trump's Violations of Norms and the Beltway's Inability to Cope

Ben Kesling at the Columbia Journalism Review has it right: 

On Tuesday, NPR’s Quil Lawrence and Tom Bowman broke the news that Trump and members of his campaign appeared to violate federal law during an appearance at Arlington to mark the third anniversary of the deadly attack on US troops that punctuated the deeply flawed withdrawal from Afghanistan. Members of Trump’s staff had sought to film the event for a campaign video, and got into an altercation with an Arlington National Cemetery staff member who tried to stop them. Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign official, strongly denied that any altercation had taken place and said the campaign was ready to release a video to prove his point. (They have yet to release it.) It wasn’t surprising that these two NPR pros with deep knowledge of the military, and sources among veterans, were the first with the news. The Washington Post followed with a story the same day, as did the New York Times. The public took note.

As more publications followed suit, the Arlington stories suffered a dreadful fate: they all started to sound the same. News outlets ended up with articles bogged down in parsing federal law, carefully defining what exactly counts as an altercation, and quoting milquetoast official statements like “There was an incident and a report was filed.” 

Lumped together, the reporting this week left readers and listeners, especially those with no knowledge of the military, at a loss to understand what actually happened—and, crucially, why it mattered so much. The Trump campaign team had successfully muddied the waters by alleging that the photographer had been invited to the event by family members of soldiers buried there. 

But as any veteran knows in their bones, the solemnity of the ceremony is exactly why the unauthorized photographer had no business being there—regardless of who invited them...

This is a very big reason why the veterans' organizations and a lot of veterans on social media are livid towards trump right now. And yet, the Beltway media doesn't seem to understand the fury:

Readers needed to know that, when you visit Arlington, you might not know exactly what you’re supposed to do when confronted by those rows of headstones, but you damn sure know what you’re not supposed to do. But the coverage this week left many readers with the impression that the whole thing might have been a bureaucratic mix-up, or some tedious violation of protocol. It focused on bland horse-race coverage so common during election season, rather than clearly stating what really took place: an egregious and willful violation of long-standing norms...

This has been one of the most obvious problems that our mainstream media suffers when it comes to covering trump, especially those moments when trump violates not only the established norms of political comity but also the long-established norms of common courtesy.

Put aside the well-told tales by now of trump's personal inability to understand military service, and his blunt disdain for those who suffered and died in that service. trump simply has no respect or diligence for anything he can't use or abuse.

Look at how trump himself behaved during this staged fiasco. Not only ignoring the cemetery's requirements to not bring his own campaign staff - he did - and not to bring his own photographer - he did, and promptly blamed it on the families he talked into hosting his appearance - and not to turn the memorial service into a partisan event - it became clear he was going to claim the moment was an official ceremony and accuse Biden and Harris of failing to show, in order to paint THEM as disrespectful to the military - trump proceeded to preen and pose at the gravesite of the fallen soldier with a grin and a thumbs up.

I refuse to show that photo on my blog. It is offensive and obscene. It's not that he's desecrating the burial grounds by urinating on the grave marker, it's that he's violating the common custom of treating cemeteries as a solemn and sacred location.

This is on him. This is how trump behaves for ANY photo op: standing with someone or a group who must act "grateful" to be in his presence, flashing that smile like he's happy instead of the dour bad boss he often is, and giving a thumbs up like "I'm perfect, I'm winning!"

And that's trump having no sense of place, no sense of humility, no sense of the gravity or gravitas of the situation, no sense at all really.

You damn sure know what you’re not supposed to do. And trump clearly doesn't know that.

The pity is the goddamned Beltway media doesn't know what to do with trump.

The media is unable to call trump out for his inhumane, clueless, selfish behaviors. They just can't, terrified of seeming biased and getting attacked by the Far Right for speaking the obvious that the GOP standard bearer - hell, the entire Republican Party leadership - is incapable of being a goddamned normal human being. 

This isn't just on the media owners, who are clearly in the tank for a Republican Party that's going to cut taxes for the uber-rich if they regain full control of government this 2024. This is on the editors and the writers and the reporters in the field just genuinely incapable of making the moral decision to point out how immoral trump truly is.

Gods help us.

I should mention how this is a personal matter for me. In the time that this scandal's percolated to this level of trump struggling to blame everyone else for his screwup, I've remembered that my father took me to Arlington a long time ago - probably on that week my older brother got married in Maryland when I was in my 20s - to visit the gravesites of his father and mother. I never met Grandpa Wartenberg - he died in 1968 before I was born - and dad rarely talked about him. Best I recall, my grandfather served as an officer on a Navy submarine during World War II in the Pacific (Grandma died when I was 8, and was buried in another spot in that region because of how the cemetery works). If the Naval records I've read is correct, Grandpa joined the Navy in 1917 and it looked like he served until 1946. If he was on the front lines of the Pacific War, he earned that spot in Arlington. (I need to find more about his duty during the big war).

When we visited, Arlington was a peaceful, calm, quiet place. There were others nearby visiting the graves of their family members, and everyone was solemn. Dad and I paid our respects at the markers, it might have been when dad talked about grandpa's service, but that was it. Nothing fancy. Nothing outlandish. That's all you're expected to do when you're honoring the dead.

trump just can't do that, can he.

/rage

Refreshing the Charges Against trump

Oh, and in case you missed it - and you likely did because the New York Times didn't even put it on the front page like they did with Hillary's emails in 2016 /rage - Special Prosecutor Jack Smith re-indicted donald trump for his role in the January 6th insurrection.

David A Graham at the Atlantic has some of the details (paywalled):

When the Supreme Court ruled last month that presidents are immune from prosecution for anything done as an official act, many observers reacted with immediate horror. They warned that the ruling would allow future presidents to act as despots, doing whatever they like without fear of accountability. And in the immediate term, they predicted doom for the federal case against former President Donald Trump for attempting to subvert the 2020 election.

The effect of the ruling on future presidents will not be clear for some time. But Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is prosecuting Trump for the Justice Department, isn’t acting too rattled by the Supreme Court’s decision.

Smith obtained a superseding indictment today in the case against Trump, whom he had previously charged with four felonies. The new document is a little more concise and changes some language, but it keeps the same four felony charges and most of the same evidence. After taking a few weeks to review the Supreme Court ruling, Smith has apparently concluded that it doesn’t change much about his case at all.

Roberts and his conservative buddies on SCOTUS can try to warp reality all they want, but what trump did was criminal and by GOD he needs to answer for it.

In addition to some slight rephrasing here and there, Smith makes two notable changes. First, he takes out all references to Trump’s attempt to involve the Justice Department in his subversion. Trump, who has spent much of his current presidential campaign warning about the “weaponization” of the federal government, attempted just that as he sought to stay in office. The then-president asked the department to issue a letter saying the election was corrupt and then “leave the rest to me and the R[epublican] Congressmen,” according to meeting notes taken by a DOJ official. One of Trump’s confederates was Jeffrey Clark, a Justice Department official whom Trump tried to install as acting attorney general to further the scheme, before fierce resistance from DOJ and White House lawyers stayed his hand.

But the Supreme Court ruled that “because the President cannot be prosecuted for conduct within his exclusive constitutional authority, Trump is absolutely immune from prosecution for the alleged conduct involving his discussions with Justice Department officials.” The superseding indictment thus takes out references to Trump’s conversations with these officials. It removes Clark from a list of co-conspirators. And it deletes a section of the initial indictment that explained how Trump tried to enlist the department to help solicit slates of false electors from states.

The fact that Smith and his team were able to re-indict trump to basically the same four charges underscores just how much dirt they still have on trump that the Supreme Court can't wash away (for now).

If I can refer to Marcy Wheeler at Emptywheel to get her take on this:

Altogether, the changes incorporate not just SCOTUS’ immunity decision, but also the DC Circuit’s Blassingame decision deeming actions taken as a candidate for office are private acts, and SCOTUS’ Fischer decision limiting the use of 18 USC 1512(c)(2) to evidentiary issues.

The logic of Blassingame is why Jack Smith included these paragraphs describing that Trump and Pence were acting as candidates.

1. The Defendant, DONALD J. TRUMP, was a candidate for President of the United States in 2020. He lost the 2020 presidential election.

[snip]

5. In furtherance of these conspiracies, the Defendant tried–but failed–to enlist the Vice President, who was also the Defendant’s running mate and, by virtue of the Constitution, the President of the Senate, who plays a ceremonial role in the January 6 certification proceeding.

As I’ve said repeatedly, it’s not clear that adopting the Blassingame rubric will work for SCOTUS, even though they did nothing to contest this rubric...

The decision to supersede this indictment may have turned what could have been an immediate dispute about the viability of the indictment at all into an evidentiary dispute to be managed later...

At the very least, Jack Smith suggests he has something viable on which to arraign Trump (and Trump’s Xitter wails treating this as a real indictment suggest he may believe that)...

This should serve - again - as a reminder to the general American voting public that trump is dangerous, that he's not pursuing the presidency for some lofty purpose: trump is running for President to keep his orange ass out of jail. It's not only the criminal charges trump is still facing - not only in DC but also in South Florida as Smith appeals to the appellate level to reinstate the classified documents case Cannon dismissed, and in Georgia with the state fake electors case - but also the criminal matter in Manhattan where he sits with 34 jury-confirmed felonies (with the presiding judge ruling mid-September on what happens next).

And those are the criminal charges and convictions. trump's civil trials found him liable for business fraud, defamation, and sexual assault (that the judge rose to the level of rape).

We've never had a major national party stoop so low as to have a convicted felon and confirmed sex offender like trump running for the highest office in the land (remember, Debs was a minor party candidate who never had a chance).

Every registered voter in America needs to understand how horrifying and criminal that is, and make certain that trump never gets within 100 miles of the White House again.

For the LOVE OF GOD AND JUSTICE, America, STOP VOTING trump.

Violating Sacred Ground for a Photo Op: August 2024 edition

For the LOVE of God, trump's doing it again. Desperate to show himself as a virtuous leader, trump's violating holy ground for a staged photo op: This time our nation's most honored cemetery for our military fallen (via Quil Lawrence and Tom Bowman at NPR):

Two members of Donald Trump's campaign staff had a verbal and physical altercation Monday with an official at Arlington National Cemetery, where the former president participated in a wreath-laying ceremony, NPR has learned.

A source with knowledge of the incident said the cemetery official tried to prevent Trump staffers from filming and photographing in a section where recent U.S. casualties are buried. The source said Arlington officials had made clear that only cemetery staff members would be authorized to take photographs or film in the area, known as Section 60...

Trump participated in an event to mark the third anniversary of a deadly attack on U.S. troops in Afghanistan as U.S. forces withdrew from the country; 13 U.S. service members were killed in the attack. The Trump campaign has blamed President Biden and Vice President Harris, now the Democratic presidential nominee, for the chaotic withdrawal...

trump is also trying to deflect from the reality that it was HIS administration in December 2020 - when it became clear he was losing the election to Biden - that brokered the deal with the Taliban that led to the U.S. withdrawal and collapse of our backed government there. I wish the national media would remember that and not let trump avoid his accountability. Thing is, he's accountable now for possibly violating federal law by staging his photo op where he shouldn't:

In a statement to NPR, Arlington National Cemetery said it "can confirm there was an incident, and a report was filed."

"Federal law prohibits political campaign or election-related activities within Army National Military Cemeteries, to include photographers, content creators or any other persons attending for purposes, or in direct support of a partisan political candidate's campaign," according to the statement. "Arlington National Cemetery reinforced and widely shared this law and its prohibitions with all participants."

Look, if there IS a federal law in the US Code for this, give us the chapter and verse, people! If trump committed a felony trespass, and if he committed a felony campaign violation, if he even committed some dinky misdemeanor in the rule books, charge the son of a bitch.

Stop letting trump get away with his godforsaken campaign stunts that mock everyone and causes real harm to the people he thinks are standing in his way.

And make him answer - one way or another - for the shame he keeps committing against our men and women in the military.

Update 8/28/24: Follow up on social media pointed me to the Code of Federal Regulations - the administrative side of how agencies interpret and enforce the US Code - specifically to 32 CFR 553: Army Cemeteries. The specific rule is 32 CFR 553.32(c):

Memorial services and ceremonies at Army National Military Cemeteries will not include partisan political activities.

The CFR relies on the 38 USC Section 2413 as one of its legal foundations: It issues the prohibition any form of protest or disruption at a memorial service. While trump wasn't protesting per se, his photo op staging could well have led to such disruptions, hence the ban.

Some of the legal experts I know at TNC's Horde are pointing out there may be no criminal remedy - except for the physical assault of a park ranger - but civil ones. Still, trump needs to understand he can't get away with this outrageous bullshit of turning our national memorial sites into his playgrounds.

The Joy

Update: Thank you Steve in Manhattan at Crooks & Liars for sharing this article at Mike's Blog Round-Up! Hope everyone enjoyed the DNC this week, hope you've ordered your BALLZ TO THE WALZ t-shirts like I have, and get the damn vote out for every Democratic candidate across all 50 states! Let's EFFING GOOOOO....

There is a thrill to the Democratic Party campaign I haven't seen in ages.

The current national convention in Chicago is humming with delight, musicians showing up to perform during otherwise staid roll calls, genuine laughs and cheers from audiences not just sitting there applauding politely on cue. For all of the discontent from the media elites, and for the legitimate criticisms from protestors outside that the party is ignoring the suffering in Gaza, and for all the dread about another trump attempt to hijack the elections; the Democratic voting base is enjoying the moment with the kind of hope for the future not seen since Obama's victorious celebration in Grant Park when he won in 2008.

Amanda Marcotte at Salon is documenting the atrocities sorry bad habit, documenting the pleasantries:

Organizers kicked off the Democratic National Convention by immediately demonstrating that they know how to throw a party better than Republicans. Democrats scheduled their elderly leader who rambles on too long for the first night, not the last. President Joe Biden's Monday night speech started slow and only got more boring, but the crowd cheered him gamely, chanting, "Thank you, Joe!" Part of that was real gratitude for the surprisingly effective job he's done in his four years in office. But the cheers reflected the attendees' joy at knowing this whole thing is done with. It's time to move forward with a candidate who embodies their hopes for the future...

That word matters.

In contrast, Donald Trump's capstone speech at the Republican National Convention was disastrous. Biden may have been long-winded and boring, but Trump was all those things while also sounding objectively weird. His speech ping-ponged between self-pity and incoherence, delivered in that odd sing-song quiet voice he uses when his aides tell him to act "serious." The crowd, always eager to flatter the cult leader's ego, cheered, but it felt forced and exhausted...

It's odd how the RNC was barely a month ago, and yet is utterly forgettable now. The only detail I can recall from it was how a number of attendees band-aided their ear in honor of trump's surviving that assassination attempt the week before... an event that has already dropped off of most people's awareness and something that failed to generate any level of sympathy or concern outside of the MAGA base.

As Andrew O'Hehir wrote about the RNC last month, the convention was "a startlingly quiet, polite, low-energy event." We did witness the audience get hyped up for Hulk Hogan, but even that has caveats: It was the last night, so more people bothered to show up. Hogan is a professional wrestler, an expert at riling up crowds over nonsense. (Though the actual message of his speech was terrifying and fascistic.) And frankly, after four days of listlessly wandering around hoping something interesting might happen, the attendees seemed eager to feel something. But Trump destroyed Hogan's hard work with his whining, droning, weird speech. 

On Tuesday night, Harris made the contrast crystal clear by holding a rally at the Fiserv Forum, where the RNC was held. (Personal insert: Milwaukee is literally up the road from Chicago, so Harris traveling to Fiserv wasn't a burden) It speaks volumes about the enthusiasm gap that it's not even surprising that the turnout and volume at this Harris rally outdid what Trump got at his own convention last month.

The difference was dramatic enough that Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, appeared at the DNC by remote video from Milwaukee. It created the visual effect of more than doubling what Trump was able to turn, despite covering his ear with a comically oversized bandage and everything...

One of the things about long political campaigns is the belief in Momentum (the Big Mo as Bush the Elder called it), and if the differences between the party conventions are any evidence, all of the Big Mo is with Kamala:

With Harris as the nominee, however, you can feel Democratic voters unclenching. This is not a crowd that feels "triggered." The mood is giddy. There's a scent of hope in the air. There's plenty of criticism of Trump, but it's no longer coming from a place of cornered animals trying to survive. The tone towards that babbling old fascist is one of contempt. Instead of flinching, Democrats are laughing in Trump's face. No wonder he's even more obsessed with crowd sizes and ratings than usual. He used to be the one offering entertainment value, even if it was only to his base that just wanted to inflict pain on their perceived enemies. Now it's Harris who is captivating, this time to a nation that wants to feel something other than despair...

I can speak to the enthusiasm among the political circles I keep: both the TNC Horde and the Balloon Juice commentariat are bouncing off the walls like it's a romper room. Hell, even the Rude Pundit is giddy:

It was simple. I thought, "Man, we need this." And by "this," I mean all the joy and energy and possibility being embodied on that stage. But it's not only about this moment. We need this because the one thing that's been missing as we emerged from the worst part of the Covid pandemic (and recognizing that Covid is still very much a problem) is a catharsis, some release where we all recognize that we survived. And it's not just a catharsis for getting through the lockdowns and mass deaths and required health safety measures. It's a catharsis for surviving the presidency of Donald Trump, which took this country down some incredibly dark alleys, leaving it battered and weary, with a good deal of PTSD.

We couldn't actually celebrate, or even fully exhale, because hanging over all of us was the tension of what would bring the Trump saga to its end. We waited for something to validate the anger we had and to demonstrate that things would be different. We hoped that Trump would be convicted and sent to prison, but that didn't happen and may not. 

The election of Joe Biden was an absolutely necessary step to get to this point. We needed someone who knew how the federal government worked inside and out, an old hand to get to the bridge and right the ship, weld the holes, scrub off the rust, get rid of the piles of garbage, and get us back on course, all while restocking the bar. We were all scared out of our weary minds in 2020, awaiting the even deadlier next surge of Covid deaths that was coming in January 2021. Then January 6th happened, and our sense of security in the very things that are supposed to function in this country were undermined, all while watching a large percentage of the population go down a red-capped abyss of crazy and conspiracies they will likely never return from. Biden's skill was in allowing the rest of us to chill out, to see that the government hadn't lost the ability to actually work.

In the last few months, though, everything kept hitting us, even as Trump was found guilty or liable, owing hundreds of millions of dollars. All of it still didn't lead us to anything like a feeling of completion, a feeling we could, indeed, move on. We were hit again and again with insane Supreme Court decisions, with the polls that showed Biden losing, with Biden's obvious signs of aging, with this feeling that it was all going to go south again. We would stick by Biden if we had to (and more than a few were doing so gladly), but, my god, we needed celebration. We needed joy. Real joy, not the kind of joy that says, "We made it," but the joy that says, "We crushed it." We need to face our American demons, who are easily identifiable, and we need to unify to exorcise them and send them back to whatever crevices in the earth they crawled out of, not just defeat them at the polls...

A previous Democratic leader once clarified that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself," but FDR spoke to the rational demands of the moment and to the urgency of recovering from the Great Depression. The demands and urgency we face today have more to do with recovering from the emotional traumas of things like 9/11, the failed War on Terror, the economic chaos threatened by Silicon Valley "disruptors" looking to profit from fanciful shell games, the overwhelming Culture War madness of misogynists looking to take rights away from women and of racists looking to take rights away from ethnics they deemed "Other".

The opposite emotion to Fear in many ways is Joy, a means to build well-being for the self, the delight of the new and the willingness to celebrate. In the face of Republican Fearmongering, it has been a long time since Democrats fought back using Joy not as a shield but as a weapon, cutting through the dour unhappiness of the likes of trump and JD Vance who scowl at their rallies and lie about how America is "doomed" unless they take over as our overlords.

The Democrats are campaigning this year on Joy, not as a slogan but as an emotional buttress, a foundation on which all other policy positions will rest, allowing the nation to build not only on the successes of Biden's administration but on the future of Harris' potential tenure.

This is a campaign movement of Joy that can thrive, that can inspire millions to turn out to vote, with every sign this post-convention that the Democratic ground game will run with this emotion all the way to victory in 2024.

...

Just remember to keep the lawyers on payroll to stop trump and his Republican lackeys from the electoral chaos they're planning to unleash, please and thank you.

It's Campaign Time 2024 and the Beltway Is Still Broken

As the Democratic National Convention continues this week, apparently the national punditry are raging into the void about how they got bamboozled by the Biden retirement/Harris promotion (via Meredith Shiner at New Republic): 

...Trump (in 2016) was unique among that field of suits in that he did not slide from Polite Washington’s slick political candidate widget factory. He didn’t care to perform the same canned lines on tax rates, entitlements, or the national debt. And he showed the world that audiences didn’t care about that long-running political vaudeville act, either. The Trump era, however you define it, yielded few gifts and cured little about the broken political discourse coming out of Washington. But if it didn’t wreck the political press’s performative vacuity, it at least exposed it for all to see.

Now, with nearly four years of Trump out of the White House, Trump back on the trail, and a Democrat at the top of the ticket who can actually campaign, the gap between the Beltway Truman Show and what people outside of D.C. actually are experiencing is widening. And this rift in reality imperils the media at a time when journalism is fighting a multifront war against anti-truth Republicans, declining revenue, and predatory venture capital mismanagement...

The problems of campaign coverage from 2016 wasn't entirely all about trump: The National Media had been suffering with embarrassments and acts of self-immolation ever since they went all in on Bill Clinton's sex scandals and wondered how the hell the rest of the nation stopped trusting them. It didn't help in 2016 that Hillary was there to incite the media mob into a dangerous binary world-view that made Hillary a threat to everyone and not trump. But I digress.

When Trump burst onto the scene, I was still a reporter in Washington covering national politics and Congress. I watched as the journalism-industrial complex of D.C. reporters and operatives around me tried to cast Trump as an atypical candidate who blew up the Republican Party. Casting Trump as an outlier—trying to make him an aberration instead of an outgrowth of a decades-long Republican effort to break our country—obscured the collective national gaze from something much more troubling for the people who make their living on politics: Trump didn’t break the Republican Party at all. He just broke the made-up Washington rules that empowered every lobbyist, reporter, and staffer to attend parties together without fear or reservation.

The Republican Party had been dying for some time, when as a party they decided to shift to a Culture War narrative light on policy and heavy on demonizing fellow Americans. trump merely saw the weak spots in the GOP relationship between leaders and voters and overtook control of the wingnut base. The national media elites had no idea how to explain that - not only to the citizenry but also to themselves - and so have been flailing about trying to find anything that would fit their "both sides!" or "let's have bipartisanship!" world-views. America's punditry are stuck in a bubble of their own. Back to Shiner:

Because if this summer has revealed anything, it’s that, just like the Scott Walkers of yore, we are watching the national media short-circuit before our very eyes. They are insular. They are unprepared. And after years of watching Morning Joe and searching for their birthdays in the Politico Playbook, they do not see their role as speaking to us, but rather speaking to themselves. While this may seem ancillary to the main plotline of our national politics, the mainstream media own-goaling themselves out of civic relevance is a net negative for anyone who believes in the outcome of better, more representative, good government.

For years, largely because Republicans are better at working the refs and crying foul about any effort by the media to hold them accountable for their actions, the idea that the media are dyed-in-the-wool liberals has become the orthodoxy. Of course, the Beltway media are conservative. This is not a novel argument by any means: It’s an industry run by (increasingly reactionary) plutocrats, who reliably summon their charges to lead a highly effective, “But how will you pay for it?” pincer movement against anything resembling liberal policy. Meanwhile, there is seemingly no sin grievous enough to earn a Republican the same sort of nullifying skepticism—the Trumpists who aided and abetted the former president’s attempt to overturn a lawful election remain in the good graces of America’s cable news bookers.

Still, we need to acknowledge that the media are conservative in the most traditional, unideological sense of the word: They are clinging to a status quo, their status quo, that has not matched our reality since Barack Obama was elected president in 2008 and the Tea Party emerged as the energized manifestation of Ronald Reagan’s 1980s fever dreams. Their rules, their conventional wisdom, their savvy takes become more stale, more detached from normal life, and more cartoonish with every passing day...

I argued about this earlier about how the modern Beltway media elites are still obsessing over the Reagan Era like it's still 1985, with Green Eagle making a solid case that the ultra-rich owners of the media outlets have their own (anti-tax and deregulation) agendas to pursue. Either way, we are talking about an entire profession - journalism - unable to fulfill even the most basic functions of that job - to provide Objective (fact-driven) reporting - because they've sunk entirely into Subjective self-absorbed pandering to each other in the news business.

The problem is that we as a nation - we Americans as a people - need objective factual reporting to keep us informed properly about our choices when it comes time to use our power to elect our representatives and our leaders. We're not getting any of that when the headline writers and the front-page opinion pundits and the talk show guests can't even be correct about what they're selling us in their columns and podcasts.

Just again a reminder: For the national media elites, there is no accountability for being wrong (or self-centered). Maureen Dowd could spend the first half of 2024 screaming that Biden needed to step down from the presidential campaign, and less than a month after he did so accuse the Democratic Party of "pulling a coup" that she refuses to admit her own role in it. THIS is how that punditry acts - and reacts - and when things don't go their way they'll throw a conniption far bigger than anything crybaby trump puts out.

Until the national press comes to terms with the current reality that they are biased (and towards trump and other Far Right wingnuts); until the punditry realizes they are not the heroes of their own narratives, they are accomplices in the Far Right's schemes; until the likes of Dowd and David Brooks and the majority of swelled heads at the New York Times and Washington Post settle the fuck down: We are not going to get an honest story out of any of them.

And it's still up to us to tune out their ego-driven narratives and focus on what matters most: keeping criminal trump out of the White House and banishing the Republican Party from the national stage this November general election.

Get the damn votes out, everyone.

Let's Effing Go: Ballz to the Walz Shirt Is HERE

It took forever, but the Ballz to the Walz shirt finally got in the mailbox!

And it fits (so far, things may shrink in the wash, alas)!

The arched eyebrow is noticeable, but I think I need to smile a little more.

Oh, and the Democratic National Convention starts tonight.

LET'S EFFING GO! LET'S WIN ALL 50 STATES (well okay maybe not Idaho)!!!

BALLZ

TO

THE

WALZ

What If: A Different Dynamic for a Democratic 2024

Let me state officially for the record that I am terrible at this prognostication shit.

Not just the fact that I never do well at the Powerball lotteries (cries), but that I'm terrible at plotting out how these 4-year presidential cycles go. When the horserace starts up and the primary candidates line up to get humiliated, I tend to be off by a candidate or three when the official lineups survive to their convention celebrations.

I mean, last year I jumped ahead of everything to try and guess the 2024 election results thinking that it was going to be a repeat matchup between Biden and trump. Granted, certain facts were unavoidable: Biden was the sitting incumbent and they always run for a second term; trump had bullied and cowed the Republican party into taking him back a third time as a candidate retained his maniacal MAGA voting base in spite of a few hopeful candidates like DeSantis and Haley challenging to be a fresh candidate for 2024. A second round of Biden v. trump was kind of a given.

What I hadn't counted on was a mainstream media desperate to hijack the electoral process to force their own choice on a national electorate, hammering on Biden for being too old over and over even as he beat down his younger primary challenger Dean Phillips by 90 percent of the party vote, as well as hammering on trump for also being too old as well as facing criminal indictments and 34 felony convictions no wait, the media still hasn't hammered him on that. Gee, wonder why... /sarcasm

We saw what happened after the early debate between Biden and trump got the media riled up for Biden's scalp: Biden read the room, realized he wasn't going to win back the Beltway mob that was a little too eager to throw the election to trump, and made the move to pass along his primary gains to his running mate Kamala Harris, ensuring a smooth transition for the Democratic campaign while giving the would-be kingmakers in the press both middle fingers.

So now, instead of facing the likelihood of a repeat performance of 2020 results - although possibly switching out Georgia for North Carolina, as things looked in the polls - we're facing a different dynamic for 2024, with massive enthusiasm boosting Democratic chances across the electoral board while the Republicans find themselves doubling-down on an older, out-of-touch, and hate-filled ticket.

I had posted the 2020 Electoral Map as a foundation for what the 2024 map would be when it was Biden:

from 270towin.com 

But now with Harris, what should we expect?

Well, electorally, probably more of the same. The partisan nature of the modern electorate has calcified most of the states into their Red/Blue status for the most part. Only a handful of states - Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina - would be considered battlegrounds, where the shifting independent votes and overall voter turnout matter a whole lot more than in say California or New York or Tennessee or (alas) Florida (Texas keeps threatening to flip, so voter suppression keeps that GOP Red).

But the way Harris is redefining the campaign - and spurring more voter interest at levels not seen since 2008 - is making it more likely the battleground states that went for Biden in 2020 are near-locks this election. Yes, I know the polls can't be trusted. And yet. Depending on what bounce Kamala gets post-convention this week, even on-the-fence states like Georgia and North Carolina could well turn into solid gains. Not merely winning by hundreds of votes but tens of thousands, well out of reach for trump and the GOP to whine that the election was "stollen".

Also 270towin.com 
I'm projecting Kansas and Nebraska to flip Blue
because Walz's appeal to the Midwest is THAT good!

So don't be surprised that trump whines "stollen election!" just like he did in 2020. This is the easiest part of any guessing game with how the 2024 November results play out: trump will scream that he "won" and never concede even the states he honest-to-God never had a chance to win anyway.

Remember this fact: trump can never admit he ever loses.

So what will trump do when confronted with the likelihood he is not only going to lose the popular vote for the third time in a row, but also the likelihood he is going to lose the Electoral College for a second time?

All the signs point to trump scheming with his cronies and state-level allies to stir utter chaos and not allow elections to get certified in the first place.

In 2020, trump and his cronies tried to cook up plans to have "fake electors" put in place to override the legitimate electors giving Biden the Electoral votes - from Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Arizona - in order to flip the 270 needed from Biden to trump. Those "fake elector" schemes didn't exactly work, and there's criminal trials and plea deals happening in Georgia, Michigan, and Arizona as we speak (with trump delaying the Georgia one to save his ass before this year's election). Obviously, setting up fake electors didn't help him.

So now trump is taking aim at making sure the votes from certain counties and states don't even count at all. Via Sam Levin at the Guardian (US):

Nearly three dozen officials who have refused to certify elections since 2020 remain in office and will play a role in certifying the presidential vote in nearly every battleground state this fall, according to a new report by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew), a watchdog group.

The report underscores the concerns that Donald Trump and allies will attack the certification process at the local level as part of any possible effort to contest a loss in the election. In a presidential election, there are tight deadlines at the local, state and federal levels to certify the vote. Delaying the vote at the local level could cause states to miss deadlines and open up protracted court battles and give oxygen to conspiracy theories...

Certification is generally considered a ministerial duty and the officials charged with doing it can’t unilaterally decide not to officialize election results, legal experts say. Ballot disputes and discrepancies are typically adjudicated before an election moves to the certification stage.

“Each of these states have procedures for examining potential voter fraud and voter irregularities and none of those procedures concern the certification process at the country level. In other words, there are things you can do. County elections officials denying certification is none of those things. That’s not allowed under the law,” said Noah Bookbinder, the president and CEO of Crew.

No effort to block certification thus far has been successful. Each time that local officials have tried, they have been either forced to certify by a court, outvoted by their fellow commissioners or reversed course...

Just because it hasn't happened before doesn't mean it won't happen now. trump has broken a centuries-long Good Faith effort by our governments to abide by the ceremonial acts of bipartisanship, especially when it comes to elections. Granted, we've had broken and corrupt elections at local, state, and arguably federal levels over the years, but for the most part they were aberrations or part of local corrupt political machines that our Civil Rights era of the 1960s and 1970s cleaned up.

The last time I can think of an honest-to-God broken electoral process - to be fair, elections like 1960 and 2000 were procedural question marks (it's just that the Supreme Court over-reached in deciding the 2000 results) - at the Presidential election level was 1876 when the Republicans raised a stink about the electoral results from several states, which forced a congressional committee to "recommend" the results in such a way the Republicans with Hayes won (literally by one committee vote).

It's painful - not ironic - that trump is aiming to stir enough chaos this election cycle to force a repeat of 1876: Get enough (Republican) elections officials to refuse to certify results, which will deny Electoral counts for Harris (and himself) to where no one gets over the 270 hurdle to win the College, and then force the matter into a possibly-Republican-controlled House of Representatives to anoint trump "the winner" even if trump officially loses the popular vote by more than the 7 million in 2020.

If there's any good news, it's that 1) the states where trump's cronies can pull these stunts were likely going Republican in the first place, 2) the battleground states where trump could try this and fail - like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Arizona - have enough pro-election players in office to prevent this from happening, and 3) there's a chance the voter turnout in enough states will be so overwhelming for Harris/Walz that the local elections officials will have no legal excuse to avoid certifying and not even risk it for trump's sake.

Because much like the fake electors scheme trump and his cronies cooked up, the plans to force non-certification are likely violating a lot of state and federal laws as well (via Marina Villeneuve at Salon): 

“I think there's every indication that Trump and perhaps other candidates will try to disrupt or overturn results if they lose,” said Ben Berwick, a former DOJ trial attorney who is now counsel leading advocacy group Protect Democracy’s election law and litigation team.

Berwick said four years after Trump and his allies failed to overturn the results of the 2020 election based on unsubstantiated allegations, the rule of law still weighs against such legal arguments. Protect Democracy released a March report that stressed that courts and lawmakers have created a certification process that will hold up to manipulation.

“Bottom line is, there is really nothing that local election officials and state election officials can do legitimately or legally to overturn election results,” he said. “That doesn't mean it won't be tried...”

Isn't it just like a convicted felon (trump) to think that illegal acts are perfectly normal things to do? But I digress.

Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig, a 2016 Democratic presidential candidate and the co-author of the book “How to Steal a Presidential Election,” said he's more troubled by potential scenarios where Trump and allies could exploit gaps in existing election law, put pressure on state legislatures or governors and get their case to the Supreme Court.

All those scenarios, Lessig said, require more than actions by local election officials alone.

“I think all of these strategies require something more than just as county officials or election boards screwing around with the results,” he said. “We don't know what's actually being planned, beyond what we've seen on the surface so far.”

What may end up happening will be the same thing that happened in 2020: trump will scream that "illegal immigrants voted" or that Democratic officials "switched out ballot boxes" or some other "stealing my win" excuse. Anything to claim that "the wrong people voted that shouldn't have." And yet for all that screaming, when trump and his lawyers are called to prevent their evidence of "voter fraud" they still won't be able to present evidence that massive voter fraud on the scale they're claiming even happened. They will find scattered individual cases of potential fraud usually committed because that voter was confused, not criminally involved in a conspiracy.

It will then be up to the courts - at the state and then federal levels - to accept trump's conspiracy claims without any actual basis in fact. Many courts won't, because they have to rely on evidence on which to base their decisions. This is something that can well vex the US Supreme Court itself, which we've seen bend over backwards several times to give trump all the wiggle room he needs to escape accountability.

Can a Roberts Court truly throw out all lack of evidence and simply go by trump's claims lies that the 2024 election results were wrong if Harris actually wins? If they do that - if at least five Justices side with trump in spite of the popular and Electoral votes, if they decide on a matter more far-reaching than anything settled in Bush v. Gore - we will have a judiciary essentially invalidating the very concept of free and fair elections for all time.

Gods help us if that happens.

The best way to make sure it doesn't? Massive voter turnout on a scale so convincing for Harris/Walz and the Democrats that any claim of fraud by trump is laughable, to where Roberts and the other Far Right justices won't even risk the end of the U.S. Constitution to save trump.

Elections still matter. Voter turnout still matters, especially in this election cycle, when trump is poised to lie and bluff and bully his way out of certain electoral doom.

For the LOVE OF GOD AND COUNTRY AND THE CONSTITUTION, America, get the vote out this election cycle and vote for Kamala and Tim and for every Democrat up and down the ballot. Get the vote count for Democrats over 81 million again, while trump and JD show every sign of sliding well below the 74 million trump got in 2020.

P.S. one of the other funny thoughts I've had if trump tries to pull off his "don't certify" stunt with local elections officials: Many other elected officials like state legislators and U.S. congresscritters are going to rely on those same election results. It's been proven that not everyone votes a party line: Some candidates will get more votes than others from the same party due to various Indy/moderate voters refusing to vote a straight ticket down the ballot. What happens in a county where trump doesn't win it and screams at the elections official to not certify, but a lower-ticket guy like a state Senator did win and needs that election certified to keep his seat? They can't cherry-pick the ballots: Either the voter was legal to submit a ballot or not at all. 

This could lead to a rather interesting dynamic where the state-level Republicans can't side with trump in order to keep enough seats to control the state legislatures to try and steal the election for trump anyway. This particular paradox can prove most interesting...

When the War on Woke Destroys Libraries, It Destroys People Too

Just seeing this now on social media, and as a librarian I AM LIVID AS HELL (via Steven Walker with the Sarasota Herald-Tribune): 

Hundreds of New College of Florida library books, including many on LGBTQ+ topics and religious studies, are headed to a landfill.

A dumpster in the parking lot of Jane Bancroft Cook Library on the campus of New College overflowed with books and collections from the now-defunct Gender and Diversity Center on Tuesday afternoon. Video captured in the afternoon showed a vehicle driving away with the books before students were notified. In the past, students were given an opportunity to purchase books that were leaving the college's library collection.

Some discarded books included "Nine and Counting: The Women of the Senate", "The War of the Worlds" and "When I Knew" — which is a collection of stories from LGBTQ+ people recounting when they knew they were gay.

New College spokesperson Nathan March acknowledged the Herald-Tribune's request for comment but had not provided the college's response as of 2 p.m...

Fuck Governor DeSantis. Fuck Chris Rufo. Damn their anti-Woke, racist sexist asses.

This may not be literal book-burning but it's as damn close as the Far Right wingnuts will get.

I guarantee you there's no practical reason they're clearing these books. It's not for shelf space, or for updating to current understanding. These bastards are dumping these books out of spite, out of their sadistic need to make intellectuals and researchers and readers suffer. They intentionally purged a Gender and Diversity Center, for God's sake.

This isn't about faith either. These bastards are purging books about religions that only they disagree with, in violation of the First Amendment and the Constitutional right that no religious test should ever be applied to anything.

Any other rational actor at the academic level would have made good-faith efforts to see books that are weeded from a collection have a chance of going to another college that may need those titles for research purposes. Do you realize how many rare or hard-to-find titles survive at universities exactly because of their research value? If New College had a rare book that DeSantis and Rufo just tossed into the dumpster, they have knowingly denied current and future generations of researchers any opportunity to learn from that book.

SONS OF BITCHES.

For the LOVE OF FREEDOM, and AN HONEST GOD that does NOT ban thought or the SIMPLE RIGHT TO EXIST that every gay and lesbian and trans person has as human beings, and OUR SOULS. Florida, Please. Please please PLEASE STOP VOTING REPUBLICAN. Stop giving these haters and anti-intellectual dickweeds any power over all of us.

SAVE THE BOOKS. SAVE OURSELVES.

Woodstock Anniversary! Let's Bop!

It is August 15th, time again for a nostalgic look back at the 1969 Woodstock Festival.

This time, we're taking the dry, academic review provided by the History Channel itself!

...

You know what, that's boring. Here's Sha-Na-Na instead!

--

P.S. buy my books! (ow stop hitting me)

The Grift in Gainesville

Update: Many thanks again to Batocchio at Crooks & Liars for including this at Mike's Blog Round-Up! Please do your part to support Harris-Walz for the Presidential ticket this 2024, as well as voting out every goddamned Republican hack at the state level especially here in Florida. /rage

Someone pointed this article in the Independent Alligator to me this afternoon, and after reading the lede and the next three paragraphs as a U of Florida alum I am livid (via Garrett Shanley):

In his 17-month stint as UF president, Ben Sasse more than tripled his office’s spending, directing millions in university funds into secretive consulting contracts and high-paying positions for his GOP allies.

Sasse ballooned spending under the president’s office to $17.3 million in his first year in office — up from $5.6 million in former UF President Kent Fuchs’ last year, according to publicly available administrative budget data.

A majority of the spending surge was driven by lucrative contracts with big-name consulting firms and high-salaried, remote positions for Sasse’s former U.S. Senate staff and Republican officials.

Sasse’s consulting contracts have been kept largely under wraps, leaving the public in the dark about what the contracted firms did to earn their fees. The university also declined to clarify specific duties carried out by Sasse’s ex-Senate staff, several of whom were salaried as presidential advisers...

Graft. Grift. Corruption. Paying off cronies and buddies in every direction. There's no other way to describe this.

I wrote back in 2023 how Governor Ron DeSantis was sacrificing Florida's higher education system to pander to the MAGA voters:

It's been noted before that Florida's current Governor Ron "Pander Away" DeSantis is waging a war against "Wokeness," the current catch-all phrase by Far Right wingnuts describing anything that exposes our nation's history of racism, sexism, and bad behavior by conservative elites.

DeSantis has escalated his efforts across every level of education our state can offer. Not only are the classrooms at our public schools been emptied of every book so that DeSantis' foot soldier censors can refuse whichever titles they fear, but DeSantis is happily plugging in conservative political hacks into leadership roles at every major state university...

At the time, the big scandal revolved around DeSantis breaking the rules and hiring practices at New College, an experimental honors-level program that the Far Right anti-education forces wanted to convert into a Christianist Vo-Tech. But UF was getting the treatment as well:

If any of this feels the same as the situation leading to University of Florida - a flagship institution that had become one of the top universities in the nation - hiring an unqualified political hack like Ben Sasse earlier this school year, don't be shocked.

How was Sasse unqualified? Above all, he wasn't even from this state, carpetbagging his way here from Nebraska where he served as U.S. Senator. Where he did have qualifications, it was serving as president of a small college in that state that was facing financial shutdown. Sasse was able to bring in fundraising, and merging in students from a nearby college that did close in order to boost enrollment to a survivable level.

Thing was, University of Florida wasn't facing financial straits when DeSantis brought him on, only political targeting as a primary battleground over diversity hiring and enrollment that the Far Right Republicans like DeSantis wanted to stop. Sasse wasn't needed for any financial acumen: He was a party ally needed to push a political agenda.

And with that political agenda came a cash grab.

One of the things you'll notice about the modern Republican Party - at least from the 1990s, and arguably well back into the Nixon years - is how they view the public sector as a personal piggy bank to raid for their own pockets. Instead of managing revenues and spending for the public trust, the Republicans happily funnel taxpayer dollars to privatized businesses and contractors who happily overbill in order to get millions of money nobody keeps count of. Republicans in office will spend money on themselves and their vacation buddies without concern (or consequence).

Just look at the allegations leveled at Sasse: 

Amid protests over his conservative track record as a Nebraska Republican senator, Sasse promised during his ascension to the UF presidency in Fall 2022 that he would divorce himself from partisan politics under what he called a vow of “political celibacy.”

But the senator-turned-university president quietly broke that promise in his 17-month term at the university’s helm, hiring six ex-Senate staffers and two former Republican officials to high-paying, remote jobs at the university. 

Under Sasse’s administration, two of his former Senate staffers — Raymond Sass and James Wegmann — were among the highest-ranking and highest-paid officials at UF. Both worked remotely from the D.C. area, roughly 800 miles from UF’s main campus in Gainesville.

It's called "No-show jobs" and I doubt these guys even spent any actual minutes working for UF.

Sass, Sasse’s former Senate chief of staff, was UF’s vice president for innovation and partnerships — a position which didn’t exist under previous administrations. His starting salary at UF was $396,000, more than double the $181,677 he made on Capitol Hill. 

Wegmann, Sasse’s former Senate communications director, is UF’s vice president of communications, a position he works remotely from his $725,000 home in Washington, D.C.

They invented new jobs - arguably without any defined duties and responsibilities - just to fill them with cronies.

Sasse appointed his former Senate press secretary, Taylor Sliva, as UF’s Assistant Vice President of Presidential Communications and Public Affairs, a new position. Sliva’s $232,000 salary made him the second-highest-paid employee in UF’s Office of Strategic Communications and Marketing, trailing only Wegmann. 

The remaining three ex-Senate staffers — Raven Shirley, Kari Ridder and Kelicia Rice — served as presidential advisers to Sasse, though their specific duties remain unclear. Rice, Sasse’s Senate scheduler, is listed as a presidential adviser in UF’s salary directory but in practice remained as Sasse’s scheduler, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Sasse raised his former Senate staffs’ salaries at UF by an average of 44% compared to their Capitol Hill pay, contributing to a $4.3 million increase in presidential salary expenses over Fuchs’ last year in office.

Outside of his Senate staff, Sasse also tapped former Republican Tennessee Commissioner of Education Penny Schwinn as UF’s inaugural vice president of PK-12 and pre-bachelors programs. Schwinn, with a starting salary of $367,500, worked the newly-created position from her $1 million home in Nashville, Tennessee.

Additionally, Sasse hired Alice James Burns, former scheduler for Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC), as Director of Presidential Relations and Major Events. Burns, salaried at $205,000, also worked for UF outside of Florida.

Jesus. I doubt any of them ever set foot on campus except for the occasional photo op with Sasse and to pick up their paychecks (oh wait, they probably used direct deposit). How the hell could any of them claim to know what they were doing when they were NEVER there to do it?

In Sasse’s first full fiscal year at the university’s helm, travel expenses for the president’s office soared to $633,000 — over 20 times higher than Fuchs’ annual average of $28,000. Sasse spent more on travel in his 17 months at UF than Fuchs’ entire eight-year tenure.

Notice how Republicans love to claim they're the party of fiscal responsibility? How can they be, when they're more wasteful with money than drunken teenagers ahold of their parents' credit cards (Gods, this is a phrase I've been using since 2010). In all seriousness, Republicans are fiscally responsible only when it's their money: They will waste other's people's money to their hearts' content.

Remember how I said earlier Sasse had some experience running a college? Well, UF is a university: Vastly larger, more complex, and requiring more skill than Sasse apparently brought with him... because he hired in private consultants at expensive rates to walk him through it:

His track record in higher education administration was limited to his five-year presidency at Midland University, a small, private liberal arts college in Fremont, Nebraska. At UF, which enrolls over 60,000 students and pulls in an annual $1 billion in research grants, Sasse faced a steep learning curve.

He turned to consultants for help.

During his presidency, Sasse spent $7.2 million in university funds to consultants for advice on his strategic planning and to fill leadership gaps — over 40 times more than Fuchs’ total consulting expenses over his eight-year term.

Sasse paid nearly two-thirds of the $7.2 million to McKinsey & Company, where he once worked as an adviser on an hourly contract. The firm carries prestige as one of the “big three” management consulting giants, but is notoriously secretive about its dealings and shielded its work from public view using records laws protecting trade secrets.

A critical “scope of work” attachment, which would outline McKinsey's responsibilities to UF, was redacted from a copy of the contract obtained from a public records request. The redaction, permissible under state public records laws, makes it virtually impossible for the public to know what the firm did to earn its fees...

For all we know, those fees were for covering their tee times and martini luncheons at whatever golf courses they visited. It'd be nice to prove me wrong, McKinsey & Co.

Everything about this situation screams corruption, intentional wasteful spending of public dollars for private use and straight-up greed.

There is no way the crooks at the top of this chain - DeSantis and the state Republican leadership - will do anything to investigate these allegations (and will likely replace Sasse with one of their own corrupt colleagues).

Goddammit. Call in the feds. Get the Department of Education down here, get the Justice Department, bring the U.S. Marshals, whatever it takes. Find out how bad the rot is before it eats at everything else in the Sunshine State that hasn't been broken yet.

And for the love of GOD, Floridians: Vote these corrupt Republican SOBs out of office.

August 12th, A Notable Day for the Citizenry In Respect to the Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico

It is August 12th, in my mind - although I'm getting reports it's January 8th - Emperor Norton Day:

Norton I., Dea Gratia, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico, Being desirous of allaying the dissensions of party strife now existing within our realm, I do hereby dissolve and abolish the Democratic and Republican parties, and also do hereby decree the disfranchisement and imprisonment, for not more than ten nor less than five years, to all persons leading to any violation of this our imperial decree. - San Francisco Herald

So while it's sad that Norton I - if he lives in this day and age - may not yet vote for Kamala Harris for the Presidency of the United States due to her status as a Democratic candidate - that he may insist on the imprisonment of any party member, although I have hope the Emperor is a forgiving soul - I am of firm belief that Norton I would never vote for that crazy-ass third-party hack RFK Jr.

I mean, other than the whole emperor business, Joshua Abraham Norton was a reasonably sound and forward-thinking person. And he might not have been wrong about that emperor business anyway.

from The Sandman (1989 series) comic #31
art by Sam Keith, dialog by Neil Gaiman, based on the actual life of Norton I

Remember to pay your .50 tax to the Emperor, kiddos! And name that bridge in honor of his service to the city of San Francisco and the nation at large.

Ukraine Punching Russia - And Putin - Where It Hurts

Holy forking shirtballs, this is happening right now in the Russian-Ukrainian War (via Institute for the Study of War): 

Ukrainian cross-border mechanized offensive operations into Kursk Oblast that began on August 6 are continuing as part of a Ukrainian operational effort within Russian territory. ISW will not offer assessments about the intent of this Ukrainian operation in order to avoid compromising Ukrainian operational security. ISW will not make forecasts about what Ukrainian forces might or might not do or where or when they might do it. ISW will continue to map, track, and evaluate operations as they unfold but will not offer insight into Ukrainian planning, tactics, or techniques. ISW is not prepared to map control of terrain within Russia at this time and will instead map observed events associated with the Ukrainian incursion into Russian territory as well the maximalist extent of claims and unverified reports about Ukrainian advances. Maximalist claims and unverified reports about Ukrainian advances within Russia do not represent territory that ISW assesses that Ukrainian forces have seized or control. Inferring predictions about Ukrainian operations from ISW maps and assessments that do not explicitly offer such predictions is inappropriate and not in accord with their intended use.

Since August 6th, Ukraine started a counter-offensive into Russia itself - going into the Kursk Oblast bordering their nation - that has achieved stunning results 48 hours later. Here's a map from the ISW report:

More accurate than Risk, what what.

The fun thing about Kursk? It's the region right between Ukraine and Moscow. 

Where Putin has put Ukraine on the defensive since 2014 - don't forget, this all started with Putin seizing Crimea back then - and then creating a bloodied stalemate along the southeastern part (Donbas) of Ukraine over the last two years, this is the first true military offensive that Ukraine has put together. That counter-offensive in autumn of 2022 that reclaimed most of eastern Ukraine to them only went as far as the Russian border. Now they've crossed that border, and they've exposed a soft underbelly of how fragile Russia's own defensive capabilities are:

Russian milbloggers claimed that small Ukrainian armored groups are advancing further into the Russian rear and bypassing Russian fortifications before engaging Russian forces and then withdrawing from the engagements without attempting to consolidate control over their furthest advances. Russian milbloggers noted that the prevalence of these armored groups is leading to conflicting reporting because Ukrainian forces are able to quickly engage Russian forces near a settlement and then withdraw from the area. Ukrainian forces appear to be able to use these small armored groups to conduct assaults past the engagement line due to the low density of Russian personnel in the border areas of Kursk Oblast. Larger Ukrainian units are reportedly operating in areas of Kursk Oblast closer to the international border and are reportedly consolidating and fortifying some positions...

A lot of this echoes what happened last year when the Wagner mercenary forces mutinied against Putin's mishandling of the war effort. If I can recall what I wrote then:

Throughout this crisis, Russia's own military failed to respond in full against a "turncoat" private army, highlighting the low morale and poor discipline plaguing the regular forces. Prigozhin made faster advancements marching into Russia within 24 hours where it took him and his Wagner brigades over three months to achieve anything at Bakhmut.

It looks like Zelensky and his generals paid attention to what Prigozhin did - before he wimped out, surrendered to Putin, and got himself and others killed on his next plane flight - and realized how vulnerable Russia itself was to a military offensive. With Putin hellbent on seizing as much of Ukraine as possible before he's forced to into any ceasefire - so he can claim all that territory is legally Russia, and maintain a foothold he can use to invade the rest of Ukraine in the future - most of Russia's military might is stuck in the Donbas front lines.

While Russian forces are advancing in Ukraine, they're doing it slowly due to their draining resources. Putin's been able to turn it into a meatgrinder in the hopes of wearing down the defenses and whittle away Ukraine's own limited ammo and armaments. The US and NATO are NOT doing enough to supply Ukraine out of fears of escalation (something frustrating the hell out of policy experts like Adam L. Silverman).

But now it's looking like Ukraine had been intentionally holding back on their arms and armaments the last several months to pull off this Kursk offensive. And it's looking like - at least to this armchair general colonel major okay the highest rank I ever got was library branch manager - the Ukrainians are trying to catch the Russians in a risky Either-Or decision: 

1) Redeploy any and all reserves - especially armored units and air support - away from supporting the Donbas offensives, which would weaken their offensive capabilities and give Ukrainian forces there a chance to punch through their defenses, taking away Putin's land grabs, or

2) Refocus more military effort into Donbas - where Ukrainian defenses are already pitched in and can make it too costly - to take more territory (and force Zelensky to at last relent), and hope that the mostly untrained and undersupplied conscript forces in Russia itself can set up effective defenses to halt any advances that would be politically damaging (like say Ukrainian tanks rolling in plain sight up the Kremlin driveway in Moscow itself) to Putin.

Already three days into the Kursk Offensive, and the Ukrainian forces have beaten back most of the Russian counterattacks with ease. Russia couldn't do any of the heavy defensive fortifications they made in Donbas - you can't place landmines in your own country, after all - and they're relying on recently drafted conscripts - since this April - to work up the nerve to charge into a Ukrainian position. Whatever armored capabilities Russia has, their failures to fight back - at the moment - are highlighting the likelihood Russia's military has almost nothing left to defend with.

If I can go back to Silverman at Balloon Juice for a minute about the current (well, last night) situation regarding all of this:

The more I think about it, the more I think the second answer – that the Ukrainians are trying to demonstrate to the Biden administration, as well everyone else, that the emperor – Putin – has no clothes. That no matter what red lines he declares, no matter what he says he’ll do if they’re breached, such as tactically using nukes during a conventional war, these are just agitprop and hollow threats in order to establish reflexive control over the leaders of his adversaries in order to give himself a preemptive veto in their decision-making process. I also think they have studied Prigozhin’s aborted revolt from a little over a year ago, how Putin personally responded, and how Russia’s military, security services, and law enforcement were unable to do anything to actually stop his Wagner mercenaries. I think they have a very, very, very good understanding of what Russia is not able to do to actually defend itself within its own borders and is exploiting those weaknesses...

There is every likelihood that Ukraine is over-extending their own military with this offensive - after all, they're not making incursions into other Russian oblasts (not yet) - although there are signs they are setting up strong defensive positions at key locations inside Kursk if/when their attack forces need to pull back. Thing is with this operation Ukraine is clearly proving they know what they're doing and how to pull it off, whereas Russia is still swinging blindly to land any punches they think they can make.

Silverman is right in that Zelensky and his government are proving how much of a feeble paper tiger Russia truly is: That past the threat of launching nuclear reprisals, there's nothing left behind Russia except bluster. And even the threat of nukes seems ludicrous because A) Putin dare not use them in Ukraine or Eastern Europe due to literal fallout returning to Russia itself and B) going nuclear against the US and Europe period is basically summoning a full apocalypse out of sheer spite because it will leave all of Earth a radioactive dust-ball.

Biden - and NATO - needs to be doing more for Ukraine. They need more tanks, more ammo, more body armor, more resources. They need more Patriots and anti-missile systems to stop Putin's ongoing attack on civilian populations (the one thing Putin will never stop doing, because he's a genocidal sadist). And Ukraine needs all that yesterday.

Today, Ukraine is kicking ass. The western powers need to pony up to help Ukraine kick Putin's ass tomorrow. And keep aiding Ukraine until Putin and his ilk are all gone from power.

Honest Bumper Stickers 2024: Phase One In Which DougJBalloon Get His Oats

Hey kids, remember those brief fun moments when I carved out Honest Bumper Stickers?

Like this one?

Well, here's 2024, the candidates are set, the conventions are happening (or have happened), and it's time to see if I can remember how Inkscape works!

Okay, now that I've gotten THAT out of my system... HERE'S SOME MORE!

because the saying "Balls to the Walls" is a term to go full speed, and...
and... (sigh) look, I *have* to explain it, not everybody gets it!

And just to be fair, I crafted a couple of trump-friendly bumper stickers for this election cycle!

took me hours to find a decent
commons use image of prison bars

I'd make one for the struggling, tone-deaf, cruel-to-animals RFK Jr campaign: Alas I do have standards.