those who want it, who expect it and who are willing to make sacrifices for its birth.”

The special prison sentence will include other harsh measures. Navalny can only see family once a year and receive one parcel each year. He will be forbidden from talking to fellow inmates. Convicts are led around the prison with their heads bent down and are only allowed to take occasional walks inside a closed courtyard.

Albats said: “Putin is giving him a message (and make no mistake, it is Putin): ‘You were publishing about my palace, my wife, my lovers. Now you get the message back.’ It’s a revenge from Putin for sure.”

Putin, 70, is widely expected to assume another six-year term as president beginning in 2024, meaning he could remain in power until 2030 or even 2036, according to new constitutional rules.

His time in power, which began in 1999, could potentially surpass that of even Joseph Stalin, who ruled the Soviet Union for almost 31 years.

Russia has become far more repressive since it invaded Ukraine, with most of the country’s high-profile opposition people either in prison or forced into exile.

Navalny, however, was always a special target. He was arrested in early 2021 after recovering from an attempted assassination by poison that has been tied to the FSB security service. First sent back to prison for violating an old probationary term, he was then given a further nine years for fraud and contempt of court.

He is also facing terrorism charges that could add decades more to his prison sentence.

In February, Putin ordered the FSB to raise its game and said it was necessary “to identify and stop the illegal activities of those who are trying to divide and weaken our society”.

What's the big deal? According to Moore, Christianity is in crisis in the United States today.

Moore is now the editor-in-chief of the Christianity Today magazine and has written a new book, Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call For Evangelical America, which is his attempt at finding a path forward for the religion he loves.

Moore believes part of the problem is that "almost every part of American life is tribalized and factionalized," and that has extended to the church.
"I think if we're going to get past the blood and soil sorts of nationalism or all of the other kinds of totalizing cultural identities, it's going to require rethinking what the church is," he told NPR.
During his time in office, Trump embraced a Christian nationalist stance — the idea that the U.S. is a Christian country and should enforce those beliefs. In the run-up to the 2024 presidential election, Republican candidates are again vying for the influential evangelical Christian vote, demonstrating its continued influence in politics.

In Aug. 2022, church leaders confirmed the Department of Justice was investigating Southern Baptists following a sexual abuse crisis. In a statement, SBC leaders said: "Current leaders across the SBC have demonstrated a firm conviction to address those issues of the past and are implementing measures to ensure they are never repeated in the future."

In 2017, the church voted to formally "denounce and repudiate" white nationalism at its annual meeting.