Nobody's Fault But trump's

Update: Thank ye again to Batocchio for including this blog in the Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! Please stick around and view the other articles I've got, and good luck this summer!

When you consider today's criminal conviction of donald trump, a lot of this is his own damn fault.

He didn't have to run for President in the first place. trump could have literally stayed in his lane as a corrupt businessman, living off of the inflated values of his properties, feeding off celebrity tributes, plastering his name on questionable products, buying up more resorts to mismanage, and none of this would have happened. It's rare anymore for the legal system to chase after white collar crime like fraud, especially on so brazen a scale that trump was doing. he'd been doing this - remember "trump University"? - for so long over the decades it's likely the state attorneys would have never gone after him, and trump would have gone to his grave convinced he was a genius business negotiator feared by his enemies, worshipped by women, and envied by all.

trump's corporation would never have gone under the financial scrutiny that the State Attorney Letitia James eventually deployed, leading to massive liabilities and fines that can well doom trump's entire financial empire (whatever's left of it).

trump didn't have to go out of his way to accuse Barack Obama over Obama's birth certificate. trump could have tamped down his racism and not gotten involved in any of that false conspiracy drivel. But he did, and received the public putdown at that Correspondents' Dinner that apparently triggered trump's urge for political revenge. Now trump's the one facing imprisonment while Obama enjoys a post-presidency as a beloved figure.

If trump hadn't run for President, he'd have never panicked over the possibility of the women he'd had affairs with going public with their stories. he'd have never arranged for the "capture and kill" scheme with the publisher of the National Enquirer to silence those reports, which were part of the charges he'd just gotten convicted. trump would have never paid hush money to Stormy Daniels through his bagman lawyer Michael Cohen, who both testified to what happened during this trial and whose credibility were confirmed by this jury.

If trump hadn't been President, making himself a public nuisance shooting down other allegations of sexual misconduct, it would have been likely one of his victims - E. Jean Carroll - would have remained silent. Instead she spoke up, leading to his defaming her, and leading to civil trials where trump was officially held liable for sexual assault. It is a matter of record that trump is a sex offender.

Even the legal defenses in each of the trials trump faced are his fault. If it were any other defendant with political ambitions, that person and their lawyers would have worked out plea deals. Instead of felonies, there'd be misdemeanors paid off by fines and probation, and the media furor would die down to where a political career was still within reach.

If things had gone to trial, that defendant would have behaved in court, worked to impress and win over the jury. There would have been contrition, admission of lesser unethical behavior, means of convincing the courtroom that mistakes were made but didn't rise to the level of a guilty verdict.

But trump can never do that, can he. In trump's mind, admitting to anything would be admitting he was wrong even in the slightest thing, and he can never admit to that. In his mind, there are Winners and Suckers and himself - a Winner - can never do any wrong. This is why he claims the acts he's done - the bullying phone calls, the attacks on those he views as his inferiors - are "perfect" and shouldn't even be investigated. This is why he cannot act contrite to a judge or jury. This is why he'd rather attack the trials as "witch hunts" and undermine the entire legal system: his narcissistic self-worth can't accept any other option.

This is why his lawyers in every trial kept employing odd legal tactics that outside observers noted couldn't work... and those tactics didn't work. Half the time, trump's lawyers were too busy pandering to their client instead of winning over juries. It was an oddity that in the middle of attacking Stormy Daniels' credibility that trump's lawyer tried to get her to admit under oath that "trump was a good golfer" as though that had any relevance to the trial.

trump's defiance in the face of legal facts made it next to impossible to adequately give trump effective legal counsel. It exposed him time and again as a bullying egotist, making it difficult for any jury to accept him and for any judge to tolerate him.

And so here we are, still in the Darkest Timeline, coping with the reality that the Republican Party - that proudly declares itself "The Party of Law And Order" - has as their standard bearer a convicted felon, a certified sex offender, a known liar and bully. This is who the GOP voters accept as their leader. There is no sign they will be pushing him aside as their Presidential nominee for the 2024 elections.

Gods help us.

Elections matter, America. For all the yelling and screaming by Republicans about how corrupt Democrats are, the fact is clear that the Republicans - led by donald trump - are the truly corrupt party. For the LOVE of God and the Rule of Law and everything America SHOULD stand for, do not vote for trump or for any Republican lackey still kissing trump's convicted orange ass.

As of May 30 2024 at 5:15 PM EDT

It is official now. donald trump is a convicted felon. The jury returned the verdict with all 34 counts as Guilty.

THAT'S GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY!

I'm at work at the moment so I'll add some comments later.

Getting To The Week Where It Could Finally Happen

I haven't written much more about the Manhattan criminal trial facing donald trump since late April, as much of it had been the day-to-day witness testimony and presentation of evidence... alongside trump's efforts to skirt around the judge's contempt warnings about trump's social media attacks.

If you want some details, Josh Kovensky over at Talking Points Memo (TPM) provided decent coverage.

Thing is, last week both sides wrapped up their cases before the jury, so Judge Merchan set this coming Tuesday May 28th - he did not want to ruin Memorial Day weekend for the jurors - for closing arguments and to give instructions to the jury for deliberation. This - as they say - is it.

Whether trump wins acquittal or DA Bragg wins at least one "guilty" conviction remains with how Merchan instructs the jury, what limits he imposes, and what decisions - if any - that jury returns.

I don't want to get my hopes up (again). There could be straight acquittal across all 34 charges, or at least one juror holding out to where it ends up a mistrial. The jury could vote guilty on just a handful of counts and not others if they have reasonable doubts, or convict on every one.

This is, in my opinion, the closest we as a nation have ever gotten to holding trump accountable for all the unethical and brazen acts he's committed over the decades he's been in the spotlight. While trump has been held liable in civil court for his sexual assault and for his tax/financial frauds, this is criminal court now; and the potential to hold him in jail - where his gaslighting and denials will not save him - can happen.

Some of this depends on how quickly the jury goes through each indictment before them: There are 34 felony charges, and they could well deliberate on each one at a time. They could also finish this as quickly as the civil jury decided on Carroll's sexual assault charges, which took one afternoon.

A lot of this will boil down to which side presented the stronger case, and by most accounts trump's defense was shoddy and questionable at best. The highlights were the testimonies by the prosecutors' star witnesses Stormy Daniels and Michael Cohen, where trump's lawyers did their best to discredit both. Court observers don't think that happened, especially against Cohen (via Kovensky at TPM):

Michael Cohen, the arch-nemesis of Donald Trump, would finally face withering cross-examination on the stand. He would come face to face with attorneys for the former and potentially future President.

The entire case would hinge on this. Cohen alone, the thinking went, could confirm a central element of the business records falsification case: that Trump approved the fraudulent reimbursement scheme for Cohen making the hush money payment to Stormy Daniels. And Cohen did confirm it.

But on Tuesday, in the first hours of cross-examination, something else happened. What was anticipated to be fireworks instead turned to a fizzle in a stuffy Manhattan courtroom on a warm May afternoon.

Trump defense attorney Todd Blanche spent much of his initial day of cross-examination meandering in questioning with Cohen. He landed a few blows on Cohen, assailing his credibility in various ways...

Blanche then followed up with the obvious and effective hit: how could Cohen claim to remember phone calls with Trump from 2016 in detail when he said he did not recall interactions with prosecutors on the case in which he was testifying from 2023?

That line of questioning had additional impact: it portrayed Cohen as uncontrollable by prosecutors. It came after Cohen and the DA spent more than a day on direct examination establishing that all of his lies and bullying during his time with Trump occurred at Trump’s direction, his behest, to please him. Instead, if further pursued, Cohen ignoring requests from the DA’s office to stop speaking to the press could develop into an argument that he was going rogue from Trump when he paid the hush money to Stormy Daniels in 2016.

But on Tuesday, Blanche did not pursue that.

Instead, he wound up mired in often confusing details about the various Trump investigations in which Cohen had testified. At one point, Blanche asked Cohen about his first interview with prosecutors in the Mueller investigation — an instance in which he has admitted to have lied...

That arguably wasn't a good avenue to go down, because Cohen can counter that he lied back then on trump's behest (even on his orders).

The relative softballs came as a surprise in part because of Cohen’s performance under cross-examination during New York Attorney General Letitia James (D)’s civil trial of the former president. Then, he erupted with his own objections, telling defense attorneys in that case that some questions had been “asked and answered.”

That set a low bar for Cohen’s testimony in this case. But he managed to parry some of Blanche’s questions in part by embracing the negative implications that the Trump attorney seemed to be trying to elicit by trickery or force...

It didn't help trump's defense that they presented too few of their own witnesses to rebut the DA's case. Their big witness turned in a performance more detrimental than Cohen's hostile testimony (going this time to Charles R. Davis over at Salon):

One reason Donald Trump’s lawyers probably are telling him not to testify in his own defense is because they — and everyone else in a certain Manhattan courtroom on Monday — have now seen what happens when a defiant witness takes the stand and has a tantrum in front of the jury.

Robert Costello, an attorney who briefly advised Michael Cohen after the FBI raided his home in 2018, is the first person the defense team has called to provide substantive testimony. Firmly on Team MAGA, Costello was asked to counter the former president’s ex-fixer, who had told the court that Trump called him after the raid and told him to “stay tough.”

According to Costello, Cohen was distraught after the raid — but adamant, at the time, that he had no dirt on his boss that he could share with law enforcement in hopes of softer treatment. “He said, ‘I swear to God, Bob, I don’t have anything on Donald Trump,’” Costello said, purportedly quoting his former client.

But that was far from the highlight. What drew the most attention from Costello’s brief time on the stand was the way he acted toward Judge Juan Merchan, who had sustained multiple prosecutions objections to the apparent annoyance of the defense witness. “Jeez,” Costello muttered in response to one such ruling, whose sarcasm extended to his body language – and prompted the judge to clear out the jury to remind the witness how to behave in a courtroom.

“I want to discuss proper decorum in my courtroom,” Merchan said. “You don’t give me a side eye and you don’t roll your eyes,” he continued. “If you don’t like my ruling, you don’t say, ‘jeez.’”

Costello responded with what CNN described as a “long glare,” further setting off the judge.

“Are you staring me down?” a visibly upset Merchan asked Costello. The scene ended with the judge threatening to strike Costello’s testimony altogether if he didn’t learn how to control himself. “Your conduct is contemptuous right now,” he said. “If you stare me down one more time, I will remove you from the stand.”

As Davis noted, if you want an idea how trump would have behaved on the stand - and he didn't, because even his lawyers were terrified how trump wouldn't keep track of which gaslighting lie to stick with - Costello was the proxy. For a lawyer himself, Costello forgot one of the biggest rules taught in school: NEVER antagonize a judge. While the jury was dismissed for the part where Merchan read Costello the riot act, court attendees noted several jurors seemed stunned by Costello's behavior, arguably didn't impress them, and they had to know what was going on while they were out:

As attorney and Brookings Institution senior fellow Norm Eisen commented, Costello’s performance was what might call an “own goal”: he added nothing that jurors would not have already gathered from Cohen himself — the former president’s ex-fixer told jurors he repeatedly lied to protect his boss — while needlessly antagonizing the judge. Even if the jury had left the room for the talking down, jurors could likely figure out the reason they had to get up and go: “ill manners of a kind we have not seen from any witness yet across the 19 days of trial, even on the most contentious cross-examinations...”

From where I'm sitting, trump didn't put up a convincing defense. Every prosecuting witness didn't flinch on the stand, and corroborated both the paper trail and what it was all for.

This should be the week justice finally comes for donald trump.

We'll see how it goes from there for the rule of law and the fate of the nation.

This Earth, This Realm, This 2024 British Election to Tell Tories to Sod Off, Eh

It's been a busy weekend, but here's news about the British Prime Minister calling for a snap election - months ahead of when he was required to hold one - that may well spell the end of almost two decades of Conservative Tory rule (via Helen Lewis at The Atlantic (paywalled)):

One of the perks of being Britain’s prime minister is getting to choose the date when voters deliver their verdict on your government. Most push their advantage by selecting a time when their party is ahead in the polls, the economic mood is buoyant, and their supporters are optimistic about success.

None of those things is true now for Sunak and his Conservative Party, who will face voters on July 4. Since the last election, in December 2019, the Tories have dispensed with Boris Johnson for partying through COVID and Liz Truss for somehow tanking the economy in a mere 49 days in office. Sunak, who has been prime minister only since October 2022, was required to call an election by December, but no one quite understands why he has done it now...

The recent local and mayoral elections were bloody for the Tories. They lost nearly 500 local councilors, the mayoral elections in London and Birmingham, and a special election in the northern-English constituency of Blackpool South. “For the Conservative government the message is crystal clear,” Rob Ford, a political-science professor at Manchester University, wrote on Substack after the results came out. “Voters want them out, everywhere, by any means necessary. That mood is as strong as ever and time is running out to change it.” Added to this, Sunak’s personal ratings are woeful: Polls show that a majority of Britons find him incompetent, unlikable, or indecisive...

So why call an election now? Presumably because Sunak thinks, in an inversion of the song that soundtracked Tony Blair’s election victory in 1997, things can only get worse. And sure enough, when Sunak made his announcement outside Downing Street, a protester outside the gates started to play “Things Can Only Get Better” at ear-splitting volume, drowning out the prime minister’s recitation of his record in office, and of the threats currently facing Britain. As it turned out, things could also only get wetter, as spring rain soaked the normally dapper Sunak. He was just a man, standing in front of an electorate, asking them not to humiliate him at the ballot box...

Something that Lewis barely mentions in her article - the word itself only shows up three times - is Brexit. The biggest policy gambit since Margaret Thatcher's undoing of the social safety net, the one policy that Conservatives - pushed by Boris Johnson, Brexit's biggest advocate - campaigned hard for back in 2019, the one thing affecting nearly every economic decision made by Parliament since 2016... and you'd be hard pressed to find ANY Tory or major UK media outlet bringing it up as an issue for the voters. Not even Labour - the major opposition party poised to retake Parliament this cycle - wants to discuss Brexit's impact on the United Kingdom.

Which is weird considering how Brexit's been a negative effect on Britain ever since Johnson pushed a hard Brexit departure from the European Union. Even the economists like Bloomberg's Matthew A Winkler can't put a positive spin on it:

Far from being the bloated, inefficient bureaucracy derided by Euroskeptics -- led by former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson when he was the fabulist journalist for the London Telegraph -- who colored the prevailing Brexit media narrative, the EU economy is growing 2.3 percentage points faster than the UK’s on an annual basis, with GDP advancing 24% since 2016, compared with the 6% for the UK. During the 10 years before the Brexit referendum, EU GDP lagged behind the UK annually by 12 basis points, since 2000 by 9 basis points and the two decades preceding Brexit, by 149 basis points, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The dichotomy is similar for GDP per individual among the 20 countries sharing the euro. The bloc’s per capita GDP increased 19%, or 2.19 percentage points more than the UK on annual basis since 2016, an overwhelming reversal of the decade prior to Brexit. During the 10 years preceding Brexit, annualized euro zone growth was barely eight basis points better than the UK, and between 2000 and 2016 the euro zone trailed the UK by six basis points.

Contrary to the overwhelming perception, Britain had everything to gain from its EU inclusion and little to lose as the bloc expanded with the fall of the Soviet Union's Berlin Wall and rapid integration of Eastern European countries. Between 2011 and 2015, the EU's jobless rate expanded from 1.3 percentage points higher than the UK to 4.6 percentage points above. Only after the Brexit vote did the situation reverse, with the EU's additional joblessness rate narrowing to 2.9 percentage points as its citizens secured employment at a faster rate than their UK counterparts...

Among other things that happened - even when you take the COVID pandemic of 2020-22 out of the equations - have been the increased red tape within the UK itself trying to deal with trade with multiple different partners instead of a unified EU bloc. Supply chains got disrupted and show no signs of getting better.

Conservatives can't resolve these matters because they dare not admit - even to themselves - that they bolloxed their prized policy stance this poorly. Every response they could offer from their agenda - tax cuts and deregulation - could well trigger apocalyptic reactions from their markets (like it did when Liz Truss tried to pitch a massive tax cut plan that nuked her Prime Minister job in record time). Labour doesn't want to talk much about it - even though they're likely to repair some of the damage to fit their own policy ideas regarding trade and finance - because they have their own concerns about the EU that hampered their own campaign stances back in 2019.

If the Tories have any advantage, it's that their district-oriented, first-past-the-post election system could split the anti-Conservative anger among the voters between Labour and the third party Liberal Democrats. Much like what happened in 2019, where the Lib Dems - the only major party to openly oppose Brexit - and Labour competed to their detriment letting Conservatives to eke past both in key districts. While this time around, there's more calls for "strategic voting" between Labour and Libs to ensure that doesn't happen again, there's no guarantee the voters will pay attention.

Tories have basically been in control of the UK since 2010, over 14 years of economic austerity and Brexit ineptitude that has broken most national services and created this social and economic malaise. Toss into that scandal after scandal that have exposed the Conservatives as liars/hypocrites/failures, and there's little that the party can offer as any kind of successful leadership. 

There's far too many British voters now angry at them, since there's no one else to blame now.

Time for them to depart, they have sat too long for any good they have never done for the nation or the world. In the name of Doctor Who, go.

P.S. As a side note, it's been pointed out how Sunak is calling for this election to fall on July 4th, which is a rather embarrassing day in British history all things considered; and a pretty funny act of irony for us Americans who'll be celebrating our Independence Day then. Considering how I celebrate that day - blogging like mad to make it Four for the Fourth - I am likely to comment on the election results, so I got that to look forward to. ;-) 

When a Wannabe Dictator Tries to Sway the Wrong Crowd (w/ Update)

I don't know how this happened, but somehow someone got donald trump an invitation to speak before the national Libertarian conference this year. It's about to happen tonight around 8ish, depending on how libertarians keep time. By all accounts, this wasn't a bright idea (via Alex Isenstadt, Peder Schaefer, and Brittany Gibson at Politico): 

As delegates gathered at the Washington Hilton on the eve of his speech, the party’s decision to host the former president, which had split the organization, erupted Friday into open revolt. Fuming delegates at the convention said they plan to protest Trump’s speech, and one group sought unsuccessfully to remove the former president along with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., from the agenda — a move that resulted in thrown punches and obscenities between supporters and opponents of the move.

“I would like to propose that we go tell Donald Trump to go fuck himself!” Kaelan Dreyer, a Libertarian from New Mexico, yelled into a microphone, winning cheers from the crowd. After shouting vulgarities at the convention’s chair and fending off punches, he was led out of the convention hall.

The raucous opening to the convention reflects the pockets of hostility that Trump faces as he appeals to the Libertarians to help him box out a growing, third-party threat from Kennedy’s independent presidential campaign...

Third Party wannabe RFK Jr is running as an anti-Biden candidate but running on a platform of anti-vaccinations that appeal to MAGA... and there's signs he's stealing votes away from trump more than Biden. Hence trump's panicked attempt to appeal to a Libertarian party - that's kinda pro-RFK - that has a couple of reasons to hate him.

Part of it is simple party partisanship. Libertarians keep running into the problem of never winning enough votes, and a lot of it has to do with they and Republicans sharing the same ideology when it comes to deregulation of (federal, in some cases even state) government and lower taxes. Voters tend to go Republican because as one of the two major parties they're more likely to win anyway, and the Libertarians hate that.

It doesn't help that Libertarians are viewed as "Republicans Who Smoke Pot" because the two parties do split over civil liberties such as legalizing things like drugs and prostitution. Libertarians don't like the "Law and Order" stances that Republicans promote, and are ideologically opposed to a number of things that trump himself wants, such as Absolute Immunity and broad presidential powers to abuse anyone and everything.

Libertarians are not about to enjoy getting treated as second-class people within their own convention when trump shows up to speak, as he's bound to bring in his own MAGA audience to stage the event as a pro-trump success.

This is awkward: The Libertarian delegates wrapped up their voting and came in to discover that the priority seating in the room where Trump is speaking has been claimed by Trump fans. Now the Libertarian chair is asking Trump people to move, but most are not moving. pic.twitter.com/GMsTpSGINN

— Meryl Kornfield (@MerylKornfield) May 25, 2024

Yeah, it's gonna be that kind of night.

Bring all the popcorn, will ya?

Update: Apparently trump tried to hold out to force the Libertarians to let "his" audience sit up front. he finally gave his speech during which cries of "hypocrite" and loud booing kept interrupting him. Here's a sample from Acyn on Twitter (never X, Elon!):

Trump: Combine with us in a partnership.

Crowd: booooooo pic.twitter.com/NO46Gsxv5w

— Acyn (@Acyn) May 26, 2024

trump is up there - almost threatening, hiding his need to beg - insisting that the Libertarians side with him against "crooked Joe Biden," but to Libertarians he's just as crooked if not more: They're well aware of his criminal charges and not blinding themselves the way his MAGA base does. 

It's not helping that trump is bashing the Libertarians for their poor electoral performance every Presidential cycle (that's right trump, insult the crowd to their faces).

At some point I worry the Secret Service is gonna toss flashbang grenades to disperse the hecklers.

More popcorn.

Update 5/26: The day after did not go well for trump. Most of the media commentary covered how the attendees booed him off the stage. When the convention held their first round of balloting, trump wasn't officially on the list but got write-in votes... six of them. RFK Jr was on the ballot and received nineteen votes. Both missed the cutoff and the Libertarians are going to be going with one of their own.

This tweet clip pretty much sums up the whole trumpian fail:

Request for information at the Libertarian National Convention: Did this body grab a former president by the p—— last night? pic.twitter.com/qizZehgVYh

— Acyn (@Acyn) May 26, 2024

C'mon, Libertarians, show some decorum... /evil grin

There Was No Sense

It was a time of great and exalting excitement.
-- Mark Twain, The War Prayer

Well. File this under the category of HOLY SHITH (via Joe Hernandez at NPR): 

Iranian state media is reporting that a helicopter carrying President Ebrahim Raisi and other top officials suffered a "hard landing" Sunday, with no immediate word on casualties.

The state-run IRNA media outlet reported that the aircraft carrying Raisi, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian and other senior officials went down in a mountainous part of northwestern Iran as they returned from an event along Iran's border with Azerbaijan.

Two of the three helicopters on the trip reportedly reached their destination safely, but crews were still searching for the one carrying Raisi, according to state media.

Iran's Interior Minister, Ahmad Vahidi, reportedly confirmed the "hard landing" of the president's helicopter and said the search-and-rescue operation is underway...

And by "hard landing" they mean "holy (expletive) this is gonna be messy." (These are religious extremists, they don't get to curse like us Unitarians).

Rescue efforts by all reports are hampered by massive fog and bad weather. To which my response was "what the HELL were they doing flying through bad weather in the first place? Just delay the next meeting and wait for clearer skies."

So why is this a Holy Shith moment?

Because Iran's leadership is riled up by the current Israeli-Hamas-Hezbollah conflict, stirred by decades of mistrust between the hardline Israeli government and the hardline Islamic Shi'a government that has backed the likes of Hamas to prevent any successful two-state solution involving Palestine. We just dealt with the two nations attacking each other in April:

When he came into office, Raisi said Iran would continue to honor its nuclear deal with the U.S., despite former President Donald Trump's decision to pull out of the agreement in 2018.

Still, Raisi has been viewed as more of a hard-liner than his predecessor, former Iranian president Hassan Rouhani.

Last month, Raisi celebrated Iran's attack on Israel following an airstrike in Damascus that killed seven members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Iran blamed Israel for the bombing, but Israel never claimed responsibility. Israel said it intercepted 99% of the missiles and drones Iran fired during its retaliatory strike. (personal note: in truth the US and regional allied forces helped shoot those missiles down)

Iran's president is the head of its government, but the country is ruled by (Ayatollah Ali) Khamenei, its supreme leader...

Raisi is (maybe was) considered next in line for the Ayatollah position as Khamenei is up there in years (85 years old, hey New York Times tell him to retire). If Raisi turns up dead from the crash, the immediate effect is that the Iranian Vice President takes over as acting President for 50 days while a special election takes place.

The political effects would be Iran ramping up their level of mistrust to full-blown paranoia. They reacted to that targeted Israeli strike on Damascus with a missile spam of their own. It won't even matter if this helicopter crash was a legitimate accident - due to weather or to mechanic failure - because the death of one of the top leaders is a casus belli (cause for war) the hardliners want.

Think I'm exaggerating? Look up the War of Jenkins Ear. The Brits went to war with the Spanish over that. The United States almost went to war with France in 1797 over the XYZ Affair. We did go to war with Iraq in 2003 over unfounded claims - in some respect outright lies - around Weapons of Mass Destruction that turned out didn't exist.

Just think what a nation like Iran - controlled by authoritarians desperate to keep their restless and angry citizenry under heel - would do triggered by their President's (possible) death: Willing to blame Israel (and the U.S. and other regional powers) and escalating the madness and bloodshed in Gaza and the rest of the Middle East. Even if Raisi survives, don't be surprised if Iran claims the crash was an assassination attempt.

We are as a planet stuck in the Middle East because of terrible regional factions - Iranian vs. Saudi vs. Israeli vs. Syrian vs. Turkish vs. religious extremists vs. authoritarians across multiple nations vs. Russians vs. Americans - all eager in their own way to resolve their differences through blood, because no one dares want to try peace or diplomatic resolution to end the cycle of violence and hate.

There's thousands of civilians dead across Israel and Gaza and the West Bank and Lebanon and Syria, with more to follow. All because the drumbeats go on...

It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.
-- last line of the War Prayer

Update 5/20: This morning, waking up to confirmation Raisi and others died in that copter crash. It's too early to point to a specific cause, and U.S. Senator Schumer is telling reporters that our intelligence agencies are finding no evidence of foul play. But the Iranian leaders will draw their own conclusions. Things can well escalate to more violence from here. Gods help us. 

Getting Ready for the 2024 Florida Ballot Amendments

It's about time to start thinking about the state-level referenda that will be on the 2024 general ballot along with the major races like President, Senator, Congress, and State legislators.

Ballotpedia does a good job of keeping track of these things, so I defer to the information they've got gathered for the six amendment offerings: 

Amendment One: Partisan School Board Elections

This one changes the county-level school board elections from the current nonpartisan (no party listed) to where a candidate has to establish affiliation. The debate around this is a question of transparency: While the ballot currently doesn't say which candidate's issues and ideologies are, you can judge by which company they'd keep if they were openly Republican (vouchers to private schools, doing nothing on teachers' pay, crowded classrooms, etc.) or Democrat (public money to public schools, improving teacher pay, smaller classroom sizes, etc.).

If you ever visit a state or county-level party website, you'll see listings for "Supported Candidates" that will include "recommendations" for school board candidates. They may pretend to be "nonpartisan" but they're really not.

I'm kind of on the fence on this one. You can't avoid the reality that there will be partisan candidates for school boards, especially as the fights over book censorship and transgender/gay rights move to the forefront. If you can tell which candidate is backed by either party, you can at least gauge which will better defend your interests. The problem will be the campaigning: If you make the school board elections officially partisan, the hostility and viciousness that comes with such campaigns could make the local elections more divisive.

On this one, I'm going to err on the side of "better to know which candidate is Republican and thus shouldn't be in office".

Amendment Two: Right to Hunt and Fish

While there is some hunting and fishing allowed in Florida, this amendment seems to expand that right to unregulated levels.

Florida is on a rare environmental stage: a diverse ecosystem relying a lot on water (shorelines, rivers, lakes) and on still-undeveloped geological areas like wetlands, swamps, and forests. There's a number of endangered animals still about - the Florida Panther for example - and a lot of dangerous wildlife - alligators and brown bears - facing more encroachment and threats from humans (not just the hunters). This amendment in my opinion would increase the risks towards a number of those endangered or dangerous animals to where we'll disrupt the Florida environment even more. Those who oppose the amendment also point to the threat of overfishing.

I've never gotten into hunting. My grandfather willed me a hunting rifle as a child and I never accepted it. I don't believe in hunting as a sport or as a natural part of the cycle (there are logical reasons to manage high-breeding animals like rabbits and deer in some places, but not for me). If I wanna stalk an animal I'm using my camera to take pictures, not lives.

Amendment Three: Legalizing Marijuana for adults

A previous amendment had legalized pot for medicinal purposes back in 2016, and this one looks to open the market to recreational use for those 21 and up.

This is coming at a moment when the Biden administration is pushing to reduce marijuana's Schedule status from Class I (dangerous, illegal, and criminal) to Class III (regulated/controlled by doctors). There's been more studies about the benefits and risks of using cannabis and essentially pointing to how it doesn't fit the Class I profile.

Reducing marijuana to Class III lowers it as a priority drug for law enforcement, which should reduce a lot of unnecessary arrests and prison time for otherwise non-dangerous users. Putting it at Class III still requires regulated control, and would encourage upholding penalties for things like Driving Under the Influence much like we do for alcohol.

I am not a drug user. I don't smoke anything. I don't drink alcohol (I've tried once or thrice). I don't begrudge those who do (except for smokers, I hate second-hand smoke, keep away from me ugh), although I advocate for moderation in all things. When I see how the War on Drugs has been a disaster - much like Prohibition that did nothing to stop alcohol consumption - anything that would reduce the prison rate in our nation and change policing habits is a good thing. If we can shift the focus on the War on Drugs away from punishment and towards health care (rehab and detox) we ought to see a reduction in drug use.

Amendment Four: Abortion Rights for Residents, setting a specific timeline and for cases where the woman's health is at risk 

This is the big one, now that the state court allowed for a restrictive six-week ban that essentially negated abortion as a choice for women no matter what.

Previous state court rulings upheld a right of privacy, but two decades of hard Far Right government allowed Republican governors to replace judges with anti-abortion advocates. Given that a solid majority of Americans agree that abortion should be a choice for the woman, this amendment is a strong effort to regain that choice and set the abortion deadline to a more viable 24 weeks.

This is where the Minority Party Rule obsession of the Republican Party is at odds with what the people want (and need). Without access to abortion as a health care right, more and more (poor) women are going to suffer from miscarriages, infections, stillbirths, and worse.

With the supermajority requirement of 60 percent approval for this amendment to pass, there's going to be a lot of fighting between the anti-abortion and pro-choice factions to get the vote out. Here's hoping the pro-choice side gets well above the 60 percent threshold to signal to the Far Right just how serious residents are in protecting their personal rights.

Amendment Five: Annual Inflation Adjustment to Homestead Exemption

This is where the Republican-controlled Legislature wants to add the Consumer Price Index to creating more tax cuts. Essentially adjusting on an annual basis more room for non-school related county/city millage rates. It probably won't be much for most homeowners as a tax savings, but the cities are opposing it because it will cut into their revenues.

I should mention as a city librarian employee, this tax cut could affect my library's budget, which affects all the steamy vampire romance novels we can add to the collection. You don't wanna lose your steamy vampire romance novels, do you? DO YOU?! Save the steamy vampire romance novels, and vote No on this amendment, thank ye.

Amendment Six: Repeal of Public Financing for Statewide Campaigns

There's currently a referendum amendment on the books from 1998 that set up public financing - and serious spending restrictions - for state-level offices such as Governor/Lt. Gov. The Republican-controlled state Legislature is looking - has been for a good while - for ways to undo that amendment and remove the restrictions.

The dangers of private, deep-pocket money getting into state-level elections are very real. The Republicans - deep in the tank for billionaires, land developers, and rich wingnuts - want more of that unregulated campaign money to finance themselves (and their consultant buddies eager for six-figure fees).

We've seen the effect of unregulated campaign financing at the federal level (fuck you, Citizens United). That's the LAST thing we need in the Sunshine State. This better be a hard No, Floridians.

So, to recap: Huge Yes to Amendment Four and abortion rights, Solid Yes on Three to allow marijuana use for adults, Middling Yes on One for Partisan School Board elections, Hard No on open Hunting/Fishing, Huge NO against inflation-adjusting property taxes and against the repeal of public-financed campaigns.

Get the vote out this November, Florida. Elections always matter. Especially the referenda, especially for our rights.

Georgia Protests On My Mind

No, not that Georgia, the other Georgia.

There's been a lot of unrest in that nation (via Ani Chkhikvadze at Foreign Policy):

In Tbilisi, on a cobblestoned street next to the Georgian Parliament, a robotic female voice warned protesters to disperse or face legal action. The demonstrators were gathered in opposition to the reintroduction of the controversial “foreign agent” law by the ruling Georgian Dream party.

The legislation that was retracted following widespread protests a year ago, requires civil society organizations and media outlets that receive more than 20 percent of their funding from abroad, mainly from the United States and EU, to register as agents of foreign influence. Tens of thousands have flooded the streets, demanding the withdrawal of the legislation seen as aligning Georgia more closely with Russia, which has used a similar law to crush dissent.

In the past, the Georgian Dream party kept hold on power through a combination of fearmongering, vilifying the divided opposition, and engaging in diplomatic bartering with Western allies. However, these once-successful strategies appear to have waned. As the party navigates its third term in office, it finds itself confronted with genuine protests both domestically and internationally that may cost it the elections in October.

One thing to remember from history is how Ye Olde Imperial Russia - and later the Soviet Union - treated a place like Georgia as occupied territory. When the USSR broke up in 1991, Georgia was one of the earliest states to break away and form their own nation.

Unfortunately, political opportunism and ambition - and arguably mixed signals from NATO and the U.S. - led to the Georgian government triggering a disastrous conflict with Russia in 2008, reducing the nation back into a puppet state under Putin's control.

Georgians as a population still resent the situation, and are using the current Russia-Ukrainian conflict to express their anger:

The full-scale invasion of Ukraine shook the carefully crafted balance the Georgian government sought between Russia and the West.

Over the past two years, hundreds of thousands of Georgians have taken to the streets in solidarity in demonstrations aimed as much at their own government as at Moscow. At every turn in Tbilisi, “Fuck Putin,” “Russia is an occupier,” and “Georgia stands with Ukraine” are painted on the walls. Almost every establishment, from banks to bars, displays Ukrainian flags...

The relationship between Tbilisi and Kyiv was already strained over the arrest of former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, who returned to his native Georgia after serving as a member of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s administration. Today, it’s near rock bottom. The two sides have exchanged strong words. Ukraine withdrew its ambassador from Georgia and sanctioned some members of Ivanishvili’s inner circle...

The current Georgian government is trying to spread fear and propaganda that "The West" is trying to drag their nation into another costly war against Russia, but the current street protests show that sizable numbers of their own people aren't buying those messages.

So the pro-Putin leadership is moving on to the next trick in the Putin playbook: mass arrests and beatdowns. Via Reuters:

WASHINGTON, May 9 (Reuters) - The United States is deeply troubled by actions taken against those protesting a draft law in Georgia and the government should change its course, U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Thursday.

Georgian security forces have repeatedly deployed tear gas, pepper spray and water cannon against protesters who have been staging almost daily demonstrations for around a month against the government's "foreign agents" bill.

There's been a number of reports on social media of bloody beatdowns and arrests of known opposition figures. There hasn't been any sign of the protests abating.

It does beg the question if the Georgian government destabilizes over this uprising "what would Putin do next?" He's already been shamed on the international stage over his Ukrainian warmongering, and he's invested a lot of his military and focus on breaking Ukraine's will to resist. There is still a lot of manpower in Russia he could deploy, but it would involve diverting resources away from his primary target. And any escalation of his conscription efforts to handle a multi-front war can well trigger protests back home even he can't subdue.

In the meantime, stay strong Georgia. Stay alive and alert and don't believe any of the bullshit Putin and his allies are going to shove at you.

And sing to yourselves the songs of Ray Charles, Georgia's beloved Favorite Son. Well, okay, the other Georgia's beloved Favorite Son, but we'll lend him out to you for the time being.

I Might Cry

Goddammit, one right after the other. trump's getting the damn delays in his criminal trials he wanted.

First off, yesterday the trump-appointed judge overseeing the documents theft case in Mar-A-Lago decided to indefinitely delay the start of that trial until certain matters - matters she's muddled in the first place - are resolved (via Russell Lewis at NPR):

Judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed to the federal bench when Trump was president, had originally set a trial start date of May 20. In a hearing on March 1, attorneys with special counsel Jack Smith's office urged Cannon not to delay the trial beyond July. Trump's legal team wanted the trial to start after the presidential election.

In a written order issued late Tuesday, Cannon said there are too many outstanding pre-trial motions and classified issues that need to be resolved — and said a trial date cannot be finalized. It is unlikely that the trial will now start before the November election...

Marcy Wheeler at her site goes into more detail how this happened:

...Trump nominated Judge Cannon on May 21, 2020. Judge Cannon’s order ceded to the requests of Trump and his co-defendants for hearings on all sorts of requests that, before any other judge, would be deemed frivolous. She adopted deadlines Trump asked for last year. The order undoubtedly delayed accountability in this case, with the next deadlines set for a month after the original trial date. And Trump is alleged to have stolen nuclear documents. In the original 15 boxes returned in January 2022, there were three documents classified FRD, for a total of 57 pages and charged document 19, which was seized on August 8, 2022, is also classified FRD, formerly restricted, a classification used for nuclear stockpiles and targeting. All would have been covered by the Presidential Records Act and so belong to the US Government; Trump could declassify none of them on his own...

The post is a good way to start thinking about the information economy that led us to a place where a Republican judge helps delay accountability for stealing nuclear documents and storing them in a closet normally storing campaign swag. This information economy creates an environment in which a former prosecutor like Aileen Cannon either believes, or claims to believe, outlandish claims of bias and ill-treatment solely because career national security officials — rebranded by Trump as the Deep State — did their job...

Wheeler highlights a number of social media wingnuts who threw out argument after argument against the legal system and our own national security people that Cannon could then use as excuses of her own to treat trump's situation differently than any other national security breach we've known:

And by feeding the rubes shamelessly false claims, Julie (Kelly) has become quite the celebrity, speaking at CPAC and regularly appearing on Steve Bannon’s show. Bannon knows a useful propagandist when he sees one!

Now, I’m not begrudging Julie the fame she has carefully cultivated with her shamelessness. She has earned it! The right wing propaganda network — the deliberate fostering of lies masterminded by people like accused fraudster Bannon — always rewards people who will tell the rubes what they want to hear.

What I’m trying to explain is how her role gives Aileen Cannon cover to do truly astonishing things, like entertain the notion that  putting a non-partisan in charge of the investigation of Trump for classified documents while putting a Trump appointee who had already deprived a Trump target of due process in charge of the Biden investigation is instead proof of selective prosecution against Trump.

In addition to that premise — that investigating Trump in the same way as investigating Biden is proof of selective prosecution against Trump — Aileen Cannon’s order yesterday and earlier orders signaled she is entertaining the following claims:

• That Walt Nauta, who doesn’t claim to have sorted through any documents, must have the ability to sort through classified documents
• That because the document investigation, which included crimes in DC, started in DC, and used DC SCIFs for the investigation, it’s proof that Jack Smith was deliberately attempting to bypass SDFL
• That because Mark Meadows and Pat Philbin got the White House involved in document response, it’s proof that Biden improperly intervened
• That even though multiple Trump-friendly witnesses testified that Trump didn’t even know Tom Fitton’s Clinton socks theory until 2022, he should be able to argue to jurors he applied it in 2021
• That because NARA informed DOJ about classified documents, the same way they did with Joe Biden, it’s proof that NARA are part of the prosecution team as opposed to the victim
• That because Trump’s surveillance system uses difficult software and one of the defense lawyers only uses an iPad, prosecutors have failed to meet discovery obligations
• That Trump has immunity to steal nuclear documents that he couldn’t even declassify on his own

These are all, individually and collectively, crazy. It’s unclear whether Cannon truly believes them or simply doesn’t care. She has chosen to treat Trump’s claims according to the reality his propaganda bubble has created rather than the actual facts before her...

Cannon could claim inexperience dealing with national security matters in the first place, but that ought to require her either recusing herself so a judge with that experience can take over, or for an appeals court to do that for her. Otherwise, this is just her finding not only opportunities to delay this trial, but any opportunity to dismiss these serious charges against trump.

This morning, news came out from Georgia that the Fulton County election fraud case got hit with a delay when the state's appeals court agreed to hear trump's argument to have DA Fani Willis removed from that prosecution (by Sam Gringlas at NPR):

The Georgia Court of Appeals has granted oral arguments after former President Donald Trump appealed a decision allowing Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to stay on the criminal case involving Trump and others.

The court's decision likely further diminishes chances that the Georgia election interference case goes to trial this year.

In March, Fulton Judge Scott McAfee allowed Willis to remain on the case — if the special prosecutor she had been in a romantic relationship with resigned. That special prosecutor, Nathan Wade, resigned.

Trump and other defendants who first raised allegations of a conflict of interest appealed McAfee's decision.

It seems unlikely the appellate judges will accept trump's argument, since the matter at the district level was resolved by that judge. But the way things are going, I don't have that optimism anymore, all my previous aspirations of justice being firm and swift are now gone. 

We're left with the status of the DC matter involving four felony charges on trump for his involvement in the January 6th Insurrection, and THAT could be overturned outright by five wingnut SCOTUS Justices looking for any excuse - even if it destroys the checks and balances of the Constitution itself - to get trump off the hook. If by the off-chance the Court rejects trump's claims of immunity - at least involving what happened that day - and does so within this month (or early June) then we could see Special Prosecutor Jack Smith getting a trial set up just as the Manhattan trial concludes.

I no longer have my hopes up for that though.

We'll get there when we get there, I guess.

In the meantime, for the millions of Americans who know full well the damage trump has done - and the damage trump threatens to inflict - need to get the damn vote out this November 2024 and stop trump - and the Republicans - from usurping our power and responsibility to vote at all.

It's CINCO DE MAYO 2024

I still haven't seen taco trucks on every corner. It's been EIGHT YEARS. The fearmongers LIED to us, America.

In the meantime, here's some taco recipes with DANNY "Yes, a blade is involved" TREJO!

On a personal note, there's a couple of personal anniversaries and remembrances for me this month of May, some of which I'll post here and at least one that'll post to my librarian blog across the corner (WHICH ALSO DOESN'T HAVE A TACO TRUCK, AAAAAAAAUUUGGGGHHHH).

Anniversary of Four Dead In Ohio

While today was a Star Wars holiday and also a Free Comic Book Day for those who geek out, this was also an anniversary for one of the darker days of the civil rights/antiwar protest movements in our nation's history: the Kent State shootings.

By 1970, the Vietnam War had become an obvious quagmire that more Americans - especially the younger generations who were getting drafted to serve - wanted to exit. While Richard Nixon got elected in 1968 with a promise for "a secret plan" to get out of Vietnam "with honor," nothing had changed much. 

On May 1st, Nixon gave a speech that he was escalating matters in Southeast Asia by sending troops into neighboring Cambodia (trying to cut into North Vietnam's supply lines and trying to stop "the Domino Effect" of communism spreading).

For the college-attending Americans growing up through the early half of Vietnam's escalation, it seemed like they - or their younger siblings - were going to become fodder - once they graduated and were eligible for the draft - for a perpetual war. Protests erupted across college campuses across the United States.

In Ohio, the governor James Rhodes agreed by May 2nd to send in 1000 National Guard troops to pacify the Kent State campus after the ROTC building got hit with a firebomb. Accusing the protestors of "being the worst type of people we harbor in America" - even though he's talking about our families' own sons and daughters at the time - Rhodes declared martial law and that no further gatherings or protests be held.

The students refused to stop.

May 4th, the escalation and anger and frustration led to this:

Defying the ban, people begin gathering on the Commons around 11 a.m. on Monday. By noon, some 3,000 people are there, including a core group of some 500 demonstrators around the Victory Bell, and many more onlookers. The target of their protests shifts from Nixon, Cambodia and the Vietnam War, to the National Guard and its occupation of Kent State.

After the demonstrators refuse to disperse, some 100 of the National Guardsmen begin to march across the Commons. They push the crowd up a slope known as Blanket Hill and down the other side into a parking lot.

Following the crowd into a nearby practice football field, the Guardsmen find themselves blocked in by a fence. They throw tear gas canisters and point their guns at the demonstrators, who yell and throw rocks and other debris at them. After about 10 minutes of this, the Guardsmen begin to move back up Blanket Hill. The crowd cheers their retreat and continues throwing things at them.

At 12:24 p.m., just after reaching the top of the hill, the Guardsmen turn back and fire their M1 rifles and pistols, some of them aiming directly into the crowd. In 13 seconds of shooting, they fire between 61 and 67 shots. Jeffrey Miller, Allison Krause, William Schroeder and Sandra Scheur are killed, and nine other students are injured, including Dean Kahler, who is shot in the back and left permanently paralyzed from the waist down.

There had been numerous protests from the early 1960s onward that had ended in violence. The Civil Rights marches tended to end with police - and angry white mobs - pummeling marchers, unleashing dogs, or knocking them over with high-powered water hoses. The antiwar riots from 1967 onward tended to go the same way, culminating in the "police riot" violence that engulfed the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago.

But never before had the police - or the National Guard - just opened fire like that. Nobody expected it. Eyewitnesses would later note how they and the other students present - even the ones not protesting - didn't think the Guard would fire with real bullets. The reports included how even some of the Guardsmen were stunned by what happened.

The chaos and confusion of that moment - the only emotions everyone seemed to have between student and soldier alike were fear and rage - led to tragedy. Scheur and Schroeder weren't part of the protest, they were separately walking between classes. Krause and Miller may have been protesting, but they didn't deserve to get killed like that. No one should have gotten shot.

Kent State essentially shut down right after the shooting and wouldn't reopen for months. Across the nation, outrage was immediate. Over 650 universities and high schools saw protests and walkouts by students, not only raging against the war but now raging against a nation's military willing to shoot their own citizens.

The counterculture scene - filled with antiwar activists especially the musicians - produced artwork decrying the shootings and memorializing the dead. The act Crosby Stills Nash and Young crafted a protest song "Ohio" within weeks of the incident. The song attacked Nixon by name - who had directly created both the Cambodian crisis and the authoritarian environment of state/federal agencies being brutal towards protestors - and is considered to this day one of the more impactful protest songs of that era.

In the short term, the outrage over the Kent State deaths led to little change. Nixon and his allies arranged counter-protests in favor of the war to continue harassing the antiwar crowds. Most college students - even the ones not from Kent State - returned home over the summer to find family members and neighbors arguing that the protestors were at fault. The investigations into the shooting led to arrests for around 25 student and faculty protestors, but only a few pled to lesser charges, one was acquitted, and the charges dropped for the rest for lack of evidence. For the Guardsmen, five of them faced murder charges and two more on misdemeanors, but they argued for "self-defense" as they feared for their lives. The judge agreed on that point, dismissing the charges but admonishing the National Guard that their actions that day were "deplorable."

Nixon won re-election in 1972. He resigned two years later due to his mishandling of the Watergate scandals, and it was only years later we learned how callous he got towards the antiwar students. 

The war the students originally protested didn't end well, either. Nixon's efforts to control Cambodia - honestly, to bomb it into rubble - only served to destabilize it more to where the Khmer Rouge took over in 1975. While Nixon was able to secure a "peace with honor" treaty with North Vietnam by 1972, all it did was delay the inevitable of South Vietnam falling to the Viet Cong by 1975 as well.

Nobody won anything at Kent State. Just four dead students, and a nation that still hasn't come to terms with how we should handle student protestors more than 54 years later. 

We're seeing police and National Guard getting called in again across dozens of universities and colleges trying to contain - and brutalize - the antiwar protestors rising up against the violence in Gaza towards Palestinian civilians. We have campus administrators overreacting to where escalation towards the students is creating the same kind of confused, fearful environment that built up at Kent State. Instead of using Soft Power tactics - of placating and isolating the protestors to minimize conflicts - we have heavy-handed tactics by the cops, and demonization of the Arab/Palestinian protestors as "terrorists" with a New York deputy commissioner holding up a single textbook (which is about the History of it, not a How-To like the Turner Diaries you morons) as evidence.

It's ironic how a history book underscores how our law enforcement and national leaders keep forgetting the lessons of history.

One Sentence Thought About The College Campus Protests Over Israel's Overkill in Gaza

While there are a number of pro-Hamas agitators screaming about killing Israelis and a number of counter-agitators screaming about killing Palestinians, the heavy-handed tactics by the city/county/state police towards the protests are going to escalate the anger and increase the risk of police brutality/bloodshed on our campuses to a level we haven't seen since the Vietnam-era, and which didn't do ANY of the sides - the protesters on one side, law enforcement on the other - any good.

Where the hell are the efforts at Soft Power de-escalation of hostilities: Assurances of open protest as long as there are no calls for violence, containing protest areas to ensure civility, separating agitating groups to prevent tempers flaring up and fights starting? Okay, that's two sentences, but one had to follow the other...

While Biden is talking to the media about trying to de-escalate, what is he ACTUALLY doing? Where's the hard efforts to rein in Netanyahu as the corrupt Israeli PM is openly planning a genocide in Rafah? Why is Biden focusing on the "violent protests" of occupying campus buildings instead of recognizing that a majority of the student protesters are peacefully marching out there asking for the violence to stop? Okay, that's three more sentences in forms of questions, but yeah these questions need asking, and answering. Okay, that's one mo... Okay I'll stop.