Get The Damn Vote Out: 2022 Blue Wave Edition

I keep saying "Elections matter" because guess what, they do.

There has been at least since the 2008 election cycle a glaring reality - one that our mainstream media refuses to admit, because they dare not lose "access" to Republican elites - that one political party - hint Republicans - has gone batshit insane. Obsessed with retaining power even as they sink into political minority status, the modern GOP has sunk into conspiratorial alternate-reality mind screws of their own making. We've seen what happens when they had trump pose for them as their standard bearer in the White House, and it wasn't pretty. And the Republicans want the nation to go back to that... permanently.

We're at the point where Republicans are openly pushing an agenda to pass a national abortion ban - to hell what they said about states' rights - to make every American woman second-class breeding stock, and going after Social Security and Medicare as though those safety nets for our elder citizenry are threats to the Far Right's Way of Life.

We're seeing what Republicans are doing at the state level: attacking gay/lesbian/trans teens as Dreaded Other; wrecking school curricula by denying any texts that dare call out our nation's racist history; and persecuting/abusing legal migrants from Central/South America through political stunts, harassment, and lies.

And Republicans are going after everyone's power to vote, because they know damn well keeping voter turnout down is the only way they can stay in office.

This is what Republicans want, and this is what they think will keep them in minority-majority rule for the next 10 100 years.

We dare not let them win.

We've seen what happens in 2018 and 2020 when voter turnout exceeds Republicans' desires. We've seen it happen this year in Kansas already, where a massive women's turnout flipped a midterm amendment referendum on abortion on its ass. 

Massive voter turnout by Democrats and left-leaning Independents work. Massive voter turnout keeps our nation's democratic traditions alive. Massive voter turnout defeats a lot of Republican attempts to steal away our rights.

There's a lot at stake this 2022 midterms, especially at the federal level: If the Republicans gain control of either the House or Senate (or worse, both) then our government becomes logjammed and nothing will get done. The Republicans - grown increasingly rabid under trump's leadership - have already promised retribution towards President Biden for what they feel is partisan attacks on trump for what are in reality legal investigations into trump's misdeeds. They will do everything in their power to hinder, delay, or break up any current investigations into trump's role in the January 6th insurrection; they will press hyperactive attacks on Biden's son Hunter to weaken Joe Biden's standing among voters; they will stage vote overrides of Obamacare and every big-ticket bill Biden just got passed this year knowing full well Biden's veto will save them from whatever disasters would happen if any of those bills were repealed.

It's imperative that Democrats retain control of the House. This may not be likely, due to the extreme gerrymandering that happened in Red and battleground states like Texas, Wisconsin, and Florida. But it IS possible for Democrats to blunt or reduce that gerrymandering, by reaching high turnout numbers that negate the district rigging. Voting for the U.S. House matters.

The U.S. Senate numbers are slightly better only because gerrymandering doesn't affect state-wide votes. There's even a likelihood the Dems can increase their 50-50 status in the high chamber with two (and even four) seats flipping Blue. It would secure any need for Biden to fill more judicial and executive vacancies without Republican interference: It could include enough left-leaning reformers into the Senate who can end the filibuster logjam mechanics and free up future Senates to vote more clean and effective bills into law. Voting for the U.S. Senate matters.

It's harder - I will admit this - for elections to affect the state results, especially in Republican-held states that have gerrymandered everything across every corner of each state. But turnout can still work, especially for the state-wide Governor races. If Dems can gain enough Governor seats, that can setback a number of extremist legislative bodies from doing further harm to their states (although as Wisconsin and North Carolina showed, a lame-duck GOP lege can try to strip Governors of enough power to weaken such changes). Voting for the Governors and state-level legislatures matter.

Let the call go out to every registered Democratic and Indy voter: This midterm matters. Voter turnout matters. Get the vote out, and do everything you can to prevent the Republicans from denying your access to the ballot box.

If the Republicans win, this could be honest-to-God the last honest election the Republicans will ever let us have.

As a personal note, I am currently in the path of a massive Hurricane Ian that threatens to shred central Florida. If I don't make it out alive, I want a promise, I WANT YOU TO PROMISE ME AMERICA, I want a promise that 69 percent of you - Democrats, Left-leaning Independents, Pro-Choice and Pro-Immigrant Republicans who are still out there (yes you are) - will show up this November and vote a straight-down All-Democratic Blue Wave ticket.

GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT, AMERICA.

And for the LOVE of God, do NOT vote Republican at any level. Blue Wave 2022!

Good luck.

Hurricane Ian Rolling In

It's become legend that whenever Jim Cantore from the Weather Channel shows up on your beach, you're getting doomed with a hurricane...

So here comes Hurricane Ian aiming for the Tampa Bay area with Jim goofing off on Clearwater Beach. More from Michaela Mulligan at the Tampa Bay Times:

After a night of intensification, Hurricane Ian has emerged as a major hurricane Tuesday — still following its track toward Tampa Bay.

The Category 3 storm is just off the coast of Cuba, about 10 miles south of Pinar Del Río and 130 miles southwest of the Dry Tortugas, according to an 8 a.m. update from the National Hurricane Center. Ian is moving north at about 12 mph and is expected to turn toward the north-northeast while beginning to slow Tuesday night into Wednesday.

Forecasters predict the center of Ian to move over western Cuba Tuesday morning and then emerge in the southeastern Gulf of Mexico, where it likely will strengthen...

I'm a little further inland (Polk County), and if the storm keeps tracking straight north - or better turns west - I won't get hit with anything serious. Still, this is the first year I've gotten sandbags for my porch doors, which were vulnerable to the last hurricane that passed by.

This year, given the uptick in climate change and the noticeable erosion of the Florida coastline, my home metro of Tampa Bay may be hit real hard with lasting - and tragic - damage. Too much residential development along the coastline has made us too vulnerable to big storms like this, and we're looking at serious flooding and power outages to last well into next week.

I may try to get a few more blog articles in before the storm hits, so we'll see.

Quick Update on trump's Legal Woes As We Head Into October 2022

The past week has been a little busy for donald trump's lawyers, so let's recap.

You might remember that trump had found a district judge he appointed to throw up roadblocks to the FBI's digging into all the classified materials they caught him with, when Judge Cannon agreed to his demands for a Special Master to delay everything. Well, the Justice Department appealed that, going to the 11th Circuit to allow the feds to continue their work. The judges at the 11th - including two who were appointed by trump - threw a smackdown on Cannon and trump in response (via Emptywheel):

While reserving judgment on the merits question, the opinion was nevertheless fairly scathing about Cannon’s abuse of discretion. Some of this pertained to her jurisdictional analysis... But two important implicit admonishments of Cannon’s actions pertain to the deference on national security that courts give to the Executive.

The opinion calls the scheme that Cannon had set up — allowing the Intelligence Community to continue its intelligence assessment but prohibiting any investigation for criminal purposes — untenable. In support, the opinion notes that there’s a sworn declaration from FBI Assistant Director Alan Kohler (the only one in this docket) debunking Cannon’s distinction between national security review and criminal investigation. It notes, twice, that courts must accord great weight to the Executive, including an affidavit. The opinion notes that “no party had offered anything beyond speculation” to undermine this representation...

In another section, the opinion makes a finding that goes beyond where the dispute before Cannon has gone (but not beyond where the dispute before Special Master Raymond Dearie has). Even former Presidents can only access classified information if they have a Need to Know. (Italics for the appellate decision)

[W]e cannot discern why Plaintiff would have an individual interest in or need for any of the one-hundred documents with classification markings. Classified documents are marked to show they are classified, for instance, with their classification level. Classified National Security Information, Exec. Order No. 13,526, § 1.6, 3 C.F.R. 298, 301 (2009 Comp.), reprinted in 50 U.S.C. § 3161 app. at 290–301. They are “owned by, produced by or for, or . . . under the control of the United States Government.” Id. § 1.1. And they include information the “unauthorized disclosure [of which] could reasonably be expected to cause identifiable or describable damage to the national security.” Id. § 1.4. For this reason, a person may have access to classified information only if, among other requirements, he “has a need-to-know the information.” Id. § 4.1(a)(3). This requirement pertains equally to former Presidents, unless the current administration, in its discretion, chooses to waive that requirement. Id. § 4.4(3).

Plaintiff has not even attempted to show that he has a need to know the information contained in the classified documents. Nor has he established that the current administration has waived that requirement for these documents. And even if he had, that, in and of itself, would not explain why Plaintiff has an individual interest in the classified documents...

In short: trump had no privilege to claim.

And then there was the 11th Circuit ruling about Cannon's authority to intervene in the first place. Back to Emptywheel:

The summary of this case is a really remarkable description of what has already happened (I’m sure it helped the clerks on that front that they had no page limits). Ominously for Trump’s case, the opinion starts the narrative from the time he left the White House and lays out several moments where Trump failed to invoke privilege or declassification. Trump likes to tell the story starting on August 8 when the FBI arrived at his house out of the blue...

This means trump can't stick to his story that he always had the right to possess these documents when he really didn't. I digress, back to good part:

In Trump’s reply to DOJ’s argument that he couldn’t own these documents, the opinion notes, he specifically disclaimed having filed a Rule 41(g), which is where someone moves to demand property unlawfully seized be returned...

Cannon, the opinion notes, claimed to be asserting jurisdiction under equitable jurisdiction even while treating Trump’s request (in which he had not made a Rule 41(g) motion) as a hybrid request...

Half that page of the opinion consists of footnotes, recording that Trump’s claims about Rule 41(g) have been all over the map...

trump and his lawyers are wary of filing actual paperwork - that Rule 41(g) - on ownership because if they do, and the courts rule he had no right to classified materials in his possession, he'll basically be confessing to breaking that particular federal law. Instead, they claim everything and anything just on say-so in the hopes a favorable court will buy that defense. Oh, right. I'm interrupting. Back to Emptywheel.

The opinion doesn’t come to any conclusions about all this nonsense from a jurisdictional position. It doesn’t have to. But it did capture conflicting claims that Trump made and Cannon’s reliance on a “hybrid” claim to avoid pinning Trump down.

The reason the 11th Circuit didn’t have to resolve all this is because, regardless of which basis Cannon claimed to have intervened, Richey governs (which is exactly what Jay Bratt said in the hearing before Cannon, as I laid out here).

And the first prong of Richey — and the most important one — is whether there has been a Fourth Amendment violation. Cannon says there has not. That should be game over...

While this is an appellate ruling, trump can arguably push the matter further up the chain - is SCOTUS next? - but one interesting development from this ruling was how Cannon went back and revised parts of her court ruling to fit the demands of the 11th Circuit... which apparently makes it harder for trump to appeal those parts. Interesting.

Meanwhile, the Thing Cannon Set Up - the Special Master situation involving a court-approved arbitrator over the documents in question - settled on Judge Raymond Dearie to serve in that capacity, and he promptly kicked trump's lawyers in the collective tuckus in ways that showed trump wasn't getting an easy out (the AP News but quoted via the Guardian):

The independent arbiter tasked with inspecting documents seized in an FBI search of Donald Trump’s Florida home said on Tuesday he intends to push briskly through the review process and appeared skeptical of Trump lawyers’ reluctance to say whether they believed the records had been declassified.

“We’re going to proceed with what I call responsible dispatch,” Raymond Dearie, a veteran Brooklyn judge, told lawyers for Trump and the Department of Justice in their first meeting since his appointment last week as a so-called special master...

Though Trump’s lawyers requested the appointment of a special master, they have resisted Dearie’s request for more information about whether the seized records had been previously declassified – as Trump maintains. His lawyers have consistently stopped short of that claim even as they asserted in a separate filing on Tuesday that the department of justice had not proven that the documents were classified. In any event, they say, a president has absolute authority to declassify information...

But Dearie said that if Trump’s lawyers will not actually assert that the records have been declassified, and the department of justice makes an acceptable case that they remain classified, he will be inclined to regard them as classified.

“As far as I’m concerned,” he said, “that’s the end of it.”

In a letter to Dearie on Monday night, the lawyers said the declassification issue might be part of Trump’s defense in the event of an indictment. Trusty said the Trump team should not be forced at this point to disclose details of a possible defense.

He denied that the lawyers were trying to engage in “gamesman-like” behavior but said it was a process that required “baby steps”. He said the right time for the discussion is whenever Trump presses forward with a claim to get property back.

Dearie said he understood the position but observed: “I guess my view of it is, you can’t have your cake and eat it...”

A US district judge, Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee who granted the request for a special master, had set a 30 November deadline for Dearie’s review and instructed him to prioritize classified records.

Dearie, a Ronald Reagan appointee, made clear during Tuesday’s meeting that he intended to meet the deadline...

Other reports have it that Dearie is looking to wrap up by October, likely because he already sees the reality that there's not much to separate between the classified documents and anything trump claims as privileged. Granted, that's my speculation. No matter what, trump's traditional gaming of the legal system - delay, delay, delay - isn't going to work here.

The other big bombshell from last week was the breaking development in the state of New York's civil case against trump, trump's family, and their corporation. As mentioned earlier when I looked at the big four legal matters dogging trump, AG Letitia James had wrapped up her interviews for the grand jury, and apparently had enough to take it all to court seeking major damages and a long-overdue crippling of trump's crooked financial empire (via John Cassidy at the New Yorker (paywalled)): 

The lawsuit that her office filed in State Supreme Court alleges that, from 2011 to 2021, the Trump Organization’s financial statements systematically exaggerated the value of at least twenty-three of his properties and other assets—from his Fifth Avenue triplex apartment and his daughter’s penthouse on Park Avenue to his estate in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, and his far-flung network of golf courses. “The number of grossly inflated asset values is staggering, affecting most if not all of the real estate holdings in any given year,” the lawsuit states. It also says that Trump’s alleged deceptions reaped him and his co-defendants financial benefits worth up to an estimated $250 million, and asked the court to force him to repay these gains, plus interest.

In addition to Trump, the lawsuit names his children Donald, Jr., Eric, and Ivanka as defendants. In 2014, the complaint says, Ivanka was granted an option to buy a penthouse at Trump Park Avenue for $14.3 million, but the apartment was valued in the Trump Organization’s 2014 “Statement of Financial Condition” at $45 million. According to the lawsuit, Trump’s son Eric was “taking the lead” on Seven Springs estate, a large property in Westchester County, New York—which Trump bought for $7.5 million, in 1995, but between 2011 and 2021 valued at up to $291 million. The complaint also alleges that, in 2016, the Trump Organization misled an outside appraiser that prepared a valuation of the Seven Springs property, which it then submitted to the Internal Revenue Service in support of an application for a conservation easement “that ultimately, and fraudulently, reduced Mr. Trump’s tax liability by more than $3.5 million...”

In short: trump lied about how valuable his properties were when it came time to profit from them, and then lied that the properties were valueless when it came time to pay taxes on them.

Where Trump and his businesses crossed the legal line, the complaint alleges, was in producing false financial statements that grossly inflated his net worth to “induce banks to lend money to the Trump Organization on more favorable terms than would otherwise have been available to the company, to satisfy continuing loan covenants, and to induce insurers to provide insurance coverage for higher limits and at lower premiums.” The complaint identifies numerous loans and insurance policies that it said were granted at least partly on the basis of claims Trump made about his wealth in a “Statement of Financial Condition”—a list of his assets and liabilities that the Trump Organization produced annually...

This is where there's more good news:

James said her office is also referring her case to federal prosecutors in Manhattan and the I.R.S. In the absence of actions by those agencies, the potential sanctions facing the Trumps, if James wins her case, are a big financial penalty, the appointment of an independent monitor to oversee the Trump Organization for at least five years, a prohibition on Trump or the Trump Organization buying any new commercial real estate in New York during the same period, and a ban on any of the Trumps named in the lawsuit serving as an officer or director in any businesses licensed or registered in the state.

Effectively, James is trying to banish Trump and his family from doing business in their longtime home state...

James apparently uncovered criminal acts in all of the fraud trump and his people committed during their shell games with property values. It would be pretty to think that despite the City of New York's failure to bring more criminal charges against trump, the IRS will go after him for tax evasion like they've done to every mob boss since Al Capone. 

It could be argued that even after all this, trump and co. could simply relocate their business efforts to a more favorable state and restart, except that James is looking to keep trump from doing any business with any entity in New York. That covers New York City, and THAT - the financial capital of the world - covers nearly every bank on the planet. Meaning if James wins her case, there will be no way for trump and his adult progeny to do business they way they've done - through sketchy loans to pay off other sketchy loans - for at least five years.

It would kill trump not to run any kind of con job at all. trump has no actual value outside of his scams, he's a clown living on credit. A victory by AG James would be a fate worse than death for trump.

Bring it. Bankrupt the bastard. Send him into financial exile for the rest of his short life. And be rid of trump forever.

The Great Russian Skedaddle

I love that word, 'skedaddle.' A silly-sounding word but with purpose. An SAT word you study in high school. Three syllables long with just the right rhythm. Ske-dad-dle.

Skedaddle: (intransitive verb) to leave immediately : RUN AWAY, SCRAM : especially, to flee in a panic.

I've been thinking about the word 'skedaddle' ever since Russia's dictator - finally coming to terms with the massive loss of troops in his disastrous invasion of Ukraine - pushed his puppet government into passing laws allowing him to start up draft/conscription of at least three-hundred thousand men to restock his invasion force. Via Greg Myre at NPR:

Despite this track record, Putin's latest gamble may be his biggest yet. In the face of battlefield setbacks, the Russian leader has doubled down. Russia will mobilize 300,000 additional troops — a number larger than the original invasion force — and Moscow also appears poised to annex Ukrainian territory under its control...

Putin's move addressed growing criticism from pro-war Russian nationalists at home, who say Russia is in danger of losing because it hasn't unleashed its full fighting force.

Yet Putin called it a "partial mobilization," and continues to call the conflict a "special military operation." This appears to be a nod toward Russians who have misgivings about the military adventure in Ukraine...

Even with his blatant control of Russian media, Putin seems to fear calling for a massive conscription effort because internal tensions - aggravated by decades of corruption - would trigger nationwide protests.

Well... even the partial mobilization triggered those protests. To Charles Maynes also at NPR:

Russian President Vladimir Putin's order to mobilize more troops to bolster his struggling military campaign in Ukraine has been rippling across Russia, as the military swiftly drafts new recruits and signs of discontent appear to spread.

Putin announced the decision Wednesday, framing it as a "partial mobilization" that he insisted affects only a small percentage of Russians with a background in military service.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu ordered an immediate call-up of 300,000 additional troops — even as multiple news reports suggested the real number could be three times as many.

The Kremlin has tasked regional governors with overseeing the draft and stiffened penalties for refusal of service or desertion to 10 years in prison...

Despite government assurances only those with military service background will be drafted, multiple reports are emerging of draft papers being sent to people with no prior military experience...

Avtozak Live, a volunteer human rights monitoring group, reported as many as nine arson attacks had been carried out on military recruitment centers or government buildings across Russia.

Rights advocates say police detained more than 1,300 people in protests that erupted in dozens of Russian cities following Putin's address — with crowds yelling "No to war!" and "Putin to the trenches!..."

Anti-war activists have called for additional protests against mobilization over the weekend.

And when Putin gave the announcement that he was looking for a few 300,000 men to 'volunteer' as cannon fodder fertilizer for Ukrainian sunflowers, a noticeable number of Russian men in the designated victim demographics - anyone 18 and older with a pulse - seem to have made the collective decision to skedaddle (mmm, love that word) for the Canadian and Mexican wait this isn't 1965 Russian borders. Maynes' coverage also noted what's happening at various checkpoints:

Amid uncertainty over the scope of the draft, news reports and social media posts showed long lines of cars backed up on Russia's border crossings with Finland and Georgia, to the west, and Kazakhstan and Mongolia to the south.

Tickets for flights out of Russia to countries with visa-free travel — such as Armenia and Turkey — are either sold out or have soared in price...

To mix it up a little, here's Pjotr Sauer and Dan Sabbagh at The Guardian:

Long lines of vehicles continue to form at Russia’s border crossings on the second full day of Vladimir Putin’s military mobilisation, with some men waiting over 24 hours as western leaders disagree over whether Europe should welcome those fleeing the call-up to fight in Ukraine.

The Russian president’s decision to announce the first mobilisation since the second world war has led to a rush among men of military age to leave the country, likely sparking a new, possibly unprecedented brain drain in the coming days and weeks.

Witnesses on the border with Georgia, a popular route used by Russians to leave the country, said that some men resorted to using bicycles and scooters to skip the miles-long queue of traffic jams.

Footage from the scene circulating on social media appears to confirm these reports.

“I have been waiting in my car since Thursday afternoon,” said Anton, who declined to give his surname fearing it might complicate his travel. “Everyone is worried that the border will be closed by the time we get anywhere close to it,” he added...

For context, here's a map of Russia detailing the borders Russia has across Eastern Europe and much of Asia:

Wait, this is RISK. This is probably how Putin's generals are 
strategizing their war effort. No wonder they're losing, you can
NEVER hold Ukraine in a game of RISK. You should take
Australia first.

Okay wait let's refer to the Guardian's more accurate map.

Russia is a looooooong country - it spans 11 time zones! - so
there's a lot of borders that Russians can flee across...

Every Russian guy sober enough to understand how fucked the war in Ukraine has become are fleeing in a panic. In short, this is a Skedaddle.

Putin is doubling down on making this conscription (don't call it a mobilization like it's a good thing, this is forced military servitude) because Ukraine's recent success shredded much of the ground forces he had there and he needs as many bodies as possible to hold onto whatever he can claim. As mentioned earlier, Putin is also forcing the occupied regions of southern Ukraine - the Donbas in particular - to "vote" on a rigged "annexation" so that Russia can claim to the world that it's Ukraine invading Russia, even though most other nations would never recognize such a brazenly illegal move.

Putin is relying on the one last resource he can utilize in his war to conquer Ukraine: Manpower. Russia's overall population at 143 million is 100 million more than Ukraine's (43 million), and just on simple numbers in a slogfest Russia should be able to outlast Ukraine to conquer a bloodied landscape.

But in his desperation, Putin is overvaluing quantity over quality of armies. By all reports, Russia's armed forces are poorly trained, poorly motivated, poorly supplied... and everything that's happened since this February has proven how poor Russia's performance has been in a straight-up fight with an army that can fight back. While Putin is emphasizing in conscripting men with previous military experience, there's no guarantee those men have good enough experience in the first place, and there's no sign of them having the discipline and motivation to perform any better than the first wave of troops Putin sent in. Most military experts in the West argue that Putin needs to train his conscripts, which would take months... and Putin doesn't have months at this rate. He will send raw untrained victims to the front lines and hope to Zerg Rush Ukrainian forces by sheer attrition.

And while Putin can bring up 300,000 new bodies - if his "recruiters" can shanghai enough of them - or even a MILLION troops to continue his war, there's every sign that Russia has run low on any weapons and supplies those troops can use. Russia is deep into negotiations with China and North Korea to buy up any ammo they can use. That would still take massive logistics efforts to move all of that from the eastern end of things to the western front of Ukraine... and this war has demonstrated Russia is terrible at logistics. He is basically throwing more lives into the wood chipper of doom here, with no other goal than to hope Ukraine runs out of bodies first.

One last thing to consider how this conscription effort hurts Russia. Not just the brain drain of the best and brightest skedaddling for their lives, because they're the smartest ones to understand that fleeing is the best option: Putin is pulling away manpower that Russia relies on in their economy back home. He's taking menial workers, construction workers, office workers, anybody who couldn't run fast enough or who had reasons - likely family - to stay behind. He's disrupting the lives of millions of homefront Russians by doing this, and he's risking their anger if his war of attrition lingers ever onward.

Putin's running out of time, so he's stealing from Russia's very population thinking it will buy himself more time at everyone else's expense.

I warned before about Putin becoming more hated than feared. Disrupting the lives and livelihoods of millions of Russians is how you become more hated. This draft isn't saving Putin's time, it's hurrying his demise.

This is not going to end well for Putin or for Russia. We can only wait and pray that saner heads ensure the end is not in nuclear fire.

In the meantime, here's the soothing sounds of Christopher Cross and Michael MacDonald singing the one song on every Russian's playlist:

With My Mind, It Makes It Unreal

Okay, with all the craziness in the past twenty-four hours, there's a little too much about trump's legal woes to cram into one blog article at the moment, but I will focus on this (via Crooks & Liars):

No, seriously, what the hell?

I understand a little that trump is desperate to gaslight his way out of a legal jam here, by claiming every classified document the FBI recovered at Mar-A-Lago was secretly declassified - so he can avoid the serious espionage charges he's facing - but he can't fit those lies into the reality that NOBODY who worked for him can confirm he gave any "standing order" to declassify the documents he kept. So he's taking the "when the President does it, it means it's legal" argument and pushing it into the meta-level by claiming "when the President THINKS IT, it means it's legal."

That argument still runs into the problem that NOBODY ELSE CAN READ HIS SHIT-FILLED MIND, and can confirm what documents were declassified or not.

Jesus. This is like claiming "Well, in my mind I ate a slice of pie, so that pie must have been real." Or worse, imagining that you're secretly married to (insert current fantasy sexy actress/model) and that it's alright to stalk her now.

YOUR MIND DOESN'T MAKE IT REAL, trump. THE LAW MAKES IT REAL. And the law says you took documents you had NO RIGHT to take.

Insert GIFs of President Bartlet headdesking to infinity here.

Iran Again: The People Will Not Stay Silent

My home Internet is dead (again) so I am struggling to blog through other means (again) so I am back with a quick observation about yet another popular uprising in Iran over the theocratic bullying that's killing their own people (again). Via Bill Chappell and Joe Hernandez at NPR:

Iranian women are burning their hijabs and cutting their hair short in protests over the death of Mahsa Amini, a young woman who died after being arrested in Tehran by Iran's notorious "morality police," who enforce the country's rules on hijabs and other conservative Islamic modes of dress and behavior...

Amini, 22, died on Friday in northern Tehran. She had been arrested on Tuesday and reportedly was taken to a hospital shortly afterward.

Amini suffered multiple blows to the head before she died, according to London-based broadcaster Iran International.

Amini was arrested in her brother's car during a visit to see family members in the capital, the outlet reported. She was originally from Saqqez in Kurdistan province...

"This is Iran's George Floyd moment," British-Iranian actor Omid Djalili said in a video posted online, drawing a parallel between demonstrators who want change in Iran and Americans who called for police reforms after Floyd's death in custody.

Social media has been buzzing with the unrest. On Wednesday morning, top hashtags in Iran included posts about police responses to ongoing protests over Amini's death and another that essentially states, "No to the Islamic Republic..."

Iranians outraged by Amini's death have been demonstrating for nearly a week, with some women setting their headscarves on fire in the streets.

Video shared by BBC lead presenter Rana Rahimpour shows women standing on top of burning police cars, railing against the Islamic Republic.

"One question is whether this will stay as a hijab protest or mushroom into a larger anti-government movement," NPR's Peter Kenyon said on Tuesday.

At least seven people are reported to have been killed since the protests began throughout Iran, the BBC reported...

The Iranian people are frustrated, again. The Shi'a theocracy that overtook their country back in the 1970s has remained notorious about their punishing and abuse of women creating a segregated society obsessed with keeping women second-class citizens. Even the men - fathers, brothers, husbands - are pissed about how the brute force "morality police" have been brazen in their assaults on women whose only crime is to be a woman in the first place.

I wrote this back in 2009, when things looked a bit hopeful that the anger among the majority of Iranians would have been enough to force the government into at least serious reforms: 

Now, it's 2009. Ayatollah Khamenei basically calls a questionable election result too early and too eagerly for Ahmadinejad. Even though enough Iranians know among themselves there's no way Ahmad could have won all those provinces so handily, even with widespread reports of ballot box tampering and fraud. Now acting like a bullying teenager caught in a weak lie, Khamenei is threatening violence on anyone who dares question him, and starts acting in a very Shah-like manner with violent arrests, use of acid sprays, the works. Thing is, for all of Khamenei's rhetoric against the Brits, and the Americans, and Zionists and 'foreign interlopers', the Iranian people know that's not really true. There's no evidence the Brits or the Russians or the Americans tampered with the election. It wasn't BBC or Fox News rushing to proclaim Ahmadinejad the winner "by divine will" inside of an hour after the polls closed. This time, the Iranians have no one to blame but their own leaders. And that's why I think the protests are going to continue, because Khamenei is now the target of blame. The violence will get worse, which is the pity of it all, but it's not gonna stop until he's gone...

Unfortunately that was 13 years ago and the Ayatollahs aren't gone, Khamenei is getting old enough for health rumors to flourish but the institution propping him up is still in power.

It's heartbreaking to realize that even with all the outrage that erupts repeatedly across Iran whenever the corrupt priests in power abuse the citizenry, those corrupt powers have remained in place in spite of the obvious outrage against them.

It's heartwarming to know that even with decades of that abuse, the people haven't given up. The Iranians are still fighting back, and one of these days a faction of the power elite - the military, the reformers in office biding their time, someone potent and capable - will turn on the Ayatollahs and bring true freedom to the Iranian people.

Florida Ballot Amendments 2022: Short But Not Simple

It's September in an election midterms cycle, so you know what THAT means!!!

PIZZAAAAAAA!!!!

...wait, I'm on a diet now. Back up, let's rethink this. Oh, now I remember.

STATE BALLOT REFERENDUMS!!!

I'm gonna do what I often do - link to Ballotpedia's page on 2022 Florida Referenda - and then provide a little commentary on why certain amendments deserve your vote and certain other amendments don't.

An interesting note about this year's referenda: There were no voter-petitioned (Initiated) amendments put on the ballot this cycle. Either the requirements for those type of amendments got stricter, or nobody had an issue that reached high enough voter interest to get enough signatures to make it. There is a possibility the pandemic made it harder during 2021-22 to get volunteers and registration tables set up to get those signatures. Still, I do wonder. If anybody in the know can tell me, please leave a comment.

Now, to the issues.

Amendment One: Disregard Flood Resistance Improvements in Property Value Assessments

The title is wordy and a bit confusing. The synopsis tells us a Yes vote means "authorizing the state legislature to pass laws prohibiting flood resistance improvements to a home from being taken into consideration when determining a property's assessed value for property tax purposes." Voting No obviously means it won't let the state do this.

What this involves is giving homeowners options to make flood resistance improvements without such expensive items impact the property value assessments that tax appraisers would use to increase the tax value of that house. Meaning a form of tax deduction on what people will owe on those properties.

On the one hand, it falls under the Far Right obsession with lowering tax revenues that the state could collect on, which IMHO hurts our state's ability to build up funds to pay for shit like schools, roads, clean water, social safety nets, etc. On the other hand, it provides a tax credit of sorts for those who DO redevelop their property to better withstand flooding issues.

It should be a huge warning sign that even state Republicans admit that climate change is getting severe enough that flooding is a bigger problem than ever. It'd be nice if they passed more laws to combat the root cause to ensure flooding recedes as a problem (aheh).

This would be a reasonable YES vote for most voters. I just wish we had better amendments that didn't focus on cutting taxes our counties would need.

Amendment Two: Abolishes the Florida Constitution Revision Commission

You might recall four years ago (2018) we had a slew of amendments on the state ballot that exceeded the number we'd see for normal referendum cycles. What happened was a constitution-required Revision Commission was at work that year. Every 20 years, that Commission shows up - filled with Governor-nominated political hacks - to put any number of amendments that the legislature may have wanted done but couldn't get past their 60 percent supermajority... and maybe any popular voter initiatives that couldn't get enough signatures.

Problem in 2018 was - and if you link back to what I posted about that cycle - the Commission crammed together a series of multi-issue referenda: Each Commission amendment had two or three disparate issues under consideration, meaning people who were voting Yes for one thing were forced to vote Yes for other things they would otherwise had voted No.

As I noted on one of the amendments that had non-related matters to vote on:

They're trying to get people to vote for the one thing that matters - the victims' rights - to one thing that the legislature ought to do itself - raise retirement age - and then to one thing that would make our legal system worse - denying courts from getting administrative input.

It angered a lot of people, even some of the Republicans, and it led to the Legislature agreeing to the idea of abolishing the 20-year Commission outright.

Here's the problem: The Commission itself is not a bad idea.

The reason for that Commission is obvious: Political logjams in the Legislature prevents certain popular issues from getting resolved; also the strict requirements for public initiatives are needed to prevent our ballots from getting swamped by extremists pushing bad agendas. The Commission is a third option, one that if applied properly could allow voters to pass needed reforms that our state government might not make.

What really went wrong in 2018 was that the Commission had no set guidelines on how to proceed - it sets its own rules rather than by court or legislative mandates - and so abused their power to cram - also called "bundling" as many unpopular and partisan ballot referendums alongside popular ones in an attempt to screw over the voters. Instead of abolishing the Commission, our state needs to reform it by setting rules and requirements to ensure it works properly.

We need to make it so that the Commission CANNOT cram multiple ballot issues onto one "bundled" amendment. Each issue should stand alone. That would be a major improvement right there. Then, there needs to be a set limit of Commission-based amendments - say, a top ten of amendments that passed their committee votes - so that way the ballot doesn't get overwhelmed, and then any left over by the Commission can be converted into public initiatives for signatures and hopefully make it onto the next election cycle's ballot. I would also argue that the membership of the Commission should not be by governor appointment (which allowed then-Governor Scott to fill it with hacks) but by popular vote: Have voters choose an open ballot of candidates in the previous election cycle, make it so each major party nominates UP TO 25 candidates (the candidates should have requirements to run to ensure no extremists get on ballot), and the top 37 vote getters go in meaning it will be an automatic mix of both parties.

Just those three fixes alone would work. Straight-out abolition of a reform method would hurt the state in the long run.

I would argue NO against this amendment. There are better ways to fix the Commission, not kill it.

Amendment Three: Yet Another Homestead Exemption for Certain Public Service Workers

If there's anything predictable about the Republicans in our legislature, it's that they want to create more and more exemptions to the Homestead Exemption on property taxes. Just keep on making it harder for counties to pay for themselves, Tallahassee! /headdesk

At some point I swear Florida Republicans will eliminate property taxes altogether, at which point everything will be paid through sales taxes that hurt the poor the most... /more headdesk

This time around, the exemption idea is for "Additional homestead property tax exemption on $50,000 of assessed value on property owned by certain public service workers including teachers, law enforcement officers, emergency medical personnel, active duty members of the military and Florida National Guard, and child welfare service employees." I thought they've already passed a ton of exemptions for law enforcement and military residents already, but hey let's give them $50,000 more of a tax cut shall we?

At least this time around they're providing tax cuts for the more "liberal" leaning professions like teachers and social workers, so this is not as bad an exemption push as the earlier ones. Any benefit to our beleaguered teachers and family welfare workers is a nice thing to consider

The only problem with this exemption? It doesn't seem to cover OTHER public service employees like county and city officials. LIKE LIBRARIANS!!!!!!! YES, I AM ANGRY I'M GETTING OVERLOOKED. I DON'T CARE ABOUT THE HYPOCRISY, I CARE ABOUT GETTING MY CONDO'S TAXES DOWN!!! AAAAUUUuuugggg.... cough cough... um, sorry about that, got a little self-serving there for a moment.

Look, previous experience has taught me that these Homestead exemption amendments are popular and tend to get passed in spite of my pro-tax (in moderation, in short "tax the rich 'cause they're the only ones who can afford to anymore") world-view. It's likely a lot of teachers and their families will vote for this, which is a broad voting base on its own. This ballot affects enough people in what they'll view as a positive that they'll likely support it.

I'll just sit over here grumbling to myself about the slight to librarians and tell you I'm personally a No on this.

--

This is, as mentioned earlier, a relatively quiet amendment cycle for Florida. It should be relatively easy for everyone to remember. If anything, the amendment that means the most this term - Amendment Two abolishing the Revision Commission - is the one I really want voters to say NO to. That's what matters here.

Also, I want a huge Democratic / Blue Wave turnout this midterms to vote that asshole DeSantis and every other Republican out of office, but you should have learned that by now.

GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT, FLORIDA DEMOCRATS!

DeSantis Cruelty, and Florida's Ruin

So this was the Rage Thing of the Day: Finding out my evil-ass GOP Governor of Doom Ron DeSantis wasted $12 million of Florida state funds - earmarked for our residents - to stage a campaign event by rounding up migrants at the Texas border and shipping them off by plane in a deceitful manner up to Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts all in the name of mocking Sanctuary Cities and libruls in general. Via Ana Ceballos at Miami Herald (may be paywalled):

In a surprise announcement Wednesday evening, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office took credit for sending two planes with migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, apparently jump-starting an immigration program without revealing any details. The governor told reporters three weeks ago that the program was on standby, and the Florida Department of Transportation, which is overseeing the immigrant relocation program, said it had no details about how it would work yet. 

Things changed on Wednesday — on DeSantis’ birthday. “Florida can confirm that two planes with illegal immigrants that arrived in Martha’s Vineyard today were part of the state’s relocation program to transport illegal immigrants to sanctuary cities,” Taryn Fenske, the governor’s communication director, said in a statement.

Martha’s Vineyard is an island south of Cape Cod, popular for summer vacations and accessible only by plane or ferry. 

Fox News was given an exclusive, and it showed footage of the migrants arriving in Martha’s Vineyard on its nightly, prime-time show...

Sen. Julian Cyr, D-Cape Cod, said one plane left from San Antonio, and that this appeared to be part of a larger campaign to divert migrants from border states, according to The Vineyard Gazette. 

“Just like the reverse freedom rides in the 1960s, this endeavor is a cruel ruse that is manipulating families who are seeking a better life,” Cyr told the Gazette. “No one should be capitalizing on the difficult circumstances that these families are in and contorting that for the purposes of a ‘gotcha’ moment.”

Spent most of the day thinking "Christ, DeSantis Is An Asshole."

Again, the dogma of the modern Republican Party is "The Cruelty Is the Point" and dear God DeSantis keeps proving that with his bullying and open displays of hate.

Everything about this was staged. DeSantis made sure Fox Not-News had the exclusive coverage. He pulled this stunt on his birthday. He had camera crews recording the whole thing so he could make campaign ads about it later. He intentionally sent the planes to a well-known liberal hotbed, as though he was dumping trash on a hated neighbor's yard.

Fox Not-News happily trumpeted that fact:

“Everyone on the left has a home there. Do you think they are going to be embracing their new neighbors?” Fox News host Jesse Watters said.

Joke's on you, Watters and all the rest of you haters. The island residents immediately rallied to provide food, shelter, and legal aid to the immigrants. They ARE embracing their new neighbors. Liberals you decry as irreligious monsters are acting more Christian - they are acting by Jesus' teachings of Matthew 25 - and charitable than you and yours.

But this is all on DeSantis. This is his "project," whatever the hell he thinks he can accomplish.

Just what the hell is DeSantis doing taking money meant for FLORIDA to spend on transporting immigrants at the TEXAS border?

There's reports that DeSantis' people on the ground gave false assurances to the migrant families to get them to board the plane. That could be an illegal act in violation of federal immigration laws (8 USC 1324), and people are already filing lawsuits over that.

And what the hell is a state Governor doing messing around in FEDERAL affairs such as immigration? For DeSantis to pull this off, he had to get past the Departments of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), whom last I heard were opposing - yeah, even ICE - these stunts as harmful and chaotic.

Nobody truly benefits from the stunt DeSantis just pulled - and what he threatens to keep pulling - other than himself, all because it gets him national airtime and more media coverage (there is for Republicans no longer such a thing as "bad news").

That sadistic fuck.

Every single Florida Republican still thinking of voting for this sadistic fuck should hang their heads in shame. DeSantis is willfully harming people, disrupting our legal system, all so he could pander to YOUR racism towards Latino immigrants coming from Venezuela, Peru, Honduras, Mexico. These are families with children, looking for honest work and better lives just like our ancestors did, and DeSantis is mocking the American immigrant experience just so he can bully and lie his way to a second term as Governor these midterms (and position himself for the Presidency run in 2024).

Again. That sadistic fuck.

For the LOVE OF GOD, Florida. For the LOVE OF CHILDREN AND FAMILIES AND YOUR GREAT-GRANDPARENTS WHO TRAVELED TO THESE SHORES SO YOU COULD BE AMERICANS. For the love of everything humane and decent, DO NOT VOTE FOR DESANTIS.

This shouldn't be hard, Florida. DeSantis is an openly avowed bully and racist. Charlie Crist has been more decent a human being on our public stage long enough for us to know Crist won't turn our state into a global mockery.

For the LOVE OF GOD, Florida. We can be better than this. Stop DeSantis, vote for Crist, make Florida shine again...

Mississippi Stealing

Political corruption, sad to say, is as old as politics itself. If you go back to the time of Hammurabi, you'll likely find court officials taking bribes from stone masons to avoid getting punished for racing their chariots through school zones. It doesn't matter which political party, doesn't matter which nation, doesn't matter which gender, doesn't matter the religion of the corrupt official or the race they identify. Greed is universally understood: It gets into anything where money and privilege is involved, and may God have mercy on the victims who suffer when the powerful get greedy.

One of the things in American politics is how the corruption plays out between the federal level and the states. As the dynamics of the Constitution shifted from states having more of the political might and wealth to the federal - it started under the Reconstruction era post-Civil War but by the time of the New Deal (and the Second World War) all the money (and the power) flowed from Washington DC - you saw the shift in corruption as well. If not the federal agencies and elected officials getting caught stealing from the till, it was the state-level officials who were funneling federal aid away from the citizens (who needed that aid) into the officials' own pockets.

A particularly ugly example of that just got revealed to the public this week, when federal and state investigators revealed that almost 77 million dollars meant for welfare programs to the state of Mississippi were diverted to other projects or organizations that directly profited either those state officials or their wealthy benefactors/allies. The story gained national attention from the revelation that famed sports star Brett Favre - football Hall of Famer from Southern Miss - was in on part of the theft. This is one of the few times on this blog I've ever linked to a story from ESPN:

An investigative report by Mississippi Today revealed Tuesday that former Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant helped former NFL quarterback Brett Favre obtain welfare funds in order to help build a new volleyball center at the University of Southern Mississippi.

The news organization reviewed text messages from 2017 and 2019 that were filed Monday in the state of Mississippi's civil lawsuit over misspent welfare funds. The texts were filed by an attorney representing Nancy New, who has already pleaded guilty to 13 felony counts of bribery, fraud and racketeering for her role in the welfare scheme. New was the founder of the Mississippi Community Education Center, which was tasked with spending tens of millions in federal welfare funds to help the state.

State auditors determined nonprofit leaders misspent at least $77 million in welfare funds in the largest case of public fraud in Mississippi history.

The texts show Favre, New and Bryant discussing how to divert at least $5 million in welfare funds to build a volleyball stadium at Southern Miss. Favre played football at Southern Miss, and his daughter was a volleyball player there at the time some of the texts were sent.

"If you were to pay me is there anyway the media can find out where it came from and how much?" Favre asked New in 2017.

After telling Favre that "we never have that information publicized," she circled back to him the next day.

"Wow, just got off the phone with Phil Bryant! He is on board with us! We will get this done!" New told Favre...

Favre not only understood how bad this story would look if it got out, Favre expressed relief in a follow-up text - "Awesome! I needed to hear that for sure" - that he was going to get political cover from Mississippi's governor.

If you need context to understand why this is so disgusting and horrifying an act by Nancy New, Phil Bryant, Brett Favre, and several others: You need to understand that the not-so-great state of Mississippi is one of the poorest states in America. For a little more analysis, let's take a look at this (via Stephan Bisaha at NPR):

This is a tale of two Jackson, Mississippis.

There's Jackson, the state capital, run historically by white conservatives. Then there's Jackson, the 82 percent Black city, run by a mayor wanting to make it "the most radical city on the planet."

February's winter storm and water crisis provided just the latest high profile example of the two Jackson's clashing. State and local governments have made a pastime out of pointing fingers at each other for the city's woes, from crime to potholes to urban blight.

Mississippi leaders say Jackson is just one city and can't hog resources to fix problems found elsewhere in the state too. Jackson leaders say they need more state support and that Mississippi can't thrive while its largest city suffers.

For Jacksonians, it can feel like Jackson the city versus Jackson the capital.

"I don't see this legislative body as representing me," said Jackson State University Professor D'Arby Orey, referring to the Mississippi Legislature. "I don't really expect it to provide support for Jackson..."

That's usually how the relationship goes. Jackson requests state dollars, Mississippi says it will help, but other parts of the state need those resources too.

"We had 78 different systems throughout the entire state that were having and experiencing challenges," Reeves said at a press conference in March. "This is not an issue that is unique to our capital city."

State politicians also often say city leaders need to take more responsibility.

"The prime mover needs to be the city itself. It's the city of Jackson, Mississippi," Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann told the Mississippi Free Press. "How much money is it going to take, and how do you even pay for it? I haven't seen any of that."

Mississippi often places last on state lists for everything from health to income. Jackson also struggles with the same problems, with 23 percent of the city falling below the poverty line.

Jackson's mayor says the fate of the city and state can't be separated – more support from Mississippi for its largest city would mean growth for the rest of the state.

"Without question it can't change without a significant alteration in the relationship with the city of Jackson" Lumumba says. "Ultimately it is not just a Jackson problem. It is a state of Mississippi problem..."

That article was published in 2021. Just this past month August 2022 Jackson Mississippi went into full crisis as their water became too toxic for anything. And the state - which has all the money and power at that level - still doesn't seem to be doing a damn thing to fix it.

What is happening here is racism: Yes, I am going there.

Jackson is Mississippi's largest population center. You would think, rationally, that as the major center the state legislature and governor's office - which work there! - would care more to fund that metro and keep its infrastructure working well, make its schools better, make sure the workplaces are safe, the homes are well-built, the roads working, the pipes flowing. You want your major city to attract good business, keep families living there, grow and expand into a major metro the way southern cities like Atlanta and Orlando and Charlotte grew.

But the state legislature - through decades of political gerrymandering, open hostility to civil (and voting) rights, and constant corruption of social conservatives (who flipped from Democrats to Republicans during the post-60s realignment) - as noted in Bisaha's article is mostly White at 68 percent, while the city of Jackson is 82 percent Black. This is in a state of Mississippi with 58 percent Whites and 38 percent Blacks. Mississippi has the largest percentage of Black residents among all the states (The District of Columbia is higher but doesn't count as a state (yet, which may also explain why DC statehood remains undone)).

The mostly White Mississippi state legislature doesn't care about taking care of their own state, because God forbid any attempts to improve their education, health care, business startups, and/or overall economy may go to "those people". Jamelle Bouie noted this years ago at Slate:

Driven by its high poverty rate, Mississippi ranks low on health and wellness. It has one the highest rates of obesity, heart disease, and diabetes in the country, as well as the highest mortality rate for infants and adults. These ills are worst among its black residents: 43.2 percent of Mississippi blacks are afflicted by obesity and its associated problems and 44 percent live at or below the poverty line, compared with a—still high—30.2 percent obesity rate and 16 percent poverty rate for whites...

We know why Mississippi Republicans refuse to work with the ACA: A hyper-ideological, small government conservatism that disdains social programs and public investment. But it’s worth a look at the history behind that conservatism, which lives strongest in Mississippi but exists throughout the Deep South.

Mississippi has poor social outcomes and a threadbare safety net. It also has—and has long had—the largest black population in the country. And it’s where slavery was very lucrative, and Jim Crow most vicious. This is not a coincidence...

Where they existed, public services were sparse and utterly segregated. Anything public had to be kept separate from blacks, or degraded, if that wasn’t possible. To get a sense of the scale of white resistance in Mississippi, consider this: During the civil rights movement, white supremacists built a network of state and private agencies to wreak havoc on black activists with surveillance, economic reprisals, and extreme violence. One of them was the Mississippi Citizens Council, and it, writes historian Joseph Crespino, “[P]oliced a white racial authoritarianism that ran roughshod over the civil and political rights of white and black Mississippians both. Because of the Council’s influence, no place in the United States … came closer to resembling the repressiveness of apartheid South Africa than did Mississippi.”

More than a half-century later, and all of this is dead. But the ideas and culture it built are not. And why would they be? For nearly 100 years, Mississippi was a white supremacist police state. Of course this made a mark on its culture. Of course these ideas of exclusion—and specifically, of racial hostility to outside interference and public goods—are still embedded in the structure of its politics.

Today, Mississippi is politically polarized along racial lines. Whites are Republicans, blacks are Democrats, and the former controls state politics. Public investment isn’t just disdained, it’s attacked as racially suspect. “The Republican Party has never been the food stamp party, or the party of pork until desperation set in with Thad Cochran’s re-election bid,” said state Sen. Angela Hill during the Mississippi Senate Republican primary, in reference to Sen. Cochran’s outreach to black voters. The state is harshly carceral—jailing more people per capita than almost anywhere in the country, the majority of them black—and has a huge number of all-white private schools while the public school system is largely segregated...

Even after the Civil Rights era brought an end to Jim Crow, Mississippi's power structure merely realigned itself to the task of "Well, if we're supposed to make Them equal, let's make it so shitty there's nothing good about it for Them to enjoy." And so the corruption ignores the needs of the state's biggest city, ignores the need to improve the schools to let children - White and Black (and Latino and Creole and Cajun if you got 'em) - get educations that could make them smart enough for good jobs at decent wages, and ignores the reality that poverty hurts a majority of state residents regardless of race while the rich play around at the Biloxi casinos and whatever upper-class country clubs they have upriver. 

Mississippi has been one of the poorest states for generations, and the actions of these grifters - who I'm willing to bet will tell you that "poverty is a character flaw" instead of it being pressed down upon the poor to keep them poor - are keeping Mississippi broken and impoverished for their own greedy ends.

Every elected official past and present who had a hand in this $77 million dollar ripoff should be in handcuffs facing juries, every millionaire who got money they didn't need off these schemes should be in handcuffs facing juries, even Brett Favre - who was $100 million in net wealth already and could have easily used his celebrity to raise more - needs to hang his head in shame in front of a judge reading back to him the charges of stealing from the poor to make the rich richer.

Racism is at the root of a lot of our nation's sins. Don't be at all surprised Greed and Racism go happily hand-in-hand as we beat down the impoverished for our sins (and not theirs).

Ukraine Advances, Russia Flees

With all of the nonstop media coverage of Queen Elizabeth's funeral kind of drowning out all the other news, we need to pay attention to the change of fortunes going on in Ukraine as the defenders are earning major gains in their counteroffensive to retake the eastern half from Russia. Brief report from Digby first: 

Ukrainian forces pushed deep into Russian-controlled territory Saturday, handing Kyiv some of the most strategically important towns and cities in the northeast of the country and delivering retreating Russian forces one of their biggest setbacks since the start of the war.

In a matter of days, Ukraine retook swaths of its Kharkiv region, where Russians had fought ferociously for months, spending lives and ammunition to take over cities, sometimes a building at a time.

In the weeks leading up to the offensive that Ukraine launched earlier this week, Kyiv’s forces used Western-made weapons, including High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or Himars, against Russian supply lines and front-line positions.

The growing success of Ukraine’s advance signals to Western backers the effectiveness of weapons the U.S. and Europe has given to Kyiv. It comes at a particularly critical time for Western powers, days after Moscow indefinitely suspended natural-gas flows to Europe, raising the prospect of energy rationing this winter.

Russia’s retreat from key cities is likely aimed at avoiding encirclement after Ukraine captured the town of Kupyansk, which sits on a rail and road hub, and severed the last artery that connected Russia with thousands of its front-line troops.

“It’s a complete collapse,” Phillips O’Brien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, said about the Russian pullout of forces between Kupyansk and Izyum. “In the battle of Donbas, they probably had more troops deployed there than anywhere and now they seem to be unable to hold anything.”

Essentially, all of Kharkiv region is under Ukrainian control. Reports swirl that some troops have reached the Russia border.

If we can refer to my guy in the sky at Balloon Juice, what Adam L Silverman has to say:

The Ukrainian military was incredibly busy today...

Also, the Russian military was busy too; running from the Ukrainian military...

Here’s the British MOD’s assessment for today. They did not post an updated map.

"Russian forces were likely taken by surprise... Ukrainian units are now threatening the town of Kupiansk; it's capture would be a significant blow to Russia because it sits on supply routes to the Donbas front line..."

Silverman's update was yesterday. Checking on Kupiansk today is that Ukrainians are fighting in the city. Control is not secure but they have to be disrupting Russia's efforts to keep their troops alive.

Speaking of those troops, nearly every report coming out this weekend was that Russia's ground forces surrendered or fled in a rout of epic proportions. The official statement coming out of Moscow is that their forces are "regrouping" but all the other reports are saying "running for their lives."

Social media is flush with frontline video clips of Ukrainians finding abandoned tanks and personnel carriers still in working condition. Troop morale was reportedly low before this counterattack: By all evidence Russian morale is flat out gone.

There is just trash everywhere, no policing of debris, etc. Yes, war is hell and all that, but if you are in a set position for a while you maintain your AO for a variety of reasons, including just maintaining basic discipline.

— John Cole (@Johngcole) September 11, 2022

Anyone who's been a solider, like Cole, will tell you discipline matters: It keeps you focused and on your game. It's a reality of war since the days of Sparta all the way through the Romans to the Revolutionary Army drilled by Von Steuben to the World Wars to today. Without that discipline, you're not an army.

From what I've read about the modern Russia army, it seems to have been lax about discipline because they relied on overwhelming numbers, advanced armor, artillery barrages out the wazoo, and bad weather to get them out of jams. They were riding on their reputations post-World War and on the fact they had relatively decent heavy armor to match the strength of Western (European/US) armor.

Their more recent invasions and incursions - including their seizing of Crimea back in 2014 when Ukraine rose up to overthrow their corrupt pro-Putin regime - focused on limited gains and minor bits of territory. This time around it was a massive nation-sized invasion... and all of their flaws - over-reliance on shock and awe, lack of logistics, poor leadership in charge of poor troops - got exposed in real time. Advancements in anti-tank weaponry turned dreaded Russian tanks into death traps and scrap bounty for Ukrainian farmers. As soon as Ukraine got upgraded artillery weapons from the West - HIMARs in particular - they were able to strike deeper into Russian-occupied locations to disrupt their supply chains. Everything built up to this past week's counterattack using Kershon as one front and opening up Kharkiv for a rout on a scale that hasn't been seen in decades.

The last time Russia felt a loss this bad, they were the Soviets and getting driven out of Afghanistan. But that was a loss that carried across nine years of bloody quagmire. This is a loss dragged along for five months - ever since they bogged down in April - and enacted over five days. We're talking hundreds of thousands of losses to KIA or POW. Half their armored might blown up or abandoned. Even if Putin panics and makes a call to conscript more cannon fodder to his war, it will take months to plan out another attack: Any hasty push and he's merely repeating the same mistakes to lose even more bodies and armor he can't afford to lose.

If we can go back to Silverman for some concluding thoughts about how Russia is going to handle this shocking turn of (mis)fortunes:

There’s RUMINT that Putin is preparing to order a general mobilization. And the sealing of of the center of Moscow is related to that. I doubt it. First, we haven’t seen any information come out that would indicate that anything is being done to prepare for a general mobilization. Secondly, I think it is more likely this was done preemptively to try to prevent mass protests as the news from Kharkiv and Kherson filters back into Russia despite Putin’s best efforts to completely control the Russian information space.

Frankly, ordering a general mobilization isn’t going to help Putin remove his tuchas from the the crack he’s wedged it in. A crack of his own making. Unless Putin has a fully equipped and properly trained army stashed somewhere that no one knows about, it’s only a matter of time. The question is what does he do at that point? Does he cause a meltdown at ZNPP? Does he use lower yield nukes and just wipes out Ukraine and every Ukrainian he can because he can’t have it? Does he decide that a world without Russia as a great power isn’t worth surviving and he fires all his nukes...?

It's a good question, and the big reason why NATO (especially Poland) hasn't escalated matters by sending in their own troops to give Ukraine more than enough trained personnel to beat Russia back to their border. The fear of nuclear retaliation is pretty much the only reason why a nation that's barely in the top 20 economies and clearly now with the worst ground army in the world - seriously, Iraqi troops in 2003 were better trained than this - can still command any fear.

However, unlike Silverman I can't imagine Putin or Russia getting angry or desperate enough to go nuclear on Ukraine. If Putin gives the order and drops a "Sore Loser" warhead on Kyiv, he becomes a global pariah for the rest of his short life. Instead of making opposing nations cower, it will terrify them into quarantining Russia with absolute sanctions and complete cutoff of travel, anything and everything to starve the oligarchs of their wealth and power. Every Russian embassy will be shut down and sent home. The United Nations would rebel at the broken nature of having Russia as a permanent member of the Security Council. And that's just the political fallout: LITERAL FALLOUT from even one nuke can very well cover Russia and cause backlash from Putin's own people. 

Even with low-yield nukes - read up on Davy Crocketts sometime, that might scare you a little, and yes Russia has that type of yield on hand - you will see a backlash of global proportions. No other nation has used nukes since 1945: Ever since we've learned the consequences of such weapons, even the U.S. has refused to use them again. For Putin to be dangerous enough to use a nuke, it will be the last weapon he uses. The rest of the world would do everything in their power to make sure he doesn't use another.

What matters now is if Ukraine and solidify their defenses in Kharkiv, and bring in more troops to circle around and cut off Kershon and Crimea to regain all of that before winter sets in. It may be September now but even in this age of climate change the likelihood of bad weather swirling in fast is pretty high, and it won't favor either side when it does.

But right now, all the advantages favor Ukraine. Their troops are spirited and disciplined and winning. Russia is retreating in a way they haven't done since 1917.

Here's hoping Ukraine reclaims so much of their homeland that Putin can't lie to his own people anymore.

Also, I REALLY need to find out where to order Ukrainian "Russian Warship, Go Fuck Yourself" Stamps for Christmas time. I got a relative who's into stamp collecting...

As the Years Pass on September 11

It feels a bit bittersweet that given how chaotic and busy this year's been - so many other things to report on today - that this year's remembrance of September 11th seems less important than other years.

For all the chest-thumping and flag-waving over December 7th - the attack on Pearl Harbor - it too fell in importance as the generations most affected by it aged away, leaving behind the echoes of sorrow and fear that reverberated that day.

For all the rehashings of November 22nd - the assassination of JFK - it too is fading into legend, the constant re-enactments of phantom riflemen hiding at the Grassy Knoll turning into punchline rather than serious debate over what really happened that day.

As someone who can still remember vividly what it was like that Tuesday: Being at Main Library in downtown Ft. Lauderdale, running into my former supervisor Barbara tearfully telling me about the second tower getting hit, watching the first tower fall on a snowy-screened television with poor reception, telling a young couple why the county government center was closed and that "one of the towers is just flat out gone," returning to Northwest Regional in Coral Springs where it was the quietest I had ever heard that place, going to a blood donation center in Lauderhill and waiting well into darkness with the long queue of people in the parking lot wanting to do something in that moment...

And time moves on, children grow up, there is a generation going into college now born well after that tragic day.

It's getting harder to remember.

The Queen We Saw

Her Majesty is a pretty nice girl/
But she doesn't have a lot to say/
Her Majesty is a pretty nice girl/
But she changes from day to day

I wanna tell her that I love her a lot/
But I gotta get a belly full of wine/
Her Majesty is a pretty nice girl
Someday I'm gonna make her mine, oh yeah/
Someday I'm gonna make her mine...

-- "Her Majesty," The Beatles

What, you were expecting "The Queen Is Dead" by the Smiths???

I have to be seen to be believed.
-- Her Majesty, herself

Her Majesty Elizabeth, Second of Her Name, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and her other realms and territories, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith, Auxiliary Mechanic in the Home Front during World War II, Whovian Fan Number One, passed from this earthly realm today and sent much of the world into reflection about one of the most extravagant and eventful lives ever lived.

Nearly every publication out there will have tributes aplenty, but I'm finding this one by Tom McTague from The Atlantic to be spot on:

...She was the product of ancestral inheritance but was more popular than any of her prime ministers and remained head of state in countries around the world because of public support. She was in a sense a democratic Queen, a progressive conservative, an aristocratic multiculturalist.

Queen Elizabeth was a constitutional monarch, not a political leader with real powers, and one who was required to serve an ever-changing set of realms, peoples, institutions, and ideas that were no longer as obviously compatible as they had been when she ascended to the throne. The Queen’s great achievement was to honor the commitment she made to an imperial nation and its empire as a princess even as it became a multiethnic state and a Commonwealth...

Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor was born on April 21, 1926, as a princess to not simply a king but an emperor. She became Queen to a multitude of realms. A child of empire, European supremacy, and the old order—even the old faith, Anglican Christianity—she came to see it as her solemn duty to represent all the peoples and religions of the Commonwealth.

This duty created friction during her reign, but it made her different from any other European monarch and, paradoxically, kept her modern. A great irony of Queen Elizabeth II is that the most penetrating criticism of her reign came not from the republican left but from the nationalist right, parts of which saw past her image of continuity and tradition to the deep change that her rule actually represented...

In retrospect, it was absurd to think that the Queen could be both British and global, sharing herself equally among her various realms. How can one person be Queen of the United Kingdom one moment and Queen of Australia the next, as well as head of a Commonwealth? In time, the practical reality revealed itself—the Queen was primarily Queen of the United Kingdom.

From 1952 to her death, she would meet 13 of the 14 U.S. presidents elected in that time (Lyndon B. Johnson being the exception). She did so as Britain’s head of state—in effect, Queen of the Old Country hiding in imperial clothes, representing a state that, in U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson’s infamous put-down, had lost an empire but not yet found a role...

Yet successive British governments knew which direction they wanted to go in. In Africa, for example, Britain, unlike France, encouraged its former colonies not only to become independent, but to become republics. The loss of the empire was seen as a price worth paying for greater influence, and the Queen supported recognition of African nationalism. In 1960, when British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan remarked in a speech from South Africa that the “wind of change is blowing through this continent,” signaling the inevitability of decolonization, Elizabeth “took the unusual step of indicating her personal approval of Macmillan’s words,” Murphy records. Shortly after the speech, Macmillan received a telegram with a message from London that “the Queen was very interested and much impressed by the Prime Minister’s speech.” Four years later, the process of decolonization in East, West, and Central Africa was largely complete...

In some senses, Queen Elizabeth II leaves an ambiguous legacy. She stands above almost all of Britain’s British monarchs, but was one who oversaw a drastic shrinkage in the monarchy’s power, prestige, and influence. Such a legacy, however, does not do the Queen justice...

The Queen’s role in the Commonwealth might have been a device to hide the reality of the British empire’s decline, but she did not believe so. The irony is that in doing her duty to this imperial shadow in the same way she did her duty to Britain, she was better able to symbolize a modern, multicultural Britain and the world of the 21st century than logic might suggest was possible for an aristocratic European princess. Indeed, she is more popular in many African Commonwealth countries today than the former white dominions, which may soon choose to become republics and long ago stopped seeing themselves as British...

Looking back on her reign, it is clear that the age of Elizabeth really was golden: an age of extraordinary prosperity, European peace, human rights, and the collapse of Soviet tyranny. Queen Elizabeth II—the Queen—was one of the great symbols of that age, though not a creator of it, a servant rather than a master. But if her legacy is anything, it is that symbols and service matter, even as what they symbolize and serve bend and bow to meet the new reality.

If I could contribute to those thoughts: When we appraise the legacy of this queen Elizabeth the Second, we will note how she bookends the reign of the First Elizabeth, who presided over the rise of England as the foundation of a United Kingdom (as Wales, Ireland, and Scotland were slowly drawn by politics and wars to merge together) and the birth of the British Empire. Where the first Elizabeth saw its beginnings, the second witnessed - and took part in - the end of empire, replacing it with a more democratic nation-oriented Commonwealth.

It's not a clean legacy, obviously: the sins and bloodshed of colonization over the centuries do not wash off easy, and places like India and Pakistan have not forgiven some of the damage done. After I wrote this article, I've seen more angry reminders from the First Nations of Canada of how they suffered under the Residential Schools that brutally "re-educated" tribal children and caused a lot of abuse. 

But Elizabeth strived to respect the new nations spun off from colonial rule, and oversaw transitions that for the most part led to stable, functioning governments. It allowed her to retain devotion from post-colonial countries that have otherwise dismissed European political dynamics for their own. It doesn't excuse the lack of apology and reparations, I know, but it explains a little why the condemnations were intermingled with the condolences.

Elizabeth's own reputation across the world is more popular than her nation's. The glamour of royalty - where she herself was never glamourous a person compared to movie stars or the Kennedys or her daughter-in-law Diana - combined with her constant public persona of Duty Personified gave her a personality both regal and comforting. Nations that had nothing to do with the British Empire came to see her as THE Queen. Even in America, where we pride ourselves on tossing off the yoke of British tyranny - take that, Farmer George! - there is/was a lot of Anglophilia when it came to QE2. We Americans recognized her more than we recognized (or respected) the Prime Ministers who actually ran the UK.

Queen Elizabeth was the face - literally for 70 years! - of a royal institution that had outlasted nearly every other monarchy. It survived through an age of rampant republicanism, having endured constant calls by those who sought to dismantle the Crown as a political force and replace it either with an elected presidency or all of the power granted to the parliamentary system. Even the staunchest critics of royalty fell silent when the question came up whether to end Elizabeth's rule: She was too popular to toss to the curb and they knew it.

Which is why her passing can very well be the end of an age. Not just her Elizabethan (Second) Age of British glory, which stood firm against Nazis and Communists, and gave us the Beatles and Monty Python and Harry Potter and other cultural milestones that will stand the test of time like Shakespeare. With the death of Elizabeth II comes the reality that her singular gift of keeping the Commonwealth united will soon end.

Even before today, there were member nations - especially in the Caribbean, led by Jamaica - openly discussing a switch to a republican form of government with their own elected heads of state. Whether they may even stay in the Commonwealth with other nations is up for debate. The situation with Brexit - where the United Kingdom itself is struggling with trade woes and economic stability - has placed strains on how the Commonwealth operates, and may not survive for long unless serious reforms take place... and the current Tory Parliament isn't looking at serious reforms. The respect for the Queen was pretty much the one thing keeping it all going. And she's gone.

Elizabeth lived and died as mortal as any of us, but she took on a role - Wearing the Queenly Mask - that required her to sacrifice moments of personal happiness for a nation's - and the world's - greater good. And it was on that mask that the rest of us across the globe projected our hopes, our fears, our ambitions, our mockery, and more. Not everybody loved her, nor the idea of monarchy. Whatever we needed of her, we saw... but it was a question of whether we could believe what we saw. In the end, her devotion and duty convinced most of us she was real.