A print copy of this blog's greatest hits is in the final stages.
I hired an editor through Reedsy to format the book for IngramSpark submission - I just couldn't figure out getting the gutters aligned! - both paperback and eBook, and I already had the cover done through Fiverr.
Should see the book on the market mid-May, just as I'll be heading to the FLA annual conference.
We'll see how it goes.
Several things on my mind this Sunday:
The vote yesterday by the Republican-controlled House to renew financial and military aid to Ukraine was a stunning break by the Rational factions of the House GOP against the pro-Putin (and pro-trump) Irrational factions. It now becomes a question how long Speaker Johnson remains Speaker before Marjorie Trump Greene gets her revenge, and if the resulting chaos by a leaderless Republican caucus will grant the House Democrats to take the reins.
How quickly the military aid - what we're doing is "selling" them existing equipment and buying up replacement ammo and supplies to ourselves - gets to Ukraine depends on how many transport planes the US Air Force and Army have ready to go the second Biden signs the bill.
Putin's not happy. Ukrainians are. If we can replenish their ammo - and stock them with anti-drone and anti-missile defense systems - we can prevent or seriously hamper any summer offensive Russia has planned.
The vote also passed military aid for Israel, which is a more troubling matter because Netanyahu is NOT de-escalating hostilities with Iran and is NOT delaying the ongoing slaughter and starvation in Gaza. The problem in this matter is both a Hamas organization that wants to spill Israeli blood and a Netanyahu government that wants to spill Palestinian blood. This IS a situation where both sides are at fault and BY GOD both of them need removing so that the Israelis and Palestinians who DON'T want to kill each other can resolve this damn mess.
The passage of the aid bills is a blow to donald trump's direct control of House Republicans... for the moment. Right now, trump has full control of the party's national committee, and trump has finally sent the order out - knew this was coming - demanding all the lower-ballot candidates "donate" at least five percent of their own fund-raising into the RNC if they use trump - and many of them have to, as he's the banner carrier - as part of their campaigning.
It's the shakedown, kiddos. This is where the mob boss demands from all his street-level capos "fuck you, pay me." This is how trump's grift operates: Everything as much as possible goes upward to himself, never downward. Everyone else has to fight for breadcrumbs and his "magnanimity" whenever he feels like it. There is no guarantee that trump will use any of this tribute money towards supporting the GOP in full: It's more likely this money is going towards paying his expanding legal bills.
Speaking of, trump's criminal trial is moving faster than expected. The jury - 12 members, 6 alternates - are picked and sworn in, and the first witness is set to testify Monday. The prosecutors are holding back announcing who the witnesses will be until absolutely necessary, out of precaution that trump will threaten/intimidate them. The first one up is of key interest: David Pecker, owner of the media chain accused of aiding trump's efforts to squash - "catch and kill" - any stories about his affairs (especially the one with Stormy Daniels). Michael Cohen and Daniels are both expected to testify although no idea when.
But that's not all: trump and his lawyers are facing different matters all week long. Even as trump sits in on his criminal trial (required) that Monday morning, his civil court lawyers have to go before Judge Engoron to determine if that $175 million bond trump got was even legal. AG Letitia James argues the bond company does not fulfill requirements under state law, and that trump is lying about his worth (again).
Then on Tuesday at 9:30 am, Judge Merchan will hold a hearing to determine if trump's been violating - the prosecutors count at least seven separate instances on Friday, and trump's tweeted out more attacks over the weekend - the judge's gag order regarding the criminal trial. We are facing the possibility Judge Merchan will hold trump in contempt of violating the gag order, and it's a question of how severe - from fines, to changing trump's bail, to even physically holding trump in a jail cell - the ruling could go. trump and his allies will scream "free speech" and "witch hunt" no matter how harsh the penalty will be: But this is a criminal trial now, and trump has been crossing lines no other defendant has outside of Sicilian mob bosses.
On Thursday, the Supreme Court will hear the Absolute Immunity argument trump insists will protect him from his federal criminal trials, and one that would have serious ramifications on presidential abuse of power should the Justices agree with trump. This is the scary one: If five out of the six Republican Justices show favor towards trump's argument - even if they try to squeeze out a narrow finding that trump alone has absolute immunity (which would violate every form of legal logic on the planet) - we are facing the greatest threat to the Constitutional system since 1860.
And then Friday, trump will get his car towed because he parked it illegally in front of the courthouse. Well, it's possible this could happen...
So. Crazy week still ahead. Crazy month of April still ahead. Crazy summer still ahead.
Good thing I'm already crazy. It keeps me sane while this is all happening.
When last we left the Congressional Republicans, they were happily sitting around a campfire singing "Kumbaya My Lord" ahem happily shivving their own Speaker - their second in a row - for actually allowing some legislation to reach the House floor, and for not being aggressive enough chasing after "Biden Crime Family" bullshit.
Speaker(ish) Mike Johnson promptly called a week's vacation - which Congressional Republicans do every other week anyway - in order to find ways to pander to the Freedom Caucus even further, to the point where he made a pilgrimage to Mar-A-Lago to kiss trump's ring orange buttocks by announcing legislation to ban illegal immigrants from voting in elections (something every pundit noticed was a law already on the books, and was not a source of any mass voter fraud).
In the meantime, the House Republicans succeeded in doing something... which was the unnecessary, partisan, and purely performative impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas, on charges of failing to be absolutely cruel towards migrant families at the southern border. This was something that A) was never going to succeed in a Democratic-controlled Senate anyway, and B) papered over the fact that the House Republicans themselves refused to pass any meaningful border security bill - on trump's orders no less - because they didn't want to give Biden an election year win.
So earlier this week, the House Republicans made a big show out of signing the impeachment order and walking it over to the Senate for their process. There's a video of it somewhere, here we go:
It was, to be honest, performative nonsense.
And like all things done by these House Republicans, it fell apart within a day. It had to set a land-speed record for fastest dismissal of an impeachment (via Griffin Eckstein at Salon):
In a 3-hour proceeding, the 51-member Democratic majority voted to dismiss both charges on Wednesday, concluding that the charges did not reach the magnitude of “high crimes and misdemeanors” outlined by the constitution and avoiding a trial.
Republicans in the chamber objected to the lack of a trial in the matter, with Eric Schmitt (R-MO) describing the vote as “unprecedented.” The dismissal isn’t fully unprecedented, though, as the GOP caucus in the Senate attempted a similar move in 2021, when all but 5 voted to kill the impeachment proceedings against President Trump...
Majority Leader Schumer (D-NY) argued that a trial would set a dangerous precedent in future politically-motivated impeachment proceedings.
“For the sake of the Senate’s integrity and to protect impeachment for those rare cases we truly need it, senators should dismiss today’s charges,” Schumer said...
Schumer of course wants to keep up the pretense that impeachment is a functional system, when all evidence is pointing to it being a broken, partisan mess.
In the meantime, Johnson's attempt to appease the wingnut elements of his caucus went nowhere because his primary attacker Marjorie Taylor Trump Greene renewed her Motion to Vacate calls, and getting another congresscritter to sign on to her push. Alongside this was an effort by the Democrats and a handful of pro-Ukrainian Republicans to sign a Discharge Petition to bring the foreign military aid bills - Ukrainian, Israeli, and Taiwan - to the floor in spite of the Speaker's block.
Possibly in spite of Greene and her Freedom Caucus knee-capping buddies, Johnson made the move to have those financial military aid bills brought to a vote by this Saturday. Which of course enraged the pro-Putin Freedom Caucus puppets even more.
It will be nice if the House can function - even for a day - to pass something that will genuinely serve our nation's foreign policy interests and the defense of our allies.
But it's not stopping the clown car madness of the extremist Far Right desperate to crash every vehicle over the cliffs.
This is going to get crazier and crazier. Until we Americans vote these Republican crazy clowns out of power.
Get the damn vote out this November, people. And for the LOVE OF GOD - and women, and Blacks, and children, and families, and poor people, and... well, everyone who's not evil rich white guys - don't vote Republican.
Just a quick notice tonight that Bob Graham, former Governor of Florida and later Senator, passed away yesterday (via AP News):
Former U.S. Sen. and two-term Florida Gov. Bob Graham, who gained national prominence as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee in the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks and as an early critic of the Iraq war, has died. He was 87...
Graham, who served three terms in the Senate, made an unsuccessful bid for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination, emphasizing his opposition to the Iraq invasion.
But his bid was delayed by heart surgery in January 2003, and he was never able to gain enough traction with voters to catch up, bowing out that October. He didn’t seek reelection in 2004 and was replaced by Republican Mel Martinez.
Graham was a man of many quirks. He perfected the “workdays” political gimmick of spending a day doing various jobs from horse stall mucker to FBI agent and kept a meticulous diary, noting almost everyone he spoke with, everything he ate, the TV shows he watched and even his golf scores...
Graham's name came up often during the 2008 Presidential cycle as a possible Veep pick for Barack Obama, but the thing about his diaries came up and it got to be a joke that having someone that dedicated to writing everything down wouldn't be a good thing in the Oval Office. Alas.
Graham was a major figure in Florida in my youth - when my family moved here in 1977 - and had put his name to a lot of early efforts towards wildlife and shoreline preservation as the development boom of the 1980s shook the state. They literally added his name to the reconstructed Sunshine Skyway Bridge as he was a major proponent of getting a larger, grander span installed after the 1980 tragedy that collapsed the first one.
 |
| See the sail-like cables holding up the span? Graham signed off on that. One of the earliest bridge designs using that look, and quickly became popular for a lot of other bridges. from Wikipedia Commons. |
Graham was also one of those national figures from the days when bipartisanship actually worked, who had built up a solid reputation for inquiry and administrative detail. He was one of the few who challenged Dubya's claims to invade (and occupy) Iraq. He was also the last of the big-name Democrats - alongside Lawton Chiles - who helped lead Florida before the partisan takeover by the Far Right Republicans by the early 2000s.
Graham was also a Florida alum (Class of 1959) with a dedicated Bob Graham Center for Public Service named after him (I'll be lucky - with my resume - to get a brick outside Library West graffitied with my name on it).
So, for all the party-goers at the Swamp restaurant across the campus on University Avenue, pour a glass out for Bob.
(Gets told they tore that restaurant down for a Wawa convenience store)
WHAT THE HELL?! Bloody developers took over the city council, didn't they? /headdesk
Are there ANY drinking pubs across the street from Ben Hill Griffin Stadium? ANY?!
Ugh. Thank the Gods that Bob's not around to see this travesty.
Go Gators.
IT'S HAPPENING. AT LAST.
did the judge hold him in contempt yet?
— Witty Librarian 2024 (@PaulWartenberg) April 15, 2024
did the judge hold him in contempt yet?
did the judge hold him in contempt yet?
did the judge hold him in contempt yet?
did the judge hold him in contempt yet?
did the judge hold him in contempt yet?
did the judge... #trumptrial
Ahem.
Today is the pre-trial stuff, where the judge is setting out the parameters of what evidence will get presented, denying trump's attempts at recusal and delay, and setting the calendar so that the Wednesdays are off-days (awwwwww). Not sure if jury selection officially starts in the afternoon, so we'll see about that.
The whole thing is a media circus even without cameras allowed in the court - no surprise, this IS a Trial of the Century - and with any luck the chaos will settle down once the actual testimony begins.
But this is it. Finally. trump getting held accountable for all the shit he thought he could commit for the last 50 years.
You might notice that despite all on the harrumphing from me about how Elon Musk destroyed Twitter that I'm still on there. Like spotting a car wreck on I-4, I can't look away and need to fulfill my Reply Guy urges. (Also, I want to be there when Musk implodes Twitter: Screw you, Elon, I'm deadnaming it 'cause calling it X is stupid)
Having mentioned how donald trump (lowercase-naming him) spent the past week filing last-minute legal appeals against the pending April 15th Manhattan criminal trial over his hush money payments, I had a Reply Guy moment on Twitter that I'd like to share on this blog:
Top 10 trump excuses to delay trial
— Witty Librarian 2024 (@PaulWartenberg) April 13, 2024
10) Dog ate paperwork
9) Eric ate paperwork
8) Blinded by staring at eclipse AGAIN
7) Accidentally mailed himself to Guam
6) Taking over OJ's hunt for real killer
5) Claims he already won
4) (redacted)
3) Cofveve
2) The Boogie
1) BUT HER EMAILS
I had to take the "thes" out of the sentences to fit Twitter character count, by the by.
Ron Filipkowski is someone I follow and reply/requote often, also by the by.
It's a little bit of levity - and a shit-ton of schadenfreude - waiting for Monday to roll up tomorrow, with trump forced to sit in the courtroom during jury selection knowing that this is no longer something he can control.
Justice is coming, trump. No more delays. Cower like the coward you are.
P.S.: Tank the stock. SELL MORTIMER, SELL!
Damn. While I'd been busy writing a previous article, it looks like the War between Israel and Hamas expanded to include Iran sending missiles and drones to strike targets in Israel (via Becky Sullivan at NPR):
Air raid sirens sounded across Israel and the occupied West Bank and Israeli officials urged people to seek shelter after Iran launched dozens of drones toward Israel late Saturday night in an attack that marked a major escalation of conflict in the Middle East.
Iran had vowed to retaliate after an airstrike on an Iranian consulate in Syria earlier this month killed seven Iranian military officials. It is the first time that Iran has launched an attack on Israel from Iranian soil, Israeli officials said. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said the attack also included missiles.
There was already international outrage that Israel struck a foreign embassy, but this is Netanyahu we're talking about: Any excuse to expand the war so he can stay in power:
In a Saturday night address to Israelis, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that his country was ready for "any scenario, both defensively and offensively."
"We have determined a clear principle: Whoever harms us, we will harm them. We will defend ourselves against any threat and will do so level-headedly and with determination," Netanyahu said.
Caught in the middle of all this was the United States, bound by treaty and historical obligations to defend Israel. While our military in the region responded by shooting down as many of the drones and missiles as possible to reduce civilian targets, there now comes the dread that we're getting caught in an escalating cycle of retaliation between two sides: Israel backed by the U.S. and European allies vs. Hamas and Hezbollah backed by Iran... and Russia.
It's pretty clear that Russia and Iran are closely tied: Russia is relying on Iranian drone manufacturing to supply the ongoing bombardment of civilian targets in Ukraine. It's also clear - once you step back and look at the bigger picture of the global chaos all this fighting in Gaza and Israel generates - that the ones who profit most in any escalation of hostilities between Israel and Iran are Putin and his lackeys (both in Russia and here in the United States).
I've argued before against any American involvement in a war against Iran. The dynamics were different then: The reason to avoid it now revolves around how we dare not get suckered into a fight that can distract us from aiding Ukraine.
If Biden is smart enough, if he can see the bigger picture here - that the real threat remains PUTIN, and that we need to bolster aid to Ukraine - then we can hope that the United States will play a more moderating conciliatory role in the coming days. Biden needs to - with whatever force and influence we've got left - rein in Netanyahu's warmongering here and now, and end the human rights abuses in Gaza and the West Bank to signal Iran to step back on their saber-rattling (the Ayatollahs should worry about engaging in a fight that could trigger political protests at home).
Biden may try to use the moment to bring Republicans over to his side on providing aid to Israel - which he and the Democrats are tying to aid for Ukraine and Taiwan - but given how too many of trump's allies - along with trump himself - are already Putin's puppets, that's unlikely to happen.
As an aside in one of those grand ironies: If Biden tries to get authorization from Congress to expand our military's efforts against Iran (and Russia), those same Republicans could vote against it out of fear that Biden will win over 2024 voters as a war-time leader, and thus prevent the U.S. from getting dragged into another Middle East quagmire.
All in all, it's another complete mess where the simplest solution is to get Hamas and Hezbollah and Israeli Right Wingers to STOP KILLING EACH OTHER SO THAT NORMAL ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS COULD JUST GET ON WITH THEIR LIVES, THAT WOULD BE GRAND AND DANDY.
(deep inhale)
In the meantime, we can hope that Biden's diplomacy works its way through the narrowest of paths to a solution of some kind that doesn't involve nuking half of everything between Cairo to Tehran.
Good luck.
It's been noted that as the presidential campaigning shifts away from the primaries - it's all over but the tears - that Joe Biden's ground game is extensive and well-funded while donald trump's is... well... (via Peter Nicholas, Allan Smith, Vaughn Hillyard, Adam Edelman and Ben Kamisar at NBC News):
President Joe Biden has been scooping up record-making donations and plowing the money into an expanding campaign operation in battleground states that appears to surpass what Donald Trump has built thus far.
Flush with $71 million cash at the end of February — more than twice that of Trump's campaign — Biden parlayed his fundraising advantage into a hiring spree that now boasts 300 paid staffers across nine states and 100 offices in parts of the country that will decide the 2024 election, according to details provided by the campaign.
Trump’s advisers would not disclose staffing levels, but his ground game still seems to be at a nascent stage. His campaign hired state directors in Pennsylvania and Michigan last week, people familiar with the recruitment process said.
Combined, the Trump campaign and Republican National Committee have fewer than five staff members in each of the battleground states, said two Republicans familiar with the committee and the Trump campaign’s organizational structures in 2020 and 2024.
It's looking like trump isn't even trying to get the vote out - even for his Republican base.
That's the danger: trump sort of doesn't want voter turnout at all.
If the past two presidential elections taught trump anything, it's that he's not going to win the Popular Vote. Oh, he gaslights that he "won the most votes ever," but he lost the majority of voters to Hillary and he lost also to Joe. The only thing he won was the Electoral count in 2016.
trump can lie all he wants about the Popular vote, but he knows nothing's really changed to his favor this 2024. With his pending criminal trials - especially the one starting this Monday - he risks losing even more voters across the nation before November.
So he's going to take the other route: The cheaters' route. trump's going to sow chaos to prevent the electoral system from working at all.
trump's going to scream - falsely - about "stolen votes" and illegal voters. (via Nicholas Riccardi at AP News):
Former President Donald Trump turned to one of his favorite themes on Friday — the specter of immigrants improperly voting in federal elections. House Speaker Mike Johnson came to the former president’s Florida compound to announce that he would introduce a bill to stop those who are not citizens from voting in elections.
Trump has made baseless claims about this subject before, like in 2016, when he blamed his loss of the popular vote on voting by immigrants, and then appointed a commission to investigate the issue. It disbanded without identifying a single case of a noncitizen casting a vote...
This has actually been a gambit of the Far Right for decades now. Don't forget Kris Kobach has been working as an election denialist out of Kansas for years, always getting into court battles trying to prove there's mass voter fraud... and always failing because there's no proof of it.
What's happening here is the Conservative mindset - the fear - that there are "undesirables" or "non-citizens" threatening to undermine the power and privileges of the "elite" (themselves), getting projected into a Narrative of mass voter fraud that isn't taking place.
And yet, trump is running with this because it justifies his delusions that he's "really popular" and always winning. And the Republicans are happy to play to those delusions because it fits into their belief that "non-Americans" - the ethnic minorities, the women, the young - shouldn't have the right to vote in the first place.
Instead of working a ground game of voter registrations and "get out the vote" drives, trump and his ilk are going to figure out way to sabotage the vote, disrupt precincts and harass poll workers, throw off early voting and mail-in ballot efforts. With trump's takeover of the national-level RNC, the GOP is already spreading the lie that there was massive fraud in 2020 to lay the foundation to trump's claims of unproven voter fraud for 2024.
trump doesn't want to win the Popular Vote. he doesn't even want to win the Electoral College. trump is planning on breaking the entire voting process so that the results all come down to who controls the US House in January 2025, so he can get his MAGA allies in the House to reject any Biden win and just hand the Presidency to trump even if trump got his ass stomped in November 2024.
It depends on two things: How the Electoral College works out and how many state the Republicans control in the House when January 2025 rolls around. If the Electoral College clearly goes to Biden - and trump can't bully or trick enough Blue states to disrupt their Electoral numbers - then it comes down to if the Republicans control either the House or Senate to forcibly reject those results (like trump wanted on January 6th when he sent in the rioters) and send the whole thing to the House where it'll be rigged for the cheater to cheat.
This will all come down to voter turnout for Congress and the state legislatures as much as turnout for the Presidential election.
Elections matter, everybody. And it matters that the Republicans be in NO position to disrupt the results if they don't go their way.
Get the damn vote out, Democrats and Indy voters and whatever Moderate Republicans are left out there. Deny trump any chance to deny OUR votes.
Update: thanks again to Driftglass for sharing this at Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up. P.S. suck it trump, your Trial of the Century begins Monday!
News broke today on the passing of O.J. Simpson.
A sports celebrity from the early 1970s - a running back at a time when such players were icons - Simpson converted that fame into an acting career by the 1980s defined by his natural charisma. Right up until June 1994 when his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman were found murdered at her place.
At that moment, the United States - indeed the world - was falling into a strange new territory of instant media craving for stories, alongside the collapse of the Cold War shifting historical trends in unknown directions. We'd just had CNN and cable news gaining acceptance through its coverage of the First Persian Gulf War where the U.S. pounded Iraq over its invasion of Kuwait. We were getting more cable networks springing up filling niche interests including criminal justice and true crime scandals. Syndicated celebrity shows and daytime tabloid talk shows were filling the airwaves. We were just barely getting the Internet up to speed to fill in all the rumors and speculation among the masses.
It was also a time of massive racial upheaval, not just in the Los Angeles metro where the Brown Simpson and Goldman murders took place. The Rodney King police brutality trial two years earlier had shocked the nation when the jury acquitted four police officers - even with them caught on tape pummeling King to near-death - and the city of L.A. erupted into riots. The violence exposed a raw nerve, the racial divide of the United States re-emerging in a post-Civil Rights Era and reminding us just how embedded racism is in our nation's psyche.
All of these factors were in play as the media coverage went into hyperactive as OJ became a prime suspect in the murders, as the narrative consumed everyone's attention right up to the point where OJ tried to flee the police in a suicidal fugue. The Bronco Chase - broadcast live by helicopter reporters - entered memetic folklore.
I know. I saw it. I watched the madness on television as it happened, and I - like millions of others - couldn't look away. It became An Event: akin to the JFK assassination, the Moon Landing, Nixon's Resignation, the Challenger disaster, the Fall of the Berlin Wall. (It would echo in later events like the night Princess Diana died) History as it happened.
With my background in journalism, I watched with a mixture of contempt, alarm, and bemusement as it all exploded into a "Trial Of the Century", more three-ring circus than an attempt to uphold justice for grisly murders. Everybody covered it: Even Doonesbury got into the act. It permeated every layer of our nation.
What the trial revealed were lessons our nation and our legal system never seemed to learn from. For all the evidence of Simpson's involvement in the deaths - the history of domestic violence towards Nicole that exposed a deeply jealous and violent man - Simpson was able to use his wealth to hire lawyers who knew how to game the system and cast doubt on forensics, and played his celebrity status to sway a jury. The acquittal revealed a nation divided by race where White communities were certain that OJ would be found guilty, and Black communities bought into the defense's argument that the LAPD - staffed with racist detectives - tampered with evidence in order to send "another Black man" to prison.
We're still coping with a legal system that still doesn't take domestic violence serious enough to protect women, and a legal system that still creates distrust of law enforcement every time an unarmed Black person gets gunned down or beaten up by cops.
I read a Vox article by Constance Grady that covers the impact of what the OJ Trial wrought:
The trial of the century was a lightning rod for sociopolitical commentary. Feminists argued that it was a matter of public record that Simpson had stalked and beaten his ex-wife, and that if law enforcement had taken the problem seriously and made the proper interventions, Brown would still be alive. Simpson’s lawyers argued that he was being unjustly targeted because the police could not stand to see a Black man be successful, and they wanted to tear him down. The argument was potent enough that support for Simpson fell strongly along racial lines. A Los Angeles Times poll found that Black people were more than four times more likely than white people to think Simpson was not guilty...
Simpson’s celebrity was, perhaps, able to protect him from a guilty sentence in criminal court. Yet the act of cashing in his social capital in such a way seems to have transformed fame into infamy. There was a kind of hole in the fabric of American culture where a hero used to be, and it was hard to know what stood in its place now. After the long run of trials, Simpson was no longer the kind of figure that rental car companies wanted promoting their product. He had lived off his reputation for a long time, and now that reputation had changed...
The story of O.J. Simpson has become an American morality tale, a myth. It is the story of how all our national sins converged into a single terrible crime. Even after the man at the center is gone, the sins persist...
Even with the acquittal, Simpson could not return to the celebrity life, too toxic for film/television and for the sports world that once feted him. The criminal trial led into a civil trial for wrongful death by the victims' families, and in that OJ was found liable, forcing him to sell whatever he could to pay the legal bills. It led to an infamous attempt to publish his side of the story If I Did It, an act that even his staunchest defenders flinched away from: It ended up under the editorial control of Goldman's parents who made sure the subtitle of the book read Confessions of the Killer.
In the meantime, the media circus that consumed the world back in 1994-95 heralded a new world dominated by immediate information. With the advent of cell phone cameras, the ability to record a moment - even a snapshot - as it happened and sending it across the globe became possible. Smartphones became news cameras on the front lines. The impact - no, the hype - of the OJ sensationalism seems so quaint now.
And speaking of Trials of the Century...
You're next, trump. Welcome to history as it happens.
I feel like getting married, or committing suicide, or subscribing to L'Illustration. Something desperate, you know.
-- Albert Camus, A Happy Death
Facing an imminent criminal trial in New York for his hush money payments, trump isn't just getting annoying he's getting DESPERATE.
he's getting his lawyers to file last-minute demands to move the trial venue out of Manhattan as yet another means of delaying the start, and he's trying to file a lawsuit directly against the judge to force a recusal. With regards to the venue, well this is how the upper court handled it (via ML Nestal at Raw Story):
Judge Lizbeth Gonzalez denied the former president's request to move the venue out of New York City without explanation in a one-sentence order, according to multiple reports.
I bet the one-sentence order went along the lines of "sucks to be you, donald."
Trump's lawyers attempted to sway an intermediary appellate court pause the upcoming date suggesting it would be impossible to find an impartial jury.
"In terms of prejudicial pretrial publicity in this county, this case stands alone," wrote defense attorney Emil Bove, arguing there had not been a case with so much attention since the 1999 police killing of Amadou Diallo.
All things considered, it's trump's own fault he draws this much attention to himself. There are remote tribes in the Gobi Desert who've heard of him. There's no place to move a venue, so he might as well face a jury of fellow New Yawkers where he stands.
With regards to trump's attempt to sue Judge Merchan, there's more detail with Charles R Davis at Salon:
Trump, who is accused of falsifying business records to cover up a 2016 “hush” payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels, has spent weeks now railing against Judge Juan M. Merchan. One ex-prosecutor likened his attacks on Merchan — and Merchan’s daughter — to the behavior of a “mob boss.”
That behavior led Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to seek a revised gag order barring such attacks on the judge’s family. Now, with the trial set to begin April 15, Trump is again trying to stall the case against him, this time with a legal filing that directly targets Judge Merchan.
According to the Times, the filing constitutes an “Article 78” action, a proceeding that can be used to challenge decisions by state officials and judges in New York. While it remains under seal, the former president has claimed that the gag order against him violates his right to free speech...
There's been long debates about gag orders violating free speech rights, but if the Supreme Court precedence is viewed properly they're meant primarily to ensure the fair rights and safety of the defendants: There's nothing there about the defendant using speech to threaten the rights and safety of the judges, prosecutors, and juries. If defendants had the power to issue threats and insults towards judges in every other trial, we'd never see justice done.
trump, for all we know, intentionally went on the attack against Merchan - and the judge's daughter - precisely to trigger a gag order that trump could then use was denying his free speech. It's behavior that shouldn't be tolerated or allowed.
One way or another, trump is desperate to delay this criminal trial like he's delayed all the others.
Because he knows - despite all his claims of innocence, and despite all his bravado that he's happily being martyred (seriously, comparing himself to Mandela???) - the second a trial gets a jury empaneled, the second the witnesses start testifying under oath, the second every nasty little detail comes out that trump can't debunk where it matters (because he dare not go on the stand under oath) he becomes even more a political liability to GOP party leaders than he already is.
trump knows the second a jury comes back with even one Guilty verdict, his presidential campaign is doomed. While the legal experts are saying DA Bragg's case here is the weakest trump faces - due to Bragg using unconventional interpretations of records laws - there's still solid evidence against him, and the jury will be hearing from witnesses like Michael Cohen, who will point out he'd plead out to similar charges on the same hush money matter, implying trump should face his justice as well.
trump may claim that his followers will accept him even if he's found guilty - and there are a lot of them who will vote for a convicted trump - he has to know there's a solid faction of Republican (and No Party Affiliate) voters who will never vote for a convicted felon. There's already signs at least 20 percent of the existing GOP voting base won't accept trump under any circumstance, and he can't afford - even with all the plotting he's doing to disqualify the Electoral Count this 2024 - to lose that many across most of the states.
This is why trump is desperate to delay every criminal trial he's facing well past November.
This is why the courts shouldn't indulge him.
Let Justice be done. Bring trump to trial.
Update: Thanks again to driftglass for including this article at Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up. Please check out the rest of the blog, and celebrate National Library Week (April 8-13) at your local public library!
The Conservative Far Right wingnuts are going after librarians, again. Look at this happening in Louisiana (via Kelly Jensen at Book Riot):
Despite the fact that librarians are among the most trusted professionals, per data acquired in several studies of parents on the perceptions of the profession, lawmakers across the country continue to infantilize and criminalize library workers. The 2024 legislative session has been particularly eager to capitalize on the rhetoric from the far right on libraries, as seen through several bills aimed at not only limiting the types of books allowed in school and public libraries but also in how the profession itself may operate...
Louisiana continues these efforts in an ongoing move by politicians in the state to damage public libraries with House Bill 777. HB 777 was introduced March 25 by Representative Kellee Dickerson, who helped fund the Louisiana Freedom Caucus. The bill would criminalize library workers and libraries for joining the American Library Association.
The American Library Association (ALA) is the largest and oldest professional organization for library workers in the nation...
By creating a villain of the biggest professional organization for library workers, book banners pound away at the institutions that establish and uphold librarianship as a profession. Librarians lose their place as experts in their field, with the skills, knowledge, and passion for helping connect people to vetted, accurate, verifiable information. To real facts and not those crafted by so-called “alternative” library organizations developed by long-time library antagonists and sympathizers who themselves have worked hard to dismantle these democratic institutions...
You can picture the next round of state legislative or even US Congressional hearings by the Far Right demagogues chasing after the information professionals: "Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Awards Committee for the Reference and User Services Association?"
My profession has become the next Red Scare.
Library associations matter, in that they encourage and promote reading literacy and information learning skills. In the time I've been with the various associations out there - the ALA, the Florida Library Association - I've worked on committees that promoted scholarships for new students, and promoted Intellectual Freedom as a human right. With FLA, I worked on a Standards committee that set guidelines on the objectives and purposes that public libraries serve to our communities.
Libraries matter, because we serve a public trust: Access to information, be in online or in print or on DVD or CD, be it entertainment like movies and music and fiction or be it informational like works on natural sciences, history, the arts, philosophy, religion, true crime, cookbooks, business management, and self-help tutorials.
And yet to the Far Right wingnuts, we librarians are criminals. It's not because we threaten their "purity" by providing young adult books about romance, it's because we threaten their need to control everyone else's "purity" through their judgment and punishment of us.
We give access to differing thoughts, religious beliefs, world-views, that are poison to their rigid dogma. We provide access to resource and online tools to the poor and impoverished that could be used to improve their lives, whereas the Far Right would rather keep them ignorant, ill-informed, and poor.
It's been a struggle for decades - especially in Republican-controlled states - to fight for meaningful state and county funding just to keep libraries functioning. We still endure because of incredible advocacy through the local communities, who rise up either to vote in favor of local tax hikes to fund public libraries or through their petitioning the legislatures to keep libraries open (there are more than one tale of a committee chair's mother calling their son that libraries are where they take the grandkids for activities when they babysit, and they damn well better not close down where mom's knitting club meets every Monday).
Now the struggle is getting more blunt, more personal. The wingnuts are no longer trying to close libraries, they are now actively criminalizing them and the knowledge our community hubs provide.
Welcome to the Wingnut Republican War on Everybody, America.
Support your local libraries. Before the wingnuts put us ALL in jail for our freedom to read and think for ourselves.
It's April 5th, which for a solid number of Gen Xers is a melancholic anniversary. I wrote this ten years ago:
But it was a little-heralded band out of Washington state - part of the Seattle music scene that soon became known as "grunge" - called Nirvana that blew the speakers out of every teenager and college student's sound systems that year. A song - "Smells Like Teen Spirit" - that was part Ramones up-tempo rock, part metal, part protest - just hit the right damn notes with the Gen X age group. From epic opening riff to the fading scream of singer Kurt Cobain shouting "A denial...", it spoke to a generational apathy of teens and college students who wanted to unplug from a crazy world, couldn't, and just had to cope.
Nirvana went from a garage band that traveled to shows in beat-up vans to a headlining act filling packed arenas and stadiums. Cobain became the iconic grunge rocker: dressing in hand-me-down flannels, with shaggy hair and three-day beard growth, walking about with a dazed look in the eyes and a knowing grin. Everyone thought it was cool.
Except for Cobain. He never asked to be a hero or a rock star. He wanted to be a rocker, sure, but someone who plugged in, played a few chords, moved on. He had his own heroes - other post-punk and college radio bands that he eagerly talked up in interviews, which gave them brief bumps in popularity - but he also had his own demons...
Cobain didn't expect so many people to get into what he was doing, and was dismayed a lot of his work was getting overplayed... or worse played out of context. One of the things that haunted him was finding out his song "Polly" - a disturbing tale of an unconcerned man raping a girl, based on a real-life serial rapist who haunted the Pacific Northwest - was being sung by two rapists assaulting their own victim. Cobain got disgusted finding out that as Nirvana got more popular they were attracting the same jerk jocks and frat-boy bullies that made his teen years a living hell, many of them not even getting the fact that a lot of Cobain's own songs were raging against them.
Not helping matters were Cobain's history of drug use - some of it psychiatric, some of it to cope with a chronic stomach ailment, some of it recreational with the hardest of them being heroin - and getting into a volatile relationship with Courtney Love. Due to the couple's drug use, they temporarily lost custody of their daughter Frances Bean and he continued to live under the fear of losing her again. In this environment, a handful of drug-using moments seem to turn into suicide attempts.
By the end of March 1994, Cobain was confronted with an intervention and convinced to put himself in detox/rehab in Los Angeles. He only stayed for about a day, then hopped the clinic's six-foot wall and fled. By April 2nd, he was spotted in a few places around his stomping ground Seattle. By April 5th, he ended up at his big secluded home. His body was found April 8th, shotgun to the head, body pumped of heroin, a suicide note nearby...
Man, I've been blogging so long even my articles are having anniversaries. But I digress.
As I've noted before, my generation - X - remains an odd, almost schizophrenic grouping split between overly aggressive conservative wingnuttia and the apolitical disaffected. Caught between the hypocrisy of the Boomers and the confusion of the Millennials, we've become a rather cynical, disconnected lot. Cobain's fate seems to echo down the years for us.
We're in our fifties now, well into aging parenthood with OUR kids graduating college while we're sitting around wondering where our MTV went (music videos are mostly on YouTube anymore). We're a bit miffed that CDs are getting phased out for streaming services, unable to place our Nirvana albums on any sound system that might still be in our living rooms. At least vinyl is making a comeback.
Time keeps moving. We're further away from April 1994 than ever before, and next year will be farther still. Frances Bean is in her 30s now, just married her second time and trying to get on with her life, and it's just a sad regret that Kurt didn't stick around to see if she's happy or not.
Things as always are crazy in Florida. Especially with the religious wingnut Republican Party in charge of everything the last 20-odd years, to where abortion rights in the state suffer in spite of previous state Supreme Court rulings that upheld the privacy rights in the state constitution.
Today's Florida Supreme Court - now stacked with Far Right Conservatives by decades of Republican control - just gave the state residents a mixed bag of sorts with their recent rulings on two abortion-related items: One ruling that effectively ends abortion rights in the state but then another ruling that gives voters the chance to get those rights back (via Regan McCarthy at WFSU Public Media, an NPR affiliate):
The Florida Supreme Court has issued two rulings that stand to significantly impact abortion access in Florida. Voters will get to decide the future of abortion through a constitutional amendment that will be on the ballot in November. In a separate decision, the court upheld Florida's current 15-week abortion ban, triggering a six-week ban to take effect in 30 days.
Lauren Brenzel is the campaign director for Floridians Protecting Freedom, the group leading the push for the amendment. Brenzel is happy to see the proposal heading for the ballot, but they worry the six-week limitations on abortion will create a “public health emergency.”
“There is nowhere in our southern region to intake Florida’s patients,” Brenzel says. “Women will be forced to travel thousands of miles away from their support systems and their own providers.”
Lawmakers approved the six-week ban last year but stipulated it would not go into effect until the court issued a ruling on Florida's current 15-week abortion limit. In an opinion Monday justices upheld the current rules and found that a privacy amendment in the state constitution does not protect access to abortion—reversing a ruling the court had issued back in 1989...
No matter what you think about American jurisprudence based on previous rulings to set precedence, be aware that Far Right judges will rewrite precedence to fit whatever agenda they have. Which is why it's a bit surprising the state court allowed the pro-choice referendum to move forward:
The proposed amendment could reverse the six-week ban. If the amendment language passes in November, Brenzel says it will go effect in January of next year. To pass, it needs approval from at least 60% of the voters who turn out at the polls. More than a million people signed petitions to get the proposed amendment on the ballot, but Brenzel says the next step will require even broader support.
“We need to make sure that we reach out to voters all across this very large state who come from a variety of different backgrounds and a variety of different standpoints on the uniqueness of pregnancy," Brenzel says...
The amendment received an incredible amount of signatures - I was one of them - to get on the ballot as Amendment 4 - well over a million, and well ahead of the deadline - and could well reach the supermajority 60 percent needed to pass (the polling at the Ballotpedia link shows it currently at 62 percent in favor).
Considering how the Florida Republicans instituted a six-week ban on abortion - trying to avoid the hassles of a complete ban, but making the timeline so strict (women do NOT automatically know they're pregnant) no person can achieve it - a lot of women and pro-choice men are going to be angered up enough to show up and vote.
For the ones still on the fence regarding abortion, they need to understand this: None of this is about "the fetus" or the children. If it were, these "pro-lifers" would be pushing for more prenatal and postpartum health care funding, they'd be willing to accept the reality that miscarriages or health risks happen, they'd accept the hard reality that rape/incest are creating painful choices for women stuck with unwanted (even immoral) pregnancies. All of this is about the Far Right conservatives passing their moral judgment - and their own punishments - on women, on the poor, on minorities who lack privilege or protection, on their lessers.
Voting in favor of Amendment 4 carves it in stone that women needing an abortion - for rape, for incest, for health risk reasons - have a reasonable timeline (doctors put it at 24 weeks) to find the physical and emotional health care they need. It leaves it open as a choice between the woman, her health care provider, her family, and her faith (not the state's) and no one else's.
This is an issue that matters, even if you don't think it affects you directly. Because it affects your families, your cousins, your friends, your coworkers, every woman you know in life, every woman you don't even meet in this state. We're seeing stories already from states with strict bans against abortion, and women are suffering from stillbirths, miscarriages, and complications from infection. It matters a lot for women to ensure and protect their own health care choices, especially against a group of Far Right wingnuts who don't care about other people's well-being, only their own stance above the rest of us playing to their own egos (they may claim it's their faith, but true faith is more abiding and forgiving than themselves).
This is a vote that could win. The previous pro-choice vote in a massively Republican state like Kansas proves it. The recent special election for a state Senate seat in Alabama - where the Democratic candidate campaign hard in favor of abortion and protecting IVF - that had the Democrat winning with 60 percent of the vote proves that pro-choice gets the vote out.
We need to get the vote out, Florida. Every person needs to get on the ballot this November and vote in favor of Amendment 4 to give women their power back over their own bodies and their own lives.
We also need to vote every Republican out of office at the state level, because you know these buzzards are going to do everything they can to obstruct and deny this Amendment even if it passes.
Elections matter, Florida. Vote for your loved ones, vote for your friends, vote for their own choice and their own health.
To the nine official readers of this blog, if any of you can reach central Florida this coming Tuesday April 9th, I hope you can stop by Lake Wales Public Library for my Local Authors appearance in the morning.
Here's the event info:
Library Lobby
The library likes you to sign up ahead of time so they can track the turnout, please and thank you.
I'll be there - discussing my latest publication Funny Locations - as part of the National Library Week event that happens across the United States every second week of April. Lake Wales' theme this year is to support the local authors, and they're going to have a big showing of published writers that I know across Polk County and central Florida.
If you can't make it to Lake Wales, at least check out your local libraries to partake of their events, again please and thank you.
And psst buy my book (owstophittingme)
