Category Archives: current events

Brave New World

Comedy Monster Jim Gaffigan made an interesting distinction that illuminates a lot about our current social crisis. He differentiated between being old and being like “no cellphone in high school” old. I am both, as anyone born before about 1990 is. To prior generations, the idea of having a super computer in your pocket, capable of Flash Gordon-style video conferences, was something out of 1950s science fiction, yet there it is, in my shirt pocket as I type.

Has the smart phone changed the world? You betcha. More than the printing press, telegraph, telephone, radio and television changed the world? You betcha, since it makes irreversible changes instantly, simultaneously, in real time, constantly tweaked and updated for billions of us puny earthlings.

The technology of smart phones has released limitless wealth for many smart business people, many of them now powerful, influential billionaires, their fortunes derived from selling targeted ad demographics based on what they learn about the preferences and personal habits of actual individuals.

Printers made a lot of money selling new printed books, and some newspaper owners got very rich, the latter from ad dollars as much as from people buying newspapers. Telegraph and telephone magnates surely got rich. Radio, a populist game changer, was another gold mine. TV made many people very rich, also based on massive ad dollars spent on this powerfully influential new entertainment technology that instantly reached millions. But none of these was on the scale of these current day billionaires who get rich by monetizing the private needs, wants and weaknesses of billions of people using the internet and the smart phone.

How the technology, carried around in a pocket by billions of us, changes the way we interact is what I am thinking of. There is little chance for real nuance in a text, LOL! The loss of this nuance, to me, is a big deal. I spent years making myself a better writer, learning to choose and rearrange my words carefully. I’ve spent a lot of time making my writing a clear and accurate expression of my thoughts, feelings and observations. It is a certain kind of satisfying work, though unappealing work to many, sitting over something you’re writing and methodically revising it to make it clearer and clearer.

An average writer sending an informational or opinionated text dashes off some words, and an acronym or two, with every expectation of being understood. ROTFLMAO is one you used to see, instead of hearing the sound of your friend laughing, watching her rolling on the floor, you know, her ass literally falling off she’s laughing so hard.

Facial expressions, eye contact, body language, tone of voice, irony — all impossible to discern in any but the most skilled text message. The world of interpersonal communication, the world itself, has radically changed, in less than twenty years.

I know, I’m an old fart and there is probably not even a point to registering the things I am trying to express now. It is surely the kind of nuance that we’ve lost that makes no difference at all to anyone raised without it.

Why quibble about a thumbs up being the same as saying “I like the way you phrased that, very sly” with a wink, a pat or an eye roll? Thumbs up! Like. Nothing ambiguous about it, I thought it was cool.

I text and email my friends all the time, sometimes it’s the only contact we have outside of seeing each other at long intervals (now that we have this endless Democrat [sic] plague upon us, a new Trump-resistant variant of the original “Kung Flu”) but to me, even without the eye contact, body language, facial expressions, talking to them on the phone is almost always preferable to the linear process of sending notes back and forth.

In third grade we passed notes, written on slips of paper, to people we wanted to talk to. During lunch break we got to talk. Back in class we passed notes that were not allowed to be passed. We’d be busted for passing notes sometimes, and would have to pretend to be sorry.

Today it seems to be largely passing notes, purely linear back and forths instead of conversations that can turn into discussions where we actually learn something new about somebody or something else. The other regrettable feature is the linear nature of texts, they focus solely on the matter at hand. It strikes me like the difference between googling a source for a term paper, and including a link as a footnote, and reading a book that leads you to other books that give you information you didn’t know was important.

I am old school, I know, a dying breed. I like to listen, I like to talk, I like to bring in divergent topics related to something I hear someone say. I like the idea of learning, shedding light, having it shed for me, gaining what used to be called insights.

Insight is in short supply in a knee jerk world of instant thumbs up or thumbs down. That business is from the Coliseum when the mob indicated if they wanted a vanquished gladiator killed or spared. It is the same today, friend, “unfriend”, have a nice day.

I love a good talk. I understand that conversation is a dying art, in an age when it is so much easier to tap a few keys and wait for a usually instant reply. We are programed to respond to our phones right away. It saves time, yes, but saves it for what? Time with those we care about is really the only real wealth we have.

To me, a conversation can be magic. A text is only a parlor trick that more than a billion people do billions of times a day. We can see what happens to the world when conversation, and the ability to discuss nuance, and problems that are complex, is flattened into a yes/no computer process that ends in a thumbs up or a thumbs down. LOL!

Rolling on the floor laughing…hey, wait! Where the hell’s my ass??!!!

Happy New Year — and one last one for 2021

Note, the lede is buried in this draft, my apologies, but I’m writing this under a time constraint. The point I’m coming to is why the DOJ has not indicted Rudolph Giuliani for crimes he appears to have committed in his capacity as Trump’s personal lawyer, several years ago in Ukraine (prior to his unethical behavior as Trump’s lawyer in post-election purely propagandistic lawsuits).

I recently found myself listening to what I thought was the opening presentation from the popular Mr. Trump’s second impeachment trial. I was looking forward to hearing the presentation, prepared by the excellent editors over at Lawfare who had a great podcast covering the Mueller Report and, not long after, the first impeachment, called The Report.

Lawfare did a great job boiling down complex issues, and condensing many hours of hearings into a clear and compelling hour or so, and I followed their great dissection of the Mueller Report and the first impeachment closely. I discovered they had a new season and I eagerly jumped in to hear everything said during the second impeachment, weeks after the January 6 riot when most of us were keen to make sure the instigator of a violent assault on democracy could no longer run for the most powerful position in the world.

It turns out Lawfare hadn’t covered the second impeachment at all, at least not on The Report. I found myself instead listening to their excellent presentation of the first group of impeachment managers laying out the case for conviction in the impeachment trail (well worth hearing) — over the former president’s plan to shake down the new Ukrainian president not only in the perfect phone call, but in the weeks leading up to it, when our ambassador to Ukraine was smeared, menaced and abruptly fired, and in the days and weeks following the perfect call, when the whistleblower report on the call was being buried by Barr, as a Russian army threatened Ukraine (who had already been granted military aid by Congress) and Trump refused release the aid or to meet with the president of our beleaguered ally until he announced a fake investigation into seemingly slimy bastard Hunter Biden, in order to politically hurt his father.

If their crystal clear laying out of the facts of Trump’s extra-legal meddling in Ukraine, to extract the promise of a propaganda coup, had been presented to a jury in a court of law, there is no question that a guilty verdict would have been returned. Even with Trump’s party’s refusal to allow witnesses or new evidence (and damning new evidence was coming to light daily), the facts they produced supported conviction for a conspiracy to threaten a false corruption investigation out of the vulnerable new president of one of our allies, seeking more foreign help in an American presidential election.

Now this is all urine down the old urinal and I’m not bringing it up to re-litigate any of that “purely political” stuff, here’s the buried lede.

What is laid out in the presentation is how Giuliani, acting as Trump’s PERSONAL lawyer, conducted official business for the United States, employed Trump donors Lev Parnas and Igor Furman (both on trial now) to work with corrupt Ukrainian power brokers (pro-Russian associates of Trump’s first campaign manger, pardoned felon Paul Manafort) to have President Zelensky announce a corruption investigation into the son of Trump’s perceived rival in the 2020 election — after ousting our longtime ambassador. The plot stinks a mile, as my grandmother used to say. A few month’s after Barr, Trump’s warrior gunsel, parachuted out of the looming insurrection, Rudy Giuliani’s home and office were raided by the FBI, records, phones and computers seized. Rudy’s two shady associates, Lev and Igor, Individuals 3 and 4, were both indicted (though for other crimes). Why is there no indictment against Rudy?

If you indict Rudy for doing the corrupt, illegal bidding of Individual One, for the benefit of Individual One, at the request of Individual One, how do you avoid indicting fucking Individual One, particularly now that he’s a private citizen? Hard to do, maybe impossible. I feel your pain, Merrick Garland, and I hope to heaven that you have a very good plan the Department of Justice is busy working on.

Happy New Year, everyone.

Arguing in the alternative

I was a little surprised to learn, in a first year law school class, about arguing in the alternative. It may not be intuitively obvious that you can defend yourself on multiple, sometimes contradictory theories, but it makes a certain amount of sense in our adversarial legal system.

Charged with murder you answer that you didn’t do it, you weren’t even in the state, you have an alibi witness. You also argue that even if you did kill the guy it was legally justified self-defense, and if not self-defense, it was done without malice aforethought and therfore was not murder, and if it was murder under the law then the murder law is facially overbroad and therefore unconstitutional.

You can throw up as many contradictory defenses as you can think up, placing the burden on the prosecutor to overcome each one, beyond a reasonable doubt. Being creative, within the universe of legal possibilities, is a lawyer’s legal responsibility to a wealthy client (lawyers for the poor usually don’t have the same luxury to create).

A lawyer for Trump just sent a motion to the Supreme Court asking the Federalist Society Six to carefully consider a recent Washington Post interview with January 6 Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, who showed his nefarious political bias by admitting (note damning action verb!) that if the evidence points there the committee would make a criminal referral for the former president.

I didn’t do anything wrong, and if I did, these evil fucks are still persecuting me! I don’t know if Binnall is a legal genius, but he’s throwing everything he’s got against the wall to see what sticks. He’s throwing it to six judges who’d probably be happy for a legal figleaf with which to fully clothe their beleaguered, eternally brawling, party leader.

And why not? The lawyer is just earning the fees Ronna McDaniel [1] will use political donations to pay.

[1] For RNC executive compensation schemes, see this very Trump Org type setup

https://www.propublica.org/article/republican-national-committee-obscured-how-much-it-pays-its-chief-of-staff

Invitation-only secret public policy membership society is a tax exempt charity

So right-wing power center CNP, the powerful, off the radar Council for National Policy, a by-invitation-only private, secret membership society of leaders, funded by undisclosed donors, is a charitable non-profit under the laws of these United States of America. Of course it is.

Makes sense, I guess, considering the power and reach of its secret membership (identities sometimes leaked) who, in addition to sometimes having the final say on who the Republican presidential candidate is (2016), rotate seats on the boards of the Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, The Progressive Policy Institute (“radically pragmatic”), Judicial Watch, ALEC, the Cato Institute, Donors Trust and Charles Koch’s personal favorite, The Institute for Humane Studies.

Eh, what are you gonna do? The law’s the law. No law against powerful partisan zealots secretly meeting as a nonprofit 501(c)(3) or (c)(4) corporation. This is America!

Exceptional!

The incriminating info has long been public…

Frustrating that Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice, scrupulous about avoiding the appearance of political motivation, has been so reluctant to even investigate anti-democratic criminal activity we all saw play out in front of us, that we see playing out in front of us now as our democracy hangs by a thread, amid the threat of further, better-organized mob violence.

The belatedly formed House Select Committee on January 6 is doing an excellent job investigating and laying out the case, as two teams of impeachment managers also did, clearly setting out a case that could have been proved beyond doubt by testimony and other evidence withheld, for the benefit of Mr. Trump who never, ever obstructed justice. Of course, the impeachment trials were pure politics, the foreman of the jury pledging to work closely with the defense team to acquit each time. The outcome would have been far different in a court of law. Now it’s Garland’s moment to step up. Step up, my man.

Garland famously followed Barr’s lead when he appealed the judge’s decision not to let the Department of Justice stand in for Trump as defendant in E. Jean Carroll’s defamation suit, on Barr’s ridiculous theory that the president calling someone who accused him of rape a fucking liar he wouldn’t fuck with Mike Pence’s dick was acting in the scope of his “official duties”. It’s true that the DOJ leaped into action to try to challenge the Texas anti-abortion law that cleverly circumvents court review (DOJ appeal dismissed by Supreme Court) and to protect parents at school board meetings (quickly weaponized by the GOP as Garland’s partisan war against people giving totally legal Nazi salutes to show their hatred of commie school boards who hate our freedom) but, Jesus Christ.

Bending over backward to appear impartial and apolitical, the Biden DOJ let Don McGahn finally testify behind closed doors about what he told Mueller (Trump asked him to fire Mueller, then, when McGahn refused, asked him to write a memo stating they’d never discussed firing Mueller– you know, as one does while not corruptly abusing one’s power…) not under oath (the honor system again), after the court belatedly found McGahn’s defiance of a subpoena under Barr’s ridiculous blanket protective privilege claim not supported by law. You can read the transcript of McGahn’s boring, two year-delayed interview, but nobody else ever did, I won’t even bother you with a link. (OK, fine, click this one— link to transcript halfway down, above graphic.) A cold, legalistic transcript is nothing like damning testimony, delivered under oath, with skilled cross-examination, on live TV.

Equally tellingly, the Biden administration has done nothing to combat Trump’s favorite tactic of weaponizing court delay until the underlying issue becomes moot. No inter-branch dispute court has been created, no changes to the judicial docket in DC have been made, let alone the assignment of special judges for expedited rulings on urgent matters of national security, things that can currently be tied up indefinitely by unscrupulous litigants employing toothless appeals to waste additional months or years. Oh, well.

As for the detailed information that is already out there, here’s a bit from the November 6, 2021 New York Times, all undisputed (except by a compulsively litigious serial liar with millions in donated legal funds) and supported by sworn testimony and documentary evidence:

WASHINGTON — Even by the standards of President Donald J. Trump, it was an extraordinary Oval Office showdown. On the agenda was Mr. Trump’s desire to install a loyalist as acting attorney general to carry out his demands for more aggressive investigations into his baseless claims of election fraud.

On the other side during that meeting on the evening of Jan. 3 were the top leaders of the Justice Department, who warned Mr. Trump that they and other senior officials would resign en masse if he followed through. They received immediate support from another key participant: Pat A. Cipollone, the White House counsel. According to others at the meeting, Mr. Cipollone indicated that he and his top deputy, Patrick F. Philbin, would also step down if Mr. Trump acted on his plan.

Mr. Trump’s proposed plan, Mr. Cipollone argued, would be a “murder-suicide pact,” one participant recalled. Only near the end of the nearly three-hour meeting did Mr. Trump relent and agree to drop his threat.

Mr. Cipollone’s stand that night is among the new details contained in a lengthy interim report prepared by the Senate Judiciary Committee about Mr. Trump’s efforts to pressure the Justice Department to do his bidding in the chaotic final weeks of his presiden

The report draws on documents, emails and testimony from three top Justice Department officials, including the acting attorney general for Mr. Trump’s last month in office, Jeffrey A. Rosen; the acting deputy attorney general, Richard P. Donoghue, and Byung J. Pak, who until early January was U.S. attorney in Atlanta. It provides the most complete account yet of Mr. Trump’s efforts to push the department to validate election fraud claims that had been disproved by the F.B.I. and state investigators.

The interim report, released on Thursday, describes how Justice Department officials scrambled to stave off the pressure during a period when Mr. Trump was getting advice about blocking certification of the election from a lawyer he had first seen on television, and the president’s actions were so unsettling that his top general and the House speaker discussed the nuclear chain of command . . .

. . . Republicans have sought for months to downplay reports of Mr. Trump’s pressure campaign, arguing that he simply cast a wide net for legal advice and correctly concluded that it would be a mistake to replace Mr. Rosen with Mr. Clark. Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, echoed those sentiments on Thursday with the release of a report by committee Republicans, which called Mr. Trump’s actions “consistent with his responsibilities as president to faithfully execute the law and oversee the Executive Branch.”

But Mr. Rosen, Mr. Donoghue and Mr. Pak — all Republicans — testified that Mr. Trump was not seeking their legal advice, but strong-arming them to violate their oaths of office, undermine the results of the election and subvert the Constitution.

The report is not the Senate Judiciary Committee’s final word on the pressure campaign.

Link to article

Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, echoed those sentiments on Thursday with the release of a report by committee Republicans, which called Mr. Trump’s actions “consistent with his responsibilities as president to faithfully execute the law and oversee the Executive Branch.”

Of course, they did. Merrick?

As for Barr:

The report recommended that the Justice Department tighten procedures concerning when it can take certain overt steps in election-related fraud investigations. As attorney general, the report said, Mr. Barr weakened the department’s decades-long strict policy of not taking investigative steps in fraud cases until after an election is certified, a measure that is meant to keep the fact of a federal investigation from impacting the election outcome.

The Senate panel found that Mr. Barr personally demanded that the department investigate voter fraud allegations, even if other authorities had looked into them and not found evidence of wrongdoing. These allegations included a claim by Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer and a prime force behind the unfounded election fraud allegations, that he had a tape that showed Democratic poll workers kicking their Republican counterparts from a polling station and fraudulently adding votes for Joseph R. Biden Jr. into the count.

Fucking bagpipe playing bastard.

Merrick?

We are all crazy with anxiety now

I don’t say this judgmentally, we’d have to be crazy not to be feeling a bit crazy right now. We don’t talk about it much, but we are all stretched to the breaking point from two years (and counting) of a politically weaponized (talk about insanity…) highly infectious pandemic that began toward the end of the angrily divisive reign of a malignant narcissist troll, who came to power in the final act of a well-organized, almost complete, decades-in-the-making radical right wing coup that now defends white mob violence, justified by bold, insane lies. The shit storm blows not only here, but there and everywhere. We puny earthlings are facing scary uncertainties related to interlocking global crises, as the great state of Texas sets new records for Christmas temperature (a balmy 82 degrees F) and rolling back constitutional rights.

The newspapers and TV don’t dwell on the cascading crisis of mental health, an unaddressed epidemic of anxiety, depression, loneliness, grief, loss, fear, moodiness, hopelessness, anger and aggression as deadly as any of the other crises facing all of us these days.

Every so often an article is published laying out the scope of our observable epidemic of mental health troubles. The New York Times found, after surveying more than a thousand therapists, that therapists are starting to burn out (though the survey didn’t ask that), like Covid overwhelmed doctors, nurses and hospital staff, and are very concerned about their freaked out patients (and, presumably, the masses of freaked out mental health deniers). Read the Grey Lady’s article to find out Why 1,320 Therapists Are Worried About Mental Health in America Right Now. The survey respondents reported that demand for therapy has surged, waiting lists are long, medication needs have increased, children’s mental health issues are intensifying, couples are struggling, the outlook for 2022 remains bleak. Here’s a slice:

While there were moments of optimism about telemedicine and reduced stigma around therapy, the responses painted a mostly grim picture of a growing crisis, which several therapists described as a “second pandemic” of mental health problems.

“There is so much grief and loss,” said Anne Compagna-Doll, a clinical psychologist in Burbank, Calif. “One of my clients, who is usually patient, is experiencing road rage. Another client, who is a mom of two teens, is fearful and doesn’t want them to leave the house. My highly work-motivated client is considering leaving her career. There is an overwhelming sense of malaise and fatigue.”

The Washington Post recently chimed in with an article called The pandemic has caused nearly two years of collective trauma. Many people are near a breaking point. The article begins:

An airplane passenger is accused of attacking a flight attendant and breaking bones in her face. Three New York City tourists assaulted a restaurant host who asked them for proof of vaccination against the coronavirus, prosecutors say. Eleven people were charged with misdemeanors after they allegedly chanted “No more masks!” and some moved to the front of the room during a Utah school board meeting.

Across the United States, an alarming number of people are lashing out in aggressive and often cruel ways in response to policies or behavior they dislike.

“I think people just feel this need to feel powerful, in charge and connected to someone again,” said Jennifer Jenkins, a school board member in Brevard County, Fla., who said she has faced harassment.

Most people I know are near the breaking point, not that my circle is given to busting up tyrannical restaurants, assaulting flight attendants or giving Nazi salutes at school board meetings. I’m closer to the breaking point than I like to be. Are you as calm and dispassionate, and filled with gratefulness and occasional joy, as you like to be? If so, my hat’s off to you, though I’m also leaving the door open in case you suddenly pick up a weapon.

Then, as we know, since fear and uncertainty are such terrible emotions to sit with, many turn to anger and the certainty of righteousness a good, boiling rage always brings. Check out this Washington Post headline (and the article is a gift to you from the ever generous Jeff Bezos) Anger at Covid drives GOP lawmakers in Red States, which has since been re-titled: Anger over mask mandates, other covid rules, spurs states to curb power of public health officials (tendentious subtitle: Republican lawmakers pass laws to restrict the power of health authorities to require masks, promote vaccinations and take other steps to protect the public health.)

And really, who among us does not have the right to be fucking furious at a persistent disease that keeps morphing and spreading, with deadly effect, among people who find it as enraging as being told what to do? And, also, you know, as bad as the disease itself, and as infuriating — fuck those fucking so-called public health official Nazi fucks and their goddamned liberty-infringing “mitigation strategies.”

It is good to keep in mind, as we walk through this shattered landscape we are all living in today, that we are all at a breaking point and every one of us needs to treat each other with an exceptional amount of mercy. Few of us are at our best during prolonged, draining periods of terror and uncertainty.

Yes, crisis is supposedly viewable as opportunity (I think that Chinese ideogram meme has been debunked) but it is also a high wire act we’re forced to perform, without a net, over broken glass and everything that ever caused a nightmare. Remember very few of us were ever taught how to deal with fear, with anger, with terror. We learned by example: pretend to be fearless, deny anger (and attack the fucking accuser) and as for terror, the word speaks for itself.

This horror show too will eventually pass. Most likely. Denying the scope of our mutual suffering helps nobody. Of course, the mainstream right-wing/corporate bloc in the Senate will block debate on any proposed government efforts to fund mental health care, or any kind of health care, for that matter ($100,000,000 in this year’s military budget for bands to play John Philips Sousa marches is one thing — your fucking personal problems are another).

Being aware of the fearful situation we are all in, as we try to understand the suddenly intensified insanity of everyone around us, can only help. It certainly can’t hurt. And every little act of mercy, and everything else that doesn’t hurt, tends to help.

Reminds me of what a kindly old drug dealer told me, many years ago on a Greyhound bus in Boston, after I declined his offer of a selection of drugs. Seeing my crutches on the seat next to me, and my bandaged foot, he asked if my foot hurt. I told him it did. He handed me a single percoset, on the house, which I thanked him for. “Enjoy it, baby. Like I said, if I can’t help, I don’t hurt” and he smiled, heading up the aisle to his seat.

Council for National Policy’s deal with Trump

The religious right’s bargain with Trump, in a nutshell, from Bob Garfield’s recent interview with CNP researcher, author Anne Nelson on his podcast Bully Pulpit:

GARFIELD: All right. Let’s now turn to the more-or-less present: the rise of Trump and the now violent assault on democracy. How was CNP involved in Trump’s ascent?

NELSON: The CNP was involved with Trump, initially, very reluctantly. He wasn’t one of them, he had no particular religious background, he was multiply divorced, and he really didn’t reflect their values in many ways. Their favored candidate was Ted Cruz, but they had a problem – which was that Cruz had a tremendous charisma deficit, and as he lost the primaries, they realized that either they supported Trump, the primary victor, or they lived with Hillary Clinton’s presidency, which was unacceptable to them.

GARFIELD: Oh, I – I’m sorry, I just – I just have to interrupt to remind you what then Senator Al Franken (laughs) said about Cruz.

AL FRANKEN: I probably like him more than most of my other colleagues like Ted, and I hate him (laughs).

NELSON: That is the case. Cruz is a formidable intelligence and strategist. He was not a winning candidate outside Texas. So the fundamentalists convened something like a thousand leaders and representatives in New York City in June of 2016 at the Times Square Marriott. They brought Trump out to parade him before them, and they had a number of leaders from the Council for National Policy there on the program. And publicly, what that event was about was to sell Trump to this thousand fundamentalist leaders, many of whom had been Never Trumpers, and they were like, “This is going to be your guy. You need to go home and tell your flocks that this is the plan.” But the second part of that agenda involved meetings where they cut a deal with Trump. They said, “You don’t have a war chest, you don’t have ground troops for the election canvassing, you don’t have a strategy. And all indications are you’re going to get creamed.” So we have all three of those that we can put into your service. But in return –

GARFIELD: We have a shopping list. 

NELSON: We have a shopping list, and it’s basically got three items. The first one was enact some of our policies by executive orders. So when suddenly the Republican platform has this new anti-trans, anti LGBT language that was literally written by the president of the Council for National Policy, Tony Perkins, Trump enacted the anti-trans policy for the Pentagon against the Pentagon’s wishes, which, you know, the Pentagon said, “This is disruptive of our operations and trans people are not a problem,” but Trump had to deliver on his deal. The second part was to create an evangelical advisory council. Obama had a religious advisory council, but it included Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims. This one was 100% Protestant, and none of these other religions needed to apply. The leadership of this council were in and out of the White House on policy discussions and photo ops on a weekly basis. The third was by far the most important, far reaching, and devastating to our democracy. And that was when they got Trump to agree that any federal judges he nominated would be approved from a list that was submitted by three organizations run by members of the Council for National Policy. These were the Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, and the National Rifle Association. Now, what business the NRA has in recommending federal judge nominations? I do not know, but that’s how it played out, and after his first confirmation, he invited the representatives of these groups, most of them from the Council for National Policy, for a little victory luncheon at the White House.

GARFIELD: So that was the origin story of Trump’s deal with the devil, a man with not only no religion, but no ideology to speak of creating himself in the image of his political and financial sponsors. Over the ensuing – well, so then he was elected, more or less – and then over the ensuing four years, many of Trump’s 30,000 lies, big and small, find their provenance, what do you know, in the CNP. So, can we just tick a few of these off beginning with the COVID hoax, and the savior drug hydroxychloroquine?

NELSON: So if you get to the beginning of 2020, the Trump campaign is in trouble and the Council for National Policy recognizes it. They had hoped that the 2020 elections would be won with a popular vote, that was cast into doubt. COVID set in a couple of months later, and the whole strategy of the Trump campaign had been built around mass rallies and data harvesting from attendees of the rallies and building on that to secure a victory. Well, mass rallies became impossible because of COVID restrictions, so there was a critical phone call that involved the president of the Council for National Policy and members of the Trump campaign staff, where they said, “We need to open up society, get the economy roaring again, and people are afraid of COVID, but they trust doctors. We have a group of doctors who will say that COVID is a hoax, will argue for the reopening of society and the mass rallies.” So that summer, these doctors were convened by Jenny Beth Martin in Washington. Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of Tea Party Patriots and a leading figure in the Council for National Policy. At that point, the point person – when Dr. Simone Gold announced that hydroxychloroquine was a cure for COVID – she was put on partner media platforms of the CNP, including the Charlie Kirk Show and the Christian Broadcasting Network, spreading this disinformation 

SIMONE GOLD: With the tyranny of medical apartheid nipping at our heels, rise up. Rise up. Rise up.

NELSON: And that has now expanded into a small army of unethical physicians who are continuing the hydroxychloroquine hoax. They’ve added ivermectin as a cure and, in fact, they have online prescription services charging money to people who are ordering ivermectin as a COVID cure.

JAKE TAPPER: Poison control centers are reporting that their calls are spiking in places like Mississippi and Oklahoma because some Americans are trying to use an anti parasite horse drug called ivermectin to treat coronavirus, to prevent contracting coronavirus. What would you tell someone who is considering taking that drug?

FAUCI: Don’t do it.

NELSON: There’s no evidence that it helps against COVID and, in fact, there are several cases of deaths. Not just from COVID and the failed approach of ivermectin, but people taking overdoses of ivermectin. At the same time, they’re discouraging vaccination, and the purpose that lies behind this is, I believe, to discredit any federal agency, to discredit the CDC and the NIH, and to have their followers distrust any kind of fact based authority. Whether it’s science, whether it’s professional journalism, whether it’s federal agencies, and work them into this stoked anger and frustration that is then politically mobilized, and so is chaos.

GARFIELD: And not just because they’re elites and look down at the silent majority, as Nixon called Middle America, but because there is a vast conspiracy to make money for Bill Gates or to turn children against their country, or to put right wing political dissidents into concentration camps or, you know, whatever the crazy talk is. It wasn’t enough just to make people suspicious of – of expertise and authority, but to brainwash them that they were actually active enemies of the people.

NELSON: I would say that the strength of the Council for National Policy is to figure out what I call the raw nerves of our culture and to further inflame them. So right now, parents – with kids in public schools – are stressed on so many levels. Are the schools open or are they not open? Are there mandates? Are there not mandates? Can working mothers go to work if their kids aren’t in school? Right? These are real, real issues. And then you put on top of that our very difficult conversation nationally about race. When the Black Lives Matter protests happened, the way that the CNP’s media and other media systems played it was, “these are violent riots,” and they cherry picked photos of buildings and flame and violence in the streets and amplified it and exaggerated it. These were not invented or doctored photos, these things happened, it’s just that they happened as very, very few cases and very small percentage of the peaceful protests. But that’s not what their audience saw.

TUCKER CARLSON: This may be a lot of things this moment we’re living through, but it is definitely not about black lives. And remember that when they come for you, and at this rate, they will.

The rest of their conversation is HERE. Fascinating and horrifying, both.

The Council for National Policy

Formed in 1981, the Council for National Policy is an invitation-only, secretive charitable organization that promotes deeply conservative Christian values [1], and advances plans and policies for that purpose. It is a coordinating leadership committee for a network of far right groups with an influential membership list.

CNP’s highly private membership is a Who’s Who of right-wing royalty and wealthy dark money donors. Among the member names that some traitor leaked you will find Oliver North, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, former AG John Ashcroft, Steve Bannon, Kelleyanne Conway, Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society, Clarence Thomas’s influential right-wing wife Virginia and the billionaire philanthropist mother of billionaire donors Erik Prince and Betsy DeVos [2].

Here’s a huge shocker:

On October 14, 2020, The Washington Post reported that it had obtained videos recorded by CNP of several meetings in February and August 2020 whose overtly partisan, political nature raised “potential issues of compliance with election laws and charity rules.”[1]

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I hadn’t even heard of this influential group until a recent, excellent Bob Garfield interview with author Anne Nelson. Garfield says of their talk: a conversation with author Anne Nelson about the Council for National Policy, which has spent decades exploiting bugs in the system to gain minority control of our politics — and our future.

In a two part discussion they talked about the sixty year right wing coup, carried out quite brilliantly by what Hillary Clinton was widely mocked for calling the vast right wing conspiracy. The CNP is part of a large network of well-funded, hugely influential, interlocking organizations. The reach of this network is definitely vast and always serves a well-coordinated right-wing plan to control the narrative of American politics, get and maintain power and make laws consistent with its distinctly minoritarian views.

CNP appears to be close to the top of the movement conservative food chain, the beating heart at the center of well-financed, secretive right-wing power. Here’s a bit more about CNP.

Membership is by invitation only. The organization’s membership list is considered “strictly confidential”. Guests may attend “only with the unanimous approval of the executive committee.” Members are instructed not to refer to the organization by name to protect against leaks.[4] The New York Times political writer David D. Kirkpatrick suggested that the organization’s secrecy since its founding was intended to insulate it “from what its members considered the liberal bias of the news media.”[2]

CNP’s meetings are closed to the general public, reportedly to allow for a free-flowing exchange of ideas. The group meets three times per year.[13] This policy is said to be similar to the long-held policy of the Council on Foreign Relations, to which the CNP has at times been compared. CNP’s 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status was revoked by the IRS in 1992 on grounds that it was not an organization run for the public benefit. The group successfully challenged this ruling in federal court. A quarterly journal aimed at educating the public, promised in the wake of this incident, has not substantially materialized. The organization has a website that contains many policy speeches from past gatherings (covering the years from 2013 up to the present).[14]

While those involved in the organization are almost entirely from the United States, their organizations and influence cover the globe, both religiously and politically. Members include corporate executives,[15] legislators[15] former high ranking government officers,[15] leaders of ‘think tanks’[15] dedicated to molding society and those whom many view as “Christian leadership”.[15]

In May 2016, the Southern Poverty Law Center released a leaked copy of the membership directory for 2014.[16][17]

A membership list for September 2020, leaked a year later, revealed that members, who could attend meetings together, included elite Republicans, wealthy entrepreneurs, media proprietors and pillars of the US conservative movement, and anti-abortion and anti-Islamic extremists. It was reported that members of the secretive CNP are instructed not to reveal their affiliation or even name the group.[

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The first rule of Fight Club, yo. If they don’t ever find out you’re even doing it, how are they going to be able to stop you? Use your fucking head!

Coming up: the CNP wish list and Trumpism, the deal that was made between CNP and The Donald before the elite of the organized right in the US would throw its weight behind a clearly unsuitable presidential candidate with vast media charisma. It was one deal that Trump kept, 100%, for maybe the only time in his long, transactional life.

[1]

CNP was founded in 1981 by Southern Baptist pastor Tim LaHaye, author of The Battle for the Mind (1980) and the Left Behind series of books. Other early participants have included W. Cleon Skousen, a theologian within The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and founder of the Freemen Institute; Paul Weyrich; Phyllis Schlafly; Robert Grant; Howard Phillips, a former Republican affiliated with the Constitution Party; Richard Viguerie, the direct-mail specialist; and Morton Blackwell, a Louisiana and Virginia activist who is considered a specialist on the rules of the Republican Party.[40][41][42]

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[2]

Members of the CNP have included: General John Singlaub, shipping magnate J. Peter Grace, Edwin J. Feulner Jr of the Heritage Foundation, Rev. Pat Robertson of the Christian Broadcasting Network, Jerry Falwell, U.S. Senator Trent Lott, Southern Baptist Convention activists and retired Texas Court of Appeals Judge Paul Pressler, lawyer and paleoconservative activist Michael Peroutka,[10] Reverend Paige Patterson,[11] Senator Don Nickles, former United States Attorneys General Edwin Meese and John Ashcroft, gun-rights activist Larry Pratt, Colonel Oliver North, Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, philanthropist Elsa Prince (mother of Blackwater founder and former CEO Erik Prince and Trump Administration Secretary of Education Betsy Devos), Leonard Leo, and [1] Virginia Thomas (wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas).[1] Former California State Assemblyman Steve Baldwin was CNP’s executive director from 2000 to 2008.[12]

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