There should be a Profiles in Cowardice award to be given to Bezos and the LA Times owner.
And why isn’t the Musk revelation about his Putin relationship vaulted to the top of the list of the highest military threats to the security of our country? He has entered Bond villain territory!
Asha, thank you for weighing in on the latest goose steps on the road to a fascist takeover. I hadn’t heard about Ruth being disinvited from Annapolis while Elon was sanctified by West Point. Your thoughts keep me from completely losing my mind. I look forward to watching you and Renato discuss everything.
Me too. I'll spend the same money supporting the Guardian. I've dumped Amazon Prime as well. I'll use them to find the vendors and order direct. I survived without the convenience of fast delivery before. I can do it again. I'm looking at this as an opportunity to more carefully choose who I enrich.
I voted early on the first possible day here in Ohio. All I can do is sit back and watch. Management at the community college issued a directive that we had to be openly non-partisan and not be connected to any campaign. Considering we have a bunch of elected MAGA types wanting to yank our funding and shut us down I suppose we’re boxed in at this point.
My biggest worry with the election is access to health care. Letting people like RFK Jr. near the US Department of Health and Human Services or any component of it in a managerial capacity could be disastrous. If Trump wins that’s apparently coming. When you’re someone in a rare genetic disorder situation (1 in 50 Americans), that’s truly terrifying as the prospect of research getting banned and treatments getting pulled from availability is pretty high. I know the Trump-Vance campaign has the “vision thing” but it boils down to “hello darkness my old friend” seemingly.
So they issued a directive that applies to your actions at work / on campus? Or it applies to your actions outside of work and in your private life? Because that is a blatant 1A violation.
Eugene Robinson had an interesting column regarding Musk's "Know-It-All Syndrome". He, that crazy Republican candidate what's his name, and that Kremlin Gremlin all suffer from it to varying degrees. Although it is interesting how they have broken through the ceiling of traditions, it is NOT in a good way. When I learn that Ruth Bien Ghiat was disinvited from speaking at the US Naval Academy, although I am not familiar with her work, I trust Asha for raising it as a concerning sign / red flag. I think of the Age of Enlightenment / the Age of Reason beginnings in the 1700s and 1800s, and how a pursuit of knowledge led to true advancements, including the United States itself. People gradually became more free, with Americans becoming free of British colonial rule, US slaves getting their freedom (officially, at least) in 1865, and on and on, The Internet could have taken that to new heights, but I would think because of lack of regulation, it can be used as an uncontrolled weapon. At middle age, I struggle to get the perspective of younger generations who have known the Internet and mobile devices most of if not ALL of their lives. Dame Helen Mirren apparently has made comments about how she is always curious of the future, and thinks of Kurt Cobain dying at 27, and completely missing out on the Internet. Having lived "BI" and "AI" (Before Internet and now Artificial Intelligence), I can't say one is better or worse, but just different. That being said, in the AI world, people are so engrossed in technology that they miss out on reality as they try to insulate themselves into a world of comfort and familiarity. It leads to inbred thoughts. Initially, I thought Bezos was supporting the crazy guy, but my best understanding from reports is that he is bowing to threats from the not-so-great dictator. Honestly, I don't think an endorsement is going to make or break the election; people who read the Post would more likely vote Harris anyways, and if they were not, I don't think a Post endorsement means anything to the crazy guy voters. Our work won't be done once we win, my blue friends, but at least we will have diffused a nuclear weapon in this attempt to shift to an age of disenlightenment / control. I think the most intelligent people are those who know they don't know it all, want new ideas and the truth, and have that healthy dose of humility that keeps people grounded in reality. But with so many heads stuck in smartphones, is it at the cost of people getting dumber, and living in their own imagination of life rather than the here and now? Thanks for the Round Up....always nice to get a healthy dose of the real world of pungent politics.....Not pleasant, but the reality we must all face.
Insightful as always, looking forward to book club and speakers. Germane to our class, this article in The Atlantic is lengthy but worth the read: "WHY THE PAST 10 YEARS OF AMERICAN LIFE HAVE BEEN UNIQUELY STUPID". This commentary in particular struck me: "Social scientists have identified at least three major forces that collectively bind together successful democracies: social capital (extensive social networks with high levels of trust), strong institutions, and shared stories. Social media has weakened all three."
I am disappointed we don’t have a crisp active DOJ like I grew up with 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, who would have descended on Trump’s treasure trove of requested but refused to return NATSECDEF Classified Documents and the various Russian women spies who had total access to all taming photos on iphones sending back to putin kremlin like an indexing system so putin FSB could select give us a, b, 7, 8, I mean WTF, the lights are on but nobody’s home wanting to make a peep, upset the trump beast as it grows and grows. He should have been cuffed and frog walked out of mara lago fir all to see by men and women of United States Department of Justice in Black suits and white shirts and thin ties. I talk to many retired who live around me in northern Virginia and of course my Professor Asha Rangappa!!!!! And to read now that both trump & musk have been talking to putin in great effing detail multiple times, multiple times, since 2020!!!! If this is not a crime after all we know!!!! Its the equivalent of nixon talking to ho chi minb in 1968 ( he did) through Madame Chennault (her neice lives in crystal City) saying to Ho, “don’t make a peace deal with LBJ, i will give you a better deal” (true story, written up by former Boston Globe reporter Aloyissius Farrell). There is s law now against this. America has to wake up fast now or I will be buying property in Aruba right next to you Professor. Freedom is not free. As we know.
To clarify, my understanding was DOJ sent Musk a letter saying his cash for signatures scheme “may be illegal." If no one among the DOJs 10,000 attorneys can say definitively “here’s a statute and you’re in violation, and here’s what we’re going doing about it” then Musk is being perfectly rational in ignoring them.
Unless we need 10,000 human-sized paperweights I’m not sure what we taxpayers are getting for our $37.8BUSD in DOJ funding. I’ve been ready to take a giant broom to the organization, starting at the AGs office, from the time Joe Biden took office. Too late now, though I’m sure Judge Cannon would appreciate having her new office tidied up before she arrives.
Here's an article from a former FBI agent (and former Mueller team member) explaining that that's all they can say until they investigate the facts. They may be certain of the law but not have all of the facts reliably established yet. That means interviewing witnesses, gathering documents, issuing subpoenas for documents not yielded voluntarily, and presenting the case to a grand jury. Those steps take time, more than the four days or so this activity has been known. If they need to stop the activity more quickly than that, this is the letter they send.
The government is not ordinarily in the business of suing to stop illegal behavior. If the actions violate criminal law, the government ordinarily investigates whether a crime can be proven, and if it can, it takes the investigated case to the grand jury, and obtains a criminal charge. The target if the investigation would not ordinarily get a letter informing him he was the target until shortly before the charge jtself, when he would ordinarily be informed that he was the target of the investigation, and be invited to appear before the grand jury voluntarily if he wanted to say anything in his defense. A definitive accusation that he broke the law would come inly in the grand jury indictment, initiating prosecution against him.
Thanks for this. But I have to say, having worked with local prosecutors for fourteen years, I've never seen prosecutors take weeks, let alone years to get an indictment when the suspect committed a public act. My county DA's take, and this was in the days of Ted Bundy, Green RIver and the I-5 killer, was, "All the feds give a shit about is their win/loss records. If it's not a slam dunk you have to shame them into getting off their asses." Which apparently the House J6 committee knew to be the case and acted accordingly or nothing would have ever been done about Trump's theft of a semi-trailer full of classified materials.
I think your county DA was on to something. The whole DOJ had to be shamed by the AG of Michigan and Rachel Maddow before taking action on the fake-electors scheme--despite the fact that they all sent in certifications that they were the duly elected electors, which they weren't, and that anyone who can read, and certainly every FBI agent and federal prosecutor, knows that submitting a false statement in a matter within federal jurisdiction is a five-year felony.
Then, add the timid institutionalism of Garland and Biden. (Not that Biden has any direct role in any of this, but moderate, timid institutionalism has pervaded this entire administration.).
All of that said, paying people to vote, or register to vote, including with million-dollar-lottery chances, is clearly illegal. Rick Hasen, America's leading expert on election law, explains why: https://electionlawblog.org/?p=146397
When Garland's name first came up for SCOTUS I looked into his background, and the thing that disturbed me most was that he was the featured speaker at the 2012 annual luncheon of the Federalist Society. Leonard Leo and Opus Dei had long since taken control of the group by that point, had launched the "Judicial Crisis Network" and were running false, misleading and distorting ads against judges they didn't like here in North Carolina. No one had ever seen that in a judicial race before. The fact that Garland was not only happy to join a bunch of Koch-funded, pro-oligarchy, lying assholes for lunch, but was apparently enough of an "originalist" to merit their attention as a guest speaker, worried me greatly, and now it's clear I was worried for good cause.
Asha, yesterday's confluence of events, some reported late last night about which details are still emerging, immediately made me think of Oct. 7, 2016: the day that the Access Hollywood tape story was followed just hours later by the Wiki-Dump of John Podesta emails. You've explained before how controlling the US news cycle by saving a DNC-bombshell story to suck oxygen away from any anti-Trump October surprise was a hallmark Russian information-operation tactic. Do you also see the same dynamic at work from yesterday's:
• revelation that Elon Musk has been in regular contact with Putin;
• meeting between Trump and leaders of Bezos's Blue Origin;
• announcement of WaPo's endorsement capitulation, which was directed by Bezos;
• launching of a missile attack by Israel against Iran, ostensibly in retaliation for an Iranian attack nearly a month ago, given the regular communication and mutual support between Netanyahu and Trump (according to Trump)?
To be clear, I'm not making any comment one way or another on the merits of Israel's attack on Iran, only on its timing. The nearly month-long delay between the identified provocation and the response seems to suggest that the timing of the attack may have been chosen to maximize its helpful effect for Trump, the more sympatico candidate favored by Netanyahu.
(This also sets aside the Logan Act, FARA, and Espionage Act implications of all of the above. I'm just asking about the apparent information coordination that all looks designed to help Trump and Putin.)
That's why billionaires should be illegal -- or simply not possible. With progressive taxation, they'd pay enough taxes to leave them with 999 million dollars -- boo-hoo!?!
The MSM are doing their level best to help Trump at every turn. They want Trump to win because long term that's what helps them. They are not even trying to hide its one-sidedness at this point. They got Trump elected before and they are trying to do it again, with a lot of help from extremely wealthy owners. They'll help democracy burn for share price. Media has become no different than anyone else with too much money and influence.
There is only one normal candidate in this recent, and that is Kamala Harris.
How about wearing these kinds of shirts in front of your MAGAs neighbors? 👇 🤔
It's as though some are striving to convert our country into USA Inc where the CEO is trump and the board is, well, you know who, most anyone with a few billion.
After I posted previously, I read a story from, ironically, the Washington Post, that many here may have seen already, but if not, he is The Guardian reporting without a paywall (Musk is like Trump in that they think they are exceptional and thus do not need to follow the order of things set by the rest of society): https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/oct/26/elon-musk-illegal-immigration
There should be a Profiles in Cowardice award to be given to Bezos and the LA Times owner.
And why isn’t the Musk revelation about his Putin relationship vaulted to the top of the list of the highest military threats to the security of our country? He has entered Bond villain territory!
“Pooty call,” my first chuckle of the day. Thanks.
I’m a little baffled why Musk is getting away, at least so far, with Logan Act violations. Maybe DOJ is on it but the track record doesn’t bode well.
Disappointed to read about Annapolis. And West Point. Have the Red Hats infiltrated? An uneasy feeling.
Asha, thank you for weighing in on the latest goose steps on the road to a fascist takeover. I hadn’t heard about Ruth being disinvited from Annapolis while Elon was sanctified by West Point. Your thoughts keep me from completely losing my mind. I look forward to watching you and Renato discuss everything.
I canceled my WaPo subscription yesterday. I also voted early a few days ago.
Yup and yup.
Ditto
Me too. I'll spend the same money supporting the Guardian. I've dumped Amazon Prime as well. I'll use them to find the vendors and order direct. I survived without the convenience of fast delivery before. I can do it again. I'm looking at this as an opportunity to more carefully choose who I enrich.
I voted early on the first possible day here in Ohio. All I can do is sit back and watch. Management at the community college issued a directive that we had to be openly non-partisan and not be connected to any campaign. Considering we have a bunch of elected MAGA types wanting to yank our funding and shut us down I suppose we’re boxed in at this point.
My biggest worry with the election is access to health care. Letting people like RFK Jr. near the US Department of Health and Human Services or any component of it in a managerial capacity could be disastrous. If Trump wins that’s apparently coming. When you’re someone in a rare genetic disorder situation (1 in 50 Americans), that’s truly terrifying as the prospect of research getting banned and treatments getting pulled from availability is pretty high. I know the Trump-Vance campaign has the “vision thing” but it boils down to “hello darkness my old friend” seemingly.
So they issued a directive that applies to your actions at work / on campus? Or it applies to your actions outside of work and in your private life? Because that is a blatant 1A violation.
Eugene Robinson had an interesting column regarding Musk's "Know-It-All Syndrome". He, that crazy Republican candidate what's his name, and that Kremlin Gremlin all suffer from it to varying degrees. Although it is interesting how they have broken through the ceiling of traditions, it is NOT in a good way. When I learn that Ruth Bien Ghiat was disinvited from speaking at the US Naval Academy, although I am not familiar with her work, I trust Asha for raising it as a concerning sign / red flag. I think of the Age of Enlightenment / the Age of Reason beginnings in the 1700s and 1800s, and how a pursuit of knowledge led to true advancements, including the United States itself. People gradually became more free, with Americans becoming free of British colonial rule, US slaves getting their freedom (officially, at least) in 1865, and on and on, The Internet could have taken that to new heights, but I would think because of lack of regulation, it can be used as an uncontrolled weapon. At middle age, I struggle to get the perspective of younger generations who have known the Internet and mobile devices most of if not ALL of their lives. Dame Helen Mirren apparently has made comments about how she is always curious of the future, and thinks of Kurt Cobain dying at 27, and completely missing out on the Internet. Having lived "BI" and "AI" (Before Internet and now Artificial Intelligence), I can't say one is better or worse, but just different. That being said, in the AI world, people are so engrossed in technology that they miss out on reality as they try to insulate themselves into a world of comfort and familiarity. It leads to inbred thoughts. Initially, I thought Bezos was supporting the crazy guy, but my best understanding from reports is that he is bowing to threats from the not-so-great dictator. Honestly, I don't think an endorsement is going to make or break the election; people who read the Post would more likely vote Harris anyways, and if they were not, I don't think a Post endorsement means anything to the crazy guy voters. Our work won't be done once we win, my blue friends, but at least we will have diffused a nuclear weapon in this attempt to shift to an age of disenlightenment / control. I think the most intelligent people are those who know they don't know it all, want new ideas and the truth, and have that healthy dose of humility that keeps people grounded in reality. But with so many heads stuck in smartphones, is it at the cost of people getting dumber, and living in their own imagination of life rather than the here and now? Thanks for the Round Up....always nice to get a healthy dose of the real world of pungent politics.....Not pleasant, but the reality we must all face.
Another timely, helpful and informative newsletter Asha. These are very weird times, and Nov. 5th can't get here quickly enough. Thanks very much!
Great discussion with Elie Honig. The oligarchy uprising flexes it's muscles
Insightful as always, looking forward to book club and speakers. Germane to our class, this article in The Atlantic is lengthy but worth the read: "WHY THE PAST 10 YEARS OF AMERICAN LIFE HAVE BEEN UNIQUELY STUPID". This commentary in particular struck me: "Social scientists have identified at least three major forces that collectively bind together successful democracies: social capital (extensive social networks with high levels of trust), strong institutions, and shared stories. Social media has weakened all three."
Wow — I will check that out!
I am disappointed we don’t have a crisp active DOJ like I grew up with 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, who would have descended on Trump’s treasure trove of requested but refused to return NATSECDEF Classified Documents and the various Russian women spies who had total access to all taming photos on iphones sending back to putin kremlin like an indexing system so putin FSB could select give us a, b, 7, 8, I mean WTF, the lights are on but nobody’s home wanting to make a peep, upset the trump beast as it grows and grows. He should have been cuffed and frog walked out of mara lago fir all to see by men and women of United States Department of Justice in Black suits and white shirts and thin ties. I talk to many retired who live around me in northern Virginia and of course my Professor Asha Rangappa!!!!! And to read now that both trump & musk have been talking to putin in great effing detail multiple times, multiple times, since 2020!!!! If this is not a crime after all we know!!!! Its the equivalent of nixon talking to ho chi minb in 1968 ( he did) through Madame Chennault (her neice lives in crystal City) saying to Ho, “don’t make a peace deal with LBJ, i will give you a better deal” (true story, written up by former Boston Globe reporter Aloyissius Farrell). There is s law now against this. America has to wake up fast now or I will be buying property in Aruba right next to you Professor. Freedom is not free. As we know.
To clarify, my understanding was DOJ sent Musk a letter saying his cash for signatures scheme “may be illegal." If no one among the DOJs 10,000 attorneys can say definitively “here’s a statute and you’re in violation, and here’s what we’re going doing about it” then Musk is being perfectly rational in ignoring them.
Unless we need 10,000 human-sized paperweights I’m not sure what we taxpayers are getting for our $37.8BUSD in DOJ funding. I’ve been ready to take a giant broom to the organization, starting at the AGs office, from the time Joe Biden took office. Too late now, though I’m sure Judge Cannon would appreciate having her new office tidied up before she arrives.
Here's an article from a former FBI agent (and former Mueller team member) explaining that that's all they can say until they investigate the facts. They may be certain of the law but not have all of the facts reliably established yet. That means interviewing witnesses, gathering documents, issuing subpoenas for documents not yielded voluntarily, and presenting the case to a grand jury. Those steps take time, more than the four days or so this activity has been known. If they need to stop the activity more quickly than that, this is the letter they send.
The government is not ordinarily in the business of suing to stop illegal behavior. If the actions violate criminal law, the government ordinarily investigates whether a crime can be proven, and if it can, it takes the investigated case to the grand jury, and obtains a criminal charge. The target if the investigation would not ordinarily get a letter informing him he was the target until shortly before the charge jtself, when he would ordinarily be informed that he was the target of the investigation, and be invited to appear before the grand jury voluntarily if he wanted to say anything in his defense. A definitive accusation that he broke the law would come inly in the grand jury indictment, initiating prosecution against him.
https://open.substack.com/pub/muellershewrote/p/doj-is-investigating-elon-musk?r=1ggwtv&utm_medium=ios
Thanks for this. But I have to say, having worked with local prosecutors for fourteen years, I've never seen prosecutors take weeks, let alone years to get an indictment when the suspect committed a public act. My county DA's take, and this was in the days of Ted Bundy, Green RIver and the I-5 killer, was, "All the feds give a shit about is their win/loss records. If it's not a slam dunk you have to shame them into getting off their asses." Which apparently the House J6 committee knew to be the case and acted accordingly or nothing would have ever been done about Trump's theft of a semi-trailer full of classified materials.
I think your county DA was on to something. The whole DOJ had to be shamed by the AG of Michigan and Rachel Maddow before taking action on the fake-electors scheme--despite the fact that they all sent in certifications that they were the duly elected electors, which they weren't, and that anyone who can read, and certainly every FBI agent and federal prosecutor, knows that submitting a false statement in a matter within federal jurisdiction is a five-year felony.
Then, add the timid institutionalism of Garland and Biden. (Not that Biden has any direct role in any of this, but moderate, timid institutionalism has pervaded this entire administration.).
All of that said, paying people to vote, or register to vote, including with million-dollar-lottery chances, is clearly illegal. Rick Hasen, America's leading expert on election law, explains why: https://electionlawblog.org/?p=146397
Eleven former GOP officials, including a Bush I Deputy AG, a Watergate prosecutor, Bush II's chief ethics lawyer, a Reagan DOJ Assistant Solicitor General, a Reagan WH Associate Counsel, and a Reagan Assistant AG all agree:https://www.washingtonpost.com/documents/8f24d8e7-9f44-4ea3-a33d-b7de2187f438.pdf?itid=lk_inline_manual_2
When Garland's name first came up for SCOTUS I looked into his background, and the thing that disturbed me most was that he was the featured speaker at the 2012 annual luncheon of the Federalist Society. Leonard Leo and Opus Dei had long since taken control of the group by that point, had launched the "Judicial Crisis Network" and were running false, misleading and distorting ads against judges they didn't like here in North Carolina. No one had ever seen that in a judicial race before. The fact that Garland was not only happy to join a bunch of Koch-funded, pro-oligarchy, lying assholes for lunch, but was apparently enough of an "originalist" to merit their attention as a guest speaker, worried me greatly, and now it's clear I was worried for good cause.
And that was when he was a judge!
Asha, yesterday's confluence of events, some reported late last night about which details are still emerging, immediately made me think of Oct. 7, 2016: the day that the Access Hollywood tape story was followed just hours later by the Wiki-Dump of John Podesta emails. You've explained before how controlling the US news cycle by saving a DNC-bombshell story to suck oxygen away from any anti-Trump October surprise was a hallmark Russian information-operation tactic. Do you also see the same dynamic at work from yesterday's:
• revelation that Elon Musk has been in regular contact with Putin;
• meeting between Trump and leaders of Bezos's Blue Origin;
• announcement of WaPo's endorsement capitulation, which was directed by Bezos;
• launching of a missile attack by Israel against Iran, ostensibly in retaliation for an Iranian attack nearly a month ago, given the regular communication and mutual support between Netanyahu and Trump (according to Trump)?
To be clear, I'm not making any comment one way or another on the merits of Israel's attack on Iran, only on its timing. The nearly month-long delay between the identified provocation and the response seems to suggest that the timing of the attack may have been chosen to maximize its helpful effect for Trump, the more sympatico candidate favored by Netanyahu.
(This also sets aside the Logan Act, FARA, and Espionage Act implications of all of the above. I'm just asking about the apparent information coordination that all looks designed to help Trump and Putin.)
That's why billionaires should be illegal -- or simply not possible. With progressive taxation, they'd pay enough taxes to leave them with 999 million dollars -- boo-hoo!?!
The MSM are doing their level best to help Trump at every turn. They want Trump to win because long term that's what helps them. They are not even trying to hide its one-sidedness at this point. They got Trump elected before and they are trying to do it again, with a lot of help from extremely wealthy owners. They'll help democracy burn for share price. Media has become no different than anyone else with too much money and influence.
There is only one normal candidate in this recent, and that is Kamala Harris.
How about wearing these kinds of shirts in front of your MAGAs neighbors? 👇 🤔
https://libtees-2.creator-spring.com
Just imagine their reaction! 🤣
It's as though some are striving to convert our country into USA Inc where the CEO is trump and the board is, well, you know who, most anyone with a few billion.
After I posted previously, I read a story from, ironically, the Washington Post, that many here may have seen already, but if not, he is The Guardian reporting without a paywall (Musk is like Trump in that they think they are exceptional and thus do not need to follow the order of things set by the rest of society): https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/oct/26/elon-musk-illegal-immigration