There are so many threads of this ugly and increasingly bizarre (three scandals at once) set of scandals in the upper ranks of the Virginia state government. But one is the proximity of these two events to the end of Jim Crow in the South. Before delving into this, let me stipulate that by saying there were lots of racist attitudes in the 1980s I’m not saying there aren’t a lot today. I am trying to make a different point. These events happened in the early 1980s. The Civil Rights Act of 1965 was 15 years or so earlier. Brown v Board was almost thirty years earlier. But actual desegregation, even de jure, let alone de facto desegregation was accepted by the courts as a years long process. Basically the de jure end of Jim Crow had only happened maybe 15 years or so earlier. To place ourselves in time, it’s like looking back at the 2004 presidential election day. In other words, just a short time ago. Read More
Late this afternoon, Jeff Bezos published a letter on Medium that is, frankly, one of the most stunning things I’ve ever read. It is also extremely important, far beyond the celebrity gossip of a billionaire caught in an affair or compromising photographs. Read More
In addition to the all the bombshellish parts of that Jeff Bezos posts I discussed below, there are a few breadcrumbs strewn through the text that may reveal more than it seems on a quick read. Let’s go over them. Read More
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Last night I wrote a couple quick posts on Jeff Bezos’s revelation about The National Enquirer, its parent company AMI and its attempt to blackmail him with ‘intimate photos’. This isn’t just a tabloid story. I suspect this is a huge story with potentially mammoth implications. I wrote this post explaining why and this one about key clues Bezos left in his public statement.
Unsurprisingly, the Trump Inaugural was a veritable orgy of Trump world sloppiness and sleaze, well beyond even conventional Washington buck-raking standards. Here’s why prosecutors are so interested.
I confess to being more than a little confused by this piece by Politico cofounder John Harris. Harris started out as a political reporter in Richmond. So it’s about the recent chaos and plunge toward the abyss in Virginia state government and the state Democratic party. As he summarizes it on Twitter, “The good old days in Virginia were bad. These days are worse…”
In other words, Virginia’s current political leaders don’t match up to the virtue and valor of those from the old days. Read More
The Washington Post has a new poll out about Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam and that poll shows clearly, for better or worse, why I think he almost certainly won’t be resigning his office. The top line number in the poll is that the state is split 47% to 47% on the question of whether or not he should resign. That’s certainly not great in general. But those aren’t the kind of numbers that make any elected leader actually step down. The underlying numbers though are even more revealing. Read More
I addressed this on Twitter. Let me try to address it here. Yesterday, freshman member of Congress Ilhan Omar riffed on a tweet by Glenn Greenwald about Kevin McCarthy and pro-Israel politics in Congress.
She responded and here was my response to hers …
McCarthy’s a fool who has no power to punish anyone. Criticism of Israel doesn’t equal anti-Semitism. And this is a very unfortunate tweet. https://t.co/WaCjbr2yNp
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) February 11, 2019