Hear ye, hear ye...

The warnings are coming fast and furious now.  Trump indictments coming soon!

I don’t know, but I’m having visions of “The Boy(s) Who Cried Wolf.”  

In other words, I’ve seen the Trump movie enough times, and heard about Trump getting his “comeuppance” ad nauseam, that I’ve got to see it to believe it.  Yeah, “Fool me once…” Syndrome has set in for me.

So, what do you think? 

1. Will the news of these indictments pan out?  If yes, how soon before at least one of them happens?  I'm not asking what the NEWS thinks; I'm asking what YOU think.
2. What will be their ramifications?  (E.g., Jail time for Trump [there’s a laugh], big fines, will it bolster his chances “bigly” of getting the Republican nomination because he’s been wrongfully accused [poor me…witch-hunted], etc.)  What do you see happening to Trump and his brand?
3. Of all Trump’s “legal problems” (tax evasion, stolen classified documents, 1/6 insurrection incitement, hush money payments to porn stars, interference in the 2020 election), what is the most egregious?  Rank them in order of legal seriousness, as you see them.

News bits: An odd court decision whacks the bad guys for being bad; Etc.

Law & Crime writes:

Right-wing activists Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman’s robocalls targeting Black voters violated the Voting Rights Act and Ku Klux Klan Act — and the question isn’t close enough to require a jury, a federal judge ruled.

[The judge said that] the evidence “establishes that the neighborhoods that Defendants targeted were not accidental or random,” finding that a reasonable jury couldn’t escape the conclusion that the pair wanted to “deny the right to vote specifically to Black voters.”

Recorded by a woman identifying herself as “Tamika Taylor,” the robocalls largely targeted diverse regions with the false message that “if you vote by mail, your personal information will be part of a public database that will be used by police departments to track down old warrants, and [will] be used by credit card companies to collect outstanding debt.”

Though Wohl and Burkman painted themselves as “goofballs and political hucksters with an irreverent sense of humor,” Judge Marrero rejected that the robocalls were “mere hyperbole.”

If the Republican Supreme Court takes this case up, it will try to find a way to let these two Republican vote fraudsters off the hook on free speech grounds. After all, Republicans use the law to protect their own and savage those they hate and politically oppose.

______________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________

Ukraine update: The NYT writes: “Russia Lacks Firepower to Keep Advancing, U.S. Intelligence Chief Says.”

That’s not credible. Maybe it will be credible when it happens. Another pulse check in six months might to shed enough fact-based light on this to come to a reasonably fact-based opinion.

______________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________

The WaPo writes: “Russia fires barrage of hypersonic missiles, piercing Ukrainian air defenses.”

Russia continues happily to pulverize Ukraine into the stone age.

______________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________

Morally bankrupt American military: The NYT writes: “Pentagon Blocks Sharing Evidence of Possible Russian War Crimes With Hague Court. American military leaders oppose helping the court investigate Russians because they fear setting a precedent that might help pave the way for it to prosecute Americans.”

Biden and State Department want to turn the evidence over. The US military fears prosecutions of its personnel. If the Pentagon stopped doing things that create liability for prosecutions, this would not be a concern. 

______________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________

From the Pissed Off Catholics Files: The WaPo writes about an investigation it launched into this odd story: “A group of conservative Colorado Catholics has spent millions of dollars to buy mobile app tracking data that identified priests who used gay dating and hookup apps and then shared it with bishops around the country. The secretive effort was the work of a Denver nonprofit called Catholic Laity and Clergy for Renewal .... The use of data is emblematic of a new surveillance frontier in which private individuals can potentially track other Americans’ locations and activities using commercially available information. No U.S. data privacy laws prohibit the sale of this data.”

Personal privacy online is just about non-existent. How many priests will get axed from this little fishing expedition is an interesting question.

______________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________

From the Snarky Columnist Files: A WaPo opinion by Alexandra Petri opines, snarking on the Faux News and Tucker Carlson spinning the 1/6 coup attempt into a harmless, fat-free nothingburger:

I got an advance transcript of Tucker Carlson’s next several shows, operating under the same premise as his recently released, selectively edited Jan. 6 coverage! It follows.

Viewers! For too long, Big Paleontology and the mainstream media have lied to you, saying that the planet was hit by a meteorite that caused dinosaurs to go extinct. That’s what they want you to think. But I’ve looked at the footage and — it’s just not the case. For the overwhelming, vast majority of the time that dinosaurs were walking around on Earth, there’s not a single meteorite to be seen.

Mostly, the dinosaurs were not impacted by a meteorite, actually. Finally, someone with the courage to say it. It makes you wonder: What else are they keeping from us?

Next, we will observe footage that reveals Abraham Lincoln was mostly not assassinated — I have almost an hour of footage of him enjoying a theater performance without incident! And footage showing that for the overwhelming majority of his life, Elvis was alive. Next, lots of footage of the Hindenburg flying without a single problem! Makes you wonder who stood to gain by painting it as a disaster! 

Faux News and Carlson are doubling down and saying the 1/6 coup attempt was peaceful and lawful. They have to double down or lose audience share. For Faux, as we all know, concern for profit is first, while truth is a distant third behind 2nd place audience share.  

Tucker showing the peaceful patriotism  

of the 1/6 coup attempt

What Tucker Carlson Really Thinks of Trump? "I Hate Him Passionately."

Tucker Carlson has been a central proponent of Trump and the MAGA movement in the GOP. He's a trusted go-to source for the MAGA troops, and in the past I have even heard rumors of his running for president in 2024. But, like a lot of other people, I've always had the suspicion that he's a phony who runs a lucrative business telling Fox audiences what they want to hear. It looks like there's something to that hunch according to recently obtained private comments Carlson made which have surfaced in the context of the Dominion Voting Systems defamation suit. The following is an excerpt of a NYT article published yesterday.

_________________________________________

NYT: 3/8/23

Here are five examples of Mr. Carlson’s views on Mr. Trump from the documents:

Nov. 6, 2020

1. On Trump’s Business History

As votes were being counted in the 2020 presidential election, Mr. Carlson texted with his producer, Alex Pfeiffer, fretting about viewers turning away from Fox News after the network called Arizona for President Biden.

Alex Pfeiffer: Trump has a pretty low rate at success in his business ventures.

Tucker Carlson: That’s for sure. All of them fail. What he’s good at is destroying things. He’s the undisputed world champion of that.

Nov. 10, 2020

2. On Trump’s Plan to Skip Biden’s Inauguration

A staff member texted Mr. Carlson to say they’d heard Mr. Trump was planning not to attend the inauguration, an important symbol of the peaceful transfer of power.

Carlson: I’d heard that about the inauguration. Hard to believe. So destructive.

Carlson: It’s disgusting. I’m trying to look away.

Nov. 23, 2020

3. On His Interactions With Trump’s Team Over Sidney Powell, a Trump Lawyer

Mr. Carlson texts with the Fox News host Laura Ingraham about Sidney Powell, a lawyer for Mr. Trump and one of the biggest promoters of the unfounded election fraud claims.

Carlson: I had to try to make the WH disavow her, which they obviously should have done long before.

Laura Ingraham: No serious lawyer could believe what they were saying.

Carlson: But they said nothing in public. Pretty disgusting. And now Trump, I learned this morning, is sitting back and letting them lose the senate. He doesn’t care. I care.

Jan. 4, 2021

4. On His Desire to Move On From Trump

Mr. Carlson texts with members of his staff, two months after the 2020 election and two days before the insurrection at the Capitol building, about looking forward to not having to cover Mr. Trump.

Carlson: We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can’t wait.

Carlson: I hate him passionately.

Jan. 7, 2021

5. On the Aftermath of the Capitol Riots

After the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, Mr. Carlson texts with Mr. Pfeiffer about Mr. Trump’s culpability in the insurrection and how to deal with viewers who still support him. It was two weeks before the inauguration of President Biden.

Carlson: Trump has two weeks left. Once he’s out, he becomes incalculably less powerful, even in the minds of his supporters.

Carlson: He’s a demonic force, a destroyer. But he’s not going to destroy us. I’ve been thinking about this every day for four years.

Pfeiffer: You’re right. I don’t want to let him destroy me either. [REDACTED]. The Trump anger spiral is vicious.

Carlson: That’s for sure. Deadly. It almost consumed me in November when Sidney Powell attacked us. It was very difficult to regain emotional control, but I knew I had to. We’ve got two weeks left. We can do this.

 

 Full article here: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/08/business/media/tucker-carlson-trump.html?campaign_id=190&emc=edit_ufn_2023

 

News bits: Abortions wars; Election wars; More abortion wars

I post about abortion wars because it is one of the culture war issues where we can often or usually clearly see radical right progress. What is happening with that issue is also coming to us now with other issues the authoritarian-theocratic radical right has both (i) demagogued, and (ii) the power to conduct nationwide social warfare. Politico writes about how Christian nationalist (CN) Republican politicians in power are slowly forcing companies to comply with CN religious dogmas:

Walgreens won’t distribute abortion pills in states where GOP AGs object

The nation’s second-largest pharmacy chain confirmed Thursday that it will not dispense abortion pills in several states where they remain legal — acting out of an abundance of caution amid a shifting policy landscape, threats from state officials and pressure from anti-abortion activists.

Nearly two dozen Republican state attorneys general wrote to Walgreens in February, threatening legal action if the company began distributing the drugs, which have become the nation’s most popular method for ending a pregnancy.

The company told POLITICO that it has since responded to all the officials, assuring them that they will not dispense abortion pills either by mail or at their brick-and-mortar locations in those states.

The list includes several states where abortion in general, and the medications specifically, remain legal — including Alaska, Iowa, Kansas and Montana.  

“In my letter to Walgreens, we made clear that Kansas will not hesitate to enforce the laws against mailing and dispensing abortion pills, including bringing a RICO action to enforce the federal law prohibiting the mailing of abortion pills,” Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach said in a statement.

Some activists want people to boycott Walgreens for stopping sales in states where at least some abortion is still legal, at least for now. 

Q: Do you see this an an example of anti-democratic social warfare being waged by radical right authoritarian, theocratic CN warriors with the Republican Party being the CN's Department of War? If not that, what would you call it?

______________________________________________________________

 ______________________________________________________________ 

The latest radical right attack on election integrity: The radical right is mounting major nationwide attack on election integrity. It will make widespread vote fraud easier. The WaPo writes:

At a time of hyperpolarization over voting and elections, Democrats and Republicans had largely managed to agree on one thing — that a little-known data-sharing consortium of more than 30 states has helped keep voter rolls updated and free of opportunities for fraud.

But the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), as the consortium is known, has been straining lately under the weight of accusations and misinformation from election deniers. Critics, some of whom have aligned themselves with the false stolen-election narrative of former president Donald Trump, have claimed that the group is actually a left-wing vehicle that shares sensitive voter data with liberal groups, encourages bloated and inaccurate rolls and enables the very fraud it is intended to stamp out. ERIC’s leaders deny these accusations.

Now, ERIC’s survival is in jeopardy, with Republican-led states withdrawing, others threatening to do so and heated disputes breaking out among members over how to save the organization. Should ERIC collapse, its boosters say the country would lose one of its most powerful tools for keeping ballot fraud at bay just as states are beginning to prepare for the 2024 election calendar.

“Why would people who purport to want more election integrity seek to damage the best tool out there?” asked David Becker, who helped found ERIC in 2012 with seven states when he led the elections program at the Pew Charitable Trusts and watched it grow over the ensuing decade. “The only thing I can come up with is they don’t actually want election integrity. They want more chaos.”

ERIC’s founding members thought they had devised the perfect way to impose sound voter-roll practices on states while keeping Republicans and Democrats happy in an area fraught with mutual suspicions. .... The system can also be used to help identify and prosecute those who have double-voted across state lines.

Q: Do you see this an an example of anti-democratic social warfare being waged by radical right authoritarian, theocratic warriors with the Republican Party being the authoritarian-theocrat Department of War? If not that, what would you call it?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

Abortion war in Texas: The Texas Tribune writes:

Federal court ruling may prevent Texas teens from getting 

birth control without parental permission

U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a former religious liberty lawyer, found that a federal program that gives teens access to birth control denies a parent “a fundamental right to control and direct the upbringing of his minor children.”

A federal court ruling Tuesday may make it nearly impossible for Texas teens to access birth control without their parents’ permission.

U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ruled that Title X, a federal program that provides free, confidential contraception to anyone, regardless of age, income or immigration status, violates parents’ rights and state and federal law.

Kacsmaryk, appointed by President Donald Trump in 2019, is a former religious liberty lawyer who helped litigate cases seeking to overturn protections for contraception.

This is CN theocracy being forced on people by the federal courts. Attacks on civil liberties like this allow radical right politicians in Texas and congress to escape most accountability. All they have to do is say the court did it, not them. It's a great tactic because it works quite well.