Monthly Archives: January 2021

Kevin Drum goes back to 2016 to discuss a Michael Anton essay that warned against Hillary Clinton’s election to the Presidency:

… oh hell, let’s just give you a taste:

2016 is the Flight 93 election: charge the cockpit or you die. You may die anyway. You—or the leader of your party—may make it into the cockpit and not know how to fly or land the plane. There are no guarantees. Except one: if you don’t try, death is certain. To compound the metaphor: a Hillary Clinton presidency is Russian Roulette with a semi-auto. With Trump, at least you can spin the cylinder and take your chances. [Anton]

Anton’s essay had a huge impact when it was written, and in a way it describes the id of the Trumpist movement. In a nutshell, Anton argued that the nation was declining and close to collapse, which meant that voting for Donald Trump was our only choice. Like the passengers on Flight 93, who could charge the cockpit and probably die or do nothing and definitely die, conservatives needed to vote for Donald Trump whether they liked it or not. Sure, he might be a disaster. But Hillary Clinton would definitely be a disaster.

Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, reminded me of “The Flight 93 Election” a few days ago, and it produced two thoughts when I reread it. The first is something I’ve mentioned before: the reason conservatives fight so hard is that they really, truly believe that liberals are bringing about the collapse of the country. The second is that they’re completely wrong. Consider the “litany of ills,” that Anton enumerates at the beginning of his essay. I’m reproducing them here word-for-word, adding only numbers to make them easier to reference: …

It’s a good rebuttal to the fear-mongering of the Anton essay, complete with charts, although honestly I think the far-right fringers are simply afraid of having their entire broken philosophy extinguished.

But I think Drum missed it on this one:

9. And, at the higher levels, saddles students with six figure debts for the privilege. …

9. Student debt
No argument here. Student debt is indeed out of control.

But Drum fails to address the question of the why of higher tuition debt. It’s not a matter that the left forces the price of education up so much as the right’s philosophy that the student should pay more of the costs of education, and in so doing forgetting that society as a whole benefits from every advanced degree earned, and by not paying for them, an untoward burden is thrust upon the student.

I’ve discussed this before, and reader feedback made clear that certain costs associated with the higher education systems were also responsible for the sky-high tuitions. That cannot be easily disregarded.

But in the end, the philosophy that society gets no benefit from advanced degrees is a fallacious, and therefore bankrupt, philosophy. While I’m not in favor of canceling all tuition debt or making tuition free for all – a little skin in the game is generally a good idea – I think Drum’s chart proves the point that, by not subsidizing education, a generation of Americans are being saddled with ridiculous levels of debt, meaning they’re ruining their lives in order to provide useful, even critical services to society.

And that’s neither right, nor good for the economic health of society.

There’s been a lot of chatter about the difficulties various former Trump White House employees are facing in finding new jobs commensurate with their expectations. Evidently, former Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders has decided to go for a job where there’s really very little evaluation of past efforts:

Wikipedia

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, President Donald Trump’s former press secretary, announced Monday that she is running for governor of Arkansas.

“With the radical left now in charge of Washington, your governor is your last line of defense. In fact, your governor must be on the front line,” Sanders said in a nearly eight-minute video posted on Twitter. “So today, I announce my candidacy for governor of Arkansas.” [CNN/Politics]

The daughter of former Arkansas governor, pastor, and Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee (R-AR), I’d say she has a leg up on her primary challengers, whoever they may be, and then a quick run to the governor’s mansion in this deeply conservative state.

It’ll be interesting to see how her opponents deploy her Trumpian – and admitted at least once – lies against her, and how she responds. If her opponents are unable to make the case that lying is simply part of the Trumpist way, or that constant lying is undesirable in a governor, she’ll win.

Because she won’t win on personality. She certainly didn’t show any charisma during her time as Press Secretary.

But I’d put my money on her. Her family has a history of political success, so she’s seen how it’s done. I’m not saying it’s not a sordid history – Mike Huckabee apparently left some controversy in his trail – but she knows the requirements, she’s high profile, and she’s picked the right audience.

Because voters don’t have an HR to thoroughly vet candidates, unlike a commercial employer. Or, rather, they do, in the free press, but they don’t use them much.

Professor Richardson nails the essence of what makes the American democracy work:

Democracy depends on a nonpartisan group of functionaries who are loyal not to a single strongman but to the state itself. Loyalty to the country, rather than to a single leader, means those bureaucrats follow the law and have an interest in protecting the government. It is the weight of that loyalty that managed to stop Trump from becoming a dictator—he was thwarted by what he called the “Deep State,” people who were loyal not to him but to America and our laws. That loyalty was bipartisan. For all that Trump railed that anyone who stood up to him was a Democrat, in fact many—Special Counsel Robert Mueller and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, for example—are Republicans.

Authoritarian figures expect loyalty to themselves alone, rather than to a nonpartisan government. To get that loyalty, they turn to underlings who are loyal because they are not qualified or talented enough to rise to power in a nonpartisan system. They are loyal to their boss because they could not make it in a true meritocracy, and at some level they know that (even if they insist they are disliked for their politics).

It’s a microcosm of my Sectors of Society meditations. If you replace one goal with another, the methods will change in order to optimize the attainment of the goal.

If moving ahead in your career depends on excellence in whatever field of democratic government you’re in – national defense, pollution regulation, science research, law enforcement & justice are just a few examples – then you will either develop those skills or you’ll move on to some other career. In a very real sense, it’s the old Evolution In Action gig. And the organization will improve, not only because you’ve improved, but because the public perception of the goal matches the interior specification of the goal.

If moving ahead in your career depends on brown-nosing Dear Leader, then you’ll develop those skills relevant to brown-nosing. The better you brown-nose, the better your career – and excellence in whatever part of government you’re in is purely an accident. You’ll prosper in proportion to your brown-nosing.

And screw everyone who depends on the government to get things right.

We’ve seen this phenomenon in Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Communist China, even the United States during those periods in which political commissars, rather than competent experts, lead non-political portions of government. Look at Trump and most of his commissars. Or Bush II and his FEMA director Michael Brown, whose devotion to President Bush may have served him well, but New Orleans ill.

Richardson’s essay is important for its accuracy and brevity.

Nebraska preacher Hank Kunneman of One Voice Ministries is a far-right preacher who apparently predicted that Trump would win the recent Presidential Election. Faced with a distinct loss of face – and, in the fake preaching gig, that’s tantamount to ruin – he’s elected to go on offense, rather than apologize. Right Wing Watch has a partial transcript of his most recent protestation that he’ll be proven right. Watch for the part where he tries to be two things at once:

“I feel like we’re putting so much emphasis on an inauguration date, that the election has still some things that must be looked into, that will be looked into,” Kunneman said. “And you can’t tell me [that] over hundreds or thousands of prophetic voices, intercessors, believers, all missed it. In other words, I believe God is saying we need to wait and stand and take a position like David. Is there not a cause? And here’s what I would say, ‘Come back and talk to me in four years.’ You say, ‘That’s ridiculous. Four years? You said President Trump would be reelected.’ He was, but come back and talk to me in four years. In other words, they thought Noah was a fool. Noah prophesied something that had never been done in the history of the Earth. He said it would rain and the scoffers, the whole world was against him. You talk about a guy who the whole world was against, it was Noah. They scoffed at him, they rejected him, they mocked him. But in the end, they had prophetic blindness until God moved, and that’s what’s going to happen.”

Catch it? He equates himself to Noah in the last part … a guy who the whole world was against … blithely ignoring the fact that he just said … And you can’t tell me [that] over hundreds or thousands of prophetic voices, intercessors, believers, all missed [predicting the election result would be for Trump].

I wonder how many in his flock picked up on that little detail upon which so much depends. Kunneman is terrified that the fatted calf is about to be jerked away from him.

But this is typical of the sleight-of-hand practiced by con men and grifters. A quiet bending of logic, a rush of emotions, and soon the believer’s money is in your pocket.

For their flocks, it’s too bad that all those prophecies went bad, but I think we all know you’ll stick to the flock. After all, that’s the source of comfort, help, community, and, rather more crassly, social standing and power. The hell with such unpleasant realities as truth, fact, and straight-shooting. You have a position to maintain.

A Senator who prompts me to ask all those Wisconsin voters next door to Minnesota, WTF WERE YOU THINKING WHEN YOU VOTED THIS LOSER IN?

Democrats can’t have it both ways: an unconstitutional impeachment trial & Senate confirmation of the Biden admin’s national security team. They need to choose between being vindictive or staffing the administration to keep the nation safe. What will it be: revenge or security?

— Senator Ron Johnson (@SenRonJohnson) January 21, 2021

The trick for the Democrats is to not permit him to specify the question. The real question might be Law or Chaos, Senator Johnson? Which do you and your businessman backers prefer?

Depending on the childish whims of President Trump, or the predictability of the law?

If we’re going to be a nation of laws, a long standing tradition which is part of what has made us great, then the impeachment trial must proceed, and the Senators must stand up to the forces of terror and vote, each and every one, for conviction.

And we’ll know, by those who don’t vote for conviction, those Senators who depend on suckling at Trump’s teat, rather than their own skills and genius, for their prestige and position. We’ll know them for the unworthy toadies that they are.

And we’ll know who to eject at the next – lawful – opportunity.

Ineluctable:

1. incapable of being evaded; inescapable:
   an ineluctable destiny. [Dictionary.com]

I’m a little embarrassed to say that I didn’t know ineluctable, although I’ve seen it for years. Noted in “Another bank cuts ties with Trump as the ex-president’s unraveling continues,” Aldous J Pennyfarthing, The Daily Kos:

While I won’t be entirely happy until Donald Trump is exiled to the isle of Elba or the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (my top choice, naturally), his ineluctable slide into social and business pariah status is heartening.

The situation involving an Ethiopian dam on the Nile does not appear to have improved, according to an AL Monitor report:

Antony Blinken, US President Joe Biden’s nominee to be secretary of state, warned this week in his confirmation hearing that talks between Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam could “boil over.”

In response to a question by Senate Foreign Relations Committee member Chris Coons, D-Del., about how the United States can better support the “fragile transition in Sudan” and hold countries in the region accountable for human rights, Blinken noted “concerning actions, including atrocities” by Ethiopian forces against Tigreans and refugees and promised a “fully engaged” American foreign policy in the region. …

The stakes in the Nile dam talks couldn’t be higher for Egypt, and became more complicated, and intertwined, because of the Ethiopian civil war and its impact on Sudan. While the Nile talks have been until now been mostly a high stakes Egypt-Ethiopia diplomatic dispute, with Sudan in a supporting role (for Egypt), the Sudan-Ethiopia fault line now risks military escalation.

There’s not a lot more to say than what’s come before on this thread, is there? A military strike on Ethiopia’s Grand Renaissance Dam could light quite a fire if other military and diplomatic powers, such as the United States, aren’t ready to quench it immediately. Still …

Egypt has a population in the range of 100 million, Ethiopia’s in the same neighborhood, and Sudan is at 41 million. It’s not a peaceful part of Africa, so a war could be likely and quite deadly. But if there are enough outside parties pressing for harmony, perhaps the controversy can be settled. Peace be on them.

From Fr. Z’s Blog:

QUAERITUR:

What are the best ways for the laity to remain in a state of grace should the Holy Mass and the sacraments eventually be outlawed by the upcoming Biden/Harris administration?

The simple answer, which isn’t simple at all, is “Don’t commit any mortal sins.”

Also, disciplining yourself over time and working to eliminate your principle faults would be key.

Notice he didn’t tell his interlocutor that Biden is a devout Catholic, so please don’t ask nonsense questions.

Nope, instead this comes up:

I want to take the proposition seriously: outlawing of church services by the upcoming Harris administration. Yes… I think that can happen. Seeing what we are seeing after 6 January (the day freedom died?) it looks like it only a matter of time.

Yes, indeed. Both of them are far gone in right wing victimhood, and I don’t know what to tell them except If it doesn’t happen, would you consider returning to the American mainstream?

My oh my:

TIME's new cover: Day one https://t.co/VazxGDJzZf pic.twitter.com/R6jVrzXXZc

— TIME (@TIME) January 21, 2021

Apparently, Fox News threw a tiz fit.

Steve Benen has a piece on Republican obstructionism from Day 1 and the filibuster:

… there’s no real question as to whether Republicans will “go into full obstruction mode”; they already have. Literally on Joe Biden’s first full day in the White House, GOP senators said they would, en masse, reject his economic relief package and his immigration reform proposal, and there’s no reason to believe the party will adopt a more constructive posture in the coming months. …

… there are core truths that are inescapable:

The Senate does not and cannot function as an effective legislative body under its current rules.

Without a functioning Senate, federal policymaking has turned sclerotic in recent decades, and the problem will persist indefinitely without reforms.

In another post, he blames it on Senator McConnell (R-KY):

The circumstances are frustrating for those eager to see effective governing, but they shouldn’t surprise anyone. GOP leaders wrote a playbook the last time Democrats controlled the White House and both houses of Congress, and they’re obviously running the same plays again.

As we recently discussed, observers need only look at Mitch McConnell’s actions in early 2009 to get a sense of how the Kentucky Republican approaches his governing responsibilities when Democrats control the levers of federal power.

As I noted in my book, after President Barack Obama was inaugurated in 2009, Republicans were under some pressure to be responsible and constructive, with many pleading with GOP officials to resist the urge to slap away the Democratic president’s outstretched hand. McConnell executed a different kind of plan, refusing to even consider bipartisan governing, even when Obama agreed with his opponents.

As the Kentuckian saw it, the public believes bipartisan bills are popular, so he rejected every element of the Democratic White House’s agenda so voters would not see Obama succeeding. “We worked very hard to keep our fingerprints off of these proposals,” McConnell told The Atlantic in 2011, referring to legislation backed by the White House.

Here’s the executive version: The Democrats are playing the governance game – they try to implement good governance wherever possible, correct or mistaken, to confront the national problems that come upon us. In the end, they hope to be judged on how well they governed.

The Republicans play the Win power game – whatever it takes, they will keep the ideas of the Democrats from being passed into law, even if they agree with them. If it has Democrats’ fingerprints on it, it is anathema and must be stopped^[1].

No matter what the cost is to the Nation.

We’ve since seen that Senator McConnell, and the balance of the Republican Party, really has no idea what to do with that power. The incompetence of the AHCA and the 2017 Tax Reform bills were so awful they were laughable.

But make no mistake, the incompatability of these strategies, the inferiority in terms of the good of the nation of the Republican strategy, is, definitionally, damaging to the nation. It matters not to the Republicans, who have long contended that conservative ideas are superior; this contention has proven hollow in their refusal to endorse any idea with Democratic endorsement, even when they brought it up, when they don’t control the Senate, as well as the vast incompetence they’ve shown in executing their own business.

And when it comes to economic aid to small business that President Biden endorses and the House passes and sends to the Senate? They’ll refuse to vote for that, too. Even though all disinterested economists endorse it. Even though our local bars and restaurants are going under. They’ll refuse to pass it, using filibusters if necessary.

Remember this from above?

Without a functioning Senate, federal policymaking has turned sclerotic in recent decades, and the problem will persist indefinitely without reforms.

And that frantic urge to power, that step towards Turchin’s internecine war of the elites, is what existentially threatens this nation. It’s one thing to work against a piece of legislature based on ideological principle; it’s quite another, and morally illicit, to work against a piece of legislature based on your pathological need for power. McConnell, and his ideological predecessor Newt “Quitter” Gingrich, may call it the long game, but I call it abdication of responsibility.

The electorate should be judging based on quality of governance, rather than making one side look bad while substantially damaging the nation.

¹ This extends even to the naming of members of SCOTUS; see Judge Merrick Garland’s treatment.

George Will of WaPo:

Piety:

In spiritual terminology, piety is a virtue which may include religious devotion, spirituality, or a mixture of both. A common element in most conceptions of piety is humility. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “What Message Did Biden’s Religious Inauguration Speech Send to Atheists?, Hemant Mehta, Friendly Atheist:

I’ll be honest: It didn’t ruin my enjoyment of the [Biden Inauguration] ceremony. It’s the way Biden talks. He’s Catholic. He’s been using that kind of language for decades. I’m used to it. But his unwillingness to even namecheck Secular Americans — indeed, a growing part of his own base — wasn’t lost on people. The Freedom From Religion Foundation said that “Pieties do not make them better leaders.”

That simple quote is incomplete and unfair to Mehta and Biden. Here’s more:

There is some reason for hope. When Biden signed an executive order yesterday night to rescind the Muslim Ban, it included that more inclusive language:

Nevertheless, the previous administration enacted a number of Executive Orders and Presidential Proclamations that prevented certain individuals from entering the United States — first from primarily Muslim countries, and later, from largely African countries. Those actions are a stain on our national conscience and are inconsistent with our long history of welcoming people of all faiths and no faith at all.

Much better.

On pro-Trump National Review, the yakking about the horrors of the Biden Administration is under way. Here’s Yuval Levin:

The Biden team has set as its goal getting 100 million Americans vaccinated in its first 100 days. That of course requires a pace of a million people getting vaccinated each day on average. And what pace were they left by the Trump administration?

There are various ways to track the pace, but they’re all relying on the same underlying state and federal data and so fall into the same general range every day. So let’s look at the Bloomberg vaccine tracker, which is probably the best organized of them. It shows that yesterday, the last day of the Trump administration, more than 1.5 million Americans were vaccinated. The numbers go up and down some each day, but the 7-day average for the last week of the Trump administration was 912,000 people vaccinated per day.

No. No No No. That’s not what the Bloomberg vaccine tracker shows.

Vaccinations in the U.S. began Dec. 14 with health-care workers, and so far 17.2 million shots have been given, according to a state-by-state tally by Bloomberg and data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In the last week, an average of 912,497 doses per day were administered.

A shot is not a vaccination! A vaccination requires two doses. The Bloomberg piece he cites is explicit:

The U.S. is managing state allocations of Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine,  as well as Moderna’s shot and has said it will make more shots available in order to increase vaccinations. Both vaccines require two doses taken several weeks apart. At least 2.30 million people have completed the two-dose vaccination regimen.

Bold mine. 2.3 million fully vaccinated does not equate to a million people vaccinated a day. It’s been about a month since we started, so if we were on pace, it’d be 30 million fully vaccinated. But Bloomberg notes the 912,497 daily average figure for shots is the rolling week average.

And the subject is really even more convoluted than it sounds. As much as the Biden Admin is complaining about a lack of planning by Trump, it’s worth understanding that it’s relatively easy to vaccinate in big cities, where a long trip may be a few miles on city streets.

It’s a whole ‘nuther ball of wax out in the rural areas, where getting to a clinic may take quite a trip – a trip not appropriate for elderly patients. But Levin can’t be bothered to explore this aspect.

It’s really inexcusable for Levin to pretend that a shot equates a vaccination. Which shot completes a vaccination and which initiates a vaccination may be difficult to quantify for statistical purposes, but suffice it to say that at this point in the cycle, as shown by Bloomberg’s data, most are initiators.

So Levin’s attack on the Biden Administration is mostly dishonest – or, like Trump, incompetent.

The Gwinnett County Republican Party desperately wants changes to Georgia’s election laws:

One of the Gwinnett County Republican Party’s two representatives on the bipartisan county elections board told fellow members of the GOP that she favors major elections changes at the local and state levels, including a move away from no excuse absentee voting for many Georgians.

Alice O’Lenick, who is the Gwinnett Board of Registrations and Elections chairwoman for 2021 and 2022, encouraged members of her party to write letters and make phone calls to state legislators to encourage them to make changes to state elections laws. …

“I was on a Zoom call the other day and I said, ‘I’m like a dog with a bone. I will not let them end this session without changing some of these laws,’ “ O’Lenick said. “They don’t have to change all of them, but they’ve got to change the major parts of them so that we at least have a shot at winning.” [Gwinnett Daily Post]

That last line brings Republican strategy into crystal clear focus, doesn’t it?

At the meeting where this is proposed, I would smile sweetly and ask which laws are suppressing Republican voters, and offer to loosen those up so more Republican voters can show up.

Any response along the lines of suppressing Democratic or Independent voters would be ignored, after suggesting that such a motivation might qualify for law enforcement investigation. Suggestions that ineligible voters are voting should be referred to the Court system, with special reference to Section 11, or whatever section is pertinent for Georgia state Courts, which refers to the barring of lawyers who bring frivolous suits to court.

The point of election laws is to permit voting by eligible citizens first, and restrict ineligible voters second.

The Lexington Herald-Leader reports on the reaction of Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) to President Biden’s Inaugural Speech:

Getting one’s nose out of joint in Minnesota.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul quickly criticized President Joe Biden’s inauguration speech on Wednesday, saying Biden was calling Republicans racist.

“If you read his speech and listen to it carefully, much of it is thinly-veiled innuendo calling us white supremacists, calling us racists, calling us every name in the book, calling us people who don’t tell the truth,” Paul said on Fox News Primetime.

Paul said he also thought Biden was calling his political opponents liars.

Steve Benen purports to be puzzled over Paul’s odd reaction, but I think it’s obvious.

Victimhood is the Gorilla Glue of the conservative movement these days, especially between leaders and followers. The movement, with emphasis on the QAnon and Stop The Steal segments, suffered a serious defeat in the Presidential and Senatorial elections, even if it did well in the House, and the humiliation of the insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January served to underline for independents the moral depravity of the conservative movement at the present time.

Senator Paul is absolutely emblematic of a GOP leadership that has come to the fore by embracing victimhood, and therefore, to keep cohesive a movement that put him in a position of power and prestige, he has to play to it, even when the logical jump is quite thin on the ground. Rand is known as a flake’s flake in the political world for the objections and positions he takes, which can bewilder even his GOP colleagues. He has to have this binding glue, his assurance to his constituents that they are being accused, unjustly, of being racists and insurgents, in order to push his oddball claims.

Even if that accusation didn’t happen.

The Herald-Leader continues:

Paul’s assessment was a sharp contrast to the widespread accolades for Biden’s remarks that predominantly emphasized unity following Trump supporters’ Capitol riot that was set off in part by Trump’s election fraud lies and misinformation. Some Republicans, including Kentucky’s other senator, have called Trump and his acolytes’ comments lies.

Twitter users criticized Paul’s comments, saying that it’s not Biden’s fault if Paul was offended when Biden condemned racism. Some also pointed out Paul’s opposition to an anti-lynching bill last year. Paul said at the time he was worried the bill would “conflate lesser crimes with lynching,” according to Politico. …

Paul was one of the GOP members who repeatedly pushed election fraud claims that had been disproven. During a Senate hearing in December he said “The election in many ways was stolen and the only way it will be fixed is by in the future reinforcing the laws.” His office said Tuesday that he didn’t believe discussing election fraud provoked the mob.

Which is a pile of bullshit. The entire and feeble excuse for ransacking the US Capitol was that the election was fraudulent, which the Courts, time after time, from judges of all stripes, rejected, sometimes with the Court-equivalent of laughter and shouts of Get out of here, you grifters.

It’s important to emphasize that the claims of fraud were emphatically rejected by the ultimate authority, and that the continuing claims are nothing more than attempts to infuriate the mob – again, through victimhood.

Those who continue to try to use concerns about fraud as a reason for being angry or advocating for voting rules changes must be confronted with this circular reasoning – and shamed.

Erick Erickson takes a pulse and makes an honest assessment:

There has been a sustained effort to lie to Americans and, in particular, conservatives and Trump supporters. Many so internalized it, they thought God would grant a miracle yesterday and keep Donald Trump as President. Some still think he is coming back. One Qanon adherent, on a chat board, speculated that like Jesus, Trump would return in three days. More than one pastor has told his congregation that Trump would remain as President because God willed it.

A political movement this unhealthy and this wedded to lie cannot and, frankly, should not survive. There must be an internal accounting within the conservative movement and the people who pushed the kraken nonsense and the Qanon nonsense need to repent. We conservatives must clean up our own house or the voters will do it for us.

If it’s external signs you want, the ejection of a multitude of pastors from, at the very least, prominence, and, better yet, from their positions would be a good sign.

But I want to see a number of political tenets reassessed: regulation, taxation, Laffer Curve, toxic team politics, and adherence to amateurism should all be on the list. If they are not, that means the forces which led the Republicans into this mess will lead them into another one.

It’s either reform or dissolution, folks.

Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), an ally of former President Trump, published an opinion in the milwaukee journal sentinal – and appears to have had his nuts blown off. Why? Because the journal fact-checked his opinion piece. Here’s one snippet – note the numerals were links in the original text:

All this because I did half of what Democrat Sen. Barbara Boxer did in 2005 when she objected to Ohio’s electors, forcing a two-hour debate. 2 Unlike Senator Boxer — who to my knowledge was never asked to resign or be expelled — I did not vote to sustain the objection. 3 When asked by the Associated Press immediately afterward why I voted no, I responded, “We needed to have the debate, but we also need to respect the rule of law and our constitutional constraints.”

And its fact checks:

2. Although one senator, Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., challenged the results in Ohio after the 2004 presidential election, the situation was radically different from 2020. Boxer stood alone in the Senate that year, and fellow Democrats distanced themselves from her actions. She was not supported by the Democratic candidate for president, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts. In fact, Kerry followed normal protocol for U.S. presidential elections and called President George W. Bush to concede and congratulate him on Nov. 3, the morning after the votes were counted. Unlike Trump, Kerry never questioned the overall integrity of the election.

3. Johnson only voted against objections to Joe Biden’s victories in Arizona and Pennsylvania after the deadly sacking of the U.S. Capitol had interrupted Congress’ tallying of the Electoral College vote on Jan. 6. Up to the insurrection, Johnson had publicly stated he would vote in favor of challenges to the state-certified votes. Originally, those challenges were to include Wisconsin’s tallies.

Worse, like Trump, Johnson spent weeks questioning the validity of the election without citing any evidence. That included holding a one-sided hearing that allowed Trump’s lawyers to once again air allegations of fraud that had already been rejected by dozens of courtrooms across America, including both Republican and Democratic judges and even federal judges appointed by Trump.

Johnson’s role in spreading and amplifying lies about the election — including his threat to challenge the ceremonial counting of electoral votes in Congress — encouraged Trump supporters to believe the result could be overturned, and that helped lead to the tragedy at the Capitol.

In an interview broadcast Monday night, William Barr, Trump’s former attorney general, said that doubts raised about the legitimacy of the Nov. 3 election “precipitated the riot” at the Capitol.

And Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., on Tuesday blamed Trump and other leaders. “The mob was fed lies. They were provoked by the president and other powerful people and they tried to use fear and violence,” McConnell said on the Senate floor.

In our view, those “powerful people” include Senator Johnson.

Zotto. Johnson is caught stripping context, omitting facts, and generally looks like a goon. And this is more effective than newspapers could be – because the links allow readers to follow up easily, rather than searching for end notes in a newspaper.

A free press must be dedicated to the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but – even when it comes to external contributions. This gives me a smidgeon of hope.

For those who don’t pay attention to personnel changes, Shep Smith was a Fox News anchor since the beginning until he abruptly quit in 2019. He hadn’t discussed his reasons for leaving Fox News until he talked to CNN/Business yesterday:

Smith, now host of the nightly show “The News with Shepard Smith” at 7 pm ET on CNBC, told Amanpour that his presence on Fox became untenable as opinion shows on the network spread falsehoods that hosts knew were lies.

“Opine all you like, but if you’re going to opine, begin with the truth and opine from there,” Smith said. “When people begin with a false premise and lead people astray, that’s injurious to society and it’s the antithesis of what we should be doing: Those of us who are so honored and grateful to have a platform of public influence have to use it for the public good.”

Sure, it’s unsurprising, given all the study of Fox News that has occurred, but it’s still good to have a former insider to actually point the finger and admit the truth. The one problem is that since CNN has been pronounced anathema to the conservative viewer, few if any Fox New viewers will hear what he has to say – and he has a lovely conclusion:

“I don’t know how some people sleep at night,” Smith said of the Fox News employees who knowingly spread falsehoods. “I know that there are a lot of people who have propagated the lies and who have pushed them forward over and over again who are smart enough and educated enough to know better.”

Prestige, wealth, social pressure, even rejection of facts: the faces of evil are many.

If you’re following the upcoming impeachment trial and you hear the suggestion that President Trump was merely exercising his 1st Amendment free speech rights, know that this is unlikely to work, as Professor Keith Whittington explains on Lawfare:

At least some of the speech included in this article of impeachment would be constitutionally protected under the First Amendment if said by a private citizen. Some scholars have argued that, as a consequence, this speech cannot be a constitutionally valid foundation for a House impeachment or a Senate conviction, and that the president has a reasonable legal defense in his impeachment trial that his alleged actions were protected under the First Amendment. Even if senators are inclined to acquit the president, they should forcefully reject this line of defense.

The House can impeach and the Senate can convict an officer for engaging in lawful conduct. The constitutional impeachment standard of high crimes and misdemeanors is not limited to criminal conduct under ordinary criminal statutes—though many ordinary criminal acts, if committed by a federal officer, may be impeachable. The impeachment power is given to Congress to address myriad cases of noncriminal, political misconduct. The fact that an action is lawful is no defense to impeachment and conviction in the Senate.

Or, in my mind, if a public official uses speech to undermine the very office they occupy, the 1st Amendment offers no refuge during a subsequent impeachment trial based on that speech. An impeachment is not a criminal proceeding, it’s a collective political judgment of the conduct of an official.

Mind you, if President Trump had used “free speech” to betray to a national adversary certain national security details, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that he could be arrested and bound over for a criminal trial – although an official in his position could argue that he holds the declassification power and therefore cannot be convicted. But this is to illustrate the difference. Just as President Clinton’s impeachment turned on the perception that he had lied – about a blowjob – to Congress, and most of the public thought it irrelevant, which in turn was reflected in the failure to convict, President Trump’s trial will – or would in a perfect world – turn on whether Senators believe his speech encouraged a mob to invade the US Capitol building.

And the 1st Amendment doesn’t come into play.

Listening to now-President Joe Biden’s Inauguration speech, I’m reminded, as I was when I first wrote about his candidacy, that he had run for the Presidency, twice, long ago. One run I don’t recall, but the other ended in ignominy, when it was discovered that he, purposefully or not, had cribbed part of a speech that he gave from someone else.

But he survived, keeping his seat as Senator from Delaware.

Since then, he’s made mistakes, apologized, and sought to do better. Then he served eight years as Vice President. Finally, he’s achieved his long dream.

I’ve written several times on UMB that one of the themes of the United States is the theme of redemption. From immigrants leaving damaged pasts behind to home-grown criminals making good, for those who are willing to admit error, as did Biden, the path of redemption is open. President Biden, between that error of intellectual appropriation and his apology, and the various mistakes that any legislator of serious intent can make, has certainly had his share of errors. And sought redemption.

Biden virtually embodies the idea of American redemption.

And, in that spirit, I entreat my reader of the anti-Trump persuasion to treat their friends and family who were steadfast Trump supporters, and may begin to seek redemption as they emerge from their Trump-inspired fever dreams, to not disdain them, but to welcome them back to your circle, and the greater circle we call the American mainstream. This is not a call for ignoring their mistakes, for redemption is not cost free; those who ask to be redeemed must admit error and express remorse.

But repairing the tears in our society are necessary if the United States is to move forward. This is what President Biden called for in his speech, and I think it’s necessary to echo and reinforce it.

George Conway, co-founder of The Lincoln Project:

At one time, I believed, because I wanted to believe, that Trump could be a good president, or at least a passable one. I wanted to believe that, because I believed in many of the policies he, his party and his administration have professed to believe in. I still believe in many of these policies, even though Trump’s incompetence and perfidy have discredited them. And I believed that those who rise to the great office of the presidency often rise to the occasion, out of appreciation of something greater than themselves, and that Trump would do the same.

I believe I was wrong. I believe that not because I want to, but because the facts — mostly, Trump’s own words and actions — showed otherwise. As time went on, I came to believe Trump was a terrible president, and could never become a good one, and that, indeed, he was far worse than many of his critics, whom I had disagreed with, had made him out to be.

I came to believe Trump was mentally, psychologically and morally unfit for the high office he held, and, indeed, any position of public (or even private) trust. I came to believe he will go down in history as the worst president America ever had. I came to believe that his pathologies fostered division and hatred, and potentially violence, and rendered him incapable of achieving persuasion and consensus, and therefore incapable of successful governance. [WaPo]

I noticed that some of the responses to Conway’s article were disdainful, that he should have known. Keeping in mind that Conway is a Republican, while it’s always tempting to play the superiority game, I think it’s far more effective to try to be understanding.

Understanding that sometimes you don’t want to believe that your fellows are blithering idiots, or worse, chattering racists.

Understanding that, under the Republican banner is many religious sects, which have their beliefs that they may not reveal in any great detail, yet somehow find a way to see Trump as the favorite of the Divine. No party is a communal creature; information is fragmentary, and illusions closely grasped.

Understanding that sometimes the devil you know – you think – is better than the devil you don’t.

Understanding that almost no one knows an utter liar, so when one does pop up, many will be taken in by him.

So, sure, it’s sad that Conway didn’t immediately grasp that Trump was an impending disaster. It looks like 74 million voters didn’t in the 2020 election, either.

But Conway did figure it out, and even played a part in aborting Trump’s dreams. I think it should be applauded, not spat on.

Randy Rainbow gives Trump a delightful sendoff:

Electrocyte:

Electric eels are technically knife fish. The eel produces its signature electric discharges—both low and high voltages, depending on the purpose for discharging—via three pairs of abdominal organs composed of electrocytes, located symmetrically along both sides of the eel. The brain sends a signal to the electrocytes, opening ion channels and briefly reversing the polarity. The difference in electric potential then generates a current, much like a battery with stacked plates. [“Scientists surprised to find that electric eels sometimes hunt in packs,” Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica]

Errr, rather, movies. Introducing GN-z11, currently thought to be the most distant galaxy from Earth at 13.4 billion light years distant. Here’s the NASA illustration of its location from 2016:

More here.