…so…guess we’re doing this now

The detonation of walkie-talkies around Lebanon a day after scores of pagers used by Hezbollah officials blew up is a one-two punch that drives home the extent of Israel’s penetration of its Shia foe’s defences across its northern border.

…the walkie-talkie part seems pretty solid but I saw stuff claiming electric locks & solar arrays & all kinds of stuff, too…which most of this stuff hasn’t mentioned…so…maybe that was bollocks…but…either way

Israel has not admitted responsibility for the blasts but there is little doubt around the region that this was an operation bearing the Mossad’s hallmarks. The more difficult questions concern its purpose: do these attacks represent tactical surprise for its own sake, or are they part of a broader strategy, and where does that strategy lead? Is this a prelude to an all-out war in Lebanon, or a substitute for one?

The miniature bombs have gone off in Lebanon at a time of increasingly bellicose language from Netanyahu’s coalition. At a late-night meeting on Tuesday, the security cabinet agreed to broaden the country’s stated war aims from Gaza to the north, to include the goal of enabling the return of over 60,000 Israelis displaced by cross-border exchanges with Hezbollah since the conflict erupted on 7 October.

…& on the one hand it really is like a plot from a movie in a sort of fascinating way…the pagers that blew up were branded by a company that disavows having manufactured them…the lot that did list next to no employees & don’t appear to have a production location anyone’s found in hungary…which is a ways from the taiwainese bunch whose brand went on the things…although they apparently got fairly signficantly hacked a while back so “someone” knew all about their supply chain…& had at least one payment hung up for a while while the authorities tried to determine if it came from maybe-iran in a way it shouldn’t have…it’s a whole precarious-sounding deal with a laughable amount of variables & moving parts that you’d struggle to take seriously in that movie…& yet

The detonating devices in Lebanon offer Netanyahu the benefits of a spectacular, daring success, showing he is taking the battle to the enemy in the north, in the knowledge that Hezbollah, and its Iranian backers, have looked anxious to avoid being drawn into a full-scale war with Israel. The Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, sought to mislead his followers by exaggerating the success of a mass rocket and drone attack last month against strategic targets like Israeli intelligence headquarters, to lessen internal political pressure to inflict greater damage on Israel.

…I think I’ve lost count of the number of things that have made people remark that “the implications” about the “asymmetry of the intelligence” disparity between israel & iran/lebanon/hezbollah/hamas ought to make one side of that stop & think…but…you’d think…one of the things they’d think each time that’s been a take is that it looked a whole lot like an escalation…&…those aren’t exactly synonymous with calming influences…so…deep breath, I guess?

Nasrallah is now under even more pressure to deliver a spectacular success of his own. The Israeli security agency, Shin Bet, claimed this week to have foiled a Hezbollah plot to assassinate a former senior member of the country’s security establishment. If such a plot had succeeded, the demands within Israel for the IDF to deal with the Hezbollah threat “once and for all” would have grown significantly.

It is an inherently unstable situation. Hezbollah needs to maintain its credibility as the tip of the spear of Islamic resistance to Israel. Netanyahu needs to keep Israel in a continual state of war to put off the threat of elections, and with them his risk of a fall from office with corruption charges pending in the courts. Both seek to stay on the brink of a wider war, without the power necessarily to stop events taking on a momentum of their own and taking the region over the edge.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/18/israels-double-punch-humiliation-of-hezbollah-is-a-dance-on-the-edge-of-an-abyss

…I mean…yesterday’s newspaper is today’s fish-wrap & all that stuff

But Hezbollah gets to write the next chapter in this real-life thriller. And Israeli officials were preparing Tuesday night for retaliatory attacks that, if not contained, could trigger the all-out regional war U.S. officials have been trying to head off for nearly a year.

…but…sometimes there’s a lot in a throwaway remark…maybe?

“When Hezbollah considers how to respond, they should consider that Israel may have more surprises for them. And Israel does,” said one source familiar with Israeli thinking, during an interview on Tuesday.

…I dunno…I read that before the walkie talkie second act & this morning that part has me thinking some different stuff about what kind of source & how familiar they might be with whose thoughts

U.S. officials were in contact with Iran through a back channel on Tuesday to convey that the United States did not have any role on the attack. The administration’s sense, for now, is that Hezbollah is confused and panicked, and that it won’t make an immediate military response. If there is an attack, U.S. officials believe Israel can contain the damage — and that, if necessary, the United States will help defend Israel.

…don’t worry about the crinkling noises…that’s just all the tinfoil I seem to be festooned with this morning…but…uhh…if we briefly look over here

Iranian hackers sought to interest President Joe Biden’s campaign in information stolen from rival Donald Trump’s campaign, sending unsolicited emails to people associated with the then-Democratic candidate in an effort to interfere in the 2024 election, the FBI and other US agencies have said.
[…]
The emails were received before the hack of the Trump campaign was publicly acknowledged, and there’s no evidence the recipients of the emails knew their origin.

The announcement is the latest US government effort to call out what officials say is Iran’s brazen, ongoing work to interfere in the election, including a hack-and-leak campaign that the FBI and other federal agencies linked last month to Tehran.

Iran has denied interfering in US affairs. On Wednesday its permanent mission to the United Nations in New York said the latest allegations were “fundamentally unfounded, and wholly inadmissible.”

US officials in recent months have used criminal charges, sanctions and public advisories to detail actions taken by foreign adversaries to influence the election, including an indictment targeting a covert Russian effort to spread pro-Russia content to US audiences.

It’s a stark turnaround from the government’s response in 2016, when Obama administration officials were criticised for not being forthcoming about the Russian interference they were seeing on Trump’s behalf as he ran against Hillary Clinton.

In this case, the hackers sent emails in late June and early July to people who were associated with Biden’s campaign before he dropped out. The emails “contained an excerpt taken from stolen, non-public material from former President Trump’s campaign as text in the emails,” according to a statement released by the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

The agencies have said the Trump campaign hack and an attempted breach of the Biden-Harris campaign are part of an effort to undermine voters’ faith in the election and to stoke discord.

…lotta people out there trying to be the clever bugger…& some of ’em are iran…who roll with the paging-the-blast-zone crowd…to the point of not just bankrolling but in at least one thing I read…procurement…specifically of the specific things that they gave hezbollah that then blew up in their faces…or pockets…or whatever…so…I don’t know what that means in terms of bang for your buck…but I imagine a lot of mixed feelings might feature fairly significantly…so…err…don’t shoot the messenger?

Trump’s campaign said the leaks was “further proof the Iranians are actively interfering in the election” to help Harris.

Intelligence officials have said Iran opposes Trump’s reelection, seeing him as more likely to increase tension between Washington and Tehran. Trump’s administration ended a nuclear deal with Iran, reimposed sanctions and ordered the killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Suleimani, an act that prompted Iran’s leaders to vow revenge.

Iran’s intrusion on the Trump campaign was cited as just one of the cyber-attacks and disinformation campaigns identified by tech companies and national security officials at a hearing Wednesday of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Executives from Meta, Google and Microsoft briefed lawmakers on their plans for safeguarding the election, and the attacks they’d seen so far.

“The most perilous time I think will come 48 hours before the election,” Microsoft president Brad Smith told lawmakers during the hearing, which focused on American tech companies’ efforts to safeguard the election from foreign disinformation and cyber-attacks.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/19/iran-sent-hacked-trump-documents-to-biden-campaign-fbi-says

…deep breath…think calm thoughts…where were we?

[…] if necessary, the United States will help defend Israel.

…oh, right…yeah…I was trying not to sound like a raving paranoid who thinks bibi is the sort of guy who’d flirt with a global hot war because he’d rather not find out what happens if he’s not “heroically” defending israel from an existential threat & something tries to save israel from him…&…the other ones…that’s right…how’s that going, then?

Israel’s apparent decision to launch the attack was probably driven by both political and operational factors. The U.S.-led cease-fire plan is stalled, and with it the hope of a diplomatic deal with Hezbollah to calm the border. And having developed the extraordinary ability to turn their adversary’s communications devices into bombs, Israel might have judged that this capability must be used before it could be discovered and the pagers disarmed, as the newsletter Al Monitor reported on Tuesday night.

Israel’s desire to strike Hezbollah harder reflects a broad view among Israelis that the country can’t afford what has become a prolonged war of attrition with Lebanese militia members. Though Israel has effectively neutered Hamas militarily in Gaza, Hezbollah has continued to expand its rocket attacks against northern Israel. More than 60,000 Israelis have been forced to evacuate their homes in the north, leaving behind what amount to ghost towns.

The political pressure to deal with “the north,” as Israelis call it, has become nearly as intense as the desire for the hostages’ freedom. “When it comes to Lebanon and the north, there is a growing consensus in Israel that something needs to be done,” said the source familiar with Israeli thinking. The source also noted that the Israeli cabinet on Monday had added a new goal to its list of war aims: The return of Israelis to their homes near the border with Lebanon.

…mission creep, anyone? …chalk up some extra aims when apparently they haven’t finished checking off the ones they started with……hamas may be “effectively neutered” in gaza…but…gaza & the west bank are “effectively” a lot of things at this point…almost none of them good…& most of the worst ones pretty hard to argue not attributable to a bunch of ways bibi’s war-is-the-answer approach has continued to behave in ways that make the US look hamstrung…which in the current context doesn’t do the dems much of anything but harm…& oranjeboomer (that one‘s mostly for @farscythe) was so malleable that while jared was solving the middle east on his watch they shifted the embassy…which…rough & ready…was them getting played in a fashion every previous administration had understood to the point of managing to keep from going there…so…you gotta think your boy bibi would like nothing better than to have the clown back to keep him sitting pretty while the entire region goes down & maybe takes the rest of the globe with it by hooking up with the european theatre for a world tour the like of which hasn’t been seen in a generation

…yes…all this foil is very shiny & not at all practical for wearing out of the house where people might see me…so I can’t keep swathing myself in it if I aim to go much of anyplace today…but…I woke up like this…& I don’t think it was aliens…so…we do the best we can with the circumstances we find ourselves in, right?

What likely happened, U.S. sources told me, was that Israeli agents managed to get access to the pagers themselves before they were distributed and inserted small amounts of very powerful explosives. Malware inserted into the pagers’ operating systems likely created a cyber trigger, so that when the pagers received a call from a particular number — or some other signal — the explosives detonated, the sources said.

From a technical standpoint, it was a brilliant operation. Everyone on the military network was a target — including, it appears, the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon, who was shown on videos entering a hospital after being wounded. The Hezbollah network has now lost its special internal communications system. And because it appears to have Hezbollah’s number, quite literally, Israel can send messages warning surviving operatives that they will be killed if they try to retaliate, one U.S. source noted.

Beyond its devastating effect on Hezbollah, the attack signals the beginning of a new and very dangerous era in cyberwarfare. Any device that is connected to the internet can potentially be transformed into a weapon. The circuits of a “smart” appliance can be manipulated so that they malfunction in a dangerous way. In the Stuxnet cyberattack against Iran’s nuclear program, malware caused centrifuges to spin so wildly that they became unstable and self-destructed. In the future of what’s called of the “Internet of Things,” the errant device could be your phone, refrigerator or television.

With each new advance of weapons technology, designers imagine they’ll have exclusive use of the deadly tools of war. The United States once had what seemed a monopoly on drones, for example, but they’re now a pervasive instrument of war. Even the audacious 007 would know that his enemies can turn his weapons against him.

The ominous implications of the pager attack against Hezbollah [WaPo]

…so…that’s fun…but…if we’re going ominous…might even be skimping?

Although no party has claimed credit for the action, Hezbollah, which appears to have been the target of the attacks, blamed Israel. U.S. officials speaking on background have asserted that Israel intercepted a shipment of pagers and inserted explosives in them. According to Reuters, “Hezbollah opted to distribute pagers to its members across the group’s various branches – from fighters to medics working in its relief services.” Axios cited a former Israeli official who said Israeli intelligence services had originally planned to use the modified pagers as a “surprise opening blow in an all out war to try to cripple Hezbollah.” Unnamed U.S. officials told Axios that Israel decided to detonate the pagers now due to fears Hezbollah had discovered they had been altered and thus Israel had to “use or lose” the capability.

The attacks raise concerns about civilian harm and whether further escalation in the hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah is likely to ensue. Alongside those concerns, the exploding pagers in Lebanon raise a number of factual and legal questions related to the law of armed conflict, or international humanitarian law (IHL), given that Israel and Hezbollah are engaged in an ongoing armed conflict. (Professor Kevin Jon Heller touched on some related issues in his article examining the 2008 killing of then-head of Hezbollah’s international operations, Imad Mughniyah.)

Law of War Questions Raised by Exploding Pagers in Lebanon [justsecurity.org]

…remember “church & state”…like…when it invoked there needing to be visible daylight between them, I mean…which was always confusing when for the longest time it seemed like you couldn’t get elected unless you went to the right church…but…when it stops trying to make kids pray while they swear allegiance & starts looking like it’s in a hurry to get to the rapture already…I’d appreciate it if it would back the fuck up off of that state?

The Lord works in mysterious ways. Six weeks after his improbable rise from obscurity to speaker of the House in late 2023, Louisiana’s Mike Johnson decided to break bread with a group of Christian nationalists. He gave the keynote address (at the Museum of the Bible) to the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, a group whose founder, “proud” Christian nationalist Jason Rapert, has said: “I reject that being a Christian Nationalist is somehow unseemly or wrong.”

Rapert’s organization promoted the pine-tree “Appeal to Heaven” flag, which was among the banners flown at the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6, 2021 — and which, by total and remarkable coincidence, was proudly displayed outside Johnson’s congressional office.

Confirmed speakers and award recipients for the gathering Johnson addressed included: a man who proposed that gay people should be forced to wear “a label across their forehead reading, ‘This can be hazardous to your health’ ”; a woman who blamed gay people for Noah’s flood and more recent natural disasters; and various adherents of “dominionist” theology, which holds that the United States should be governed under biblical law by Christians.

“I’ll tell you a secret, since media is not here,” Johnson teased the group, unaware that his hosts were streaming video of the event. Johnson informed his audience that God “had been speaking to me” about becoming speaker, communicating “very specifically,” in fact, waking him at night and giving him “plans and procedures.”

God, said Johnson, told him that “we’re coming to a Red Sea moment” and that Johnson needed to be prepared — to be Moses! Throughout the speakership battle, “the Lord kept telling me to wait,” Johnson recounted. “And it came to the end, and the Lord said, ‘Now, step forward.’” Johnson told them that “only God saw the path through the roiling sea.”

…gee, mike…did the big guy stop calling or did they just up your meds…only

At the moment, Johnson and his caucus are in a typical crisis of their own making. The government runs out of money in less than two weeks, and Trump has ordered Johnson to shut it down if Democrats won’t swallow a poison pill that makes it harder to register to vote. But after a seven-week summer recess, Johnson tried to put the plan on the House floor last week — only to pull it because he didn’t have enough Republican votes. He’s trying again this week, against long odds.With days to go before a shutdown, House Republicans don’t even have a concept of a plan.

…word to the wise, mike…I dunno if there’s a god…or if you’d comprehend it happening if they spoke to you…but I am pretty god-damned certain that god is not a sweaty orange felon from florida trying to adapt a grifter’s instincts to the appearance of a political career by monkey-see-monkey-do-ing his way through what he thinks are aspirational examples like vlad & bibi & modi & orban & the-actual-fucking-nazis-I-fucking-can’t-believe-that-shit-either-but-here-we-fucking-are

…we call those “context clues”, mike…that help clear some shit up for you?

Today, Johnson’s run looks anything but heaven-sent. In the first 18 months of this Congress, only 70 laws were enacted. Calculations by political scientist Tobin Grant, who tracks congressional output over time, put this Congress on course to be the do-nothingest since 1859-1861 — when the Union was dissolving. But Johnson’s House isn’t merely unproductive; it is positively lunatic. Republicans have filled their committee hearings and their bills with white nationalist attacks on racial diversity and immigrants, attempts to ban abortion and to expand access to the sort of guns used in mass shootings, incessant harassment of LGBTQ Americans, and even routine potshots at the U.S. military. They insulted each other’s private parts, accused each other of sexual and financial crimes, and scuffled with each other in the Capitol basement. They screamed “Bullshit!” at President Joe Biden during the State of the Union address. They stood up for the Confederacy and used their official powers to spread conspiracy theories about the “Deep State.” Some even lent credence to the idea that there has been a century-old Deep State coverup of space aliens, with possible involvement by Mussolini and the Vatican.

…wait a second…do I have this backwards?

…have I just gone tinfoil-blind & actually I’m the one *not* wrapped in that shit head to toe?

…because…that would actually explain some shit I for one can not

They devoted 18 months to a failed attempt to impeach Biden, which produced nothing but Marjorie Taylor Greene publicly displaying posters of Hunter Biden engaging in sex acts. One “whistleblower” defected to Russia, another worked with Russian intelligence and is under indictment for fabricating his claims, and still another is on the lam, evading charges of being a Chinese agent.

As soon as Biden withdrew his candidacy, they promptly forgot their probe of Biden’s “corruption” and rushed to launch a new series of investigations into Kamala Harris (over her record on border security) and Tim Walz (over his military service and “cozy relationship” with China).

After a number of failed attempts, they did impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas (the first such action against a Cabinet officer since 1876) without identifying any high crimes or misdemeanors he had committed; the Senate dismissed the articles without a trial. House Republicans created a “weaponization committee” under the excitable Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), but it was panned even by right-wing commentators when it produced little more than a list of conspiracy theories from the likes of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard.

They lapsed repeatedly into fits of censure resolutions, contempt citations and other pointless acts of vengeance. In all of its history, the House had voted to censure one of its own members only seven times; in the two weeks after Johnson became speaker, members of the House tried to censure each other eight times.

Give them credit for this: a bipartisan debt deal to avoid a default crisis that they themselves created. A pair of temporary spending bills (both passed with mostly Democratic votes) to avert a government shutdown crisis that they themselves created. They made hardly a dent in federal spending. Their attempts to stoke culture wars with poison-pill legislation went nowhere. Their months-long failure to approve arms for Ukraine enabled Vladimir Putin to inflict punishing losses on Ukrainian forces.

In lieu of consequential legislating, they passed bills such as the Refrigerator Freedom Act, the Gas Stove Protection and Freedom Act and the Stop Unaffordable Dishwasher Standards (SUDS) Act. On the House floor, the Republican majority suffered one failure after another, even on routine procedural votes. Seven times (and counting), House Republicans voted down their own leaders’ routine attempts to begin floor debates — something that hadn’t happened once in the previous 20 years.

…meanwhile bibi’s blowing up pagers in the pockets of terrorists while fighting a war while fending off the judiciary that wants to put him out of our misery…is there any part of the GOP that looks like it even dreams of having its shit together on that kind of scale under that kind of strain…asking for a friend?

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.), stood on the House floor and demanded: “One thing. I want my Republican colleagues to give me one thing — one — that I can go campaign on and say we did.”

…fuck, no…I said “friend”…of course I wasn’t talking about chip-on-his-shoulder boy, there…although…it’s a sound point…what is a thing they actually did that they can treat like an asset & not a liability on the campaign trail…there’s usually at least a couple…remembering to put one a year on the books isn’t a high bar…but…not sure “unaffordable dishwasher standards” cuts a lot of ice on the doorstep

The chaos has one source. While Johnson and his House GOP colleagues may think they’ve been hearing the voice of God, they’ve actually been heeding the voice of the “Orange Jesus,” as Tennessee Republican Rep. Mark Green called Trump (in Liz Cheney’s telling).

Johnson owes his job entirely to Trump, who backed Johnson’s speakership bid last year and shot down Greene’s effort to oust him in May. Johnson has reciprocated by relinquishing control of the House agenda to Trump, most prominently when the speaker, responding to Trump’s orders, killed a bipartisan border-security bill — the toughest in decades — of the sort Johnson himself had been demanding for months.

With each election since Trump became a political force a decade ago, the House GOP caucus has swelled with ever-more-exotic hooligans, saboteurs and conspiracy theorists in the MAGA mold.

…at this point there’s a bullet list of an array of batshit people with seats in congress that you can scroll through if you click through but I make you do enough of that as it is, so…skipping past that

With such an extraordinary lineup of lunacy, it was going to be difficult for members of the freshman class to distinguish themselves as the nuttiest of the nutty. But there were many fine attempts.

Florida Republican Cory Mills celebrated his appointments to the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees by handing out inert grenades to members of Congress. Mike Collins of Georgia blamed a spate of train derailments on “diversity, equity and inclusion” policies. Trump-backed Harriet Hageman of Wyoming, who had ousted Cheney in a primary, engaged in conspiracy theorizing so bizarre that (Trump-appointed) FBI Director Christopher Wray called it “insane.” Eli Crane of Arizona referred to Black Americans as “colored people” on the floor of the House. Iowa’s Zach Nunn described the bloody Jan. 6 insurrection as “a bunch of middle-aged individuals … walking onto the floor.”

And from Long Island came a young gay Republican who was a “proud American Jew,” grandson of Holocaust survivors, son of a woman who died in the World Trade Center on 9/11, had been a star volleyball player at Baruch College, got a business degree from New York University and top jobs at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, saved thousands of dogs and cats with his charity and lost employees of one of his companies at the Orlando gay nightclub shooting. As the world now knows, all of it was a lie. In real life, George Santos had been a drag queen in Brazil. He pleaded guilty in August to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft and faces at least two years in prison and must repay those he defrauded.

This was, without a doubt, the zaniest bunch of lawmakers to enter the House of Representatives since … well, since the Republican Class of ’20.

That batch included Georgia’s Greene, who was famous for, among other things, promoting such beliefs as: Jewish space lasers start forest fires; Democratic officials ought to be executed; pandemic public health restrictions were akin to actions of Nazi Germany; joining the U.S. military is “like throwing your life away”; the 9/11 attacks were an inside job; various school shootings were faked; members of Congress are being spied on by “Nancy Pelosi’s Gazpacho Police”; Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are murderers; and “the Democrats are a party of pedophiles.”
[…]
The GOP Class of ’20 also included a gun dealer, Andrew Clyde of Georgia. Clyde handed out AR-15 lapel pins to colleagues and opposed the awarding of the Congressional Gold Medal to police officers who had defended the Capitol on Jan. 6. Clyde had called the attack a “normal tourist visit.” Clyde, whose gun stores had been monitored by the federal government because many guns sold there had been used in crimes, has attempted to block the federal government from supporting gun-violence prevention research.
[…]
Classmate Victoria Spartz of Indiana, an immigrant from Ukraine who voted against aid to Ukraine, routinely mystifies colleagues with her rambling speeches and her constant reversals (she announced her retirement from Congress and then ran for reelection anyway). This summer she was caught at Dulles International Airport with an unloaded .380-caliber handgun in her carry-on bag.

And rounding out the roster for the Class of ’20 was Ronny Jackson of Texas, who as White House physician under Donald Trump was known as the “Candyman” for liberally dispensing pills without paperwork. His subsequent nomination by Trump to be secretary of veterans affairs fell through over allegations that he had been drunk on the job, had an explosive temper and fostered a toxic work environment.
[…]
These rookie rowdies joined well-established oddballs such as Florida’s Matt Gaetz (the subject of an ethics probe into sexual misconduct), Louisiana’s Clay Higgins (who sends coded messages to militias and claims the FBI instigated the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol using “ghost buses”), white-nationalist Paul Gosar of Arizona and Pennsylvania’s Scott Perry, whose conspiracy ideas about the “stolen” 2020 election were so bizarre that even Trump’s Justice Department called them “pure insanity.”
[…]
On one level, these guys have at least had the minor virtue of entertainment value: Santos’s campaign expenditures for OnlyFans and Botox; Santos going to a karaoke bar full of journalists, and, another time, being chased down a Capitol hallway carrying an unidentified baby; the House passing an unemployment fraud bill the same day Santos was being indicted on a charge of unemployment fraud; Greene telling Boebert she was a “little bitch” on the House floor and inviting former British prime minister David Cameron to “kiss my ass”; Greene leading the Mayorkas impeachment for what she pronounced as “indicktable crimes,” calling for a “very tedious impeachment inquiry” of Biden and drawing guffaws when, presiding over the House, she insisted on “decorum.”

McCarthy, in his short run as speaker, produced endless amusement: Having a bidet installed in the speaker’s office; delivering a “kidney punch” to Tennessee Republican Tim Burchett; threatening Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) that “I’ll kick your ass” on the House floor after Swalwell called him weak; and promoting the allegation that Gaetz, the man responsible for his ouster, “slept with a 17-year-old.” Gaetz, for his part, left a draft of his “motion to vacate the chair” — the ouster of McCarthy — in a Capitol men’s room. On two occasions, Republican colleagues came close to assaulting Gaetz, and one of them had to be restrained on the House floor.

And yet the crazy kept coming. A House committee adopted a new rule allowing members to carry loaded guns to hearings. Thomas Massie, a senior House Republican, argued on the floor that guns should be allowed in bars. James Comer, chairman of the Oversight Committee, called a Democrat on the panel a “smurf.” Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.) attacked Attorney General Garland at a hearing over the “World Naked Bike Ride.” Republicans took up a resolution to condemn the Russian Revolution of 1917, Joseph Stalin’s Ukraine famine, Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward and Pol Pot’s killing fields — but they had to shelve and rewrite a simple resolution praising law enforcement out of concern that it might appear to praise the FBI. They took up legislation to defund the IRS, then later complained about poor service at the underfunded IRS.
[…]
Fully 161 House Republicans, or nearly three-quarters of the caucus, voted to eliminate the Education Department. When that failed, they attempted a 28 percent cut to the department’s budget, including a $15 billion cut in aid to low-income Title I schools.

Most House Republicans (112 to 101) voted to cut off funds to Ukraine as it defends itself from Vladimir Putin’s invasion. They also took up on the floor a Greene amendment to pull the United States out of NATO.

An overwhelming majority of 177 House Republicans voted to keep the names of military bases that honor Confederate officers.

More than half of the House GOP caucus — 125 Republicans — signed on as co-sponsors of the Life at Conception Act, which would ban all abortion nationwide, block the abortion pill mifepristone and even shut down in vitro fertilization. The House Republican Study Committee, which counts 80 percent of House Republicans as members, embraced a nationwide ban on abortion from the moment of conception and the rescinding of approval of mifepristone.

House Republicans promised to balance the budget in 10 years without touching Social Security and Medicare, or cutting defense spending or veterans’ pensions, or allowing the Trump tax cuts to lapse. To accomplish all this, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Republicans would literally have to eliminate everything — everything — else the government does: No more Homeland Security, no more Border Patrol or FBI; no more Coast Guard, air traffic control, or federal funds for education or highways; no agricultural programs; no housing, food, or disaster assistance; no cancer research or veterans’ health care; no diplomacy or space exploration; no courts — and no Congress. House Republicans passed legislation that would have slashed most domestic spending by 30 percent and eliminated all green-energy tax credits. (It went nowhere in the Senate.)
[…]
The Republicans added provisions to various appropriations bills blocking funds from going to anything that might qualify as promoting “racial equity,” critical race theory, DEI or affirmative action. They added a provision excluding undocumented immigrants from census counts. Another blocked funds for the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Latino. They voted to block research on climate change. They attempted various provisions blocking abortions, even in cases of rape and incest, prohibiting Medicaid from covering abortions, stripping funds for family planning, eliminating fetal tissue research and forbidding the military from covering travel expenses for female service members who need abortions. They sought to outlaw programs that promoted racial cohesion in the military and to ban books that mentioned LGBTQ issues. They tried to block transgender kids from competing in sports, to prevent Pride flags from flying at federal facilities, to protect those who discriminate against same-sex couples and to prohibit funds for gender-affirming care. Other pieces of legislation sought to end all income taxes, abolish the IRS, withdraw from the World Health Organization and repeal Obamacare.

Johnson and other senior Republicans have invoked the racist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory. Rep. Lance Gooden (R-Tex.) alleged that colleague Judy Chu (D-Calif.) should not have a security clearance because of her Chinese ancestry. Tony Gonzales (R-Tex.) called his colleagues “scumbags,” telling CNN’s Dana Bash that “these people used to walk around with white hoods at night. Now they’re walking around with white hoods in the daytime.”

House Republican leaders used “emergency” legislative procedures to remove Rep. Ilhan Omar, (D-Minn.) a Muslim American, from the Foreign Affairs Committee. Meanwhile, they restored the committee memberships of Greene and Gosar, both with white-nationalist ties and both of whom fantasized publicly about violence against Democrats. Nor are Democrats the only targets of violent threats: Republicans who opposed Jordan’s bid for the speakership reported receiving death threats against themselves and their families.

…profoundly unserious people can still be profound & serious threats…it’s…confusing?

“This is a sham trial!” said Trump, inside the courthouse.

“Sham of a trial,” parroted Johnson, outside the courthouse.

“There’s no crime!” said Trump, inside the courthouse.

“There’s no crime here,” repeated Johnson, outside the courthouse.

“It’s election interference!” proclaimed Trump.

“It is election interference,” said Johnson.

Biden is “weaponizing the Department of Justice,” announced Trump.

“Weaponized against President Trump,” Johnson echoed.

Even by the standards of the Trump era, it was appalling behavior by the highest-ranking officer of the legislative branch. Without a shred of evidence, he alleged that “the judge’s own daughter is making millions of dollars” off the trial. He claimed a prosecutor in the case had “recently received over $10,000 in payments from the Democratic National Committee.” He alleged that, in Trump’s classified documents case, prosecutors “manipulated documents” and “might have tampered with the evidence” — conduct “so egregious” that it caused that trial to be “indefinitely postponed.” Each of these was false or, at best, deeply distorted. For good measure, Johnson even offered an inflated count of the crowd size at a recent Trump rally — just to please the boss.

“The people are losing faith right now in this country, in our institutions,” Johnson said. “They’re losing faith in our system of justice. And the reason for that is because they see it being abused as it is being done here in New York.”

In reality, people are losing faith in our institutions because Johnson and others sworn to uphold those institutions are instead attacking them to appease their patron.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/09/18/speaker-johnson-trump-2024/

…ya think?

…what happened to “cometh the hour, cometh the man”?

The most recent example of what I’m talking about appeared in this very newspaper. I refer you to this Post headline from Tuesday: “Trump, without evidence, blames ‘rhetoric’ of Biden, Harris for possible assassination attempt.” I’m in no way picking on my own news site here, which I hold to be among the very best; these kinds of phrases — “without evidence,” “baselessly claimed,” etc. — have over the years become ubiquitous in stories about Trump in the national media. Often they sound like something out of the Onion, as in this May headline from Reuters: “Trump, without evidence, claims migrants in U.S. illegally ‘building army’ to attack Americans.”

There are good reasons for why this came to be. Trump is, to put it bluntly, a shameless public liar, which is something we haven’t really seen before. Spreading untruth, and assuming that the benefit will ultimately outweigh the consequence, is his life strategy, which is why the politician to whom I’ve most often compared him is P.T. Barnum. (Barnum was briefly the mayor of Bridgeport, Conn. There’s a museum and everything.)

…I get it…I loved the wire…but when it got around to applying that lens of its to the media component…it seemed like the punches were maybe pulled a little…comparatively-speaking

Here’s the dilemma. The news media can’t credulously publish things we know to be untrue — and yet, if the president says them, we can’t exactly not publish them, either. At the same time, we find ourselves pressured by critics on social media for whom no level of scrutiny, when it comes to Trump, will ever be enough.

…like

So, at some point, we decided that the best way to handle Trump’s more dubious assertions was to take the unprecedented step of prominently labeling them as baseless or unproven. Problem solved.

Except it hasn’t solved anything, other than to make a bunch of preening media critics feel good. If anything, in the contest between Trump’s credibility and ours, this policy of hyper-skepticism has only made things worse.

First, it’s an unreasonable standard. It’s one thing to say that Trump’s stories of a stolen election or dog-eating migrants are false — this we know from reporting. But when it comes to something like this claim about Democratic rhetoric leading to violence, what kind of evidence is Trump supposed to cite? Must a candidate walk around all day with an armful of data to back up every assertion? Is there really no room to advance a controversial and speculative argument without producing slides to support it?

In fact, while Trump’s latest allegation might be incendiary, there’s no reason we ought to dismiss it out of hand. Haven’t Democrats repeatedly said he poses an existential threat to the democracy and is a tool of the Russians? (I, for one, believe both of these things.) It’s not crazy to think these kinds of statements could incite violence, any more than it’s crazy to think that Trump’s rhetoric led to the sacking of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Saying so shouldn’t come with a courtroom-level burden of proof.

…I dunno…how much use is a courtroom-level of proof when das tangerine stan is still free as a bird, anyway…&…for the love of all that’s holy…if “it’s not crazy to think these kinds of statements could incite violence” then WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK DOES THAT IMPLY ABOUT “THOSE” KINDS OF STATEMENTS THAT FUCKING DO IT EXPLICITLY YOU FUCKING CAN’T-SEE-THE-FOREST-FOR-THE-TREES NUMPTY…you’re only writing a fucking article on trying to get a fucking grip…don’t trouble yourself to fucking contextualize the bits you’re pleased with yourself about, or anything…god forbid anyone expect that kind of thing from the press corps…it’s not their fault…they only play their audience when they get played…& sometimes they only get played because they took their lead from someone who did…so that’s not even them getting played, really…so if they pass that along then the source & the destination get played but the press can feel all kinds of good about itself for being clever enough not to be?

…I mean…that’s a bunch of crap you’re currently wondering why the fuck you bothered reading, right?

…& I swear it makes more sense to me than half the shit I read in “the actual news”…so…my contribution isn’t the only thing in that equation that doesn’t add up right

Second, it’s a double standard. Why is Trump the only politician for whom this burden exists? In this month’s debate, Vice President Kamala Harris gleefully repeated this assertion that Trump had promised a “bloodbath” if he weren’t elected in November, even though his quote pretty clearly referred to the economics of car manufacturing. Wasn’t she speaking baselessly and without evidence?

…ok…full disclosure…I think that’s a fair cop, actually…I long ago lost count of the times I’ve seen some shit & thought “why the fuck did you do that – you had all kinds of unimpeachable facts that ought to be more than enough on your side of the argument & that rhetorical flourish doesn’t get anyone anything that outweighs the disadvantage of the part where it’s a reach undermining all the shit that should be intrinsically immune to undermining – what the fuck is that about?”

The larger problem with all this selective labeling is that it’s almost certainly having the opposite effect of what we intend. Rather than highlight Trump’s falsehoods for readers who might be inclined to believe him, our need to append qualifiers to everything he says is making us look like we’re out to discredit him. In other words, we appear to be proving Trump’s entire point not just about the news media, but about the nation’s elite institutions as a whole. Rather than reinforcing trust in news coverage, I fear we’re further eroding it.

All of which really matters, because in seven weeks Trump could well win a second term. And if that happens, we have spent almost a decade covering him without figuring out how to hold him accountable for lying without making ourselves seem petty and self-interested. Yes, rebut the things Trump says that are demonstrably untrue, but don’t go out of your way to discredit everything he says just because you fear that readers might believe him, or because you don’t want the backlash from some sanctimonious journalism professor.

Surely we can manage to call out blatant mistruths without abandoning all pretense of fairness and objectivity, which is essential to what we do. Although, I admit, I have very little evidence to back that up.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/09/18/trump-without-evidence-news-media-fact-checking-credibility/

…evidence hasn’t evidenced all that successful a track record, now you mention it

“Leaving aside the question of what capacity the world needs right now, I would say that unfair subsidies do continue, based on the evidence that I’ve seen,” Gore said. “Way under-market prices for loans is a big part of it. It’s a challenge for the US and for the rest of the world outside China to react in a sensible and appropriate way.”

Whether the US has been reacting in a sensible and appropriate way by slapping huge import tariffs on Chinese clean tech products is a matter for debate. So too is the precise level of Chinese state financial support for its green industries, and whether it counts as unfair, especially in the context of large-scale green subsidies rolled out by the US, EU and other major economies.

What’s incontestable is the tension between these fair trade questions and the world’s need for low-cost green products on a large scale — the “capacity the world needs right now”, as Gore put it.

That’s made plain in today’s Sustainability Trends Report published by Generation Investment Management, the $33.8bn green asset management business where Gore is the co-founder and chair. The report repeatedly highlights China as an unrivalled driver of green production, notably in this passage:

China is the world’s most important manufacturer of advanced batteries; it is the only country able to refine some critical minerals; and it is by far the largest producer of solar panels, electric cars, electric buses and electric scooters. It is installing more renewable power than the rest of the world combined, and as a result, may reach peak emissions years earlier than expected, possibly within the next year or two. The brightest spot of the energy transition — the tremendous fall in the cost of solar panels — can be laid at China’s feet, with a big boost from Germany, which created the first large market for the panels.

Yet that extraordinary growth, to many politicians in the west, looks like a strategic threat to their economic competitiveness in industries of the future. President Joe Biden’s administration has slapped import tariffs of 100 per cent and 50 per cent, respectively, on Chinese electric vehicles and solar cells. The EU is poised to impose tariffs of up to 48 per cent on Chinese EVs.

…is this what they mean by perverse incentives?

But as Columbia University’s Adam Tooze put it recently, “to say that the world has got too many photovoltaic panels” can sound absurd in the context of the climate crisis. Especially when these panels are helping to drive a massive acceleration in the growth of renewable energy, including in cash-strapped nations like Pakistan, where the growth of distributed solar has been “remarkable”, Gore noted.

While China has significantly scaled back many of its green subsidy programmes, state support remains hefty. BYD, the country’s biggest EV maker, alone received purchase subsidies of €1.6bn ($1.8bn) in 2022, according to a study by Germany’s Kiel Institute for the World Economy.

The US has also rolled out large-scale state support for green industry through Biden’s $370bn Inflation Reduction act, but it has made far less progress in shifting its balance of energy investment away from fossil fuels.

In China, $3.20 was invested in clean energy last year for every dollar invested in fossil fuels, despite its continued development of coal-fired power plants, according to the International Energy Agency. In the European Union, that figure was $10.90. In the US, it was just $1.23, well below the global average of $1.80.

Gore suggested that the US’s ratio is set to improve. “We lost four years under a previous administration, and the signature accomplishment of the present administration took a while to put together, and it takes a little while longer to get the money out the door to the recipients,” he said.

Worldwide, the IEA forecasts total energy investment of $3tn this year, with a split of roughly 2:1 between clean energy and fossil fuels. That ratio is up from 1:1 five years ago — but this still means a trillion more dollars deployed towards extracting and burning fossil fuels this year.

Al Gore’s latest inconvenient truth [FT]

…so…although, I admit, I have very little “evidence” to back it up…in terms of a natural fit…if we call one side of this whole mystifying quagmire team #burnthatshitdownlaughingallthewaytothebank…do some pieces sort of fall into place…or is that just an optical illusion brought on by paying the wrong sort of attention to what the world seems to be telling the likes of me?