The Danger of trump Threatening American Justice

It's happened before, and donald trump is doing it again.

he's attacking the judges overseeing his trials - this time going after them on his CRIMINAL trials - and he's now attacking family members he thinks are fair game. It got bad enough in the New York hush money trial that the judge overseeing that trial issued a gag order... and trump is still pushing the lines daring for escalation. It's getting to where other judges are speaking in public about the dangers trump will unleash if he keeps provoking (via Shania Shelton and Rashard Rose at CNN):

US District Judge Reggie Walton spoke with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on “The Source” in the wake of Trump’s attacks on Judge Juan Merchan, which helped prompt the New York judge to issue a gag order on the former president earlier this week. It is unusual for federal judges to speak publicly, especially about specific political or legal situations.

“It’s very disconcerting to have someone making comments about a judge, and it’s particularly problematic when those comments are in the form of a threat, especially if they’re directed at one’s family,” said Walton, who has also faced threats, as has his daughter. “We do these jobs because we’re committed to the rule of law and we believe in the rule of law, and the rule of law can only function effectively when we have judges who are prepared to carry out their duties without the threat of potential physical harm.”

“I think it’s important in order to preserve our democracy that we maintain the rule of law,” Walton said in the interview. “And the rule of law can only be maintained if we have independent judicial officers who are able to do their job and ensure that the laws are, in fact, enforced and that the laws are applied equally to everybody who appears in our courthouse.”

I've seen tweets on social media commenting on how rare it is for a sitting judge to discuss current criminal matters going before a court. This is how reckless and disrespectful trump has become.

It's been said before that trump's only legal defense is to delay. If he can't delay, he tries to defame. If that doesn't work, he sinks to the level of a Sicilian mob boss bullying the judges into giving him more leeway if not slaps on the wrist.

It's horrifying. Half of trump's social media rants are about him being "unfairly" persecuted - the word is PROSECUTED, donald, there is a distinction - and accusing the judges and the district attorneys and the legal system as a whole being corrupt and vindictive towards himself, and then tries to get his audience of MAGA worshippers to fear that they will be persecuted next.

Unless those MAGA supporters violate the federal and state tax codes and commit property and investment fraud to the tune of millions, obviously that won't happen.

trump keeps ignoring the reality that the American legal system relies on several things, such as facts and precedence. Without facts, there's nothing you can present to a judge or jury. Without precedence, the legal system won't have any measurable means to act.

trump seems to genuinely believe - or hope - that the legal system is whatever YOU deem it to be at any given moment to whatever suits the needs of yourself or those you believe are pulling the strings. he seems to think you use the legal system to punish your enemies and reward your friends.

Nevermind that when he did try to get the Justice Department under his control to pursue Obama and Hillary Clinton for what he deemed an "unfair" attack on his ties to Russia in 2016, the special counsel he sent to dig up dirt and jail his rivals couldn't prove a thing trump screamed was true.

With all that failure, trump persists in that false narrative. he HAS to: being both Hero and Victim is how he maintains his grift, how he stirs up his followers to fear and rage towards yet another constitutional norm trump needs to tear down.

We need to recognize that trump's attacks on the judges and the courts are the same attacks he leveled against the voting machines and county officials and the legitimacy of the electoral process itself back in 2020. All those acts of harassment and bullying trying to undermine the nation just so trump could "win" when he clearly didn't.

trump's bullying is just his way of tilting the game to favor him.

The courts dare not let him. trump is crossing a line going after family members, he's getting that much closer to calling on acts of violence and disruption to get his way. trump is daring the judge to revoke his bail, hold him in contempt, as though that would complete trump's martyrdom and incite MAGA riots in the streets. trump is trying to bluff his way out of criminal accountability.

I say to the courts, you have the right - nay the necessity - to enforce decorum and civility in your courtrooms. Hold trump accountable for the threats he's unleashing across the nation. Hold trump in contempt.

trump does not have a First Amendment right to threaten violence or harm on anybody anywhere.

Hold trump accountable.

And get trump in front of a jury to answer for his crimes as soon as humanly possible.

Let Justice Be Done.

The Corporate Media War On Facts and America (w/ Update)

I wrote awhile back about the blind eye of the national / mainstream media - especially the Beltway Media that tracks our political discourse 24/7 - and where I made observations about why that media behaved irresponsibly about the partisan nature of the Far Right. Fellow blogger Green Eagle posted this comment pointing out something I overlooked:

Here is the real reason: Before Ronald Reagan took office, over 80% of the press was owned by individuals and small companies. Thanks to Reagan's "deregulation" of the media, today, about 90% of the press is owned by large corporations or multi-billionaires, almost all of which are Republicans. When I hear people explain what causes the press to behave the way it does, I want to ask them, did you never have a job in your life? And if you did have a job, did you do what you wanted, or what the boss wanted? Our mainstream press is doing what the boss wants, period. That is the real, entire story of why Democrats will never get a fair break from the national media, whose owners cannot fathom the idea that things will not be better off if government gives them everything they want.

I've thought back to GE's comment recently because this weekend the owners of NBC proved that when they hired Ronna Romney McDaniel - the head of the Republican National Committee that just got booted out by donald trump in a hostile takeover - to be a regular contributor to their news division at an obscene salary of $300,000 as though there was nothing wrong with her.

Even though there is a shit-ton wrong with her: Above all, McDaniel's unwarranted and dangerous election denialism, willingness to do trump's dirty work, and attempts to undo the 2020 election results.

McDaniel's hiring is actually standard operating procedure in the national media workplace: Over the decades, the news networks routinely hired politicians and political handlers to work as pundits from both major political parties (and even a few Libertarians to spice up the crazy).

But McDaniel's hire set off fire alarms throughout the industry, because it threatened one thing: Defending - and worse, normalizing - trump and the Far Right's open war against democracy itself.

David A. Graham at the Atlantic documented the horror show (paywalled):

On Sunday, Meet the Press host Kristen Welker rightly raked McDaniel over her past election denialism. Chuck Todd, Welker’s predecessor at MTP, then said the network’s bosses owed her an apology for placing her in a tough position—he said he didn’t know whether to take McDaniel’s answers as honest. “There’s a reason why there are a lot of journalists at NBC News uncomfortable with this, because many of our professional dealings with the RNC over the last six years have been met with gaslighting, have been met with character assassination,” Todd said on air.

Then, on Morning Joe today, the titular Scarborough said, “We weren’t asked our opinion of the hiring, but if we were, we would have strongly objected to it for several reasons.” Co-host Mika Brzezinski said she hoped NBC would reconsider.

When that "Both Sideism" hack Chuck Todd is freaking out, when Far Right former congresscritter Scarborough is objecting on-air, you know the head honchos at NBC crossed a line. 

Graham posted his Atlantic article before major MSNBC figure Rachel Maddow got her two cents in, and oh yeah Maddow dropped napalm on the hiring (via Dominick Mastrangelo at The Hill):

“If you care what I think about this, the fact that Ms. McDaniel is on the payroll at NBC News — to me that is inexplicable,” Maddow said on her show. “You wouldn’t hire a wise guy, a made man like a mobster, to work in a DA’s office. You wouldn’t hire a pickpocket to work as a TSA screener. And so, I find the decision to put her on the payroll inexplicable...”

“And it’s not about Democratic party, Republican party, it’s not about partisanship or right versus left,” she continued. “It’s about our system of government and undermining elections and going after democracy.”

Maddow highlighted McDaniel’s role in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and said NBC, like all news organizations, is currently tasked with “trying to cover an election … and cover bad actors who are using the rights and privileges of a democracy to end democracy...”

While McDaniel's first appearance on Meet the Press showed her reversing her stance and claiming the 2020 election "was fair," it still doesn't undo the actual damage McDaniel committed while serving as RNC Chair (and overlooks the possibility she can be charged in Michigan for her efforts to throw out thousands of votes). And even though trump kneecapped her and drove her from her leadership position among Republicans, you can guarantee that McDaniel - daughter to a powerful GOP political family, long-standing conservative on her own - will "carry the water" for a Republican Party that will spend most of the 2024 election cycle playing out trump's gaslighting over "unfair elections" and "stolen ballots."

Graham even wonders what actual value McDaniel has that would be of interest to the NBC bosses who signed off on her contract:

The problem is that McDaniel has no apparent value to viewers or the network. When outlets hire figures like her, they typically say that these people add perspective and insight that only insiders can provide. “It couldn’t be a more important moment to have a voice like Ronna’s on the team,” the NBC political editor Carrie Budoff Brown said in a statement.

Sometimes, the private explanation is more mercenary. When CBS hired former White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney in 2022, an executive bluntly told staffers that the network expected Republicans to capture Congress in that year’s midterm elections, and that Mulvaney would assist in getting “access.” Semafor’s Ben Smith has a related theory for this year: Many corporate leaders seem to have concluded that Donald Trump will win the presidential election, and so they’re trying to make moves to get in his good graces.

The problem is that McDaniel falls short both as an editorial offering and as favor-currying... McDaniel is not known for her strategic acumen or ideological fervor. She was chosen for the job for loyalty for Trump, and then discarded later when that loyalty proved insufficient.

McDaniel’s credibility is also in question. As Welker pointed out, she spent years indulging Trump’s claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and that January 6 insurrectionists were patriots. McDaniel’s explanation was not reassuring: “When you’re the RNC chair, you kind of take one for the whole team, right? Now I get to be a little bit more myself, right? This is what I believe.” In other words, Trust me, I was lying.

All of this makes it hard to take McDaniel’s on-air political commentary all that seriously...

...There are three kinds of prominent Republicans: Those who are in Trump’s good graces; those who have been cast out of Trump’s good graces; and those who have always loathed Trump. The third group has no truck with McDaniel, whom they see as a sycophantic sellout. (They note that she dropped her maiden name, Romney, in deference to Trump’s disdain for her uncle.) McDaniel herself is in the second group—she was available for the NBC gig because Trump demanded her removal as RNC chair, after all.

The Trump loyalists in the first group have no affection for McDaniel either. A top campaign official crowed to Politico’s Playbook about her getting caught in the crossfire. No one in Trump’s current orbit will want to appear close to McDaniel for fear of being cast out themselves. If Trump wins the election, McDaniel won’t be able to speak very effectively to his inner circle; and if he loses, she won’t be a credible voice in a post-Trump era of Republican politics.

This leaves McDaniel without any constituency...

In some respects it was never about McDaniel's place in trump's inner circle of power (she was easily dismissed like many others before her). If we look closely at McDaniel herself, all she presents - to the media and the nation watching her - is a consistent, hard conservative world-view of tax cuts to the rich (that ever-fixed mark she shares with her father), deregulations across the board, and slashing at social safety nets to make the poor suffer more.

It's a world-view consistent with the cruelty and self-serving interests of the corporate powers as well.

Like Green Eagle notes, our Beltway Media is corporate-owned and fixated on the narratives that serve their needs, rather than the factual reporting that the national audiences need to stay properly informed.

If the CEO and managers in control of NBC - and ABC, and CBS, and Fox, and C-Span for that matter, hell throw in ESPN and the Weather Channel while we're at it - want certain messages and narratives and explanations (and gaslighting) to get broadcast, they will hire the people - usually those within their own small circles of colleagues and party invites - that will shill those narratives while raking in annual salaries more than triple that of their standard employees (it doesn't help NBC's judgment when they've recently fired 100 people to clear payroll).

NBC is going to hire pundits who will gladly talk up "the benefits" of tax cuts for the rich and "reforming" Social Security and Medicare and all the other standard Far Right talking points, especially during an election cycle when they need to overwhelm the public forum with their skewed priorities. It's just that the CEOs and people who made this deal happen didn't pay attention to all the damage McDaniel is really threatening to inflict - the end of voting rights, the destruction of fair elections, the rise of authoritarian figures like trump seeking to burn the American Dream down to rule the ashes - as part of her messaging.

It's not shocking that NBC hired a prominent Republican. It's shocking that they hired one willing to destroy America.

Update: It's later in the day and the reports are out that NBC will sever ties with McDaniel, although it may be a messy situation because McDaniel will likely be looking for a lawsuit claiming her First Amendment rights were denied. This is going to cost the network a ton of money, as well it should, and the people involved are likely going to get "encouraged" to retire on their own terms in short order. But it remains a serious problem that the CEOs and company heads are going to try this again, hiring another "trump insider" who will shill the upper-class agenda of "SAVE US FROM DEMOCRATS TAXING THE RICH THEIR FAIR SHARE".

The Pains of trump's Game

No, You have not. But You HAVE stolen, embezzled, defrauded and swindled without discrimination, Mr. Lipvig. You have ruined businesses and destroyed jobs. When banks fail, it is seldom Bankers who starve. Your actions have taken money from those who had little enough to begin with. In myriad small ways you have hastened the deaths of Many. You do not know them. You did not see them bleed. But you snatched bread from their mouths and tore clothes from their backs. For Sport, Mr. Lipvig. For Sport. For the Joy of the Game.
-- Sir Terry Pratchett, Going Postal

Well today was a busy day in the New York dockets regarding donald trump's multiple legal woes.

If trump had good news it was that a New York appellate court reduced the amount of cash trump needed to post a bond in his state-level fraud case from the full $464 million (plus interest) to $175 million, and if the rest of the world had good news it was that his criminal trial in New York starts in three weeks (via Andrea Bernstein and Ximena Bustillo at NPR):

Former President Trump had a mixed day in court Monday: A judge rejected his motion to sanction prosecutors and said jury selection in his hush money trial will start April 15; separately, a New York appeals court reduced the amount Trump must post as bond from nearly half a billion dollars to $175 million — and gave him another 10 days to post it to meet the civil fraud judgment against him.

Last week, Trump argued to an appeals court that a bond to cover $454 million was "a practically impossibility," because he doesn't have the cash to guarantee it right now. Trump had been facing a deadline Monday to post the $454 million bond or else face seizure of his assets...

The logistics of getting bond during the appeal process required trump to have a near-equal amount of that $464 million (plus interest) and from other sources I'd seen not many bonding companies would deal anything over $100 million anyway. Working with a character like trump with his reputation of not paying anybody, those institutions had every reason to balk at that price tag. (trump WAS able to get a bond for the $88 million involved in the Carroll ruling, arguably because it was under that $100 million cap and he apparently convinced that company's board he was good for it) And as I've noted before, for all of trump's bluster about being rich enough to have that kind of money, he really doesn't.

trump is still on the hook for that full $464 million (plus interest) while he appeals, but he only has to put $175 million down. It's still too much a gesture of mercy from a legal system that favors the rich in these circumstances: How many poor people are sitting in jail awaiting trial because they couldn't get a bail bond for $5,000.00 and no judge is willing to waive the fee?

While trump enjoyed the minor victory from that, he faced a harsher reckoning in the criminal trial regarding his hush money payments and false financial reporting:

Separately, a New York judge on Monday set April 15 as the new start date in Trump's hush money case. Jury selection will begin April 15, and all prospective jurors will be informed that court will not convene on any date the jury is unable to attend due to Passover or other religious observances. Jury selection in the trial had been scheduled to start Monday, but in recent weeks federal prosecutors released more than 100,000 documents that could be related to the case. Trump, who has pleaded not guilty, called that release malfeasance, though the court finds that District Attorney Alvin Bragg was not at fault for the late documents...

That situation with the documents served as the crux for today's ruling, as the judge expressed a noticeable amount of anger over how trump's lawyers staged that document request as a means of deliberate delay (via Igor Derysh at Salon):

After describing Trump’s filings over the last several weeks, during which a document release by federal prosecutors at the Southern District of New York prompted a delay to the trial, (Judge) Merchan said: “This court is of the opinion that there are really not significant questions of fact to be resolved."

Trump attorney Todd Blanche argued that not only did SDNY turn over new documents but it also notified both sides last night about new documents related to adult film star Stormy Daniels.

Merchan told Blanche that he appreciated being informed of the development. “I don’t think it’s related to the hearing, but thank you,” he added.

Merchan questioned why Trump’s lawyers hadn’t asked for more time during a hearing last month even though they likely knew the materials existed last spring.

“Why didn’t you bring any of this to my attention? Why didn’t you tell the court or anyone in the courtroom at that time that you had made this request, that it was taking a little longer than you expected?” Merchan asked. “So how come you didn’t bring them up?”

Blanche appeared to be “caught off guard” by Merchan’s harsh questioning and seemed “frazzled” by the questions, according to NBC News. Trump during the hearing appeared to “relay messages through his lawyers,” according to the report.

Merchan grew “uncharacteristically furious” during the hearing, according to NBC.

“That you don’t have a case right now is really disconcerting,” he told Trump’s lawyers. “You are literally accusing the Manhattan DA’s office and the people assigned to this case of prosecutorial misconduct," he added, arguing that Trump’s lawyers did not provide a single example to back up their allegation.

In all respects, trump and his lawyers have no real legal defense to speak of. his lawyers tried to dismiss most of the witnesses but failed. There's enough paper trail to justify DA Bragg's case. Even though legal experts argue Bragg's case is weak, trump dare not risk going to a jury on any of this. Attacking the prosecutors on baseless charges and coming up with new distractions to force the court to delay even further are the only options trump has.

trump's always played con games with the legal system. he's spent decades overpromising and underpaying (if at all). he's used delaying tactics to break those who tried to sue him for money owed. he's committed acts of fraud over and over, convincing himself if not others that no one was ever harmed by his misdeeds. And he benefitted from a legal system - designed to protect "who owns what" - that never took fraud serious as a major crime.

But people were harmed. People lost businesses. People lost life savings. People were tricked into spending too much for rentals and buyouts. And they could never find justice in the legal system because trump and his lawyers kept gaming that system.

We're watching it happen now. The criminal trials he needs to face regarding stolen classified documents and regarding his schemes surrounding the January 6th riots are on hold because a trump-friendly Supreme Court is delaying his accountability. The Fulton County RICO trial overseeing trump's election fraud and fake electors scheme are awaiting an open calendar date depending on all of this, all after trump and his co-defendants spent months delaying it by attacking DA Fani Willis' personal life.

Goddamn all these delays. The legal system may need to protect the rights of defendants but it also needs to serve the rights of the citizenry to see justice done. trump has violated any right to delay any further the justice that is long overdue.

Get him in the courtroom now. NOW, dammit, before he can bluff and steal his way back into a White House that would shield him from the justice he owes us.

Are The House GOP *Ever* Going To Govern Themselves?

Update: Thanks again as always to Batocchio for sharing this article at Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up. Also, waking up this morning to the news about the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore. Oh my God, to everyone up there, I am so sorry...

It had to happen. The minute the Republican-controlled House of Representatives actually does something, the Freedom Caucus rises up to knee-cap the entire system with another purity purge. In response to the current flavor of the month Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-Mosesville) agreeing to bring appropriations bills to the floor for votes, major wingnut Marjorie Taylor Greene filed the latest Motion to Vacate (via Deirdre Walsh and Lexie Schapitl at NPR):

Greene and other hardline conservatives had expressed anger with Johnson's handling of the six remaining appropriations bills for fiscal year 2024. The package of those bills – totaling $1.2 trillion – passed the House Friday morning with more Democratic support than Republican support. It now heads to the Senate. Working with Democrats to avoid a shutdown is also what triggered the push to oust then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy last year.

"This is not personal against Mike Johnson. He's a very good man. And I have respect for him as a person. But he is not doing the job. The proof is in the vote count today," Greene told reporters Friday. "The Republican speaker of the House handed over every ounce of negotiating power to Chuck Schumer and the Democrats and went ahead and funded the government when this was our point of leverage..."

For Greene to accuse Johnson of "not doing the job" plays into the Far Right mindset that there should never be compromise with Democrats, only the abject surrender by Democrats to every Republican wish.

For all the Beltway media obsession with the idea of bipartisanship, it ought to horrify them that the modern Republicans can't even spell the word, even among their own ranks. And yet, there's no outrage or disappointment from the punditry as they sit there wondering why the Democrats won't come to the rescue of the opposition party when the GOP are clearly refusing the lifelines.

Never before in our nation's political history have we seen the controlling party in the US House self-immolate itself like this on an almost monthly - arguably daily - basis. Ever since the House Republicans gained a narrow majority in the 2022 midterms, instead of uniting behind a coherent and achievable policy agenda they've been backbiting over how to force Democrats - both in the House and Senate - to agree to draconian legislation like a harsh immigration bill. And then reject their own bills because they feared Biden and the Dems would claim those accomplishments for their own.

In the process, instead of uniting behind a Speaker of the House to gain them legislative victories, the extremist Irrational factions - the Freedom Caucus, the Tea Partiers, anyone to the Right of Grover Norquist - among the Representatives are using the Motion to Vacate tool they forced their First Round Speaker Mike McCarthy to accept - and then used on himself - to now remove their Second Round Speaker Johnson for exactly the same reason: To sow chaos.

This shouldn't be happening. The way it's set up in the Constitution and in centuries of rules and traditions, the Speaker is supposed to be one of the most powerful offices in the land (at times outclassing the Presidency). Back in the earlier days when Congress held more power - and responsibilities - than it does now, being Speaker was one of the most coveted jobs out there. And GODS, it was powerful. Men like Henry Clay, Thomas Reed, Joseph Cannon, Sam Rayburn, Tip O'Neill, and yes even the first woman Speaker Nancy Pelosi... They established and influenced national policies, and wielded the kind of control that would have lesser congresscritters hiding under the tables.

And yet, here we are: Those lesser congresscritters are now tearing at the ones who are supposed to be their leaders, all because those leaders are "failing" at shutting down the federal government on the extremists' terms. All because those Speakers - not just Johnson and McCarthy, but John Boehner and Paul Ryan who were driven out by these same backbench rioters - realized once in office they were responsible for actually getting work done in spite of the shutdown demands.

You'd think after all these years of trying and failing to get a Republican Speaker to accede to the Far Right fantasies of burning the entire federal government down in order to get rid of social safety nets -  like Medicare, Social Security, ACA, safety regulations, clean water/air acts, etc. - that the wingnuts would dial it back a little. But they can't, because they don't see any consequences to their actions: Even within their own ranks, there has rarely been any payback. Even as they're on the brink of triggering yet another prolonged job hunt for a replacement Speaker should Johnson get kicked out.

This was how it went last time in October: Failed vote after failed vote of trying to find a palatable candidate that both the Rational and Irrational - remember, there are no Moderates left in the GOP, just different levels of Conservatives - could accept. I wrote this after the third - or was he the fifth - potential compromise candidate in Steve Scalise got shot down:

There is some schadenfreude to be had here as we watch a political party that's risen to power through partisan bullshit tears itself apart applying that partisan bullshit to themselves. However, there is little joy to savor. This is all happening as the planet faces multiple global crises - not just the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East but also increasing climate change disasters and also economic instability with China - that creates an urgency to fill the Speaker's role so that our government can function and respond to these crises.

Which is exactly what the Freedom Caucus / "Government Is Bad" / pro-Russian / racist-sexist bastards want to prevent. They WANT government to fall so they can build their Utopia on the ashes.

Greene - and Gaetz, and Jordan, and Gosar, and many other extremists - genuinely believe they can pull these stunts and there will never be any punishment for it. Even though they're exposing the possibility of forcing a handful of Rational Republicans to do the "unthinkable" and put the Democratic caucus leader Hakeem Jeffries in as Speaker to spite them.

This scenario is getting more likely by the day, as various Republicans are "retiring" from their seats at just the right moment where their offices remain vacant well into the November general election, reducing the magic number needed for Democrats to flip majority control of the House.

But none of that matters to the Far Right. They will Rule or Ruin, either the House or the whole Congress or the entire United States. If they lose the House this term before November, they'll scream bloody murder and scheme out other ways to delay all meaningful legislation, and yell on Fox Not-News every minute of the day how they're the victims of an "illegal takeover" of Congress.

All for the attention, and the deep-pocket money from their PACs (whatever trump can't vacuum up through his control of the RNC), and the ability to rile up their MAGA followers to spill "bloodbaths" when the time comes.

The Republicans can't govern America. They keep proving that the last 20 years. Today, they can't even govern themselves.

When My Library Closed Four Years Ago

If we're looking back to four years ago:

March 17th 2020 was a Tuesday night, and I work the evening shifts at my library those Tuesdays. That meant I have a desk turn at the Information desk, which also doubles as the checkout desk. There's often two of the part-time Library Assistants working the shift with me: one on desk and the other performing book processing, special project works, or reshelving.

The library itself was rather quiet. The COVID-19 pandemic had gone global back in January and by February we were seeing the signs in Florida. One interesting thing to note was how most our patrons (library users) are seniors from the surrounding retirement communities, and a lot of them had already begun sheltering at home well before March as the early reports had COVID being near-fatal to older people.

It may have been quiet but I had been busy all day, handling administrative duties as our Library Director position was vacant since 2018 (My previous experience as head of a library in another county did not go well, so I took it as a temp). I recall working on collection management of one of the non-fiction ranges, and then prepping for a One-On-One tutorial session (duties as the Reference Librarian) that ended up cancelling (they weren't sick, I remember that, they just didn't want to risk it).

When I started my desk shift at 5:00PM, I checked my work emails. I had two: Library and City. The Library email kept up with staff's last-minute schedule changes, any reports for what our Children's Librarian was lining up for that June's Summer Reading Program, notifications about patron complaints, in-house stuff. The City email was for the directorial duties to the city's operations, any notifications from the Manager, reports from the City Clerk, administrative stuff. The library system for the county used a different network than the city, hence the separate emails.

So it wasn't until 5:20PM when I got to the email from the City Manager's office sent at 4:00PM that everything was shutting down citywide due to the pandemic at 5:00PM.

/headdesk

<--- always the last to know

I told my part-timers as soon as I read that email. We roamed the library floors informing any remaining patrons - there were two on computers, a mother and child in Children's shelves, one reading in the Magazines area, nobody upstairs - that the library had to close early that night. One of the assistants checked the book drop while I worked on signage for the front doors, and then sent emails to all the staff about our work situation the next morning (library was closed to public, staff still had to work).

We had been expecting something about closing down. Other city libraries - we have a cooperative system, the cities manage their own library - had already closed a week or two prior. Those were the small libraries, with few staff - some of whom had caught COVID ergo the closings - on hand. They had every reason to close earlier in the month.

Thing about a library: we were... are a public facility, with hundreds of people going in and out all day, a pandemic hotspot, one of the worst places a virus could spread. As federal and state emergency agencies were begging elected officials to do the right thing, it was just a question of when, and that Tuesday afternoon was it for us.

By the time we finished locking up and shutting down, it was after 6:00PM. I remember standing in the parking lot, staring at the library and then circling around at everything else - a city lake behind the library, the little league ballpark across the street, the civic center just a ways over, one of those retirement communities to the far side of the ballpark, all part of a small quiet town in the middle of Florida - and just wondered what the hell was going to happen next. There was nobody else outside, even at sunset there were usually families in the surrounding neighborhood walking around the parks but not that night. Everyone was at home (or the grocery stores raiding whatever toilet paper was left), everyone was waiting for the next terrifying thing.

The day after we got instructions from our city's Emergency team - the firefighters did double-duty on that - about how we had to clean our workplaces, perform daily check-ins for fever and cough, required masking even as we were closed to the public. The plan - the hope - was to reopen to the public by late April, depending on how we could restructure the library to cut down on viral spreads.

We transferred everything we had on hold to Books-by-Mail as best we could. We started book pickups for drive-thru to the front door. We wiped everything down with cleaning solutions as much as possible. We dealt with co-workers calling in sick - some with COVID itself - though thankfully we never shared an outbreak amongst ourselves. We obeyed the recommendations and performed our duty to the library patrons.

That was four years ago. Everything changed, and some of it didn't get better.

Especially as trump - driven by ignorance, desperate to restart a shut-down economy to avoid making himself look bad, and unable to project any semblance of calm leadership - kept getting worse as COVID got worse.

But that's for another time.

Four years ago, everything for me shut down.

Seriously Can We Hurry This Up

Some quick updates about the situation donald trump and his alleged RICO buddies are facing in Fulton County Georgia.

If there's good news for trump and his cronies, it's that the judge overseeing matters reduced the overall number of counts they're facing regarding their election interference and fake electors schemes (via Sam Gringlas for NPR):

The judge overseeing the Georgia election interference case against former President Donald Trump and his allies has thrown out six criminal counts from the indictment.

Trump now faces 10 felony charges in Georgia, instead of 13.

Fulton County Superior Judge Scott McAfee agreed to grant motions from defendants in the case to quash six counts in the indictment, writing in an order Wednesday that: "The Court's concern is less that the State has failed to allege sufficient conduct of the Defendants – in fact it has alleged an abundance. However, the lack of detail concerning an essential legal element is, in the undersigned's opinion, fatal..."

McAfee wrote that when prosecutors alleged that the defendants violated their oaths to the Georgia Constitution and the U.S. Constitution, that charge was so broad that it would be impossible for defendants to prepare a defense.

"On its own, the United States Constitution contains hundreds of clauses, any one of which can be the subject of a lifetime's study," McAfee wrote.

McAfee wrote that prosecutors could appeal the ruling or ask a grand jury to produce a more specific indictment on those six counts...

The good news for the rest of us is that the remaining defendants - not the ones who plead already - are still seeing at least one felony charge - such as Mark Meadows, down to a single count of Conspiracy - in a courtroom. Better news is that the infamous audio of trump himself pressuring Georgia's Secretary of State to overturn the vote count is still admissible as evidence in some of the charges trump and others are facing, although McAfee will likely limit its use.

There is a door left open for DA Fani Willis to bring back the grand jury to refile charges on more specific claims, but given the number of counts still on the table she may decide to proceed with what she has (refiling runs the risk of getting overturned again over those specifics and delaying the trial further).

Speaking of Willis, she had been facing a disqualification hearing by the defendants over an "inappropriate relationship" with a special prosecutor hired to work on the DA's team. Judge McAfee issued his ruling today on that, essentially clearing Willis but requiring the man to quit the team to "avoid any impropriety" (also Gringlas for NPR):

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis accepted the resignation of Nathan Wade, her top special prosecutor in former President Donald Trump's election interference case, after a Georgia judge made Wade's stepping aside a condition of allowing Willis to remain on the case.

The decision bolsters chances that 15 defendants including former President Donald Trump will face trial in Georgia for attempting to overturn the 2020 election result.

In a 23-page ruling that followed hours of dramatic courtroom testimony last month, Fulton Superior Judge Scott McAfee ruled that Willis' romantic relationship with Wade, the top special prosecutor she hired, created the appearance of a conflict of interest, but did not require her disqualification.

McAfee wrote that, "an outsider could reasonably think that the District Attorney is not exercising her independent professional judgment totally free of any compromising influences. As long as Wade remains on the case, this unnecessary perception will persist."

McAfee gave prosecutors a choice: If Wade does not resign from the case, Willis must step aside and "refer the prosecution to the Prosecuting Attorneys' Council for reassignment."

Willis, in a letter accepting Wade's resignation, said she complimented him for "his professionalism and dignity..."

During a multi-day evidentiary hearing last month, lawyers sparred over when Willis and Wade's relationship began – and over the veracity of their claims that Willis reimbursed Wade in cash.

As prosecutors fought a subpoena for Willis to take the stand, the district attorney appeared in the courtroom and declared that she wanted to testify. Willis and defense attorneys sparred over intimate personal details, the testimony became so tense that McAfee had to call for a five-minute recess.

In the end, McAfee found that, "the evidence demonstrated that the financial gain flowing from her relationship with Wade was not a motivating factor on the part of the District Attorney to indict and prosecute." And he wrote that the defendants failed to show how Willis' conduct influenced the case.

So Willis stays on as lead prosecutor in the Fulton County matter. And those defendants have to be fully aware that she is going to be pissed at them for dragging her personal life - the primary tactic of conservative wingnuts when deploying the Politics of Personal Destruction - into their political bullshit. Any of them considering getting a plea deal now better do before she gets them on the stand.

With all this sturm und drang going on there's still a question of when the actual trial in Georgia is going to take place, considering how packed trump's calendar is facing 91 88 felony charges across four courtrooms. But things are on hold with the federal cases while the Supreme Court considers trump's claims of Absolute Immunity - not until late April, and then further delay until late summer issuing a ruling - and now with the New York "hush money" trial on a 30-day delay due to a questionably late delivery of thousands of federal documents trump claims is needed for his defense.

I may have jinxed things last month when I blogged that trump's judgment was coming, in spite of how trump repeatedly finds ways to delay every court challenge he faces.

Goddammit, American legal system. You're playing into trump's only legal tactic - Delay, Delay, DELAY - he's got. Stop playing by his rules and get his ass in court.

Ides of March, Yet Again. I blame British Theater

Caesar: Who is it in the press that calls on me?
I hear a tongue, shriller than all the music,
Cry 'Caesar!' Speak! Caesar is turned to hear!

Soothsayer: Beware the Ides of March.

Caesar: What? You again?

Soothsayer: It's March the 15th on the calendar, Caesar.
Bloody right I'm here.

Caesar: But you warn me every year!
And every year I parade into the Senate,
Unarmed like a newish plebe, standing
Amid friends now sworn to dire purpose
Against me

Soothsayer: And yet, I do warn you
Even still that the day is not yet done

Cassius: How many ages hence
Shall this our lofty scene be acted over
In states unborn and accents yet unknown!

Soothsayer: Oh, many ages foolish lean hungry guy
Because this other fellow who
Shakes his spear upon the stage
Wrote us up a treat in this play of his
In which we do this over and over
Mostly in bad English
What the hell IS iambic pentameter anyway

Brutus: I do fear this future of yours

Soothsayer: Hey, I see the future I don't write it
If I could do anything to stop the foolishness
I'd have warned everyone about 
Trump's vicious ties to Russia decades
afore he slouched down that escalator

Caesar: What's this about Trump?

Soothsayer: He lies and bullies his way into
the Presidency in the Common Era year
of 2016 and worse
schemes painfully to regain the office
the following 2024 with more
destructive ambitions than any
you yourselves hold in your hearts
all of you

(long pause among the characters)

Caesar: Know what? Brutus, go ahead
with your steely knives, I ain't
even bothered anymore.

(Conspirators stab Caesar)

Caesar: Thank the Gods! I die free of Trump!

(dies)

Soothsayer: Lucky bastard.

Better Off Now

It's a question that comes up every Presidential election cycle whenever there's an incumbent running for a second term: "Are you better off now than four years ago?"

The party in opposition tends to ask that question to highlight how "terrible" the current President is, while the incumbent party asks it while pointing to any signs of economic, social, or international standing improvements.

It's a question we're getting now, as it becomes official that Joe Biden is the Democratic candidate and donald trump - who was President Loser of the Popular Vote four years ago - is the challenger looking to unseat Biden by claiming we are worse off today.

It's not a smart move by trump or his Republican allies to ask, however: Exactly four years ago the entire planet was in a terrible crisis with a global COVID-19 pandemic crashing into everything - the economy, our society, our health care system, our schools, our families - and leaving us scrambling for basic necessities like toilet paper.

And it was exactly four years ago this March 13th when donald trump went before the national media and declared he "wasn't responsible for anything at all."

#FourYearsAgoToday https://t.co/zyP3iW6bNv

— Emily L. Hauser @emilylhauser.bsky.social 🟣 (@emilylhauser) March 14, 2024

What I wrote back in March 2020 right after that press conference:

So for this Friday, in order to present himself as in charge and in control, trump scheduled a big televised press conference, timed exactly just as the stock markets were closing... just so he could end up showing how little control he had and even worse openly admit he was in charge of nothing...

"I'm not taking any responsibility at all." Doesn't matter what he's avoiding responsibility for, the fact that he's AVOIDING responsibility ought to anger every American living and past...

So here comes trump, facing a global pandemic health care crisis that requires bold thinking, getting out ahead of the problem, staying in touch with all players to make sure things get done properly and to the good of all.

Unfortunately, trump's spent the last three years dismantling the government systems, understaffing agencies if not outright sabotaging them. Redirecting efforts towards projects that won't help in this crisis or any other. He oversaw the dismantling of a National Security panel tasked with coordinating pandemic responses, which left much of the federal and state agencies in the dark on who was in charge during the first months of this crisis (starting back in December 2019).

trump's response to all of this? Shifting blame on Obama instead of admitting his own involvement. Arguing that it's Obama's fault there's not enough test kits for this crisis when it should have been something trump's administration ordered done the minute it became clear - mid-January - that the coronavirus was going global. Like Obama would have known back in 2016 this particular virus was going to erupt three years after he left office.

"I'm not taking any responsibility at all."

THIS was where our nation was at four years ago. Four long stressful years ago, when the months of March and April felt like years themselves.

A President takes an oath of office "I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States;" and yet four years ago there was trump refusing to faithfully execute his duties, refusing to take charge of a national emergency requiring leadership. Not doing his best at all except shift the blame on everybody else.

And now here's trump back again, running again for a job he didn't do right the first time around, trying to gaslight and bully and steal his way back into the White House. Not because he wants the responsibility - he never wants that - but because he needs that office's legal immunity to keep his ass out of prison.

So are we better off now, four years later?

Four years later, we have a President in Joe Biden who's doing his best to oversee an ongoing struggle with COVID's continued presence, to where the pandemic shifted into a shamefully tolerable endemic to where most Americans try to keep up with vaccines and ignore the relatively high annual death count we've come to accept as normal.

Four years later, we have a President Joe Biden who undid most of the damage of trump's tariff wars with our global trading partners: A tariff fight that negatively affected our own economy and one that trump will insist on restarting should he regain the Presidency.

Four years later, we have a President Joe Biden who restored America's international standing with our allies, who is trying to support Ukraine's fight against an invading Russian force - something a majority of Americans support - while trying to manage the bloodshed of the Israeli/Hamas war that's disrupting the Middle East. All of which trump would undo in a reckless raging heartbeat.

Four years later, we have a President Joe Biden who's presiding over one of our nation's greatest financial recoveries; with a thriving economy where employment rates are at their best, wages for lower- and middle-income workers are going up, where inflation is currently at an ebb, and a lot of it tied into Biden's signature infrastructure bill.

Four years later, we have a President Joe Biden who will not avoid or ignore the responsibilities of the office the way donald trump did.

How's that answer, Republicans?

Vote four more years of Joe Biden, thank you.

Brief Thoughts About Daylight Savings in America

Seriously: If Joe Biden pledges on the 2024 campaign trail that he will force Congress to hold an emergency session to pass legislation ending this travesty of time-wasting called Daylight Savings, and then uses the National Guard to block access to the bathrooms and soda vending machines to ensure both Republicans and recalcitrant Democrats vote passage of this reform, Biden will garner 65 percent of the national vote.

The whole stress-out over Daylight Savings Time - springing forward an hour in Spring, falling back that hour in Fall - has been a well-documented source of frustration for Americans for decades now, and we keep getting more evidence how it's not really doing us any good (via Danielle Pacheco and Dr. Dustin Coltiar at the Sleep Foundation website):

Adjusting the time by one hour may not seem like too drastic a change, but sleep experts have noted troubling trends that occur during the transition between Standard Time and DST, particularly in March. These issues include upticks in heart problems, mood disorders, and motor vehicle collisions. Furthermore, DST can cause sleep problems if circadian rhythms are not aligned with natural cycles of light and darkness. Some people also experience insomnia symptoms due to spring time changes...

Humans and other mammals are guided by circadian rhythms, which are 24-hour cycles that regulate sleep and other key bodily functions such as appetite and mood. These rhythms are largely dependent on light exposure. In order to reset each day, they must be synchronized with natural light-darkness cycles in order to ensure healthy, high-quality sleep.

The transition between DST and Standard Time has darker mornings and more evening light. This can essentially “delay” your sleep-wake cycle, making you feel tired in the morning and alert in the evening. Circadian misalignment can contribute to sleep loss, as well as “sleep debt,” which refers to the cumulative effect of not getting enough sleep on a regular basis...

While many people adapt to time changes, some studies have suggested the human body never fully acclimates to DST. Rather, their circadian misalignment may become a chronic or permanent condition. This can lead to more serious health problems, especially for those who experience “social jet lag” because their demands at work or school take precedence over a full night’s sleep. Social jet lag has been linked to a higher risk of obesity, depression, and cardiovascular disease. The effects of DST subside gradually after a few weeks...

There are a number of other things that disrupts a person's normal sleep cycle - travel, uneven work hours (morning / evening shifts), neighbors practicing with their garage band at midnight, similar hazards - but this is one directly caused by government policy. And it's a policy that continues to annoy if not enrage most Americans suffering from it. Nearly every poll out there - like this one in Business Insider - has a majority of people wanting an end to the damn thing.

The problem is nobody can agree to make Standard time - based on the actual solar cycle - or Daylight Savings - which moves ahead an hour and gives businesses more sunlight in afternoon/evenings for work - the national default.

Considering how the medical experts point to that circadian rhythm as key to our health, I'd argue to keep our hours to the Standard setting. It's how our planet works, how our bodies work, and goddammit we've lived for centuries without springing forward for anything.

The big reason we went to Daylight Savings was energy conservation during wartimes - First One and Second One - and then even more in the 1970s when the energy crisis hit our nation hard. Thing is ever since the 1980s when technology innovations with energy-saving methods improved our usage - even as we've expanded more use with computers, smartphones, and other electronics - the need to enforce energy conservation with summer daylight actually diminished.

There's a number of other issues with sleep depravation that need resolving, especially the early schooling hours that affect teens when they're forced to attend junior and high schools before dawn. They are at that age - still developing - where disruption of the sleep cycle affects them the most, and there's been a huge push to get states to move school hours to later in the day. All this Daylight Saving stuff is making this harder on the kids and their families.

Standard Time is the way to go.

If you do this, Joe Biden, you will go down in the history books as our greatest President ever.

Do it.

Save our Sleep Modes!

 

The Blind Eye of the Beltway

Update: Thank you Steve in Manhattan for including this article in Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! I hope everyone browses the other articles here and gains enlightenment in some form. Also, why the hell didn't Barbie win for Best Set Design?! I mean, they used ALL that pink...! 

One of the reasons for my apprehension about this 2024 presidential cycle is how the mainstream media - the Beltway (Washington) punditry leading the Fourth Estate that overwhelms our awareness - is mishandling the entire thing as a personality horse race: Between an elderly Democratic white guy the Beltway is deeming too old, and an enraged bullying Republican white guy (who's not that much older, and showing more signs of dementia) facing criminal charges across four different court rooms threatening to impose a dictatorship on Day One.

Try to guess which issue the esteemed Beltway expresses a more pressing concern. /headdesk

And try to remember how this all feels so similar to how that Beltway - now older, but still operating with the same hive-mind "Both Sideism" world view - mishandled the 2016 presidential cycle, which proved disastrous. I wrote back in 2017 how the prestigious Columbia Journalism Review evaluated the media's performance and found it biased - obscenely so - towards donald trump and against Hillary Clinton:

In other words, the mainstream media - the Beltway pundits that dominate the political discourse - flipped the real world. They focused more on Hillary's "scandals" - which turned out to be nothingburgers, inflated to inflame the voters against her - than on her policy positions to where I guarantee the average voter didn't even know what her policies were. They focused on trump's "policies" - which was BUILD A WALL, Start a TRADE WAR with China, and Shut Down NATO - while ignoring trump's failures, financial scandals, and sexual assaults.

In short: Hillary got all the bad press, trump got all the good press.

We're seeing it happen again, especially in the national press like the New York Times and Washington Post (not to mention the 24-hour cable punditry like Fox Not-News (obviously), CNN, and yes even liberal-leaning MSNBC). Most of that mainstream media focusing on narratives over Biden "needing to step aside for a younger more winnable Democrat" even as the early primary results have Biden body-slamming his opponents by 80-90 percent. Most of that same mainstream media ignoring donald trump's open calls to put immigrants into internment camps, to destroy NATO as a bulwark against Russia, to operate as a dictator on Day One "to punish" his enemies; even ignoring the recent reports of how trump's White House staff was pumping themselves full of drugs as a dangerous abuse of power.

It's that disconnect - especially at the Paper Of Record the New York Times - that is leaving our whole nation vulnerable to disinformation, misplaced outrage, and misled voters. It's the kind of thing enraging the likes of Lucian K. Truscott IV (a long-tenured reporter and pundit himself) over at Salon:

Two things — check that, three things — appear to have gone off the rails at the paper we used to call the Gray Lady. First, whoever is in charge of the paper’s polls is not doing their job. Second, whoever is choosing what to emphasize in Times coverage of the campaign for the presidency is showing bias. Third, the Times is obsessed with Joe Biden’s age at the same time they’re leaving evidence of Donald Trump’s mental and verbal stumbles completely out of the news.

Let’s start right there. At a rally on Saturday night in Virginia, Trump confused Barack Obama, who left office seven years ago, with President Biden for the third time over the last six months. “Putin has so little respect for Obama that he’s starting to throw around the nuclear word,” Trump said, as his crowd of rabid supporters suddenly fell silent. “You heard that. Nuclear. He’s starting to talk nuclear weapons today.” You won’t find that verbal stumble and the crowd’s stunned reaction in the Times coverage of the campaign over the weekend. You’ll have to read other publications — for example, Salon or maybe the Guardian — if you want to learn how often Trump is losing his way mid-sentence at rallies and just mumbling incoherently.

The Times on Sunday, however, had this headline ready for your morning coffee: “Majority of Biden’s 2020 Voters Now Say He’s Too Old to be Effective.” It’s another grab from the New York Times/Siena College poll they published on Saturday that is so outrageously flawed, a cottage industry has sprung up to pick apart its methodology and point out its glaring contradictions and straight-up bias.

A favorite of poll skeptics is its sampling bias. How did the New York Times come up with a polling sample that included 36 percent rural voters when the 2020 proportion of rural voters was 19 percent? Somehow, the poll’s sample of female voters was equally skewed. The poll found Trump winning the female vote by one percent, when Biden carried women in 2020 by 11 points. The Times wants you to ignore that in between, all three of Trump’s Supreme Court justices quarterbacked the Dobbs decision overturning women’s constitutional right to abortion, followed almost immediately by states banning abortion all over the country, many with no exceptions for rape or incest. The Times doesn’t say how it squares its poll numbers with the fact that women turned out in huge numbers to help win referendums confirming a right to abortion, including in such Republican strongholds as Kansas and Kentucky, and handed every special election to Democratic candidates in the bargain. They just want you to believe there’s been a 12-point swing toward Trump among women, with no evidence except, poof!  It happened!...

Why is the New York Times missing the red flags in its own polls? More important, why has the paper decided to give its own deeply biased poll results such heavy play? I don’t want to bring up but her emails, but for crying out loud, why is the New York Times so clearly making the same mistakes of bias and emphasis they made in 2016 covering Hillary Clinton all over again?... None of the daily drumbeat of manufactured “news” added up to even a pinprick of a scandal, but as the Times did with Whitewater and the rest of the made-up Clinton scandals, the paper simply couldn’t resist filling its front page with negative stories about the Democratic candidate for president...

If I could answer from my spot on the sidelines, there are several overlapping reasons why the Times - and the Post, and CNN, and everybody else with a free pass to the green rooms of every talking head show out there - are making the same mistakes they made in 2016.

One of the most obvious reasons the mainstream media behaves this way is the "horse race mentality" that a political campaign brings to the public's attention. It's the simplest way to frame and cover an election - This Guy vs. That Guy, let's see who wins! - even at the expense of the practical issues. The media wants this to be a personality contest.

But part of the problem is how the media frames this personality contest with a mindset of "Both Sideism" - that both candidates AND the two major parties they represent have to be balanced in some way - to where they will enlarge or over-report any minor issue for one candidate/party - to the point of fabricating scandal where there is no scandal - in order to balance the open and major flaws of the opponent. We're seeing it now where the Beltway elites are whining over the "scandal" of Biden being "too old" (when he's only three years older, and shows signs of being more fit than trump) while papering over the reality that trump is facing up to 91 felony charges in four different court rooms.

This is, by the by, why the House Republicans are still so desperate to dig up dirt on Biden's family: Fresh red meat to feed to a media corps hungry for "Both Sides" scandal reporting.

A less obvious reason the punditry are acting this way is due to their own world views getting shaped during the Reagan Era of "Sunny Conservative" Born Again Americanism. Much like the punditry and journalism of the Sixties and Seventies shaped by those who grew up to the FDR New Deal experience, today's punditry and media leadership came of age in the Eighties and Nineties, which shapes their bias of today. I said this before: 

What we're getting is this ongoing fantasy, this wish fulfillment, among the Far Right pols and pundits desirous for The Return Of The Reagan Heir: the Prince That Was Promised. We're talking about a set of people pining for the days when it was 1985: when Reagan stomped the hell out of Mondale and his dirty hippie librul army of Electoral College no-shows...

Far too many pundits and reporters view modern Democrats as "out of touch" of the "mainstream" American thought, which the media thinks means "Rural" "White" and "Angry". This is the reason why the Times/Siena College polling skewed their sample population 36 percent Rural instead of making it 19 percent like the 2020 vote turnout confirmed. The national media EXPECTS this to be fact when instead its their own bias showing.

This is why the mainstream media keeps wishcasting - thank you, Tom Nichols - for The Next Reagan: this charming, wistful, flag-waving pie-loving patron for that Small-Town America where neighbors knew everybody well enough to leave folding chairs along the 4th of July parade route down Broadway Avenue the day before, because they trust each other enough that nobody will go stealing them.

The media elites kind of know that donald trump cannot be the Reagan figure, he doesn't come from that America - he and his will happily steal or vandalize those folding chairs, and then blame it on immigrants - but the pundits still can't wrap their heads around the possibility that Biden and the Democrats can represent that part of America alongside the 4th of July parade routes down MLK Boulevard in Los Angeles and Chicago and Tampa and San Antonio and Cleveland and every other major metro where most Americans actually reside.

So they chide the Democratic front-runners for not fulfilling their Reaganesque fantasy - even as Biden, as I've noted before, is as close a Reagan (Passive-Positive) figure the Democrats have to lead the nation - all the while promoting less-charismatic Republicans - stop making Rubio happen, he's not going to happen! - or worse providing cover for Republicans representing the racism, sexism, greed and violence of America's darker Id - at the expense of the American voters remaining misinformed and disillusioned.

I'm finishing this up just as the Super Tuesday voting is wrapping up. Both Biden and trump won enough states and delegates to effectively wrap up their respective nominations, but with noticeable differences. Biden - again - curb-stomped his primary opponent Dean Phillips to where in most states Phillips was in third place behind "Uncommitted" (which also tended to be in single digits). trump actually lost a state - Vermont - to opponent Nikki Haley; and while he dominated in several states in most others Haley had secured around 30 percent, which is a significant portion of party voters.

Biden is winning big as an incumbent candidate for the Democrats, while trump is struggling as the incumbent candidate for the Republicans.

And yet you'll never see the Beltway Media frame The Narrative of their horse race in that manner.

The pundits just can't see it that way.

The Limits of the 14th Amendment, and the Need to Get The Damn Vote Out America

Knew this was coming but it still hurts. The Supreme Court ruled today that Colorado - or any other state - doesn't have the standing to disqualify donald trump from the 2024 election ballots over his act of insurrection (via Amy Howe at SCOTUSBlog): 

The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that states cannot disqualify former President Donald Trump from the ballot for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks on the U.S. Capitol. In an unsigned opinion, a majority of the justices held that only Congress – and not the states – can enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which was enacted in the wake of the Civil War to disqualify individuals from holding office who had previously served in the federal or state government before the war but then supported the Confederacy, against candidates for federal offices.  

All nine justices agreed that Colorado cannot remove Trump from the ballot. But four justices – Justice Amy Coney Barrett in a separate opinion and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson in a joint opinion – argued that their colleagues should have stopped there and not decided anything more...

In a 13-page unsigned opinion released shortly after 10 a.m., the justices reversed the state supreme court’s decision. The justices explained that the 14th Amendment was intended to expand the federal government’s power at the states’ expense. And in particular, they noted, Section 3 was designed to “help ensure an enduring Union by preventing former Confederates from returning to power in the aftermath of the Civil War.”

But before disqualifying someone under Section 3, the justices observed, there must be a determination that the provision actually applies to that person. And Section 5 of the 14th Amendment gives the power to make that determination to Congress, by authorizing it to pass “appropriate legislation” to “enforce” the 14th Amendment. Nothing in the 14th Amendment, the court stressed, gives states the power to enforce Section 3 against candidates for federal office, nor was there any history of states doing so in the years after the amendment was ratified...

In their six-page joint opinion, Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson agreed with the result that the per curiam opinion reached – that Colorado cannot disqualify Trump – but not its reasoning. The three justices acknowledged that permitting Colorado to remove Trump from the ballot “would … create a chaotic state-by-state patchwork.”

But the majority should not, in their view, have gone on to decide who can enforce Section 3 and how. Nothing in Section 3 indicates that it must be enforced through legislation enacted by Congress pursuant to Section 5, they contended. And by resolving “many unsettled questions about Section 3,” the three justices complained, “the majority goes beyond the necessities of this case to limit how Section 3 can bar an oathbreaking insurrectionist from becoming President...”

To a layman, it seems confusing how the Supreme Court is arguing that Congress has to set the law and enforcement of Section 3 through Section 5 of the 14th Amendment, but then arguing over how that has to work in the first place. To someone like me, it's as though the conservative majority was simply trying to keep it safe for trump to stay on the ballot now and then argue over semantics later.

We need to recognize several points. The Court did not even address the underlying finding of the Colorado courts that trump engaged in insurrection over the January 6th riots and its planning, with the implication that those courts' findings proved trump did. The Court may have ruled in favor of saying Congress has to oversee enforcement of Section 3 of the 14th, but they are divided on how that could get implemented. SCOTUS may have declared Congress has to handle this mess, but they're doing so knowing full well our modern Congress is a hyper-partisan dysfunctional mess, meaning this will not get resolved anytime soon anyway.

There was a hope that disqualifying trump through the 14th Amendment would end the high risk of trump - facing criminal charges at the state and federal level (depending on how fast this Supreme Court hears trump's Absolute Immunity claim), and threatening to unleash plans to behave worse on immigration and foreign policy than he did between 2017 to 2020 - getting anywhere NEAR the White House again. Now that hope is clearly gone.

We Americans now have to hope that the 81.2 million voters who showed up in November 2020 for Biden/Harris will return to vote Biden back to a second term as President; and that trump - whose support is not as strong in the primaries as an 'incumbent' candidate should have - loses a significant chunk of the 74.2 million who showed up for him so there's no fudging or denying Biden's Electoral wins.

For all the potential schemes that trump and his Republican allies have for this election cycle - the disinformation, the gerrymandering, the voter suppression - all of that can be defeated by honest-to-God voter turnout on a scale they can't suppress.

Democrats, Independent voters who oppose the Far Right's Culture War, even disgruntled Republicans tired of trump's rampages: ALL of us need to show up at the ballot box across all 50 states (and DC) and give all support to Biden and the Democratic ticket down the line (Senate, House, state level elections, state referenda, all of that).

GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT, AMERICA.

And for the LOVE OF GOD AND COUNTRY, do NOT vote trump at all.

trump Can't Stop from Grifting

Even after getting found liable for multiple acts of business fraud, donald trump can't stop himself running more cons. Just look at the latest lawsuit by his would-be business partners with his personal social media app (via Dan Mangan at CNBC News): 

Former President Donald Trump was accused in a lawsuit on Wednesday of trying to “drastically dilute” the value of stock shares in his social media company held by the firm’s co-founders, potentially depriving them of hundreds of millions of dollars in profits.

The partnership, United Atlantic Ventures, alleges that Trump Media & Technology Group engaged in “wrongful 11th hour … maneuvering” to dilute UAV’s minority stake in the media company, a court filing says.

The Delaware Chancery Court lawsuit comes in advance of the planned merger of TMTG with a shell company called Digital World Acquisition Corp, which would result in the shares of the combined entity being publicly traded.

If DWAC shareholders approve the merger next month, Trump’s 90% stake in TMTG could be valued at more than $3 billion, given DWAC’s current share price...

Dear DWAC shareholders: Don't. A deal with a devil like trump is no deal at all.

I'm no expert on stocks and market manipulations, so I hope there's an explanation for what trump was attempting to pull at his end of this "deal":

UAV is a partnership of Andy Litinsky and Wes Moss, who initially pitched Trump the idea of creating Trump Media in February 2021, after the former president was banned from Twitter and Facebook following the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot...

The planned merger comes as Trump, who is the leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, has been ordered to pay more than $500 million in civil judgments in New York, related to trial verdicts for business fraud and the defamation of writer E. Jean Carroll.

“The attempt here is to deprive them of the deal,” said Christopher Clark, the lawyer for UAV in the partnership’s Delaware lawsuit against TMTG.

“It’s not like they went out and bought a lottery ticket,” Clark said of the co-founders. “They actually went out and did the work, they created Truth Social, and now the beneficiary of that, Donald Trump, doesn’t want to pay.”

“Not a unique story, unfortunately,” Clark said, referring to Trump’s infamous practice of contesting bills from contractors and lawyers...

So trump was attempting to devalue whatever stocks Litinsky and Moss held in the Trump Media corporation, to where they'd get nothing from the buyout while he took it all.

Their lawyer Clark is pointing - if you'll recall - back to trump's infamous history of being a cheapskate and thief to anybody who did contractual work for him. Decades of trump undercutting and underpaying - if at all - his "people" to where it's a mystery why ANYBODY still wants to do business with this grifter.

It should be telling that trump allegedly hasn't even paid his best mob lawyers - his personal Roy Cohns - as Giuliani is out here telling the public trump owes him $2 million at least.

Oh, wait, NOW I get the diluting stock scheme. THAT scene from the Social Network:

Seriously, who wants to risk working for a con artist - trump, not the guy "who invented Facebook" although the jury's still out on him - who keeps ripping his underlings off?