How Can Our Own Military Be Running Out of Ammo?

Update: Thanks again to Batocchio for sharing this article at Crooks&Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! And did Italy just beat the US in baseball this week???

As much as the ongoing deaths of civilians and soldiers horrify me as trump pushes the United States into more bombings and more war with more nations, another thing irking me is the revelation that our military is woefully unprepared for most of this, especially in terms of supplies. Susie Madrak over at Crooks & Liars has the details:

Inside the Pentagon, there was deepening concern Sunday that the Iran conflict could spiral out of control, said people familiar with the situation. “The mood here is intense and paranoid,” one person said.

Senior leaders are worried that the fighting will extend for weeks, further stressing limited U.S. air defense stockpiles.

“I don’t think people have fully absorbed yet, like, what that has done with stockpiles,” one source added, noting that it often takes two or three air defense interceptors to ensure that an incoming missile is stopped.

The president’s senior military adviser, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, warned the White House last week that munitions shortfalls and a lack of broad military support from other U.S. allies would raise the risk to any operation in Iran and to the U.S. personnel put in harm’s way.

Granted, the government under Biden has been shipping out a lot of reserve firepower to places like Ukraine, but our own military should have been stockpiling newer gear, ammo, defense systems, tanks, planes, helicopters, and other equipment to fill that void. 

I went digging for information about what's going on with our military manufacturing, and by the looks of it there's hundreds of billions of dollars getting pumped into all that (via Jake Kaufman at Defense and Munitions, a trade magazine):

The President’s FY ’26 National Defense Budget requests $1.01 trillion, a 13% increase from 2025. However, at the moment, Congress has passed $831.5 billion for the Department of War’s Defense's discretionary budget. Outstanding budget considerations going through Congress could bring that final number up toward $893 billion...

You would think $893 billion would pay for a lot of bullets...

The budget includes an additional $1.3 billion for industrial-based supply chain improvements and an additional $2.5 billion for missiles and munitions production expansion. The budget also includes significant new investments of $200 million for automation and artificial intelligence (AI). It breaks down to shipbuilding, munitions and defense supply chains, and air and missile defense alone accounting for 50% of the total enhancements...

So the money is there - you would think - for a lot of weapons production and resources getting shipped out to our armed forces. And yet, we're getting warning signs from our own Pentagon officials that things are amiss, that they're not getting all these weapons and material to fight the wars they're being asked to fight.

This is a serious question: Just where the hell is all our defense spending going to these corporations that are supposed to be manufacturing all this shit? What happened to all the resources that are supposed to be pouring into our munitions factories to pump out the missiles and bullets and body armor and helmets and battlefield supplies?

Where's the fucking money, Lockheed Martin???

Violating Emoluments Every Day as a trumpian Way of Life

I have on this blog since the rise of donald trump as a corrupt political force of doom documented how much of what trump was doing was out of greed, needy for money and happy to pander to foreign powers to get as much as he could.

Well, today a number of Democrats on the House Oversight Committee - in order to counter the Republicans' obsession over Hunter Biden's dick pics laptop - presented solid evidence that trump routinely violated the Constitution's Emoluments Clause by taking millions from foreign countries like China, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar (via Luke Broadwater at the New York Times (may be paywalled)):

Donald J. Trump’s businesses received at least $7.8 million from 20 foreign governments during his presidency, according to new documents released by House Democrats on Thursday that show how much he received from overseas transactions while he was in the White House, most of it from China.

The transactions, detailed in a 156-page report called “White House For Sale” that was produced by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee, offer concrete evidence that the former president engaged in the kind of conduct that House Republicans have labored, so far unsuccessfully, to prove that President Biden did as they work to build an impeachment case against him.

Using documents produced through a court fight, the report describes how foreign governments and their controlled entities, including a top U.S. adversary, interacted with Trump businesses while he was president. They paid millions to the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.; Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas; Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in New York; and Trump World Tower at 845 United Nations Plaza in New York.

The Constitution prohibits federal officeholders from accepting money, payments or gifts “of any kind whatever” from foreign governments and monarchs unless they obtain “the consent of the Congress” to do so. The report notes that Mr. Trump never went to Congress to seek consent...

It so happened that in 2017 when this all started that Congress was under Republican control, and the Republicans are too cowardly and too crooked themselves to raise a fuss over trump's open corruption. trump didn't even need to bother Congresscritters who were happy to look the other way.

Among the countries patronizing Mr. Trump’s properties, China made the largest total payment — $5.5 million — to his business interests, the report found. Those payments included millions of dollars from China’s Embassy in the United States, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and the Hainan Airlines Holding Company.

Saudi Arabia was the second-largest spender, shelling out more than $615,000 at the Trump World Tower and Trump International Hotel...

Half of this was stuff we already knew over years of reporting about how foreign lobbyists would check into trump's DC hotel pandering for favors. It's just now, we have a great idea how much money was actually involved.

The frustrating question to ask now - just as I'd been asking since 2017 - is WHEN THE FCK CAN WE CHARGE TRUMP FOR VIOLATING THE EMOLUMENTS CLAUSE?!

Part of me is worried that we may be too late: there is a thing about statute of limitations, that there's a ticking clock to when the legal system can't pursue the matter any further. Granted, trump was doing this all the way up to January 20, 2021: There is hope the clock hasn't run out.

But one of the things that kept coming up in the courts whenever the lawsuits were filed was who had standing to do so (this is from Laurel Wamsley for NPR back in 2019): 

A constitutional challenge to President Trump's continued ownership of his businesses has been ordered dismissed by a federal appeals court.

The case was brought by the attorneys general of Washington, D.C., and Maryland, arguing that Trump had violated the domestic and foreign emoluments clauses of the U.S. Constitution by accepting money from state and foreign governments via his Washington hotel and business empire.

A three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit ruled unanimously that the attorneys general did not have the standing to bring the lawsuit and instructed a lower court to dismiss the lawsuit.

Judge Paul Niemeyer wrote in the opinion: "The District and Maryland's interest in enforcing the Emoluments Clauses is so attenuated and abstract that their prosecution of this case readily provokes the question of whether this action against the President is an appropriate use of the courts, which were created to resolve real cases and controversies between the parties."

One thing that ruling didn't spell out was: If the state AGs didn't have standing, who did? I'm still not sure, other than it being Congress, except that another court ruling in 2020 said the Democrats in Congress didn't have standing either (via Dareh Gregorian at NBC News).

In the ruling, the three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia found the members of Congress did not have legal standing to bring the lawsuit against the president for violating the clause, which bars federal officials from collecting payments from foreign governments without the approval of Congress.

In their unsigned ruling, the judges cited Supreme Court precedent, noting the 215 lawmakers filing the lawsuit are not the majority of Congress, and that they might have had standing if they had done so as a majority. "[O]nly an institution can assert an institutional injury," the ruling says...

This feels like moving the goal posts on the part of the courts: "Oh, only Congress can charge trump with Emoluments violations! No wait, only a MAJORITY of Congress members can charge trump! No wait, only a MAJORITY of BOTH HOUSES of Congress members can charge trump! No wait, only..."

/headdesk

For all the back and forth, all the debates over all the other crimes trump's been charged with, the one thing we KNOW trump committed - using his businesses to curry favor from foreign powers - is the one thing nobody seems able to charge him on.

What the hell, judges. What the hell, Republicans. You're letting the corruption flow freely anymore.

The only way to hold trump - and his Republican cronies - accountable is to deny him another chance to sit in the White House and violate the Emoluments Clause any further. Stop voting Republican, Americans. Stop voting for the crooks.

Where's the FCKING MONEY, Lebow... Oh Wait, I Meant to Say WHERE'S THE FCKING MONEY, RICK "MEDICARE FRAUD" SCOTT?

Lest you think this blog is dedicated ONLY to the misdeeds and grifting of donald trump, Loser of the Popular Vote (Twice), it's been awhile since I ranted about THIS sonofabitch. So let's go.

A development this week - via Betty Cracker at Balloon Juice quoting from the Washington Post - is that deep into the 2022 midterms the Republican Senators running for election are running out of money to pay for things like ads, workers, and donuts:

Republican Senate hopefuls are getting crushed on airwaves across the country while their national campaign fund is pulling ads and running low on cash — leading some campaign advisers to ask where all the money went and to demand an audit of the committee’s finances, according to Republican strategists involved in the discussions…

“If they were a corporation, the CEO would be fired and investigated,” said a national Republican consultant working on Senate races. “The way this money has been burned, there needs to be an audit or investigation because we’re not gonna take the Senate now and this money has been squandered. It’s a rip-off.”

The NRSC’s chairman, Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, has already taken heat from fellow Republicans for running ads featuring him on camera and releasing his own policy agenda that became a Democratic punching bag — leading to jokes that “NRSC” stood for “National Rick Scott Committee” in a bid to fuel his own presumed presidential ambitions...

As Betty noted, "Who could have predicted that putting a crook like Rick Scott in charge of the National Republican Senatorial Committee would make all the money go poof?"

I love that anonymous quote "If they were a corporation, the CEO would be fired and investigated," because that underscores the reality that Rick "Medicare Fraud" Scott WAS the CEO of a health care corporation who WAS fired while the company was forced to pay a $1.7 billion fine. The amount of money Rick actually stole for himself - it may have been $300 million - is still in dispute.

While the reality of fund-raising in a post-Citizens United world is wide open for candidates to get their money, the candidates still require some base level of support from their own party to cover a lot of their expenses. Senate campaigning can be an issue due to travel logistics (some states are HUGE and lack affordable transit infrastructure), for example. You gotta be certain you're getting some revenue somewhere, and there's no guarantee the richest Republican backer in your state has enough liquid assets (pocket change) in the moment to hand over (most rich folk are actually wealthy on paper: the money is on the stock market, investments, properties, you know like a Monopoly board. Anyway I digress).

As a result, the party that brung ya - in this matter, the Republicans - has to be well-funded enough at the national level to cover all their priorities, which should be 33 contested Senate elections this cycle (remember, the Senate rotates by thirds for their six-year terms).

And yet, the money's not there.

The other thing mentioned in that WaPo article is how Scott has been spending a lot of the party's money on himself, filming his own campaign spots - even though he's not running this cycle, his so-called buddy Marco Rubio is instead - as though he is the only one who matters. Scott also pushed out - against the advice of other party leaders - a policy agenda for Republicans that was a mix of "Contract On America" calls to patriotism, vague promises of culture war victories, and slashing popular federal social programs like Social Security.

If Scott thinks any of this is going to help him run a Presidential primary in 2024, he's not only a crook he's a goddamned idiot.

There is nothing about Scott that would make him popular or well-liked enough outside of the state of Florida to gain any primary victories down the road. He's not even that popular in Florida. He only won here for pretty much the same reason other Florida Republicans won the last 20 years: the demographics and voter turnout barely favored them over a Democratic state organization that's barely organized.

I said this before about Jeb! Bush (remember him?): 

Jeb! is primarily in politics because of the family name: generations worth of Bushes from Prescott to Bush the Elder to older brother Dubya. Jeb won the governorship of Florida (on his second try) at a time the state was solidly Republican, and even though he tried to hide his last name everyone in state knew where he came from. In hindsight his campaigning showed little innovation or risky stances: It was mostly a thing of fait accompli...

I noted almost the same thing about Marco Rubio:

Okay, I dunno if  you paid attention to the 2010 election, but the thing is Rubio won because A) Crist jumped out of the Republican Party that no longer loved him to run as an Independent, B) Crist and the Democratic challenger Greene kind of split their vote making it easier for Rubio to win, and C) in that Tea Party driven election cycle even a dead dog running for the Republican ticket would have won. Don't go giving Rubio props for a skill he don't have.

These guys - it was also Scott Walker from Wisconsin, whom the Beltway media fell in love with being a Rust Belt Republican (but not much else), and Chris Christie from New Jersey, and so many others - get on the national stage thinking they're charismatic and winning, but they always overlook the reality that they only won at a state level where the dogmatic GOP voting base and questionable Dem turnout gave them the illusion of popularity. When they actually canvass the nation for Presidential hopes, they all (Stop Trying to Make Rubio Happen He's Not Going to Happen) flamed out spectacularly against the juggernaut that was the trump Campaign Grift.

2024 won't be any different. If Rick Scott thinks he can forge a platform to run on, the primary voters don't give a fuck about the issues, all they care about is spiting the Libs. If Rick Scott thinks he can impress the voters, he's got nothing to impress them with. The fact he physically looks like the bastard child of Voldemort and Nosferatu will not help him when he goes campaigning in Iowa and New Hampshire.

And if Rick Scott thinks he won't be the target of donald trump's bullying - considering how trump dominated the debate stages by ridiculing and mocking everyone else there until they whimpered and rolled over - just wait to see how trump brings up Scott's Medicare Fraud to humiliate him on that. If Scott thinks he can punch back by pointing out all of trump's criminal misdeeds, he is going to anger up the GOP voting base that's already in trump's corner.

I said this earlier: Nothing can stop trump being on the 2024 ticket. Even if he's already faced criminal trials and convicted to jail time, the Republican voters - all of them MAGA, all of them mad - will happily vote for an orange-jumpsuit and orange-colored Shitgibbon.

If Rick Scott thinks he can impress Republican voters by being a Medicare Fraud, he is still laughably an amateur compared to the fraud donald trump's committed for 50 years. And the GOP voters already chose trump.

The schadenfreude on this will cut deep, children.

Marking Out the trump Criminal Scorecard

So what exactly should we expect from Mueller's investigation into trump's ties with Russia and how that might have affected the 2016 elections?

Obstruction

This is the one where Mueller has trump dead to rights.

This one is so obvious that ongoing revelations of how trump is handling the FBI (then Mueller) investigation into his ties to Russia - he wants to keep firing everybody - that by now even amateur prosecutors - even sideline pundits! - can argue a strong case he broke this law.

To quote William Saletan over at Slate discussing what trump tried to do in June 2017 in trying (and failing) to fire Mueller:

Look back over the Russia investigation, and you’ll see this pattern: Trump constantly sought control. In January 2017, he told Comey that he expected loyalty. A month later, Trump tried to stop Attorney General Jeff Sessions from recusing himself. Later, Trump fired Comey and rebuked Sessions for failing to protect Trump from the investigation. In July, Trump drew a red line around his personal finances and signaled to Mueller that he had better not cross that line. And in August, Trump called up members of Congress to derail legislation that would impede him from firing Mueller.

...the Times report shows that when Trump tried to fire Mueller, he did so despite warnings that this might be criminal. By May 22, it was widely reported that Mueller was obliged to investigate—and was, in fact, investigating—whether Trump had obstructed justice by firing Comey. When Trump moved in June to oust Mueller, he was essentially ignoring those reports...

To impeach and remove a president for obstructing justice, you need to show that his intent in targeting investigators was corrupt. The easy way is to find tapes in which he talks explicitly about orchestrating false testimony. The harder way is to show that he has repeatedly lied about his motives and has maneuvered to control the investigation, despite warnings to back off. Trump’s assault on Mueller, coupled with his previous assaults on Comey, Sessions, Rosenstein, and McCabe, solidifies that case. He obstructed justice...

Or referring to Adam Serwer over at The Atlantic:

Obstruction of justice is a crime that depends on a person’s state of mind, and so is difficult for prosecutors to prove. The law on whether a sitting president can be prosecuted, as opposed to impeached and removed from office by Congress, is unsettled. But legal experts say that Trump’s pattern of behavior has made the case against him much stronger, because that pattern shows Trump repeatedly attempting to undercut the investigations into Russian interference and obstruction, and then in some cases misleading the public about it. That Trump was unsuccessful in firing Mueller is irrelevant—obstruction is a crime whether or not the attempt succeeds.

“At some point, a pattern of the same conduct indicates willfulness and intentionality,” said John Q. Barrett, a law professor at St. John’s University and former associate special counsel in the Iran-Contra affair.

This one is so blatant and obvious that when - not if - Mueller presents his Obstruction charges to the court that handles this case - I think it's the DC district - the judge will insist trump's lawyers work out a plea deal because they ain't winning this one. You gotta grade this one a 100 percent lock.

Money Laundering / Financial crimes

The starting point here is Paul Manafort and his circle of questionable financial practices (and foreign government ties) as part of the trump/Kushner financial "empire".

There's a reason Mueller brought onto his team people experienced in pursuing Racketeering and Money Laundering cases. With trump's history of bad business, bankruptcies, fraud trials, and other financial misdeeds, "Follow the Money" is the best way to find out what trump really did and which laws he broke along the way.

Given how Mueller's already brought charges on Manafort, there's a good likelihood any business deals involving trump or Kushner (Son-in-Law) will lead to similar charges on them. Until Mueller reveals exactly what numbers he has, and which laws apply to trump's fraudulent behaviors, none of us should really say for sure. If anything, Mueller better reveal trump's tax returns just so Americans can find out how much trump's been lying about his net worth... Give this one about 90 percent certainty.

Voter Fraud / Campaign Finance Fraud / Electoral Interference

This is the meat of the matter, and one that needs confirmation of what happened. These are the tidbits that have been floating on the edges of the story, clues here and rumors there, about how Russian hackers played a major role in the 2016 elections. With so many public statements from trump and his Republican allies that exposed those stories as more than rumors.

Where Obstruction and Money Laundering may be the easiest things Mueller can prove, these charges are equally hardest to prove.

Part of what Mueller has to prove is how Russia could have used any voter data information from trump's people (and Republican pollsters) to craft a psych-ops program of manipulating voter turnout via social media. This requires understanding how polling works, and how it crafts campaigns (and their third-party SuperPAC supporters). This is where they can lose jurors who might not comprehend how groupthink / "mob mentality" works (and where the law may be incapable of viewing as criminal).

There are reports of voter suppression in the key states - Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania - where results eked out in favor of trump. While the DHS retracted an early report and claimed in that linked report I added that there was no evidence of hacking, it does leave open the possibility that something happened that Homeland Security can't yet confirm. One possible way of confirming that hackers affected the electronic balloting (or vote counting) would be finding out what trump or his people knew about those hacking efforts, of which trump eagerly egged the Russians on.

There's also ongoing reports from the foreign intelligence agencies - wait, the Dutch have a spy agency??? - that have tracked the Russian hacking teams (Cozy Bear?? Who named these guys?) that our intel agencies believe were the major offenders (Cozy Bear has been identified being behind the DNC email hacks during the election).

If trump and/or the Russians have done any due diligence in clearing out/hiding their paper trail on this, Mueller won't have much to go on. And as I've mentioned, Mueller is likely going to focus on what he can prove - and win - in court. So get this around 40 percent likely.

However. If any one of these cyber attacks by Russian hackers can be proved to have affected our elections, that's a serious crime. If Mueller can prove trump or any of his people had knowledge before or after, there better be charges filed against them. If trump and his people had any active role in these attacks...

Treason

This is, in truth, the hardest argument to prove. Not so much because we can't tell if trump betrayed his nation - his eagerness to embrace and trust Russia and Putin over fellow Americans is obvious, not necessarily criminal - but because the Founders intentionally made Treason one of the hardest crimes to prove. (They would know, because they themselves were traitors to the British Crown: they knew what it was like to live on that razor's edge)

There's such a high bar of legality to cross - two or more witnesses, clear actions that go against the national security or well-being of the citizenry - that bringing this to trial requires some serious fucking shit Mueller and his team uncovered (maybe a verifiable handwritten letter from trump to Putin saying "thanks for rigging the election, here's me ending the sanctions and letting you pummel NATO into dust"). It's unlikely Mueller would find something that incriminating, and more likely that Mueller will focus on stuff that will stand up in court (and mollify Congressional Republicans into staying out of the way).

This is up here, because let's be honest a lot of trump-haters - myself included - take one look at trump's eagerness to hand everything to Putin on a silver platter and we recoil with the belief that trump IS betraying us to a foreign power.

This would be pretty to think so, but we should not get our hopes up. I'm not grading this as a possibility of happening, okay maybe 5 percent. Again, Mueller has got to find a planet-busting cobalt bomb of doom in the evidence pile for this to happen.

Mueller's next step is interviewing trump (or else trump's lawyers arguing against it). That's gotta be the last step in this investigation.

We should know soon what Mueller knows.

Gods help us.

The Clothes Have No Trump

So the emperor went in procession under the rich canopy, and every one in the streets said, 'How incomparable are the emperor's new clothes! what a train he has to his mantle! how it fits him!' No one would let it be perceived that he could see nothing, for that would have shown that he was not fit for his office, or was very stupid. No clothes of the emperor's had ever had such a success as these...

It started out as observations from those who cover campaigns, especially the fundraising and financial aspects. Donald Trump wasn't spending all that much on his own Presidential campaign.

There was a kind of paradox at play there. Trump entered the 2016 campaign last year bragging, bragging that he was the richest guy on the block worth billions of dollars. Yet he was campaigning almost entirely for free. You couldn't blame him, though. The media - Fox Not-News, the other cable channels, Daily Show, late-night stand-ups, social media - were all giving him free publicity. Even the attacks were all good for Donald, as unashamed and vulgar and he was, because even bad coverage was still getting his trademarked name - Trump (tm) - out there. Why spend millions on an ad campaign when your name and face was plastered over the news channels?

As a result, Trump grew in power and position among the Republican candidates. None dare knock him off the hilltop because the party feared he would flee and start his own campaign, one that would draw a third of their own voters away and ruin every electoral chance. None dare go after his rabid fanbase of angry voters, hoping to either win them over should Trump self-destruct or to avoid their wrath.

At no time did the Party do its homework, force the issue, argue against Trump's wealth. The Republican mindset about business and wealth was that you never question it, it's always good, everyone WANTS to be rich and powerful, and no one should ever question the rich and powerful. The party leaders never bothered to call up their friends in the world that Trump comes from, to find out if Trump was really telling the truth - as though Trump was never the world's biggest bullshit artist - about being a billionaire. They never worked up the nerve to insist on Trump helping out with the overall Party fundraising, to put money down for the other elections the GOP needed to win this cycle.

And on and on the con game went. Nobody wanted to delve too deep when they had the chance during the Primaries, and so Trump bluffed his way through a gauntlet of timid, foolish, unfit candidates within a political party trapped by their own self-serving fantasies. By the time anybody could do anything, he was the only one left.

'But he has nothing on!' a little child cried out at last.

'Just hear what that innocent says!' said the father; and one whispered to another what the child had said. 'There is a little child that says he has nothing on.'

It is the prerogative of children to state the obvious. The very young do not play the games of self-deception and deceit that adults play.

Critics kept warning - not just the general voters but the Republican Party itself - that Trump was a trap: every endeavor he'd ever gotten himself into went bankrupt or failed because he wasted money, indulged on himself, refused to do the heavy lifting, or merely sought to put his name on stuff before it collapsed into dust.

Trump wasn't going to be campaigning for the glory or health of the Republican Party: he was going to campaign for himself. And get as much money out of it he could before the deal went sour.

Thing about Trump's deal-making abilities: he's really not that savvy about smoothing out things that could profit both sides. He just goes in, argues for more and more slices of the pie, bullies those who don't cave quick enough, insults critics without care, and refuses to pay for services rendered by threatening to sue and forcing his workers to settle for less.

This is not a guy who has the temperament to talk to "other" rich people about donations and financial support. This is a guy who made three phone calls to deep-pocket backers of the GOP and gave up, having failed to get one donation that the RNC hoped to get out of the calls.

And today was a horrific day for the RNC: Filings with the FEC show that Trump really doesn't have that much money in hand, and he's been spending a lot of what he did have on his family, close business associates, his own businesses, and questionable vendors all of whom tie back into Trump.

And now the entire party is stuck. The Republicans can't get any of their deep-pocket billionaires to finance a campaign the wealthy can tell is a rip-off (because they know already Trump is a grifter). The Republicans can't dump Trump - not before the convention, not during the convention, not after - because Trump has enough of a following that when (not if) he departs he leaves behind a riot of angry voters refusing any order the party elites could issue.

There's a struggle now for the SuperPACs and outside funding to carry on direct (as allowed by Citizens United) support to the Senate and House campaigns: the mad hope that they can separate the Congressional tickets from a now-toxic Presidential one. That has problems too: You can't separate the party like that anymore. Nearly every voter votes the entire ticket (if they know to: far too many leave the down-ballot slots empty) anymore, that's how partisan our system has gotten. Voters will still vote for OR against a party entirely on how that party's leadership sells the whole group.

This is where the Republicans are right now: Trump's broke, nobody's rushing in to start paying for things, they've got a convention in less than a month where the corporate backers are jumping ship, and this is all getting public in the worst way.

It's a good thing the Republican Party is already dead. Otherwise I might worry this would be bad for the country. Thank God for schadenfreude.

'But he has nothing on!' said the whole people at length. And the emperor shivered, for it seemed to him that they were right; but he thought within himself, 'I must go through with the procession.' And so he carried himself still more proudly, and the chamberlains held on tighter than ever, and carried the train which did not exist at all. - Hans Christen Andersen