As I try to cover the news tonight, I am struck by how completely the Republican Party, which began in the 1850s as a noble endeavor to keep the United States government intact and to rebuild it to work for ordinary people, has devolved into a group of chaos agents feeding voters a fantasy world.
The big news today was the hearing in Washington, D.C., where Department of Justice prosecutors argued for a protective order to stop former president Trump from intimidating witnesses and tainting the jury pool in the case against him for trying to stop the counting of electoral votes that would decide the 2020 presidential election.
Trump appears to have given up on winning the cases against him on the legal merits and is instead trying to win by whipping up a political base to reelect him, or even to fight for him. He has filled his Truth Social account with unhinged rants attacking the justice system and the president, and on Sunday his lawyer, John Lauro, echoed Trump as he made a tour of the Sunday talk shows, misleadingly suggesting that Trump had been indicted for free speech. In fact, the indictment says up front that even Trump’s lies are protected by the First Amendment, but what isn’t protected is a conspiracy that stops an official proceeding and deprives the rest of us of our right to vote and to have our votes counted.
A grand jury indicted Trump on August 1; when he was arraigned on August 3, the magistrate judge warned him that it is a crime to “influence a juror or try to threaten or bribe a witness or retaliate against anyone" connected to the case. Trump said he understood.
The next day, he posted on Truth Social: “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!”
Justice Department lawyers promptly sought a protective order to limit what information Trump and his lawyers can release. Trump has a longstanding pattern of releasing misleading information to bolster his position among his base, and lawyers are concerned that he will continue to intimidate witnesses and try to taint the jury pool in hopes of getting the trial venue moved.
Days later, Trump told an audience in New Hampshire that he would not stop talking about the case, and called Special Counsel Jack Smith a “thug” and “deranged.” He has continued to post such messages on social media.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan reinforced that Trump’s focus on politics had no relevance in her court of law. Justice reporter for NBC News Ryan Reilly noted: “The word of the Trump hearing today: yield. Came up six times, as in: ‘the fact that he's running a political campaign currently has to yield to the orderly administration of justice.’”
Chutkan agreed to the protective order but agreed with Trump’s team that it would not include any material already in the public domain. She also prohibited Trump from reviewing materials with “any device capable of photocopying, recording, or otherwise replicating the Sensitive Materials, including a smart cellular device.”
Finally, she warned Trump’s lawyers: “I caution you and your client to take special care in your public statements in this case…. I will take whatever measures are necessary to protect the integrity of these proceedings.” If Trump repeats “inflammatory” statements, she said, she will have to speed up his trial to protect witnesses and keep the jury pool untainted.
Just what that might mean was illustrated today when a judge revoked the bail of former FTX cryptocurrency chief executive officer Sam Bankman-Fried for witness tampering and sent him to jail. Prosecutors say Bankman-Fried was leaking the private diary entries of his former girlfriend to the New York Times to discredit her testimony against him.
In Ohio, where voters on Tuesday overwhelmingly rejected the attempt of the Republicans in the legislature to stop a November vote on an amendment to the state constitution protecting abortion rights, Republicans tried to stop the inclusion of that amendment by challenging its form. Today the Ohio Supreme Court unanimously rejected that lawsuit. The proposed amendment will be on the ballot in November.
After demanding that David Weiss, the U.S. attorney in charge of investigating and charging Hunter Biden, be named a special counsel and then charging that Weiss had asked for and been denied that status—both he and Attorney General Merrick Garland denied that allegation—Republicans are now angry that Garland today gave Weiss that status.
Weiss requested that status for the first time earlier this week, and Garland granted it, although both Weiss and Garland had previously said Weiss had all the authority that status carries. Now House Republicans say appointing Weiss a special counsel is an attempt to obstruct Congress from investigating the Bidens. For all that Republicans are in front of the cameras every day insisting President Biden is corrupt, there is no evidence that President Biden has been party to any wrongdoing.
One of the things such behavior accomplishes is to distract from the party’s own troubles, including the inability of House Republicans to agree to measures to fund the government after September. Far-right extremists are still angry at the spending levels to which House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) agreed in a deal to raise the debt ceiling last June, and are threatening to refuse to agree to any funding measures until they get cuts that the Senate will never accept.
The House left for its August break after passing only one of the twelve bills it needs to pass, and when it gets back, it will have only twelve work days before the September 30 deadline. This chaos takes a toll: when the Fitch rating system downgraded the U.S. long-term rating last week, the first reason it cited was “a steady deterioration in standards of governance.” It explained: “The repeated debt-limit political standoffs and last-minute resolutions have eroded confidence in fiscal management.”
Another thing this chaos does is convince individuals that the entire government is corrupt. On Wednesday, as Biden was to visit Utah, FBI agents shot and killed an armed man there who made threats against him, Vice President Kamala Harris, and other officials who have been associated with Trump’s legal troubles: Attorney General Garland, Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, and New York attorney general Letitia James. Craig Deleeuw Robertson described himself as a “MAGA Trumper.”
It seems we are reaping the fruits of the political system planted in 1968, when the staff of Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon reworked American politics to package their leader for the election. “Voters are basically lazy,” one of Nixon’s media advisors wrote. “Reason requires a high degree of discipline, of concentration; impression is easier. Reason pushes the viewer back, it assaults him, it demands that he agree or disagree; impression can envelop him, invite him in, without making an intellectual demand…. When we argue with him, we…seek to engage his intellect…. The emotions are more easily roused, closer to the surface, more malleable.”
The confusion also takes up so much oxygen it’s hard for the Democrats, who are actually trying to govern in the usual ways, to get any attention. Today was the one-year anniversary of the PACT Act, officially known as the Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act of 2022. The law improves access to healthcare and funding for veterans who were exposed to burn pits, the military’s waste disposal method for everything from tires to chemicals and jet fuel from the 1990s into the new century.
According to Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), the PACT Act has already enabled more than 4 million veterans to be screened for toxic exposure, more than 744,000 PACT Act claims have been filed, and hundreds of thousands of veterans have been approved for expanded benefits.
Biden spoke in Utah about the government’s protections for veterans and why they’re important. In addition to the PACT Act, he talked about his recent executive order moving the authority for addressing claims of sexual assault, domestic violence, child abuse, and murder outside the chain of command to a specialized independent military unit—a move long championed by survivors and members of Congress.
Today the White House released a detailed explanation of “Bidenomics” along with resources explaining why the administration has focused on certain areas for public investment and how the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act have supported that investment. That collection explains why the administration is overturning forty years of political economy to return to the system on which the U.S. relied from 1933 to 1981, and yet it got far less traction than the fight over the protective order designed to keep Trump from attacking witnesses.
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Notes:
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.258149/gov.uscourts.dcd.258149.28.0_5.pdf
https://www.democracydocket.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/2023-ohio-2786.pdf
https://www.npr.org/2023/08/03/1191901829/trump-indictment-arraignment-news
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/doj-seeks-protective-order-after-trump-publishes-post-appearing-to-promise-revenge
https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-indictment-campaign-election-interference-11cc4d1015c36e6ba078c00805d99838
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/11/us/politics/trump-judge-protective-order.html
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/judge-largely-sides-with-trump-defense-on-protective-order-in-2020-election-case
https://www.npr.org/2023/08/11/1191362886/ftx-sam-bankman-fried-sbf-crypto-fraud
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-lawyer-john-lauro-indictment-defense-rcna98509
https://www.politico.com/interactives/2023/trump-criminal-investigations-cases-tracker-list/#jan-six
https://www.cornyn.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Hunter-Biden-Special-Counsel-Letter-FINAL-2.pdf
https://miller.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/miller.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/Letter%20to%20AG%20Garland%20RE%20Hunter%20Biden[1].pdf
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4149061-house-gop-blasts-appointment-of-hunter-biden-special-counsel/
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4149931-hunter-biden-attorney-on-special-counsel-david-weiss/
https://www.fitchratings.com/research/sovereigns/fitch-downgrades-united-states-long-term-ratings-to-aa-from-aaa-outlook-stable-01-08-2023
https://www.politico.com/minutes/congress/08-11-2023/gop-funding-meeting/
https://apnews.com/article/utah-biden-fbi-assassination-threat-f9b31d6cd8e432870e4f8949cdb45b92
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2023/08/10/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-one-year-anniversary-of-the-pact-act-salt-lake-city-ut/
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/28/politics/biden-executive-order-sexual-assault-military/index.ht
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/more-details-on-guy-who-threatened-to-assassinate-biden
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/11/judge-warns-trump-speed-trial-00110870
ml
Joe McGinnis, The Selling of the President, 1968 (London: Andre Deutsch, 1970), pp. 36, 41–45.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/blog/2023/08/11/iia-resources/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/08/09/comer-biden-analysis/
Twitter (X):
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| A drought-hit fish farm in the village of Albu Mustafa in Hilla, Iraq. AFP |
IRAQ
Iraq has called on the US and Britain to extradite former officials accused of helping in the theft of $2.5 billion in public funds in one of the country's worst corruption cases.
Iraq's telecoms ministry has blocked the Telegram messaging app over national security concerns and users' personal data, which it said had been mishandled.
SAUDI ARABIA
A second meeting of global national security advisors concluded yesterday in Jeddah in an attempt to find a negotiated settlement to the Ukraine war.
ISRAEL
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would not pursue the full judicial overhaul planned by his government, working only to change the makeup of the judge selection committee while abandoning other steps.
PALESTINE
Three Palestinian militants were killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank yesterday, the army said, in the latest violence rocking the occupied territory.
A military court in Gaza sentenced seven people to death for collaborating with Israel, the Hamas-ruled Interior Ministry said.
SYRIA
Four Syrian soldiers have been killed and four wounded in an overnight Israeli missile attack, according to state media.
LEBANON
The UAE reissued its advisory against citizens travelling to Lebanon, where a week of heavy fighting between armed factions in a Palestinian refugee camp has prompted similar notices from other nations in recent days.
LIBYA
Libya's Supreme Council of State elected a new leader yesterday, in a development that could further fracture a country already split between two rival administrations.
IRAN
British authorities believe Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is the greatest threat to national security, amid reports the group is increasing activities in the country.
JORDAN
Jordan's military has sent three helicopters to help put out fatal fires in Cyprus, where at least four people were killed in blazes on the island last month.
TUNISIA
About 34 migrants were winched to safety yesterday after being stranded on rocks by rough seas, with at least 30 still missing after two ships sank off the Italian island of Lampedusa. The vessels are believed to have set off from Sfax in Tunisia on Thursday.
MOROCCO
Twenty-four people were killed in one of Morocco's worst road accidents after a minibus overturned en route to a weekly market in the central town of Demnat, authorities said.
EGYPT
The remains of an ancient sunken ship have been discovered in Mediterranean waters off the Egyptian coastal city of El Alamein.
By Marc Cooper
It’s taken a while but the orange chickies have come home to roost. Thanks to the weak-spined Merrick Garland this should have happened a year ago and not have to be shoe horned in before the coming primaries and election.
But we’ll take it. Here are my takeaways:
Kudos to the January 6 Select Committee who made this possible. A tip of the hat to Ms. Liz Cheney who pushed this forward while Merrick Garland sat at his desk and played pick up sticks for months at a time.
The indictment of Trump gives permission structure for even more indictments across the country of other seditionists and we are seing this now in Michigan and Georgia and maybe Arizona.
Brilliant move by Jack Smith to not indict (yet) the six co-conspirators because he does not want to bog down any trial of Trump who will now stand alone as a defendant. And Smith is pushing hard for this trial to take place before the election and he wants it televised….something that Chief Justice Roberts can approve. And something we deserve to see before voting.
Lots of talk this week about Biden and Trump being tied at 43%, Sorry, this means very little. I prefer Occam’s Razor interpretation. Any candidate facing four indictments and a possible conviction or two is NOT going to win the presidency. Period. Yes, with every indictment, Trumps’ dumbest, most desperate mouth-breathing fans escalate their support for them and get media attention. But for everyone of those morons, there are two other Republicans and Independents who are not going to be fooled a third time.
Donald Trump 2016 was mostly a clown. Hilary Clinton was a perfect punching bag. Many voted for Trump as a lark, as a fuck u to the system, or on a whim to see what he would do. Trump 2024 is no clown. He’s a threat. And a lot of people know it. I don’t see a serial liar, a sexual abuser, a world class grifter, a visible psychopath, a wannabe dictator, an anti-democratic zealot, a probably convicted criminal and a raging asshole getting elected. If u were naive enough to read JD Vance’s celebration of his hillbilly roots maybe you had some sympathy for the poor bastards who went with Trump. But eight years later, after all we have seen, after it is clear that Trump runs his own crime family of grifters, takers and thugs, those who now support him deserve only scorn and denunciation. They are but a neo-fascist political base. Period. No quarter. No sympathy.
Democrats seem to have landed on the slogan of Bidenomics! as their campaign slogan. Stupid jackasses. Presidents have but a marginal at best effect on the economy. Trump did not crash the economy. That was covid. Biden has performed no economic miracles. He is merely benefitting from the very natural recovery from the same pandemic. Presidential policy can affect the economy on the margins but cannot reach into the fundamentals. Who knows what the economy will look like come November 2024. Biden might deeply regret claiming authorship. This election is not between Biden and Trump. But rather a continuation of democratic rule of law against the anti-chamber of dictatorship.
Trump may come to a nefarious end, though appeals will keep him free and around at least another 3-5 years, elected or not., But even if he were to disappear or die, we now have one of our political parties and tens of millions of Americans wholly committed to undermining democratic rule. We will be contending with these fascists for years or decades to come. They are fighting hard at the local and state level, overturning abortion laws, threatening gay rights, pandering to racists, taking over shcools boards, banning books and running aound on the weekends with their Go-bag, AR’s and militia uniforms. They ain’t going away anytime soon.
In the titanic struggle before us to retain democratic rule, we need to be much better prepared and organized. While the extreme right is a minority they are much better at mobilization and organization than liberals and the left. And there are now scattered and rather alarming reports of extremists filling the ranks of Border Patol, DHS and other federal and local law enforcement. Somebody better take that a lot more seriously. We cannot depend on the Democrats to defend us. They are weak and feckless if not feeble. OTOH it is pure idiocy to write off all liberals and even moderate Dems as the enemy. The outrage of of the Twitter Left over Democrats not being socialists is ludicrous. We do not need left wing loons any more than right wing ones. We need to build a unified social political movement that unites liberals, radicals, progressives and democratic socialists in a fight to defend our democratic institutions and it must be based on class and socio economic position and not genitalia, race baiting and political correctness. And its dedication to democracy and free speech must be unimpeachable.
All this said, with all these caveats, today must be celebrated as a great day for Rule of Law —the most single most important ingredient in the recipe for democracy. ++
SPECIAL EDITION: UKRAINE Russia damages nearly 40,000 tonnes of grain in Ukraine. Since pulling out of the landmark Black Sea grain export deal, Russia has intensified its attacks on facilities vital for Ukrainian grain shipments. The damaged grain was meant to be distributed to some African countries, China and Israel. Ukrainian blood bank and airbase among the latest targets of Russian strikes. Ukraine's Air Force said 70 air-assault weapons were fired overnight at the Khmelnytskyi region in western Ukraine, around 300 kilometres south-west of Kyiv, with 10 bypassing air defences. Ukraine calls Jeddah talks productive, Russia calls them doomed. A senior Ukrainian official said that talks in Saudi Arabia designed to make headway towards a peaceful settlement of the war with Russia had been productive, but Moscow called the meeting a 'doomed attempt to swing the Global South behind Kyiv'. |
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POLITICS Thailand close to forming government. Thailand's Pheu Thai party is set to nominate a real estate tycoon to become prime minister as it takes the lead in an effort to form a government. The Move Forward party, who obtained the largest share of the vote, was sidelined after the military dominated senate became worried about its reform agenda. Former Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan sentenced to three years in prison. Legal experts say a conviction in the case could end Khan's chances of participating in national elections that are due to be held before early November. He was sentenced for selling state gifts. India’s Supreme Court suspends Rahul Gandhi’s two-year defamation jail term. India’s supreme court has suspended Rahul Gandhi’s two-year prison sentence for defamation, paving the way for him to return as an MP and to run in next year’s general election. Venezuela Supreme Court orders restructuring of country's Red Cross. The Supreme Court ordered a broad and diverse restructuring of the Venezuelan Red Cross, and the dismissal of the president and members of the board of directors. It also ordered the prosecution of outgoing directors. Red Cross International strongly opposes the actions. Senegal authorities arrest opposition frontrunner, ban his party and cut the internet. Senegal’s government has dissolved a major opposition party. Ousmane Sonko, an opposition figure, has been seen as a threat to the ruling party ahead of the 2024 election. Sonko has been accused of calling for insurrection, conspiring against the state, threatening national security and other charges. |
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CONFLICT Ethiopia declares state of emergency following clashes in Amhara. Ethiopia’s federal government declared a state of emergency following clashes in the Amhara region between the military and local armed fighters, citing that the clashes are quickly becoming a security and economic crisis. ECOWAS considering a military intervention in Niger. The West African bloc may create a military intervention in Niger if the government is not restored. They have performed six military intervention is West Africa since 1990. Philippines accuses China of water cannon attack in Spratly Islands. Philippine coast guard said China fired water cannon at Philippine boats that were heading to resupply the country’s soldiers on the Spratly Islands, parts of which are claimed by both countries. China said the boats were trespassing in its territory. Iran runs military drills on disputed islands claimed by UAE. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard has launched military exercises on islands whose ownership is disputed by the UAE. The actions increase tensions in the Middle East which are accompanied by a rising US military presence. Emirati leaders have claimed the islands belong to them. Militant attacks in Pakistan have increased substantially. Armed group attacks in Pakistan have increased by 79% during the first half of this year. The worst attack occurred in July with a suicide bombing at a political rally in Pakistan's northern province killed at least 54 people, and injured 200 others. |
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ECONOMICS Cubans struggle as peso loses half its value in a year. The Cuban peso was trading on the informal market at an all-time low of 230 to the dollar, slumping to half its value a year ago as consumers struggle with surging inflation and scarcity of goods. Australian barley tariffs to be scrapped by China. China has dropped its 80% tariff on Australian barley. The tariff was part of a long-running and high-profile trade war between the two nations. The $1 billion yearly trade in barley halted once the tariff was introduced. Eurozone unemployment rate hits record low. Eurostat, the EU’s statistical agency, stated the single currency bloc’s unemployment rate was 6.4%, a sign that the region’s labour market remains strong despite weak economic growth. China to relax internal migration rules to kickstart economy. The Ministry of Public Security announced plans to lower the bar for obtaining an urban hukou, or household registration. Beijing wants local governments to cancel hukou restrictions in cities with fewer than 3 million people. The heat wave is driving up gas prices. Gas prices jumped 15% in the past week as the heat wave hitting Texas and Louisiana slowed oil refineries down. Hurricane season may also impact refineries and push up prices, further complicating the Fed’s efforts to rein in higher prices. |
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DEVELOPMENT James Webb telescope captures brilliant new images of dying star. A team of astronomers at the University of Manchester used the telescope to capture images of the iconic Ring Nebula, which is approximately 2,600 light-years from earth. IEA says coal use hit an all-time high last year. Coal consumption increased by 3.3% to hit a fresh record high of 8.3 billion metric tons in 2022, the International Energy Agency. Sudan: Six million people face famine. More than six million people in the war-ravaged Sudan are facing high levels of food insecurity according to the UNHCR. It warns that hunger and displacement due to the war is spiralling amid ongoing fighting. Uganda ends UN human rights operations.The UN human rights office in Uganda will close after Uganda refused to renew an agreement allowing the UNHCR to operate. The closure comes amid concerns over human rights violations including extrajudicial killings in Uganda, and a new law that prescribes the death penalty for some homosexual acts. US scientists hit new fusion energy milestone.US scientists at the federal Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California announced that they achieved net energy gain in a nuclear fusion reaction for a second time — this time with a higher energy yield. |
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SOCIAL CHART: The rapid loss of Antarctic sea ice Simple fragrance method produces major memory boost. Research into aromas while sleeping sparks 226% cognitive increase. A fragrance introduced to the bedrooms of older adults for two hours every night for six months, memories skyrocketed. Imaging revealed better integrity in the brain pathway called the left uncinate fasciculus which connects the medial temporal lobe to the decision-making prefrontal cortex. China wants to mobilize the entire nation in counter-espionage. The call to popularize anti-spying work among the masses follows an expansion of China’s counter-espionage law that took effect in July. The law, which bans the transfer of information related to national security and unspecified national interests. Google and Meta set to remove news links to Canada over Online News Act. Meta will remove news from its platform and end local publisher deals before the law comes into effect. Additionally, Alphabet will remove Canadian news links from Google News and from Google Discover after the new law forces digital giants to compensate media outlets. Kenya suspends Worldcoin iris scans over privacy and security concerns. The US company Worldcoin which is aiming to build a global database of iris images for identity recognition in global financial applications. Thousands of people received free currency in exchange for a retinal scan, but has been banned in Kenya citing privacy concerns. |
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