Trump's Favorite Newspaper Has Turned Against Him

A piece at CNN is reporting that the New York Post, long a Donald Trump ally/apologist is finally kicking Trump to the curb and calling on him "STOP THE INSANITY,"  . . . . "You lost the election -- here's how to save your legacy."   In doing so, the New York Post joins Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, other Rupert Murdock controlled outlets that have recognized Trump's loss.   The CNN piece reads in part as follows: 

President Donald Trump's favorite newspaper has turned against him.

The New York Post, in an editorial that got the front-page, giant-font treatment on Monday, told Trump he needs to give up his baseless fight to overturn the presidential election result.

"Mr. President ... STOP THE INSANITY," read the front page of the tabloid, famous for outlandish headlines. "You lost the election -- here's how to save your legacy."  

[T]he top of the editorial got right to the point: "Mr. President, it's time to end this dark charade," the Post's editorial board wrote. "You're cheering for an undemocratic coup." 

The editorial from the Post, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. (NWS), is hardly the first time a Murdoch-owned news outlet has distanced itself from Trump and his refusal to concede the election. The Wall Street Journal's editorial board on November 6 urged Trump to concede once he was declared the loser (most other media organizations called the election the next day, and the electoral college voted for President-elect Joe Biden on December 14). The Journal argued Trump's legacy would be greatly diminished if his final act were "a bitter refusal to accept a legitimate defeat." 

Fox News, owned by Murdoch's Fox Corp., has acknowledged Biden is the president-elect despite its prime-time hosts' defense of Trump's refusal to concede. 

And at the Post itself, top Murdoch lieutenant Col Allan confirmed he will retire from the paper in 2021. Allan was instrumental in pushing the Post in a pro-Trump direction. Last summer, for example, CNN reported that Allan ordered the removal of a story on a Trump sexual assault allegation. 

But the new editorial was notable for its sharp-worded dismissal of Trump's misinformation campaign about the election result and multi-pronged, flailing effort to remain in power.

Here are highlights from the editorial itself which calls Trump Sidney Powell crazy and states that Michael Flynn is involved in treason:

Mr. President, it’s time to end this dark charade. We’re one week away from an enormously important moment for the next four years of our country.

On Jan. 5, two runoff races in Georgia will determine which party will control the Senate — whether Joe Biden will have a rubber stamp or a much-needed check on his agenda.

Unfortunately, you’re obsessed with the next day, Jan. 6, when Congress will, in a pro forma action, certify the Electoral College vote. You have tweeted that, as long as Republicans have “courage,” they can overturn the results and give you four more years in office.

In other words, you’re cheering for an undemocratic coup.

Sidney Powell is a crazy person. Michael Flynn suggesting martial law is tantamount to treason. It is shameful.

We understand, Mr. President, that you’re angry that you lost. But to continue down this road is ruinous. We offer this as a newspaper that endorsed you, that supported you: If you want to cement your influence, even set the stage for a future return, you must channel your fury into something more productive.

Now imagine a government controlled by your nemeses — Nancy Pelosi in the House, Chuck Schumer in the Senate, Biden in the White House. How high will taxes go? How many of your initiatives will be strangled? And, on a personal note, do you think they won’t spend the next four years torturing you with baseless hearings and investigations?

If Georgia falls, all that is threatened. You will leave your party out of power, less likely to listen to what you have to say or to capitalize on your successes, such as expanding the Hispanic voting bloc for the GOP.

Democrats will try to write you off as a one-term aberration and, frankly, you’re helping them do it. The King Lear of Mar-a-Lago, ranting about the corruption of the world.

You should use your considerable charm and influence to support the Georgia candidates, mobilizing your voters for them. Focus on their success, not your own grievances, as we head into the final week.

If you insist on spending your final days in office threatening to burn it all down, that will be how you are remembered. Not as a revolutionary, but as the anarchist holding the match.

Expect a Trump tweet shitstorm.

More Monday Male Beauty

 

Biden's Task of Restoring the U.S. Department of Justice

Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenfuhrer, viewed the Department of Justice as a part of the executive branch that was to be totally beholden to Trump, prosecute and investigate Trump's political rivals and enemies with no hint of impartiality or a first allegiance to the rule of law.  Outgoing AG William Barr is a prime example of those willing to kiss Trump's ring and throw integrity and the rule of law out the window, As a consequence, many competent career officials either were forced out or chose to resign rather than become a part of Trump's corrupt Department of Justice.  When he takes office, Joe Biden will have the task of not only of appointing competent and moral individuals to the department, but select individuals who can undo the damage done during Trump's four years of misrule.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the issues ahead for Biden.  Here are highlights:

Watching President Trump dole out pardons and commutations to a parade of former campaign officials snared in the Russia investigation, corrupt ex-congressmen, cronies who lied to Congress and/or the FBI, and even war criminals should remind us of the extent to which he has damaged the rule of law, the norms of democracy and the reputation of the Justice Department, which once upon a time played a critical role in granting pardons and commutations.

The variety and seriousness of the issues facing the next attorney general are daunting and include depoliticizing enforcement and sentencing decisions, diversifying the department’s workforce, enforcing of civil rights and police reform, and making the pardon system more transparent. President-elect Joe Biden is taking his time, wisely in my view, to find the person whom he can trust to undertake all that while maintaining an appropriate separation between political aides at the White House and the Justice Department.

Each of the leading candidates has deficits. Former acting attorney general Sally Yates may not get confirmed. Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.) may not have the experience to navigate and shake-up the department. Judge Merrick Garland, too moderate for some activists, would open up a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. With no standout pick, Biden may wait until the Georgia Senate races are held on Jan. 5 to assess Yates’s chances in the Senate.

The passage of time also raises new challenges that might require someone with a different background. The stunning cyber-attack we recently learned about underscores the national-security aspect of the job. That would point to someone like Lisa Monaco, who helped vet Biden’s vice presidential candidates. She has decades of experience in the national security realm, both at the White House and at the Justice Department.

The Post also reports that “it is possible that when he reveals his decision, he also will announce picks for deputy attorney general, associate attorney general and solicitor general.” Waiting to announcing a senior team to lead the Justice Department certainly could minimize any gaps or shortcomings Biden’s attorney general pick might have. Garland may seem too moderate to satisfy some progressive civil rights groups, but announcing his name along with, for example, former head of the civil rights division Vanita Gupta as the deputy or associate attorney general would provide reassurance he will move aggressively on civil rights enforcement and police reform.

Including his solicitor general pick could bolster Biden’s selection as well. Deepak Gupta, an all-star progressive Supreme Court litigator and one of now-Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s first hires at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, would confirm that Biden’s Justice Department will aggressively defend his administration in the highest court.

It is not surprising that Biden is patiently exploring his options. The attorney general in an administration following the nightmarish Trump years might be Biden’s most critical personnel choice after vice president. Better to wait, consider a broad range of options and relevant issues, and roll out his choice with an impressive senior team.

Monday Male Beauty

 

More Sunday Male Beauty

 

With Luck Trump Will Destroy the GOP As He Goes Out the Door

As of now, Donald Trump has failed to sign the Covid-19 relief bill passed by Congress and millions of Americans face the loss of benefits and the moratorium on evictions.  Trump may yet allow the federal government go into shutdown as he fumes over the reality that a majority of Americans despise him and voted to elect Joe Biden. But it is not just working Americans who are being hit with the consequences of Trump's petulant and self-absorbed  hissy fit.  Deliciously, the Republican Party is being buffeted in a much deserved manner after years of self-prostitution to Trump and the jettisoning of  any claim of moral decency.  With luck, Trump will sabotage the GOP candidates in the Georgia runoff elections on January 5, 2021, and hand Senate control to the Democrats.  It would be a fitting result for a party which embraced depravity and utterly foul individual.  A piece at CNN looks at what hopefully will befall the GOP.  Here are highlights:

This holiday season, President Donald Trump has wreaked havoc on Congress, our democracy and our judicial system by pardoning political associates and convicted murderers. But Trump has saved a special kind of Grinch-like behavior for the two Republican Senate candidates in Georgia who are headed for runoff elections in January and for Senator Mitch McConnell, whose fate as majority leader depends on the GOP winning at least one of those races.

These three are only the latest to realize that the return on investment for loyalty to Donald Trump is exactly zero. McConnell, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler all stood on the Senate floor in February and acquitted Trump on charges he abused his power in office and obstructed Congress. But now that it's time for Trump to return the favor, our self-absorbed [Trump] President seems to be doing everything he can to make it harder for all three -- and perhaps giving the Democrats the gift of control of the Senate as he leaves office. 

Trump's political messages started hurting the Republican senators in Georgia long before this Christmas season. Trump railed against early voting throughout the campaign to sow doubt about the election results and set the predicate for the outrageous claims of voter fraud and attempts to nullify the November election. 

Early voting, traditionally a strong suit for Republicans, provided Biden with the margins he needed around the country.  . . . The combination of massive early voting by Democrats and lower numbers on the GOP side made the January 5 runoffs possible. 

Trump's reaction to the election results has also hit Perdue and Loeffler hard. His bitter criticism of Georgia's Republican governor and secretary of state for not helping him overturn the results has split the Republican Party in the state. Setting off a circular firing squad within the Republican Party was an unexpected gift for the Democrats. 

Making it worse for the state Republican Party, lawyers who are supportive of Trump, led by Lin Wood, have cast doubt on Georgia being able to conduct a fair election. They've told Trump supporters to stay home and not vote in the January runoff. Clearly, in such a close race, neither side can afford any significant boycott on voting. 

After McConnell finally acknowledged that Joe Biden was President-elect following the Electoral College vote, Trump had an aide send a memo to Republicans in Congress trashing the majority leader. It suggested that the reason McConnell won his re-election contest by nearly 20 points was because of the President's endorsement and that the majority leader wasn't sufficiently grateful. 

Trump may have saved his biggest gift to the Democrats with his Christmas week torpedo launched at Congress. House and Senate leaders spent months painfully negotiating a Covid-19 relief bill providing desperately needed aid to millions of Americans suffering through the pandemic. 

Perdue and Loeffler now have to defend why they voted for the small payment, which [Trump] the President now opposes. Voters are not likely to focus on the President being completely absent from the relief negotiations and only speaking out after the votes were cast. 

Time and again we have learned with [Trump] the President that it is only about Trump. And the parting gift of Trumpism, as Joe Biden is sworn in, may well be a Senate controlled by the Democrats.

Sunday Morning Male Beauty

 

Trump Continues to Pose a Clear and Present Danger

Until Congress certifies Joe Biden's election on January 6, 2021, and Trump exits the presidency (actually, I'd argue until he ceases to breathe), America faces the clear and present danger of Trump trying some desperate last ditch attempt to overthrow the election through violence and/or the launching of some disastrous military adventure.  Sadly, nothing and no one, certainly not the lies of military service members, means anything to Trump, so there is no limit to what misdeeds he might do.  Unfortunately, most Republicans - especially at the Congressional level - lack the courage or basic morality to confront and tell him the game is over and/or use the 25th Amendment to remove him from office (something that would add a wonderful footnote to the horrors of the Trump/Pence regime).  A column in the Washington Post looks at the danger America faces in the waning days of the the malignant narcissist-in-chief.  Here are excerpts:

Not to be alarmist, but we should recognize that the United States will be in the danger zone until the formal certification of Joe Biden’s election victory on Jan. 6, because potential domestic and foreign turmoil could give President Trump an excuse to cling to power.

This threat, while unlikely to materialize, is concerning senior officials, including Republicans who have supported Trump in the past but believe he is now threatening to overstep the constitutional limits on his power. They described a multifaceted campaign by die-hard Trump supporters to use disruptions at home and perhaps threats abroad to advance his interests.

The big showdown is the Jan. 6 gathering of both houses of Congress to formally count the electoral college vote taken on Dec. 14, which Biden won 306 to 232. The certification should be a pro forma event, but a desperate Trump is demanding that House and Senate Republicans challenge the count and block this final, binding affirmation of Biden’s victory before Inauguration Day.

Trump’s last-ditch campaign will almost certainly fail in Congress. The greater danger is on the streets, where pro-Trump forces are already threatening chaos. A pro-Trump group called “Women for America First” has requested a permit for a Jan. 6 rally in Washington, and Trump is already beating the drum: “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”

Government officials fear that if violence spreads, Trump could invoke the Insurrection Act to mobilize the military. Then Trump might use “military capabilities” to rerun the Nov. 3 election in swing states

The Pentagon would be the locus of any such action, and some unusual recent moves suggest pro-Trump officials might be mobilizing to secure levers of power. Kash Patel, chief of staff to acting defense secretary Christopher C. Miller, returned home “abruptly” from an Asia trip in early December, according to Fox News correspondent Jennifer Griffin. Patel didn’t explain, but in mid-December Trump discussed with colleagues the possibility that Patel might replace Christopher A. Wray as FBI director, one official said. Wray remains in his job.

Another strange Pentagon machination was the proposal Miller floated in mid-December to separate the code-breaking National Security Agency from U.S. Cyber Command, which are both currently headed by Gen. Paul Nakasone. That proposal collapsed because of bipartisan congressional opposition.

But why did Trump loyalists suggest the NSA-Cyber Command split in the first place? Some officials speculate that the White House may have planned to install a new NSA chief, perhaps Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the young conservative recently installed to oversee Pentagon intelligence activities.

With firm control of the NSA and the FBI, the Trump team might then disclose highly sensitive information about the origins of the 2016 Trump Russia investigation. Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe tried to release this sensitive intelligence before the election . . . Trump retreated under pressure from then-Attorney General William P. Barr, among others.

Trump’s final weeks in office will also be a tinder box because of the danger of turmoil abroad. Iranian-backed militias fired more than 20 rockets last Sunday at the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad, with around nine hitting the compound but inflicting no American casualties. . . . State Department and Pentagon officials say Trump’s retaliatory threat is real.

Another potential flash point is just a week away. Jan. 3 marks the first anniversary of the U.S. targeted killing of Quds Force commander Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani and Iraq militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. Any new violence could ignite a quick cycle of escalation that could bring direct conflict between the United States and Iran during Trump’s final weeks in office.

The heroes in preserving the United States’ hopes of a stable democratic transition, perhaps ironically, have been some courageous, principled Republicans: judges in state and federal courts, including Supreme Court justices nominated by Trump; secretaries of state and other election monitors; a disappointingly small handful of GOP senators and members of Congress

Trump won’t succeed in subverting the Constitution, but he can do enormous damage over the next weeks. Before Jan. 6, a delegation of senior Republicans should visit him at the White House and insist, emphatically: Biden has won. This must stop.

Saturday Morning Male Beauty

 

Cold War: The Catholic Church and LGBT Catholics

I left Catholicism two decades ago as I reached a point where I could no longer participate in a church than demeaned me, labeled me "inherently disordered" and offered me nothing but more years of condemnation and self-hatred ("praying away the gay" had proven to be a cynical lie). Throw in the global sex abuse scandal and the Church hierarchy's lies, cover ups, and rank hypocrisy and leaving the Catholic became a moral requirement. I have no regrets about leaving the Catholic Church and found solace in the Episcopal Church and Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, two LGBT accepting denominations.  Sadly, two decades later, the Catholic Church continues to cling to a 12th century understanding of sexuality and ignores all modern medical and mental health knowledge.  A piece in The Advocate by a former Jesuit looks at the Church's continued cold war against LGBT individuals. Here are article highlights:

The last 12 months has been another year of the Catholic Church continuing its don’t ask, don’t tell policy of love the sinner not the sin. Another year when the Vatican missed opportunities to affirm the positive contributions of LGBTQ+ people. This year will be remembered as the year the Vatican told lesbians and gays that they were no longer interested in their salvation, or marriage, punting that issue to state rights. . . . Just a few countries away {e.g., Poland], anti-LGBTQ+ zones are rejecting LGBTQ+ people, growing increasingly intolerant towards sexual minorities.   

In America, Catholics are inspired to laud Amy Coney Barrett whose Supreme Court confirmation has pitted her style of Catholicism against President-elect Joe Biden. The United States Bishops tell us Barrett can receive communion, but Biden cannot.

In October 2020, Gay History Month, Pope Francis informed parents of LGBTQ+ children that “the church loves your children as they are because they are children of God.” Was this even in doubt? And if it were a true Vatican conviction, why couldn’t I, an ex-Jesuit and gay son eulogize my mother at her funeral at St. Isadore’s Church in Riverhead, N.Y.? (That was so 2019.)

In October, Pope Francis told his flock that heterosexual, married sex can be pleasurable. Isn’t all lovemaking pleasurable, part of an all-good and all-loving God’s plan for his beloved children?

In June, during Pride Month, the Vatican issued its most recent antigay argument: only biological males and females are complementary. . . .Of course the theology of the document does not deviate from century-old Vatican norms or Church dogma, for example, the primal purpose of adult opposite-sex relationships is to procreate. Thus, the Vatican exalts child-making couples, and shames all others; gay, lesbian, non-child bearing, and gender-fluid couples.

Of course, by exalting child-making couples, the Vatican is affirming its stance that sacramental marriage is between one man and one woman. Still, nothing new. But the damage done by this document is likely irreparable.

[T]he Vatican can never use “real-life experience” to shape its theology or dogma. If it did, divorced Catholics could remarry and receive the Eucharist. This is why calling for dialogue and listening to people talk on gender is dubious, if not manipulation by a few progressives to keep the pews filled with a portion of the faithful so easily termed uncomplimentary.  

When the Church, through documents like “Male and Female He Created Them” articulates an antigay theology, then through Pope Francis I says, “We must be attentive, not saying all are the same” that “people must be accompanied” it causes confusion, and provides a safe space for discrimination, bullying and violence against the LBGTQ+ community.

Just as the Vatican argues against gender existing along a spectrum so is it becoming increasingly clear, if you do not practice the Catholic faith in the most conservative of ways you are not fully a member of the Church. Whether you hope for a dialogue or listening, the only cudgel against the LGBTQ+ community is leading them to hope in something greater to come. And for LGBTQ+ people, that something greater might just be a change in faith; finding a new home in a house of worship that fully embraces them now and in the eternal life to come. Why settle for less? Jesus did not.