Anniversary: When Doonesbury Dropped the GUILTY Bomb On The National Discourse

On May 29, 1973, in the midst of the then-ongoing investigations into the Watergate DNC headquarters break-in by Nixon's campaign (and dirty works) handlers, a singular comic strip appeared in the daily newspapers crossing the lines from objective observation to subjective opinion when artist Garry Trudeau focused on John Mitchell - one of the key players in the overall Watergate scandals - and pre-judged the man with the conclusion that he was "GUILTY! GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY!" (Yes, CAPS LOCK was even a thing before the Internet, kiddos)

the strip that defined not just a moment, but 
altered how we perceive political commentary to this day

The Doonesbury comic strip was merely three years young in 1973, having been bought up by a comic strip syndicate as part of an effort to infuse the four-panel humor sections of daily newspapers with younger, more college-oriented (in those days, Boomer generation) artists appealing to similar audiences.

The artwork itself was pretty basic, "fresh out of art school" kind of linear inking, with static bodies and "camera placement" with distance (and no shifting of angles or position) to set the scenes for characters to interact. There was also more dialogue than most strips worked with.

What creator Trudeau brought to the comics readership was a brash willingness to discuss modern-day topics - the political upheaval happening across college campuses in those days, the then-ongoing Vietnam War (which ended in 1972) and its immediate post-war consequences, the growing feminist movement, and the struggles to integrate schools and society as a whole in the wake of the 1960s Civil Rights battles - whereas most strips were mild observations of daily life and struggles of quiet desperation.

There'd been other daily comic strips that delved in politics with as much fervor and impact: Pogo by Walt Kelly, for example, was a "cute animal" strip that discussed issues - even political topics - of the day. Kelly famously attacked the Red Scare baiting of McCarthyism of the 1950s by exposing Joe McCarthy himself as a gaslighting bullying character Simple J. Malarkey (some scenes of Malarkey hunting down several Pogo characters are considered the scariest moments in comic strips history). Modern-day political satirists - Trudeau among them - openly claim Pogo as their inspiration. 

But where Pogo could hide on the "funny pages" by being animal characters playing out allegory and metaphor in a cartoon swamp, Doonesbury is a strip about humans in real-life environments, tackling issues with real-life ramifications, and making commentary directly on people - not a ink-suited representative, but directly named like Mitchell - who could hire lawyers and sue for defamation.

That "Guilty!" strip is the moment when Trudeau crossed a line in journalism ethics - as much as cartoon strips could be considered journalism. After all, the comics page was part of the whole daily newspaper package: Front page news, Local news, Sports, Lifestyles, and Classifieds. (With crossword puzzles and comics stuck in either the Lifestyles or Classifieds. Such was the glory years of print media. I digress)

As Paul Hebert notes on his Reading Doonesbury blog about this strip:

In response to the 1973 strip, a dozen newspapers dropped Doonesbury. The Washington Post – now (in 2017), ironically, Doonesbury’s online home – argued that guilt or innocence should be adjudicated by “the due process of justice [and] not a comic strip artist,” and maintained that it could not “have one standard for the news pages and another for the comics.” Kerry Soper, in Garry Trudeau: Doonesbury and the Aesthetics of Satire, frames the Post’s “discomfort” with the “GUILTY!” strip as a product of the “problematic” fact that Trudeau blurs the line between “comic strip storyteller, journalistic muckraker, and political watchdog...”

It's the ethical dilemma in journalism between being Subjective or Objective when reporting on an event (or a person). Subjective meaning "based on personal opinion" with an emotional or judgmental bias, Objective being more "based on facts and evidence" with an eye towards informing the audience. It's a struggle that is ongoing: Especially with the rise and domination of 24/7 cable news needing to fill all those hours with more Subjective punditry discussing topics at an emotional biased level, as well as social media overwhelming the discourse with Twitter (or YouTube) bites and badly written blog essays (stares at self in the mirror). 

This ethical conflict is what I studied as a Journalism student at University of Florida, even taking a class on Journalism Ethics. Hell, my term paper was on Doonesbury's place in print media, whether it belonged in the daily comics pages or if it belonged in the Op-Ed/Letters to the Editor sections where commentary and subjective essays were permitted. I got an A for that paper, I was very proud of that fact, although I ended up with a B for the class grade (I did poorly on a mid-term exam). It's why I joke semi-seriously that I got a B in Ethics but a D in Reporting, which is how I ended up as a librarian.

The solution a lot of newspapers took was to make that move, taking Doonesbury from the less-partisan comics pages and placing it in the more opinionated Editorial pages, as a compromise whenever facing some of the more boundary-breaking storylines Trudeau illustrated, such as introducing a gay character for the first time in comics, or showing a man and woman in the same bed post-coitus, or any of the political attacks Trudeau aimed at Reagan or conservatives in general. 

Trudeau was an unabashed liberal, and it often showed in his works. However, Trudeau did his homework: On the scales of Subjective vs. Objective, when he skewered a political figure or public celebrity, he did it based on the facts he could uncover through basic research. Although he'd reach into levels we'd consider slander - such as the series of strips he inked pointing out how Frank Sinatra had questionable connections to mobsters - he at least based the attacks on provable facts. It still made for interesting reads.

I grew up as a pre-teen - I was eight or nine years old - reading Doonesbury collected paperbacks in the Young Adult section of the Dunedin Public Library (back when the library occupied a refurbished Publix storefront). I was a bit ahead of my fellow classmates having gotten bored with the juvenile lit (stop killing puppies, you damn juvenile writers!) and preferred the sci-fi and humor novels for the teens where my older brother hung out. It surely disappointed my dad somewhat as part of my left-leaning ideology comes from that exposure, but I still remember Trudeau's work being more of a gentle skewering of ideologies of the 1970s and 1980s. He would attack liberals - more of a chiding out of disappointment - for some of their follies - obsessing over symbolism more than the issues needing work - as much as attacking conservatives for their disdain and self-serving actions.

One thing that Trudeau excelled at was being sympathetic, even empathetic, towards the targets of his criticism. Even at their worst, the harshest Republican characters - especially the real-life figures like both Bush Presidents - received some level of bathos that made them human to readers (even as they didn't appear on-screen except as floating hats, waffles, or air bubbles). Save for donald trump: Even in the 1980s, his excessive greed and narcissism was on full display whenever he appeared in a Doonesbury story arc.

Compare Trudeau's character building to the likes of Bruce Tinsley's Mallard Fillmore, which never rose above caricature and attacked only one side of the political spectrum (liberals) with ire and excessive outrage. That strip essentially devolved into an Author Tract instead of any kind of running commentary. Whereas Trudeau aims for a punchline at the end of every strip, Tinsley often has no punchline, just punches.

Doonesbury itself is rarely in the papers anymore, as much as there are any newspapers still surviving. It's a question of how soon Trudeau will retire for good instead of the extended vacations he's been known to take. It may depend on whenever donald trump ends up physically in jail after all the appeals on his felony convictions are exhausted a few years from now, at which point Trudeau might put up a final Sunday strip of a large banner reading "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED."

We'll see.

In the meantime, Trudeau just keeps rolling with the hits.

from October 22, 2017
History does repeat, first as tragedy and then as farce...

The 2023 Budget Fight As An Ongoing War

Well, I just wrote a few days ago about how the current Republican Congressional push to force a debt ceiling default just to make Biden's re-election hopes go up in smoke, but somehow during this weekend Biden was able to get Speaker McCarthy to sign off on a budget deal. Some details via Claudia Grisales, Ximena Bustillo, Franco Ordoñez, and Joe Hernandez at NPR:

President Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy reached an agreement in principle to avoid a potentially disastrous government default and raise the nation's debt ceiling. But as details – and criticism – of the deal began to trickle out on Sunday, both sides moved to rally support for a plan that negotiators concede will not please everyone...

The deal follows weeks of negotiations and a tense creep toward a deadline to raise the government's borrowing limit. The final package is expected to have opponents on the extremes of both parties, but the announcement Saturday indicates that Republican and Democratic leaders believe they will gain enough bipartisan support to pass the legislation. That confidence will be tested over the next few days as the measure makes its way through the House, where Republicans hold a slim majority.

The proposal holds nondefense spending for fiscal year 2024 at roughly current levels and raises it 1% in 2025, according to a source familiar with the negotiations. The agreement separately raises the debt limit for two years.

Overall, it's something that sticks to the current fiscal path that the federal government was on. There doesn't seem to be a lot of deep cuts to social aid, the restrictions Republicans are getting on food stamps may not create massive consequences (the work requirements are going to be affecting people who are already working). This deal can be considered a win for Biden since it kicks any further debt ceiling fight past the 2024 elections (providing of course Biden wins re-election and the Dems can at least retain partial control of Congress) and because it plays up to the national media's expectations of "bipartisan" deals getting done.

Thing is, the fight isn't over. Digby at her website has more on that:

It’s not over yet, because Kevin McCarthy still has to round up enough votes to get past the Hastert Rule (GOP can’t bring a bill to floor with a majority of Democratic votes) and he might still face a motion to vacate the chair when all is said and done (which is his problem, not ours) it appears that creaky old Joe got the best deal we could have expected, most importantly an agreement to extend the debt limit until after the next election...

Digby quotes from Dave Dayen at the American Prospect:

With one potentially major exception, the relative harm and help was kept to a minimum in the final agreement. It will only be a little bit easier to commit wage theft, or to sell defective or poisoned products. It’ll only be a little harder to get rental assistance or tuition support. Only a few people will be freer to pollute the environment; only a few will find it more difficult to get food. The Internal Revenue Service will only be a little worse. A lot of things will stay the same. Almost nothing will get any better...

The goal here was to allow both sides to say contradictory things to their members. Republicans can say they achieved the target of the Limit, Save, Grow Act to limit discretionary spending to FY2022; Democrats can say they only froze spending at current levels. And both are sort of right.

Digby then cites Dan Pfeiffer over at Message Box News (what the hell is that? nevermind, keep reading):

I want to hold out judgment on the work requirements until I see the details, but based on what we know, Biden limited the damage demanded by the GOP.

There’s not much to love in this deal for progressives, but Biden seems to have preserved all of the climate funding from the Inflation Reduction Act. If that’s the case, it’s a big win.

The deal is not great, but it’s a far cry from what the Republicans wanted. Notably, the Republicans played their best card, and all they got was a suboptimal budget deal...

Joe Biden played a very tough hand well. He got a better deal than many thought possible, and he forced the Republicans to adopt a series of very unpopular positions that they will have to own on the campaign trail next year. 

There is nothing inspirational about “could’ve been much worse.” No one will run to the polls or volunteer to make phone calls because Democrats “limited the damage.” But the debt limit was President Biden’s first showdown with the MAGA Republican House. All things considered, he navigated it quite well.

Again, Biden got the best of this - and will still likely get hammered by Beltway Media for some reason or another to keep their "horserace for 2024" narratives going - while McCarthy has to face his own House factions and keep them from turning on him or each other.

I mentioned it before: There is that Freedom Caucus faction that came into this budget fight wishing for a government default who are going to be livid that the debt ceiling will be addressed with this deal. These are the congresscritters who WANT to drive the nation over that cliff, and if McCarthy is putting the brakes on that act of destruction that caucus is going to lash back.

As Digby pointed out, the current House rules are that the "majority of the majority" (that Hastert Rule) requires that enough Republicans agree in principle on this deal, and there's no guarantee McCarthy has those votes. He's working with around a 5-vote majority: If enough Far Right Republicans say no, then this can't even get to a floor vote where the Democrats could agree to it as a bipartisan act.

And that's not even addressing the possibility of one of the Freedom Caucus members calling for a "Vacate the Chair" vote of No Confidence to force McCarthy out as Speaker. I dunno if that can happen before this deal can come to a vote, but if it does the whole thing becomes a clown show.

All of that would definitely become a major Biden win, because he made the bipartisan effort to avoid economic catastrophe while McCarthy and the House GOP couldn't. Enough House Republicans could arguably go with this deal to avoid that public debacle, but then again this modern Republican Party has a history of napalming everything instead of taking the sensible option. And then Biden can step in and invoke the 14th Amendment clause anyway and resolve the debt ceiling matter altogether.

This is going to be a crazy week ahead, America.

Hope you got the popcorn popping.

The Dark Machiavellian More Hated Than Feared: Kissinger at 100

If you want to know why Henry Kissinger is the most demonized motherfucker on the planet, read the quick historical rehash by Slate's Fred Kaplan of Kissinger's body counts while handling the United States' foreign policy efforts at the height of the Cold War between the 1960s through 1970s (with a dark realization his policy ideas lived on well into the modern-day War On Terror). 

Kissinger had his moments of triumph in his years of power, from 1969–76: U.S.–Soviet détente, the opening of China, and his shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East (though it was President Jimmy Carter who, a few years later, forged an enduring peace between Israel and Egypt).

Still, the dark side of Kissinger’s tradecraft left a deeper stain on vast quarters of the globe—and on America’s own reputation.

Chile is the darkest blotch on Kissinger’s legacy. He was the chief architect of the U.S. policy to destabilize the regime of Chile’s democratically elected socialist president, Salvador Allende...

This was not a case of Kissinger merely doing Nixon’s dirty work. In fact, Nixon was considering a proposal by a senior State Department official—one of Kissinger’s aides—to reach a modus vivendi with Allende. Kissinger postponed a White House meeting with the aide and convinced Nixon to crush the new government instead...

He did the same thing three years later, after the Argentine coup, whose military leaders were even more brutal and murderous. In fact, he berated an aide who suggested issuing a démarche to the Buenos Aires government. Instead, Kissinger turned a blind eye to Operation Condor, an assassination operation against left-wingers throughout much of Latin America. In that context, he told Argentina’s foreign minister, “Look, our basic attitude is that we would like you to succeed.” And he urged him to succeed—that is, to put down dissidents and critics—as quickly as possible. State Department officials and ambassadors started issuing protests to the dictators in charge of Condor. Kissinger put the kibosh on their efforts, demanding that “no further actions be taken on the matter.”

Kissinger also gave a green light to Indonesia’s 1975 invasion of East Timor, which resulted in the killing of more than 100,000 civilians. He told Gen. Suharto, Indonesia’s leader, that his use of U.S. weapons “could create problems”—that is, legal problems for Nixon and Kissinger—but added, “It depends on how we construe it: whether it is in self-defense or is a foreign operation.” An East Timor Truth Commission later concluded that U.S. political and military support for Suharto was “fundamental to the Indonesian invasion and occupation.”

This was all of a piece with Kissinger’s actions, back in the spring of 1971, after the East Pakistan coup led by Gen. Agha Muhammad Yahya, which led to the deaths of millions of civilians. “To all hands,” Kissinger supported the coup, writing in a cable to diplomatic personnel, “don’t squeeze Yahya at this time.”

And, of course, dominating Kissinger’s entire time in power, there were the massive bombings of North Vietnam, which did nothing to turn or stop the war, and the secret bombings of Cambodia. The latter—a ferocious stream of aerial attacks that began in March 1969 and roared on for more than a year under the code names “Breakfast Plan” and “Operation Menu”—killed as many as 150,000 civilians. It also so destabilized the entire country of Cambodia that the Khmer Rouge moved into the vacuum and murdered at least 2 million more, roughly a quarter of the country’s population.

There's a reason why whenever a beloved celebrity like Tina Turner passes away, the immediate social media reaction is "Why the fuck is Kissinger still alive?"

Kissinger still lives because he converted political connections into personal power, and because the United States refuses to hand him over for war crimes or any other crimes against humanity he clearly caused across his career (and the bloody legacy he left in his wake).

Kissinger defends himself to this day by arguing the global struggle against Communism required a "realpolitik" response: That is, to be as brutal and undermining as the Stalin-backed insurgencies had been in the 1950s across Eastern Europe and then the Third World. In this, Kissinger describes himself as a Machiavellian, in that "the ends justified the means" in ensuring American economic and political influence on the world stage.

If Kissinger truly is a Machiavellian, he overlooked one of the key teachings: In Machiavelli's question "whether it is better to be Loved or Feared," Machiavelli answered his own question by pointing out "It is more important to avoid being Hated" because in that moment you lose the Respect a Prince - or any leader - needs to keep himself in power.

In Kissinger's wake were dozens of nations broken, bloodied, left to suffer under dictatorial regimes backed by American muscle. The citizenry of those nations did not, will not forget that the United States - selling ourselves as a beacon of liberty and justice - became hypocritical monsters turning a blind eye to the suffering of those who begged for liberty and justice for their own.

In this, the United States remains a target of hate across the Third World nations that we need to deal with in our ongoing efforts to maintain global political stability (which we've learned is a better way to maintain our interests through strong economies built on trade and cooperation).

Because of that legacy, Henry Kissinger remains a Prince more Hated than Feared, and clearly never Loved. I don't care what Jill St. John saw in him.

Basic Things To Know About Yet Another Republican Default Threat

There's a Democrat in the White House and there's Republicans in charge of one-half of Congress, so those of you who survived 2011 and 2013 budget crises know what THAT means: Yet another attempt by the goddamn Republican wingnuts hoping to drown the nation in Grover Norquist's bathtub, forcing spending cuts on social aid that they themselves are too afraid to do on their own, and maybe even nuking the global economy just to blame the Democrats for their own sabotage.

So as we're facing another budget battle that could lead to a U.S. default and global economic meltdown, let Stacey Vanek Smith at NPR spell out what's at stake:

One of the outcomes that would happen if the U.S. defaulted would be a major hit to the United States' reputation internationally.

"It would be a disaster and the reputation of the government for meeting its debt obligations would be in tatters," says Darrell Duffie, professor of finance at Stanford's Graduate School of Business...

So much money that the country can right now borrow up to $31.4 trillion, a debt ceiling that will need to be raised or suspended to avoid a default.

And if the U.S. defaults, the interest rate on the country's debt would go up because the U.S. would be seen as riskier: too politically dysfunctional to get its bills paid on time...

An actual default would also deliver a massive shock to financial markets, raising the prospect of a new global financial crisis.

Investment bank UBS estimates the S&P 500 could fall by at least 20%. Bond markets would tumble, and that would send borrowing costs higher across the economy including for already-high mortgage rates.

And banks would be hit as well given that lenders are among the major investors of government debt. As a result, depositors and investors could start to worry about whether banks are on solid ground at a time when the banking sector has recently suffered through the failures of three smaller and regional lenders...

(Economics professor from University of Michigan Justin) Wolfers says if the U.S. defaults and there's no more money to spend, the government suddenly wouldn't have cash to run basic operations, things like schools and roads.

Government workers could get their pay delayed if the government runs out of cash, while businesses that have contracts with the governments might also stop getting paid for a while.

And the list of people who may not get vital government benefits is long, including most prominently veterans who rely on these payments as a lifeline as well as retirees who rely on Social Security payments.

All those missed payments would have a direct impact on the economy...

The shock to financial markets and the impact across the board would be blows of such magnitude that many experts believe would lead to a U.S. recession: unemployment could spike, lending could freeze up and the economy could shrink...

All of these things are wonderful in the eyes of the Far Right, because they can use all of that to blame Biden and the Democrats even though THEY'RE the ones insisting the federal government defaults on our national debt. They've done this shit before, and while they took some of the blame the Republicans didn't lose control of Congress at the ballot boxes in 2012 and 2014 while the Democrats were hit with "both sides at fault" blame by a short-term-memory mainstream media.

The big reason for Republicans holding the debt ceiling vote hostage is that it brought Joe Biden - who lived through these fights ten years ago and promised not to make the same mistakes - to the negotiating table over the Republicans' budget-slashing agenda.

Try to remember, kids: Between 2017 and 2018 the Republicans had FULL control of the budget process, with both wings of Congress AND donald trump in the White House eager to sign off on anything they sent him. The Republicans succeeded in passing a massive tax cut bonanza for the rich, but refused to commit any major spending cuts to balance their budgets. Even they knew full well any slashing of the social safety net like Social Security, Medicare, Food Stamps, and any other public aid would have been political suicide for their party.

Which is why, whenever the Democrats are in partial or complete control of Congress and the White House, the Republicans will do everything they can to force the Democrats to do their dirty work for them and get the Dems held accountable if any social aid does get cut.

But this time around this game of fiscal brinkmanship is a little different, and more terrifying.

There's still a faction of the House Republicans - the Freedom Caucus - that wants more than just the massive spending cuts that the rest of the Republicans would be happy with: The Freedom Caucus doesn't want the debt ceiling to go up under any circumstance. These wingnuts want the federal government to default no matter what.

It's more than just crashing the national and global economy just to make Biden look bad for 2024: These wingnuts are convinced it will bankrupt and flush out an entire federal bureaucracy they fear is too far liberal/Woke for them to ever control. The Freedom Caucus honestly wants to burn the whole government down so that they can take over and rebuild their fantasy utopia on the ashes.

In the previous budget showdowns, these Freedom Caucus members were too few to hold up any compromise deals that were eventually hammered out in 2011 and 2013. THIS TIME, the caucus has the advantage of a tiny Republican majority in the House. Speaker McCarthy has basically a slim five-vote advantage over the Democrats, and all it can take is five angry wingnuts from his own party to nuke every deal and bring on that default.

Making it worse is that McCarthy, in order to gain that speakership, granted his party a "No Confidence" veto power where a single congresscritter could call for his removal. Any attempt to get centrist Democrats to cross the aisle and help him with a budget deal would trigger that revolt.

There's a less-likely scenario where the other saner Republican factions - the ones who will deal for spending cuts but won't cross the line of driving the entire planet over the cliffs - could threaten their own "No Confidence" on McCarthy to force him to ignore the Freedom Caucus, but that would lead to open schism and the Republicans still have enough intra-party discipline not to fall apart like that. Yet.

We are looking at three scenarios at this point:

1) President Biden refuses to play the Freedom Caucus' game of default, and calls on his authority under the 14th Amendment to maintain the nation's full faith and credit: Or even more fun, mint the trillion-dollar coin. That could lead to the House Republicans pushing for impeachment - which will fail - and more likely force a legal court battle that would go to an ultra-conservative Supreme Court that may side with the wingnuts to re-interpret the Constitution to allow economic havoc.

2) Nothing gets resolved, and the debt ceiling triggers a default. The Freedom Caucus gets exactly what they want. The global economy goes into a tailspin and Gods help us if the Republicans use this to regain full control in 2024. More likely is that even the deep-pocket billionaires supporting the GOP are hit hard by the recession to where they hold back on funding, and enough voters get angry enough at the real culprits to instead re-elect Biden and throw enough Republicans out of the House to reflip it back to Democrats.

3) The Freedom Caucus refuses to budge on their stance even with major concessions from Biden on spending cuts, driving enough Republicans in unsafe congressional districts to quit the party and flip the House now to where the Freedom Caucus lose their power. Granted, this is pure wish-fulfillment on my part, but given the hard-line position of that caucus there doesn't seem to be any other sane option left to the nation.

By most reports, we're looking at the debt ceiling to kick in during the first weeks of June.

By all evidence, the Freedom Caucus - as an act of sedition - is more than happy to let our nation fail.

By all rights, saner heads should prevail and kick those self-serving destructionists out of power.

One Sentence Observation On Ron DeSantis' Presidential Campaign Announcement

I hope DeSantis chokes worse than Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio.

Second Sentence Update 6:40 PM EDT: Oh ye gods, the Twitter announcement effort is reportedly turning into a techie nightmare, with metaphoric karma, and lots of crash and burn, with follow-up links to be edited in later.

Third Sentence Update 9:55 PM EDT: There's several Internet snark-reports out there with Boing Boing's headline DeSantis's Twitter Campaign Launch Suffers Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly being the funniest to describe how inept the whole start-up had been, when you think about how a better-planned organization would have tested audience capacity for an online event to avoid embarrassing crashes like this one.

Another Update to provide more Schadenfreude about this disaster: There's always Alexandra Petri at the Washington Post able to provide the appropriate descriptives about how badly this campaign launch went over (behind paywall):

This was the funniest thing Elon Musk has ever done.

Imagine that you are transported to the most awkward telemeeting of your life. And then imagine it is being broadcast to a half-million or so people, a number that keeps causing the meeting app to implode, until the crowd finally dwindles and gives up, and when the meeting finally restarts in another spot, you are left with a fraction of the original attendees.

And now imagine you are Ron DeSantis and this is your presidential campaign announcement.

Calling Wednesday night’s event “the most awkward telemeeting of your life” does not do the awkwardness justice. It was one of those calls where you both keep talking at the same time and then stopping. It was a butt dial from your mother. It was the voice broadcast equivalent of a car spontaneously bursting into flames — something with which I guess co-host Musk has some experience...

First there were several long minutes of silence. Then came the microphone feedback. Then there were some murmurs about the need to get started. More silence. Then came a routine, uninspiring introduction from a man named David. Then, mid-sentence, sudden silence. This failure repeated. And then, after more disjointed muttering, there came the hold music. Hold music! Then the hold music stopped. Bringing us... more silence...

That is to say, THE IDEAL PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN LAUNCH! Peak performance! Nothing about this was bad. Objectively. I cannot think of a better way to launch any kind of campaign, short of crashing through a window wearing only a bathrobe (on fire) and immediately being swallowed by an alligator. Well, maybe you could also be suing Disney for unclear reasons...

Actually Alexandra, DeSantis is fighting Disney because DeSantis is a bullying bitch, but I digress.

Not since the Titanic — but the Titanic at least had a successful launch. Ditto, the Hindenburg. They had other problems.

STILL TOO SOON, ALEXANDRA. Seriously. I'm still not over Macho Grande...

It truly felt as though DeSantis had forgotten that people outside his echo chamber exist. And maybe, in his America, they won’t! But first he treated us to an actual echo chamber, complete with a weird echo (I forgot to mention the weird echo!) and microphone feedback.

This is the quality of service DeSantis brought to Florida and threatens to bring to the rest of the United States.

It'd be hilarious if it didn't point to utter destruction, either by DeSantis' own hand or donald trump's.

This Stopped Being Funny in 2015: The Primary Buildup for 2024

Ugh.

I don't wanna start up the bloody horse-race comparisons of Presidential primary candidates again.

Not for the Republicans. I wasn't enticed by the 2012 lineup - the Upper Class Twit lineup - and the 2016 lineup all crashed and burned against the nightmare juggernaut of the Shitgibbon campaign.

But we've seen Ron "Anti-Florida Man" DeSantis essentially start up his campaign this year by pushing the most painful set of laws - against trans and gays, against our schools, against libraries, against immigrants, against women - on his state in order to impress the Culture War wingnuts, and there's been a number of other desperate hopefuls starting off their campaigns - like Tim Scott this week - in the mad belief that they'll be standing when donald trump gets indicted on 108 different criminal investigations (I may not be exaggerating at this point) this summer. Even Chris Christie - one of the 2016 flame-outs humiliated by trump - is thinking "Hey, now it's MY turn to humiliate HIM."

Please.

I've already pointed out that trump being indicted - hell, trump possibly being IN JAIL by next year - isn't going to stop trump being on the ballot. The Republicans - hell, the entire Presidential election process - don't have that restriction blocking any jailed felon from their ballots. And we've already witnessed the way trump violates the law of gravity in that every scandal and revelation only increases his rabid MAGA fanbase support. Any photo of trump in handcuffs becomes a rally poster, and he's going to win every GOP state primary in 2024. Republicans WILL vote for a convicted trump. It then becomes a nightmare scenario where trump and his GOP state allies can rig the broken Electoral College system to steal 2024 like he stole 2016.

This is enough to drive a sober librarian to drink. Except the drinking game gag I tried writing in 2015 quickly turned sour and unfunny the minute it became clear a monster like trump was going to win the Republican nomination. It REALLY stopped being funny in November 2016 when the broken Electoral College failed all of humanity.

I've said this before as well: There are no saviors, no moderates, no Reagan-esque figure coming to rescue the Republican Party. They have been taken over by conservative extremists hell-bent on authoritarian rule against a majority of Americans they no longer view as fellow citizens. donald trump's campaign and Presidential misrule demonstrated how cruelty and fearmongering can lead the GOP to power and control, and there's no alternative for that party to emulate.

For the Republicans ever since that fateful June 2015, it's just trumps all the way down.

There's nothing else TO say about the impending primary clown car that's about to crash over the cliffs. Again.

Gods help us.

The Sins of Conservatism

In my ongoing rants against -Isms, I came across a tweet back in May 2022, realized I was due to rant about this, then got distracted by other news cycles, and kept referring back to this while expanding my -Isms outrage into a book project:

 

I need to fcking tag this quote. https://t.co/Xvl5LXlxx1

— Witty Librarian For Ukraine (@PaulWartenberg) May 5, 2022

There is only conservatism. No other political philosophy actually exists; by the political analogue of Gresham's Law, conservatism has driven every other idea out of circulation.

There might be, and should be, anti-conservatism; but it does not yet exist. What would it be? In order to answer that question, it is necessary and sufficient to characterize conservatism. Fortunately, this can be done very concisely.

Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect...

That interpretation of Conservatism by Frank Wilhoit was pretty much spot on, but confusion rose up as to which Frank Wilhoit it was. Early interpretation was that it was (Francis) Wilhoit the political sciences professor, but instead it turned out to be Wilhoit the musical composer (who also posts comments on a lot of blogs including this one, hi Frank!).

Wilhoit the Composer may not be a certified expert on politics like Wilhoit the Professor, but his insight on Conservatism fits absolutely everything we've seen out of Conservatives since... well, the dawn of American politics.

If I'm bringing this back up now, a year later in 2023, it's because we're at yet another moment where American Conservatives - represented today by the Republican Party - are poised to wreak economic and social cruelty across every corner of the nation.

Right now, a lot of Republican-controlled states are passing anti-abortion laws that would punish women and doctors for even natural miscarriages, and forcing women to suffer through medical crises that could kill them. The Republicans are passing gender laws to punish trans teens (and even adults) as well as force gay/lesbian teens to hide from public view, all to uphold their conservative "gender role" bullshit. Republicans are ensuring easier access to firearms and easier public displays of guns especially around children, ensuring more gun violence and fear in our streets. 

At the federal level, the Far Right factions controlling the House GOP are making demands on Biden's administration to gut his own infrastructure and spending bills passed last year, putting chainsaws to Social Security and Medicare, and insisting on making the massive deficit-inducing tax cuts for the rich the GOP passed in 2017 are made permanent (they're set to expire in 2025 I believe). Otherwise they'll use the Debt Ceiling hostage AGAIN to force the U.S. government to default (causing a global economic meltdown).

And I'm not even getting into the viciousness the Conservatives aim at immigrants.

None of these things, by the way, are popular with the majority of Americans. Most Americans are okay with women having the right to choose. Most Americans are okay with gays and lesbians nowadays - having shifted to acceptance under Obama - and don't want to see trans teens abused by the states. Most Americans want gun reforms like universal background checks, safety locks to protect kids, and bans of military-grade assault rifles. Most Americans don't want tax cuts for the rich, Most Americans do want the social safety net working, and Most Americans don't want a public default to kill the global economy. 

Which is the problem with modern Conservatism. As Wilhoit noted, conservatives don't care what the majority wants, they care what they want at the expense of that majority.

Jamelle Boule at the New York Times spelled it out as the Four (Anti-)Freedoms (link provided as a gift, this may be temporary):

...All across the country, Republicans have passed laws to do exactly that wherever they have the power to do so, regardless of public opinion in their states or anywhere else. The war on bodily autonomy is a critical project for nearly the entire G.O.P., pursued with dedication by Republicans from the lowliest state legislator to the party’s powerful functionaries on the Supreme Court.

You might even say that in the absence of a national leader with a coherent ideology and agenda, the actions of Republican-led states and legislatures provide the best guide to what the Republican Party wants to do and the best insight into the society it hopes to build...

There is the push to free business from the suffocating grasp of child labor laws. Republican lawmakers in Arkansas, Iowa, Missouri and Ohio have advanced legislation to make it easier for children as young as 14 to work more hours, work without a permit and be subjected to more dangerous working conditions...

Elsewhere in the country, Republican-led legislatures are placing harsh limits on what teachers and other educators can say in the classroom about American history or the existence of L.G.B.T.Q. people. This week in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill that bans discussion in general education courses at public institutions of “theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States and were created to maintain social, political and economic inequities.” He also signed a bill that prohibits state colleges and universities from spending on diversity, equity and inclusion programs beyond what is necessary to retain accreditation as educational institutions...

Last but certainly not least is the Republican effort to make civil society a shooting gallery. Since 2003, Republicans in 25 states have introduced and passed so-called constitutional carry laws, which allow residents to have concealed weapons in public without a permit. In most of those states, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, it is also legal to openly carry a firearm in public without a permit...

What should we make of all this? In his 1941 State of the Union address, Franklin Roosevelt said there was “nothing mysterious about the foundations of a healthy and strong democracy” and that he, along with the nation, looked forward to “a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.” Famously, those freedoms were the “freedom of speech and expression,” the “freedom of every person to worship God in his own way,” the “freedom from want” and the “freedom from fear.” Those freedoms were the guiding lights of his New Deal, and they remained the guiding lights of his administration through the trials of World War II.

There are, I think, four freedoms we can glean from the Republican program.

There is the freedom to control — to restrict the bodily autonomy of women and repress the existence of anyone who does not conform to traditional gender roles.

There is the freedom to exploit — to allow the owners of business and capital to weaken labor and take advantage of workers as they see fit.

There is the freedom to censor — to suppress ideas that challenge and threaten the ideologies of the ruling class.

And there is the freedom to menace — to carry weapons wherever you please, to brandish them in public, to turn the right of self-defense into a right to threaten other people.

Roosevelt’s four freedoms were the building blocks of a humane society — a social democratic aspiration for egalitarians then and now. These Republican freedoms are also building blocks not of a humane society but of a rigid and hierarchical one, in which you can either dominate or be dominated...

Again, fitting Wilhoit's original observation: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect...

How did America's Conservativism even reach this point? Through long hard work, that's how. Decades of building up an agenda to achieve political power and then keep it at the expense of those they oppose. 

I've noted this before, when Conservatism in the United States early on bent to the whims and needs of the upper-class slaveowners of the South, who as a major faction in the Democratic Party pushed and fought against the more liberal ideologies - like the newly formed Republicans in the 1850s that called for abolition of slavery - to where they ruled and ruined the federal government into Civil War. 

For a time post-War conservativism was split between economic and social beliefs, uniting to maintain Jim Crow segregation but otherwise without a coherent banner to rally around. However, the dynamics of the liberal New Deal during the Great Depression of the 1930s, the rise and strength of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, and international pressures of the Cold War forced the conservatives to gain a foothold in the 1960s to the Republican Party as reimagined by Barry Goldwater, and brought to power by 1980 by Ronald Reagan. A radical shift within the parties by the 2000s - pushed by the first stage of the Culture War in 1992 - made Republicans into hard conservatives with almost no true Moderate or Liberal left among their ranks, making it so much easier for the modern Republican Party to fulfill Wilhoit's definition.

Making it worse in all this was how Reagan brought to the Conservative movement the religious evangelicals - something even Goldwater refused to do - empowering the Republicans into an absolutist, God-given belief structure that doubles down on the "We are the TRUE Americans and all power should be OURS" world-view turning this into a power struggle between the "righteous" and the "dread Other" who must be purged from the (Christian) national body like a disease. Never mind the corruption and violence that comes with such a world-view.

If Conservatism is so corrupting, so prone to self-empowering to the point of self-destruction, so intent on denying any power-sharing (or wealth-sharing) with others to where it never holds a true majority of people, how can it still be popular enough to hold any semblance of power in the first place?

Well obviously, Conservativism appeals to those who seek power and influence and wealth. They will buy into such an -Ism in the hopes they will profit from being in the elite few. This is why you will see women, Blacks, Latinos, other ethnic and gender minorities align themselves to a conservative movement that would deny basic human rights to their own. Because they believe they are in - or can conform to - the upper class - an elite made of money, of celebrity - protected by other conservatives.

But how can such Conservatism - defined by that elitist world-view - appeal to those still outside of that upper elite class? Why are there a vast number of those in poverty - such as the rural regions of the Midwest or the Deep South - in the lower classes still willing to vote for something against their own economic and legal interests?

Because that Conservatism still tells those among the lower classes that their social status - defined by racial ethnicity - grants them higher standing over others in the same economic levels. Yes, the low-income voters making up the Republican Conservative base are driven by racism, and that's what empowers the Culture War cruelty that the Republican leaders are inflicting on their own states.

The shortest, most polite way to describe Conservatism in America: It is a sociological, economic, and political philosophy that insists on maintaining a racist Status Quo that benefits those on the "right" side of the racist dividing line (White, Male, and/or Rich, preferably all three).

There's a lot more to be said about Conservatism - for one, I would argue against Wilhoit's point that there are no other philosophies, because I believe Conservatism is a reaction against Liberalism - but that's where my book project comes into play. More on that hopefully later when I find time to effing write it past the outline stage (the research is mostly done).

One of the things I argue about -Isms is how they are competing and oft-times conflicting ideologies, burdened by the reality that all of them can be wrong about the Human Condition in any given moment but will insist on being absolutely right. Conservatism is no different: It will insist on its own philosophical purity while ignoring the damage it does even to its own adherents.

The problem with modern Conservatism - at least here in the United States - is that conservatives are fully aware of the damage they can do and still push their agenda. The whole argument of "The Cruelty Is The Point", and what Boulle details as the Republican agenda to grant only themselves the Freedoms for their own power, proves how dangerous this -Ism has become.

Rejecting trump's Arguments, Preserving Presidential Papers, Hoping Soon for Justice

Just a quick update, saw this news popping up as I was writing about Jacksonville, but it's looking like the National Archives has receipts on trump's mishandling - nay, outright theft - of classified documents, and the Special Counsel handling the investigation should be able to press serious charges veeeeery soon (via Jamie Gangel, Zachary Cohen, Evan Perez and Paula Reid at CNN): 

The National Archives has informed former president Donald Trump that it is set to hand over to special counsel Jack Smith 16 records which show Trump and his top advisers had knowledge of the correct declassification process while he was President, according to multiple sources.

In a May 16 letter obtained by CNN, acting Archivist Debra Steidel Wall writes to Trump, “The 16 records in question all reflect communications involving close presidential advisers, some of them directed to you personally, concerning whether, why, and how you should declassify certain classified records.”

The 16 presidential records, which were subpoenaed earlier this year, may provide critical evidence establishing the former president’s awareness of the declassification process, a key part of the criminal investigation into Trump’s mishandling of classified documents...

As mentioned before, violating the Presidential Records Act is a serious felony. If the Justice Department can file at least 16 separate counts here, there's not a lot of room for trump to run.

trump's public defense - especially given during that contentious, foolish "town hall" CNN just hosted for him last week - has been that as President he could declassify any document he liked and that the ones found in his possession from the August 2022 warrant search at Mar-A-Lago belonged to him.

But the National Archives - responsible for handling, archiving, and preserving government documents for legal and historic reasons - said "Nope."

According to the letter, Trump tried to block the special counsel from accessing the 16 records by asserting a claim of “constitutionally based privilege.” But in her letter, Wall rejects that claim, stating that the special counsel’s office has represented that it “is prepared to demonstrate with specificity to a court, why it is likely that the 16 records contain evidence that would be important to the grand jury’s investigation.”

The special Counsel also told the Archives that the evidence is “not practically available from another source.”

The letter goes on to state that the records will be handed over on May 24, 2023 “unless prohibited by an intervening court order...”

NARA’s letter to Trump comes amid a flurry of activity by Smith’s team, including grand jury appearances by former national security officials who testified that they told Trump there was a process for a president to declassify material, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The 16 records may help federal investigators overcome a significant obstacle to a potential prosecution of the former president. While presidents have ultimate declassification authority, the limits of that authority haven’t been tested in the courts...

There remains a possibility trump can convince the conservative-leaning judges in the federal judiciary - some of them appointed by him - that his argument for unilateral declassification protects him. But those judges - especially on the Supreme Court - have to be aware of the dangers of setting such a precedent, and that they're going to be obligated to uphold our national security interests instead of upholding trump's desire to avoid jail.

One hopes that this letter from NARA is a signal that the special counsel into the Mar-A-Lago documents scandal is reaching its grand jury conclusion, and that indictments are forthcoming. If this can get to a court trial well before November 2024, we can pray that a guilty verdict on trump's violations - which includes a penalty that the guilty are barred from elected federal office - would bring an end to the long dark trumpian nightmare haunting our nation.

It's been said before trump: Never fuck with librarians.

(On a personal note, I will appear at the Bartow (FL) Writers Block and Street Fair as a local author this Saturday May 20th from 10AM to 6PM. It's a fund-raising effort for the local church charities, and it'll be  pet-friendly event with a ton of activities. I do hope to see some people there, and buy my books!) 

Flipping DUVAAAALLLL!

First off, a few facts about Jacksonville, Florida.

One of the earliest cities formed in the state of Florida in 1832, named for Andrew Jackson - first Territorial Governor whose military campaigns made life a living hell for the native tribes and Spanish settlers - and set in the one part of the state that wasn't all swampland. A major sea port - the St. Johns River flows into the Atlantic - made it a key metropolis throughout much of Florida's history until the 20th Century when improvements in air conditioning, the spread of railroads and air travel connecting the rest of the US to more exotic southern locales like Miami, and massive population shifts to central and southeast Florida in the 1980s reduced its importance.

In the late 1960s, Jacksonville and its county Duval agreed to a merger where the city took on most of the county's functions, essentially turning the county into the city (smaller cities on the outskirts of Duval retained some independence). As a result, Jacksonville can lay claim to being the "most populous" city in Florida, but when you factor in countywide metros for Miami (Dade), Ft. Lauderdale (Broward), West Palm Beach (Palm Beach), Tampa (Hillsborough, and Orlando (Orange), Jacksonville slides down to sixth in-state.

It's still a major metro, with its own regional flavor (basically, everything that makes up Southern Rock (SKYNYRD 4EVER)) and importance to the state: Naval seaport, interstate trade, higher education - with Gainesville UF an hour's drive away (don't drive through Waldo!!!) - with SEC Football a big effing deal (UF-UGA every year unless the stadium's getting renovated), as well as respectable beach tourism with nearby St. Augustine a historic landmark. It has one pro sports team - the Jaguars (BORTLES!) - so arguably doesn't match up with South Florida or Tampa Bay in that regard. Anyway I digress (CHAMPA BAY! ahem).

Thing is, Jacksonville is one of the few large-population areas in Florida that regularly votes Republican across the ballot. Every other Florida metro - even the heavily conservative Hispanic populations in Miami Dade - tends to vote Democratic for their local elections. In regards to the state and federal elections, I would argue that extreme gerrymandering skews the results far too heavily to Republican, but again I digress (mutter grumble gerrymandering is evil grumble grumble).

While 2023 is somewhat off-cycle for the elections, a number of cities and districts have their local elections this year, and Jacksonville was holding one for Mayor that had statewide implications. Li Zhou at Vox has the details:

This week, Democrats got a rare bit of good news in Florida: For the first time in years, they flipped the mayoral seat in Jacksonville, the most populous Republican-led city in the country. The win, driven by former news anchor Donna Deegan, was widely seen as a major upset for the GOP, which increased its dominance in the state during the 2022 midterm elections...

Deegan was also uniquely bolstered by the strength of her candidacy and an inclusive message about change that brought in Democrats, independents, and a decent number of crossover Republicans. A nightly regional news anchor for 25 years who went on to have a public fight with breast cancer, Deegan had deep ties to the Jacksonville area and strong voter recognition. She was also able to capitalize on a voter base disappointed with current Republican leadership as crime in the city has stayed high, and as a recent bid to privatize Jacksonville’s public utility has been mired in scandal...

Perhaps the biggest takeaway for Democrats hoping to make gains in Florida in 2024 is the importance of running a candidate with strong connections to the community...

The name recognition meant Deegan didn’t have to spend time or money introducing herself to voters. Deegan didn’t just rely on that, however, University of Northern Florida political scientist Georgette Dumont told Vox. Deegan expanded on existing awareness by mounting a strong ground game, with a robust door-knocking campaign and town halls, and she participated in a public debate, which Davis opted to skip...

Voters who are upset about the conservative agenda that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has pushed through the state legislature also saw Deegan as an opposition candidate. DeSantis endorsed Davis, though he did not invest significant energy boosting his campaign.

Deegan also focused her messaging on inclusive leadership that disregarded partisanship, emphasizing her willingness to boost a city government that takes in voices of all parties. She pledged to include more diversity on important boards to better reflect Jacksonville’s demographics. According to the US Census Bureau, the city is roughly 55 percent white, 31 percent Black, 11 percent Latino, and 5 percent Asian American. That type of framing ultimately could prove appealing to voters in similarly swingy areas who may be more open to less partisan rhetoric.

“This is a heavily Republican district that’s turning more blue over the years as people move in,” said Dumont. Jacksonville has become increasingly diverse, younger, and more metropolitan in recent years, added Schale. He also noted that the Obama campaign, which he worked on, invested heavily in turning out more Black voters in the region, an effort candidates can continue to build on...

Deegan's efforts were also seen as part of the overall refit of the state Democratic organization, which had been struggling since the Obama era with both messaging and finding candidates that could draw the voters to them. Nikki Fried - who had won state office (Agricultural Commissioner) in a Republican-dominated executive branch back in 2018, and who proved she could rally the state Dems and general voters to her - challenged for the Dem centrist leadership and was using this off-cycle election to test her fundraising and GOTV efforts. Unlike earlier Dem efforts to recruit 'centrist' figures who weren't local or didn't appeal to regional Dem voters, Fried seemed to focus more on progressive yet populist locals who had built-in audiences. It worked: The mayoral win is turning into a huge blow against DeSantis and giving Fried ways to punch back (via Zac Anderson at Florida Today/Sarasota Herald-Tribune):

DeSantis endorsed candidates for governor in Kentucky and mayor in Jacksonville; both lost, puncturing DeSantis' winning aura and, with the Jacksonville election, helping to revive a Florida Democratic Party that the governor had pronounced dead and buried after his dominating 2022 re-election win...

Getting behind two losing candidates could hurt DeSantis' ability to argue that he's the cure for the GOP's losing ways. The loss in Jacksonville, a region DeSantis represented in Congress, is particularly notable, although DeSantis didn't campaign in person in the mayor's race or do much beyond endorsing.

Democrats also are touting the victory in Jacksonville as a revival for the party, which was at a low point after being swept in statewide races last year and losing to DeSantis by 19 percentage points. DeSantis called Florida Democrats a "dead carcass on the side of the road."

Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried responded Wednesday on Twitter by declaring: "The only 'dead carcass on the side of the road' that I see is your presidential race..."

This election result can also be an early sign of voters rejecting DeSantis' Culture War agenda he's been dumping on the state over the last two years. Trying desperately to win over Far Right voters on anti-trans/anti-gay, anti-CRT, anti-abortion, anti-Woke agenda, DeSantis and his Republican allies didn't offer much in things that actually mattered on day-to-day issues like crime reduction, affordable housing, and infrastructure (AKA the Pothole problems). This electoral loss can be evidence the state GOP are alienating the moderate/independent voters that are commonly located in the suburban edges of metros like Jacksonville.

All hope is tempered, of course, by the reality that political fortunes shift from week to week and election to election. The Democrats have to build on this as much as Republicans getting foolish enough to double-down on a Culture War nobody else likes.

But if all DeSantis can offer to voters is "Anti-Woke" bullshit, he's not going to win over the 2024 voters. It's going to be yet another rehash of the faux Outrage platform that trump ran on in both 2016 and 2020. And trump's already proved he can run roughshod over DeSantis in the primaries on that Outrage, with no guarantee for either trump or DeSantis they can win over general election voters well enough to skew the Electoral College to their favor.

Keep getting the vote out, Florida Democrats.

And for the LOVE OF GOD everyone, stop voting Republican.

Oh, and speaking of Florida cities, there's a wonderful little town in Polk County called Bartow. On a personal note, I will appear at the Bartow Writers Block and Street Fair as a local author this Saturday May 20th from 10AM to 6PM. It's a fund-raising effort for the local church charities, and it'll be  pet-friendly event with a ton of activities. I do hope to see some people there, and buy my books!

Losing It All In the Dirt Digging

(On a personal note, I will appear at the Bartow (FL) Writers Block and Street Fair as a local author this Saturday May 20th from 10AM to 6PM. It's a fund-raising effort for the local church charities, and it'll be  pet-friendly event with a ton of activities. I do hope to see some people there, and buy my books!) 

(Update: Again, many thanks to Batocchio at Crooks & Liars for adding this article to Mike's Blog Round-Up!)

One of the things expected from the US House Republicans this congressional cycle was a persistent wave of mudslinging "investigations" into conspiracy-driven wingnut allegations aimed at Joe Biden, his son Hunter, and the Democratic Party as a whole. 

Not because there was any well-known dirt or questionable conduct by Biden himself, but because the Republicans needed to demean him, ruin his public persona, and make it harder for Biden to run for re-election in 2024.

Look at the trend of Republican dirt-digging over the decades. The Far Right had Whitewater (and then Vince Foster's suicide) to harass Bill Clinton in the 1990s, they had BS on Obama's birth certificate in the 2010s that went nowhere, and then a Solyandra scandal that went nowhere, and then Benghazi to undermine Hillary Clinton for her 2016 run, and then Hillary's emails and private server that all turned into nothingburgers but arguably succeeded in throwing that election cycle to trump.

This time around, the House Oversight and other special committees were going after Joe for his son Hunter's possibly corrupt work with Ukrainian businesses. Which is, to be fair, leading up to a handful of misdemeanor charges and one felony tax dodge charge sometime soon. Frustratingly for the House GOP, they couldn't dig up any evidence Hunter's father ran interference for him.

In the aftermath of that failed press conference, the chair of the Oversight Committee James Comer went public with the admission that they couldn't get any whistleblowers in the federal agencies to step forward, and that his committee lost track of "a key witness" that would have tied the whole room together uh tied Hunter's corruption to Papa Joe's decades of Senate and Vice Presidential work.

The public mockery for Comer's mishandling of witnesses came quick (via Igor Derysh at Salon):

Fox News host Maria Bartiromo pressed Comer on the evidence on Sunday.

"You also spoke with an informant who gave you all of this information," she said. "Where is that informant today? Where are these whistleblowers?"

"Well, unfortunately, we can't track down the informant," Comer replied. "We're hopeful that the informant is still there. The whistleblower knows the informant. The whistleblower is very credible."

The "Girlfriend From Canada" excuse and "The Dog Ate My Homework" excuse can only take you so far, bro.

Comer added that "no president has ever been accused of the things that the Biden family's been accused of."

Bro. I'm pretty fucking sure the trump family has been accused of more serious shitload of corrupt things during their years in the White House than Joe's.

"Hold on a second, Congressman. Did you just say that the whistleblower or the informant is now missing?" Bartiromo interjected.

"Well, we're hopeful that we can find the informant," Comer said. "Remember, these informants are kind of in the spy business, so they don't make a habit of being seen a lot or being high profile or anything like that."

Comer added that nine of the 10 informants "that we've identified that have very good knowledge with respect to the Bidens, they're one of three things. They're either currently in court, they're currently in jail, or they're currently missing..."

"It is stunning that some people are missing, that you need to the prove this," (Bartiromo) said. "Just stunning. A stunning breaking news story this morning that some of these people now may be missing," she later added as she wrapped up the interview.

Granted, until it's time to present this all in a courtroom, you don't want to leak the identities of people who are honestly exposing criminal misdeeds at the risk of their own lives. But Comer isn't exactly credible himself talking about "credible" people we have no idea who they are. For all we do know, Comer's "witnesses" are Far Right conspiracy buffs with no access to Biden's inner circles or even any ties to federal agencies under Biden's administration (then or now).

But if we're taking Comer's work seriously, then what Comer's admitting to is a terrible breach of investigatory procedures. One of the first things you gotta do when you're pulling witnesses together is that you gotta talk to them face-to-face as soon as possible, get their statements on record, verify the source(s), confirm they're in a position to know, etc. What Comer's admitting during that interview is that they didn't even have a handle on the informant to confirm the whistleblower was even real.

The House Republicans were charging ahead without having any evidence or witness to guide them. It's that whole "cart before the horse" and/or "get your damn ducks in a row" idiom (or metaphor, I'm not sure which) in real life.

I've represented #whistleblowers, especially within Intelligence Community (spies), for more than 25 years. Strange, I've never lost one.

🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️https://t.co/OxtxEavVtB

— Mark S. Zaid (@MarkSZaidEsq) May 14, 2023

At best, this was sloppy and incompetent. At worst, the House Republicans honestly didn't care if they had a witness/whistleblower at all. All they really wanted was the illusion that they had dirt on Biden.

Consider the other thing Comer said in that interview: Most of their informants were themselves facing criminal charges or currently in jail (as well as missing). We're talking about witnesses who won't exactly have honorable intentions to spill dirt or be considered reliable. But again, the facts were NOT at issue here. All Comer and the House GOP wanted were Big Lies about Biden to make Biden and the Dems look crooked, even if the facts proved otherwise.

When the House witch hunts inquiries into Joe Biden began, the Republican leadership all promised that they would have a number of key witnesses and whistleblowers to expose the fraud and danger of a Biden Presidency. They pretty much sent invites to every disgruntled federal employee from the FBI on down to the custodians at the American History museums to approach them with any scandalous whisper they could share. And yet, by all signs of things nobody did.

Consider this the Underpants Gnomes Congressional Inquiry. All they had going in for Step One was "Find incriminating dirt on Biden," and what they hoped for at Step Three was "PROFIT." They had nothing for Step Two.

For all the hopes and fantasies and conspiracy-mongering among the Republican faithful, there doesn't even look to be any large-scale corruption going on among the hated Democratic ranks. Whistleblowers and informants aren't stepping up because they're afraid to (compare to the numerous informants that cropped up during trump's misrule), there just aren't any real informants out there when it comes to Democratic governance.

Until Comer or Jim Jordan or Kevin McCarthy or anyone else among the House Republicans can present even one sliver of evidence of corruption, we shouldn't be taken in by their unfounded allegations about misconduct under Biden's leadership.

All the Republicans have anymore are the lies they keep telling themselves, even more than the lies they try to tell us.

It'd be funny and even pitiful, if it weren't so dangerous for the nation.

DeSantis Flirting With Disaster

Everything that Governor DeSantis is doing in Florida isn't for the sake of Floridians.

DeSantis isn't going after Disney for any kind of corporate reform, he's going after Disney for questioning his "Don't Say Gay" campaign platform.

DeSantis isn't going after Critical Race Theory in our K-12 and academic educational system because it's skewing history, he's shutting down any discussion about racism because it dares hurt the privileged feelings of mostly White Far Right wingnuts.

DeSantis isn't going after trans people for any safety or health concerns, he's going after them to appease the religious wingnuts terrified of people trying to come to terms with who they are.

DeSantis isn't going after immigrants because of public safety or protecting our jobs from undocumented workers, he going after them to pander to the haters buying into the fear that the Far Right media keeps selling about "caravans of drug dealers" that never really show up. In the meanwhile in a wonderful sign of how our political hypocrisy works, our local businesses and farms that rely on undocumented workers are already panicking over the loss of those workers refusing to show up in fear of getting arrested.

DeSantis hasn't done anything to prepare this state for the upcoming hurricane season starting next month, he's done nothing to reduce the increasing costs of homeowners insurance that will fail to help thousands of residents if a big storm wipes out another part of Florida. 

DeSantis has done nothing about the growing climate change problems addressing this state, including an ocean full of seaweed clogging our Atlantic shoreline. He's doing nothing about the algae blooms caused by excessive polluting by the southern sugar cane industry near Lake Okeechobee. 

DeSantis is doing nothing except touring the planet setting up his 2024 Presidential campaign.

Everything DeSantis is doing is leading up to disaster, all because DeSantis - the Republican Party he represents - no longer cares about honest or even GOOD governance.

Read what Robert Coutinho, guest-posting at Moderate Voice, sees in DeSantis' posturing towards his Far Right voting base:

What struck me most about this article was not that DeSantis and the Republican super-majority in the Florida House and Senate would be willing to support such laws, but that they would be so brazen about doing so. They literally put them all together and touted the fact that they were doing it as a defying act, against what they called, “Woke-ism.”

Since, when one generally asks any of them what woke-ism happens to be, they stumble all over their answers, it begs the question, “What do they mean by Woke-ism?”

Now we know. This is what hit me so squarely in the face. This was the epiphany.

It has to do with the definitions of Good, and by contrast, Evil. Good, in general, is defined as that which supports life, creation, artistic expression, beauty, happiness, and joy. Evil is not a thing in and of itself; it is, instead, the opposite of Good. It is the absence of those things and/or the destruction, denial and perversion of those things that are good. Greed and toxic pride are included in evil because they inevitably lead to destruction...

So, in other words, the Florida legislature and Governor DeSantis created a law that was deliberately evil. They touted it as, “anti-Woke.” Since Evil is that which is opposed to Good, their definition of Woke must be: Good.

There you have it in plain, simple to explain, legislation folks. Destruction, death, pain, ugliness, are all anti-Woke. How do we know? The Florida government just enshrined it into law. However, at the same time, those same politicians are adamant that Woke-ism must be stamped out. It must be eliminated from out society. They insist that anti-Woke is what we must preserve, not the other way around.

To say it as Adam Serwer said it barely six years ago: The Cruelty is the Point.

Everything DeSantis is doing now is to create a visual portfolio, a grand list of dark accomplishments of all the people he's forced to suffer just so that the wingnuts who make up the Republican voting base will support him instead of trump.

Never mind the current polling shows trump's control over that GOP voting base remains stronger than ever, because trump is so naturally sadistic and cruel towards others that DeSantis could never compete like that. And yet, he will keep doing so in vain hope that by the primaries season next year trump is somehow out of the picture.

Coutinho is right to describe DeSantis' actions as evil: Our core definition of Evil itself is that it's cruel, self-serving, above all a "lack of empathy" as described by psychologist G.M. Gilbert who witnessed the Nazi leaders tried at Nuremberg. Nothing about what DeSantis or the Republicans are doing towards fellow Americans - be they Black or Latino or Women or Gay or Trans or Young - is for their good, or for the greater good of our citizenry in any way.

Everything DeSantis is doing is to get him elected to higher (more powerful) office by people as cruel and sadistic as he is.

And in the meantime, the evil expands upon inaction: All the things DeSantis is failing to do as Governor to serve this state is going to let the rot and toxin spread, to where the next natural or man-made disaster is going to be worse than all the ones he's failed to respond to already.

Gods help us. Florida is honestly going to wash into the sea before this is all over.

May 11th: You Can Jump Into the Fire...

...But You'll Never Be Free.

Thus ever it will be that May 11th is Goodfellas Day.

I was going to be busy all day...

In real life, mobster Henry Hill's worst day happened in April, but for the purposes of the epic movie Goodfellas they moved up the date stamp to May 11th, 1980.

The sequence of Henry Hill driving about town on errands, high on drugs, paranoid about a helicopter tailing him, intermixed with songs of the era that echo his mindset - including an incredible use of Harry Nilsson's "Jump Into The Fire" - is considered one of most expertly edited sequences in film history. That this movie failed to win Best Director for Martin Scorsese or Best Editing for Thelma Schoonmaker (Thelma critiqued her own work noting various continuity flaws may have hurt her chances) remains a glaring oversight with an Academy that often fails to see greatness in the moment (I'm still livid with the Oscars overlooking TRON for Best Visual Effects. TWICE).

Still, back to the movie, which was a darker historical take on the downfall of the America Mafia from the 60s to the 70s, in which Henry Hill (played by Ray Liotta in an also-snubbed epic performance) narrates the moments of violence, greed, and self-immolation that doomed himself, his family, and his gangster friends.

Goodfellas is a time capsule of sorts, a shadow history of Americana during a transition of great upheaval, and the bittersweet sense that something was lost - even something as violent as what the Mafia represented - as we moved into the modern day.

One of the things I'm into as a librarian/amateur historian/amateur literary buff is the archetypes and tropes that define our understanding of the world. Have you ever heard of The Matter of Britain (Arthurian mythos), or The Matter of France (Age of Charlemagne) or the Matter of Italy (Roman Republic/Empire)? "Matter" equaling Legends, the cultural baseline that defines each of those cultures' expectations and shared archetypes that unify a nation?

I often wonder what would be the defining Matter of America, and I'm torn between the historical events of the Civil War - the struggle between freedom and slavery - or the Wild West - the settling of a frontier symbolized by the street wars such as the Gunfight at the OK Corral - or the rise and fall of the Mafia - tied to our immigration, capitalist ideals, and urban lifestyles.

If the Matter of America is indeed the Gangster narrative, then Goodfellas takes a serious spot in our national identity (alongside The Godfather and the 1930s Gangster films that codified the "rise and fall" cycle).

Now go get your shinebox.

A Very Short Con Caught

Even the longest con was never more than an assortment of moments that were in themselves very very short.
-- Ally Carter, Uncommon Criminals

While most of America lauded Carroll's civil courtroom victory over con artist donald trump, another political con artist faced his own gauntlet of justice in another part of New York. Remember old George "What's My Real Name" Santos who got exposed for lying about his resume, his biography, his marriage history, his non-profit scams, his (skip a bit Brother), right after winning a congressional seat from Long Island? 

Well, the Federales finally charged Santos on some serious felonies Wednesday morning. Via Brian Mann at NPR: 

Republican Rep. George Santos surrendered to federal authorities at a courthouse in suburban Long Island on Wednesday facing 13 counts of criminal wrongdoing.

Federal prosecutors say he allegedly "devised and executed a scheme" aimed at defrauding donors to his 2022 political campaign.

"This indictment seeks to hold Santos accountable for various alleged fraudulent schemes and brazen misrepresentations," said U.S. Attorney Breon Peace in a statement...

According to the criminal indictments, Santos claimed money donated to his 2022 campaign would fuel his bid for office, paying for TV advertisements.

Instead, he allegedly spent the cash on luxury designer clothes and to make a car payment and pay personal credit card bills.

Santos also faces a charge that in 2020, he fraudulently applied to receive unemployment benefits when he was employed and running for Congress in his first bid for public office...

I've seen a number of people online question "why the hell commit unemployment benefits fraud when he was making more money with his actual job?" Because, as any con artist will tell you, it's all a game. Many conservatives already viewed unemployment aid as a rip-off committed by lazy freeloaders, why NOT jump in on that "scam" when the federal aid was increased to help during a global pandemic? Also wik, con artists love to have different revenue streams to line their pockets in case one scheme goes dry. Back to the shenanigans:

Long before these charges were filed, it was clear the freshman lawmaker had pushed the boundaries of conventional political scandal. After his victory in last November's midterms, it was revealed that he fabricated most of the persona presented to voters.

Santos lied in interviews and campaign documents about his education, his professional accomplishments, his record as a champion volleyball player and his family's experiences in the Holocaust.

He also faced multiple investigations into how he raised and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign cash, including a mysterious $700,000 gift he made to his own election effort.

It remains unclear where that money came from...

Which is why I've seen other people online imply that the federal prosecutors are not done filing charges on Santos. THESE are the matters they can present right now in a criminal trial to a judge and jury.

Why Santos - whose provable history underscores a lifetime of check fraud, charity rip-offs, and other low-scale cons - decided to move up to the major leagues to pull off scams he wasn't ready to run only makes sense when you step back and recognize that the entire modern Republican Party has happily turned itself into a massive money-making scheme.

The distance between a novice still-young con artist roughly a decade into the Game and an aging bloated con artist like donald trump who's been at this grifting for fifty years has now closed thanks to the unethical state of the GOP. As David A Graham noted at The Atlantic (paywall):

For Santos to be indicted the same day that a jury in Manhattan found former President Donald Trump liable for sexual assault and defamation against the writer E. Jean Carroll is a fitting symmetry. Both men engaged in ceaseless chicanery for years before entering politics, and both found immediate and unexpected success in their first runs for office. But both men are now also wrestling with the realization that although you can get away with a lot in private life, the political spotlight can sometimes light the way for litigants and prosecutors...

In this way, his story resembles a shorter, smaller-time imitation of Trump’s. In his life as a real-estate developer, entertainer, and self-promoter, Trump was often ensnared in scandals, but he was able to escape serious scrutiny and personal criminal consequences for them. Trump’s methods were not quite so brazen, though they were sometimes pretty blunt: inflating and deflating the value of assets in different filings, for example, or simply inventing square footage for buildings. For decades, he got away with this, but entering politics brought attention he didn’t want...

This is, once again, an indictment of a legal system that continually overlooks white collar crime until it's at a scale of disastrous proportions. It's also a massive indictment of a political environment - thanks to the odious Citizens United ruling by a Republican-shaped SCOTUS - of billions of campaign dollars tempting the grifters into more brazen public acts that cannot be ignored.

My mother just mentioned this to me while driving to and from my nephew's college graduation this weekend: "We jailed Martha Stewart for less." (Now I know where I got that attitude from) Even she gets how troubling all this corruption has gotten.

I hope Santos get exposed for more of the fraud he's committed (especially that $700,000 mystery loan). I hope trump gets nailed to the wall by the New York attorney general for his financial crimes.

Let all the con artists answer for their sins. It is high time we held white collar criminals to stern measures.