The Willful Blindness

Update: Steve in Manhattan, thank you again for sharing this blog to Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-up! And to those of you stopping by, can you do me a favor and Follow Me if you can? It's... I'd like to know people out there are supporting each other. P.S. As soon as I can get a selfie of it made, I'm going to quit Twitter with both middle fingers aimed at Elon while I head off to Bluesky Social! Look for me there.

This is the thing driving me insane at this moment, and will likely keep me insane for a thousand lifetimes.

Due to the Republicans' effort to overturn Roe with the Dobbs decision, there were ten states this election cycle that had pro-abortion rights amendments for their state constitutions. The results showed that most of those states' voters - even dominated by Far Right powers - sided in favor of abortion rights (via Geoff Mulvihill and Christine Fernando at AP News):

Voters in Missouri cleared the way to undo one of the nation’s most restrictive abortion bans in one of seven victories for abortion rights advocates, while Florida, Nebraska and South Dakota defeated similar constitutional amendments, leaving bans in place.

Abortion rights amendments also passed in Arizona, Colorado, Maryland and Montana. Nevada voters also approved an amendment, but they’ll need to pass it again it 2026 for it to take effect. Another that bans discrimination on the basis of “pregnancy outcomes” prevailed in New York.

The results include firsts for the abortion landscape, which underwent a seismic shift in 2022 when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, a ruling that ended a nationwide right to abortion and cleared the way for bans to take effect in most Republican-controlled states...

For me the sad news is that Florida's pro-abortion amendment didn't pass, but only due to a super-majority (60 percent) requirement for state amendments. It still received 57 percent support, showing a clear number of residents - including other Republicans! - wanted women to have that right to abortion based on medical and psychological needs. If only 3 percent more had any more understanding of how rape victims and women suffering miscarriage are now burdened - or worse, forced to die - because Amendment Four didn't pass.

But what's driving me insane is how many of those same voters - here in Florida, and in Missouri, and Montana, and several others like Kansas and Ohio that saw pro-abortion support in voter referenda - went and voted back into office the same Republican bastards who took away abortion rights in the first place.

It's like those voters refused to pay attention to who caused this problem with women's rights. They didn't blame donald trump for appointing three anti-abortion Justices to the Supreme Court that passed the Dobbs ruling. They didn't hold accountable the Republican Senators who approved those Justices, and in fact gave the GOP control of the incoming Senate term. And they certainly didn't vote out of office the state-level Republicans who are so partisan in their Far Right agenda that they will ignore, obstruct, or defy those state amendments however they can.

In Florida's case, the pro-abortion amendment's failure is likely going to encourage DeSantis - that bastard - and the legislators still controlling Tallahassee to pursue even harsher measures such as going after birth control. They are going to double down on punishing women for being women, I guarantee you this.

How self-defeating can you get? Did ANY of you pay attention?

It wasn't just on abortion that the majority of American voters showed this schizoid desire to support relatively liberal positions while voting into office extremist conservative SOBs.

trump and the Republican Party pretty much campaigned on demonizing immigrants, not just the illegals crossing the border but lawful migrants like Haitians. For the love of God, trump held a last-minute Hate Rally in Madison Square Garden where Puerto Ricans - official citizens since 1917! - were insulted to their faces. And yet more Latinos ended up voting for trump and Republicans, in spite of the reality that trump and the likes of Stephen Miller are openly planning to attack birthright citizenship and attempt "denaturalization" of those who already cleared legal hurdles to citizenship. It's as though those Latino voters - and American voters whose communities rely on migrant workers to survive - don't believe the leopards will be coming to eat their own faces.

Most of the voters' ire towards the Democrats revolved around the high inflation that hit the nation in the Post-COVID economy. Nevermind the fact President Biden passed an Inflation Reduction Act that generated jobs and worked - slowly, alas - to reduce the inflation rate. And those angry voters sided with trump who wants to replace our income tax system with high tariffs that will create WORSE inflation - we're talking Great Depression levels - than we've ever known.

And in spite of the relative success of the ACA (Obamacare) that aid most Americans with their health care costs, those Americans just gave power back to a Republican Party eager to repeal the whole thing (and this time with no clear Replace plan to offer). The same Republican Party that literally DID NOTHING this past term of Congress (the lowest level of legislative activity ever seen).

This isn't about me being some "elitist" liberal snob - I'm barely middle class, goddammit - wondering why my fellow Americans just won't vote the way I want them to. This is me genuinely wondering HOW my fellow Americans haven't paid attention to who (evangelical Far Right greedheads) - and what (racism and sexism) - are causing the problems and turmoil that do affect them as much as all of us.

This is why I'm screaming into the void anymore. The willful blindness of my neighbors and even some family members to the real problems out there and how the Republicans they just voted for are the cause of those problems looking to double down on that madness.

It's like nobody among those 73 million trump voters remembered the madness, the cruelty, the broken acts of poor governance that trump and his Far Right cohorts brought about the first time around between 2017 to 2020. It's like they refuse to remember how since 1988 every time a Republican-led government broke things - Bush the Elder's recession, Bush the Lesser's failed wars and financial meltdowns, trump's excessive tax cuts and refusal to handle the COVID emergency with ANY level of competency or compassion - their partisan extremism made it impossible to solve those crises and were disastrous AND deadly for our nation.

What the hell, America. Seriously. Did you pay ANY attention at ALL?

trump Off The Rails But Will The Beltway Even NOTICE?

Something weird has happened to this Darkest Timeline to where the only way to describe the craziness is simply copy/paste the AP News headline:

I felt it was necessary to include a photo of his hand gesture

I haven't dared check to see how the New York Times tried to "sanewash" - yes, that is a word now, and ironically it was aimed at liberals back in 2020 - trump's increasing public displays of dementia and idiocy.

Remember how angry I was at the mainstream media for how they went after Joe Biden's increasing signs of aging and mental fatigue? trump had been showing similar signs, with public displays of meandering thought, failure to keep names straight, open angry outbursts that were one N-Word drop away from becoming blatant five-alarm fires: And yet the major news outlets - the Times especially - were going out of their way to clean up trump's ramblings to make him appear functional and coherent (via Jon Allsop at Columbia Journalism Review):

As applied to Trump, the idea is that major mainstream news outlets are routinely taking his incoherent, highly abnormal rants—be they on social media or at in-person events—and selectively quoting from them to emphasize lines that, in isolation, might sound coherent or normal, thus giving a misleading impression of the whole for people who didn’t read or watch the entire thing. In her column, Molloy called out CNN for sanitizing a Trump screed about tomorrow’s presidential debate and the New York Times for omitting an allusion to a conspiracy theory about vaccines and autism from its summary of a Trump pledge to tap Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to help make health policy; since then, she and others have applied the same analysis to coverage of Trump’s incoherent remarks—particularly around the costs of childcare and a proposed Elon Musk–led “efficiency commission”—at an economic forum in New York. “This ‘sanewashing’ of Trump’s statements isn’t just poor journalism,” Molloy wrote. “It’s a form of misinformation that poses a threat to democracy.”

The threat being a dementia-riddled trump in the White House will act even worse than how trump behaved between 2017 to 2021, and rely even more on handlers and lackeys who will get free rein to commit their own atrocities with trump's rambling racist seal of approval.

But these were signs cropping even back then - Recall how trump tried to redraw literal maps to cover for his brain farts - and it should have been the mainstream media's duty to highlight trump's growing dementia and failures to prove himself capable of leadership.

The presidency is not a horse race: It's not about who wins or who loses. It's about who LEADS the nation, and that requires a level of coherence and competency to ensure a majority of Americans - and most of the free world - are safe and secure in their persons and livelihoods.

trump's inability to even pretend - allowing his mind to ramble off in directions it really shouldn't go - should be a massive warning sign to Americans - especially those of us who are voting - that he and his Republican allies can't be trusted with high office.

For the LOVE OF GOD, America. trump's brain is toast. Do NOT vote for him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Meryl Kornfield (@MerylKornfield) May 25, 2024

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

Bring all the popcorn, will ya?

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

Trump: Combine with us in a partnership.

Crowd: booooooo pic.twitter.com/NO46Gsxv5w

— Acyn (@Acyn) May 26, 2024

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

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

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

More popcorn.

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

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

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

— Acyn (@Acyn) May 26, 2024

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

The 2024 Republican Dash to Suck Up to MAGA Voters In Case trump Ends Up In Cell Block Six

There's a Republican presidential primary debate tonight and I don't wanna watch. NO, YOU CAN'T MAKE ME WATCH I DON'T WANNA. /pout 

I do, however, feel an obligation to rate and review the idiotic Republican pretenders to trump's dark throne that are placing themselves on the floor tonight for public humiliation. Only because I did this for the Democratic candidates back in 2019 who were running for 2020, and I ought to maintain a balance of sorts.

Much like I said back then, I am tired already of the constant horse-race mentality of mainstream media that has us overwhelmed with all this partisan posturing in public. We need laws in place to force the political parties - and the goddamned hacks who jump out two years early to start fundraising to fill their pockets with millions in campaign cash - to keep these election campaigns to the calendar year the election takes place (January 2nd, not a damn thing happens before then upon pain of permanent blockage from elected or nominated office). It's the only way to keep this goddamned pandering to a goddamned minimum.

Tonight's debate arguably isn't even going to have the biggest draw for the Far Right Republican voting base: trump decided to avoid attending, partly because he doesn't even need to show up to win (his polling lead is that huge) and partly because he's due in Fulton County Georgia tomorrow for his mug shot and arraignment on his FOURTH pending criminal indictments. This slogfest is going to be made up of the second-tier half-dead wannabes who think they have a shot at the nomination should trump actually be in a jail cell by the time the 2024 RNC Convention takes place. As Mark Leibovich at the Atlantic (paywalled) notes, this will be a tedious affair made up of 'listless vessels':

So why should the rest of us bother? Would anyone watch a Mike Tyson fight if Iron Mike wasn’t actually fighting? Or The Sopranos, if Tony skipped the show for a therapy session (with Tucker Carlson)?...

Tonight’s pageant of also-rans must go on too. The Republican National Committee has decreed this kickoff debate to be a landmark event, sanctifying August 23 as a key date in the 2024 cycle. (“Cycle” feels like an especially apt cliché here—events spinning hypnotically in circles.) Never mind that Trump upended the traditional presidential campaign cycle years ago, and that it is now dictated by whatever whim he decides to follow at a given moment. No matter how much thunder Trump steals from this proceeding—by skipping it, counterprogramming it with Tucker, and potentially following it up with a morning-after mug shot—everyone else is still required to treat this spectacle as some big and pivotal showdown.

As such, the media will swarm into town—because this is what we do and what we love (and because datelines impress). The host network, Fox News, will hype the clash—the “Melee in Milwaukee,” or some such. One-liners are being buffed, comebacks polished, and umbrage rehearsed. And no matter how effective certain gambits are deemed to be in practice, the absence of the GOP’s inescapable front-runner will only underscore how impotent the rest of the field has made themselves...

Even so, tonight’s contest will inevitably suffer from two basic structural flaws. The main point, theoretically, of a political debate is to try to persuade voters to support your campaign instead of the other candidates’. But that presupposes a constituency of voters who can be persuaded by hearing a set of facts, or are open to being educated. This, on the whole, is not the audience we have here. A large and determinative and still deeply committed portion of the GOP electorate—the MAGA sector—has been more or less a closed box for seven years now...

The other structural defect involves the likely self-neutering of tonight’s putative gladiators. Ideally, a debate features participants who actually want to win. That generally requires a willingness to attack their biggest adversary, whether he’s participating in the event or not, and especially when he holds a massive lead over them. Other than Kamikaze Christie, whom Republicans will almost certainly not nominate, most of the remaining “challengers” on the stage seem content to play for second place—running mate or 2028...

Seriously, none of these suckers will be trump's running mate: trump reportedly wants a woman Veep candidate to counter Kamala Harris, and most of these candidates already know working for trump will put them in the crosshairs with trump AND the MAGA base should they step out of line to protect their own asses like Pence did on January 6th. Haley, the only woman on-stage tonight, ought to be too smart to volunteer for that shit-job. I also doubt Pence will volunteer a second go-around as a whipping boy. Back to Leibovich:

Whether intentionally or not, DeSantis actually coined something memorable the other day when he chided Trump’s supporters for mindlessly following his every pronouncement—“listless vessels,” he called them. (He later said that he was referring to Trump’s endorsers in Congress, not voters.) This struck me as sneaky eloquence from DeSantis, or whoever wrote the line for him. But again, the phrase carried a strong whiff of projection as DeSantis prepared to lead the real parade of listless vessels to Milwaukee, content to bob along in the wake of the Titanic.

DeSantis has truly been a terrible campaigner, losing financial backers and stunning his few attendees with unsettling, almost-inhuman behavior at his rallies. He's performing much in the same way the flame-outs of 2016 performed, like Scott Walker and Jeb! Bush before him: Lacking any true charisma and unable to generate enthusiasm. The rest of the field has been equally unmemorable save for Christie - whose bullying always delights the punditry - and newbie businessman Vivek Ramaswamy - whose conspiracy-addled gaslighting has made him into this year's Mini-trump.

In the meantime, here's a scorecard of the likely Republican assholes candidates (the highest office currently known, and the state they represent) vying for their party base's vote when the state-by-state primaries do take place. Doing this in alphabetical order because HAHA trump you're in last.

Doug Burgum: Governor, North Dakota

Role as: The Guy Who Bribed Republican Voters Into Donating To His Campaign With Gift Cards So He Could Qualify For This Debate (no, seriously).

Funny thing is, Burgum has to call in sick with a "leg injury" during a basketball pick-up game (???) and may not attend his own political funeral, uh this debate. Otherwise, he'd have to spend most of the evening explaining where North Dakota even IS on the map. Update: Burgum decided to show up after all, so he's not THAT cowardly.

Burgum Can Win the Party Nomination If: trump is sitting in a jail cell convicted on any number of charges by June 2024 and the Party holds an emergency vote at the Convention.

Burgum Can Win It All If: The gift cards he promised to voters in the general election were all $5000.00 per person Actually, that would be illegal. And it's unlikely he'll ever get a general voting population defending the conservative agenda he's pushed at the state level and will threaten to inflict on America.

Chris Christie: Governor, New Jersey

Role as: The Guy Who Claims He Likes Bruce Springsteen (but doesn't seem to understand the lyrics railing against HIM and his fellow greed-heads).

Christie is the one most prepped and pumped for the debate stage if only because it gives him the chance to play out his role as Bully, one of the few things he does well. The last time he primaried in 2016, he was the one who nuked Marco Rubio from orbit and destroyed the Beltway Media's fair-haired alternative to trump. If the audience is tuning in tonight, it's to see how quickly Christie gives the likes of DeSantis an atomic wedgie. 

Christie Can Win the Party Nomination If: trump is sitting in a jail cell convicted on any number of charges by June 2024 and the Party holds an emergency vote at the Convention.

Christie Can Win It All If: He can successfully recall Bruce's lyrics to "The Ghost of Tom Joad" and tearfully recant his un-Boss-like ways. Otherwise, the general voting population is going to reject his bully tactics for the more congenial Biden.

Ron DeSantis: Governor, Florida

Role as: Anti-Woke Thin-Skinned Racist Sexist Disney Villain

DeSantis is the candidate who has done the most damage to his own state in pursuit of MAGA voter support, and the candidate who's done the least to actually get any MAGA voters to flip to him. His ROI is terrible. Any early lead he's had at the beginning of this horse race has dwindled to where a virtual noob like Ramaswamy is neck-and-neck. And Christie's going to be there to pounce and make DeSantis grind his teeth like never before.

DeSantis Can Win the Party Nomination If: trump is sitting in a jail cell convicted on any number of charges by June 2024 and the Party holds an emergency vote at the Convention.

DeSantis Can Win It All If: Gods help us if he does. DeSantis' behavior governing Florida - the mismanagement masquerading as leadership, the self-destructive micromanaging, the short-sighted mistakes - will all be transferred to the federal level where his governing style of harassing critics and destroying institutions to give his cronies power and leverage will be on a Jacksonian scale. While any of the Republican candidates will be ideological nightmares if they get into the White House, DeSantis is genuinely terrifying in that he will replicate trump's efforts to seize and maintain power no matter what, with a better idea of how to actually succeed at it.

Nikki Haley: Governor, South Carolina

Role as: The Pollyanna Trying to Campaign as Reagan But Messaging Like Ann Coulter

Haley is jumping into this campaign arguably to present a figure who is known for a certain level of competence and savvy, but she's still saddled with a GOP platform that will force her to support incompetence, fearmongering, and tax cut greed. She's also campaigning to a political party that still can't handle any woman in a legitimate leadership role, which is going to force her into some uncomfortable public stances if she can make it to the general election stage.

Haley Can Win the Party Nomination If: trump is sitting in a jail cell convicted on any number of charges by June 2024 and the Party holds an emergency vote at the Convention.

Haley Can Win It All If: She can truly motivate a dying, out-of-power moderate base that she could appeal to. Problem is, there are no true moderates left in the modern Republican Party, and she's not going to rally enough of them to a primary race that's been alienating them since 2008.

Ada Hutchinson: Governor, Arkansas

Role as: The Guy From Arkansas Who's Not as Creepy As Mike Huckabee

Hutchinson is someone who barely made the cut for tonight's debate, which tells you how low in the rankings he's already playing at. While he can appeal to those who like experience in their presidential candidates, Hutchinson doesn't have as great a national profile as the others and will suffer as a result. He's not going to offer anything any different from what Christie, DeSantis, Haley, Burgum, or Scott are going to offer.

Hutchinson Can Win the Party Nomination If: trump is sitting in a jail cell convicted on any number of charges by June 2024 and the Party holds an emergency vote at the Convention.

Hutchinson Can Win It All If: Somewhere between winning the GOP primary (or the emergency RNC vote) and the November general election he can somehow gaslight his way past the anti-abortion, racism, tax-cut deregulatory bullsh-t he's been selling as both governor and primary candidate.

Robert Kennedy Jr: Democratic Asshole, New York

Role as: Conspiracy-driven Anti-Vax Trojan Horse sent by Republicans to undermine Biden's incumbency run

I know Kennedy's running as a Democrat and he's not on tonight's debate list, but if you're getting most of your campaign funding from REPUBLICAN backers then goddamn you: You're running as a Republican. Go to hell, Junior.

Mike Pence: Vice President, Indiana

Role as: The Scapegoat who can't admit he got suckered and victimized by trump 

Pence is either genuinely clueless that most of the Republican voting base views him as a traitor for failing to cheat the Electoral count for trump back on January 6th, or he's running to validate his own self-worth convinced he's the true future of the Republican party once trump is behind bars. Either way, Pence has no true charisma that appeals at a national level: Another Scott Walker leading himself to primary humiliation.

Pence Can Win the Party Nomination If: trump is sitting in a jail cell convicted on any number of charges by June 2024 and the Party holds an emergency vote at the Convention. Seriously, if this emergency vote happens, Pence is one of the few party leaders with any backroom power to get the party to risk it all on him (if the leadership convince themselves the betrayed MAGA base will change their minds).

Pence Can Win It All If: This is one of the most unlikely things even if Pence navigates his way to the top of the GOP ticket. As mentioned before, Pence is a laughing stock to the voting public at large, and either has to carry the baggage of being associated with trump's ill-run presidency or coping with an angry MAGA voting base that will refuse to turn up next November.

Vivak Ramaswamy: Businessman, Ohio

Role as: The Next CEO Galtian Asshole Who Thinks He Can Run Government Like a Business

Ramaswamy is coming from a proud Republican tradition of at least one financial figure - Forbes, Cain, Foriana, in some respects Dubya and Mitt - jumping into the primary race thinking he's reinvented the wheel when it comes to governance. Instead, he's shilling the same deregulatory tax-cutting damage as before campaigning on a top-down Unitary Executive agenda to turn the White House into a dictatorship (gee, we've heard that before), while making a hard case of going "anti-woke" in ways that make DeSantis look like he's mumbling.  

Ramaswamy Can Win the Party Nomination If: trump is sitting in a jail cell convicted on any number of charges by June 2024 and the Party holds an emergency vote at the Convention. Or if he can sway the MAGA base with his 9/11 Truther, anti-abortion, racist, sexist, fearmongering messaging to back him before the party leaders can choose among their own.

Ramaswamy Can Win It All If: he can make voters look past the reality he's a first-generation son of immigrants bashing the very system of multicultural that allowed him to become a businessman and presidential candidate in the first place. The scary thing is that his rise in the polls this cycle mimics the similar rise that trump enjoyed in the 2016 primaries: Meaning if trump is truly eliminated from the ballot due to a slight case of JAIL, Vivak could replace him among MAGA voters willing to look past his ethnicity and embrace his conspiracy-driven gaslighting.

Tim Scott: Senator, South Carolina

Role as: The Anti-Obama Beard

Arguably one of the few candidates on the stage tonight who actually HAS a political career of some success (and none of the baggage that Christie has), Scott is most often the GOP figurehead that the racists in their ranks point to and say "Look, we vote for him, clearly we're not racist!" even though Scott parrots many of the same anti-affirmative action talking points and supports many of the same social conservative issues that most voting Blacks don't.

Scott Can Win the Party Nomination If: trump is sitting in a jail cell convicted on any number of charges by June 2024 and the Party holds an emergency vote at the Convention. If Pence doesn't appeal to the backroom party bosses looking to replace a convicted trump, Scott is the next most likely who will.

Scott Can Win It All If: Scott can actually appeal to general voters in spite of his conservative bona fides. In my humble but ill-informed opinion, he might actually be the one candidate who could give Biden some trouble in the general election on matters of race relations. Scott will have problems appealing to voters if abortion is the major topic, and he is going to get stuck defending a GOP platform that will be racist towards immigrants and sexist towards women.

Donald Trump: Indicted Loser of the Popular Vote (Twice), Ugh do I HAVE to List Him as Florida

Role as: The Eternal Shitgibbon. If you prefer, The Guy On Four (AND COUNTING) Criminal Trials Involving His Misconduct in Both Business And the Presidency

Trump Can Win the Party Nomination If: Gods help us, he's already polling in the lead, and there is still solid evidence that Republicans will vote for a convicted trump. However, if trump is sitting in a jail cell convicted on any number of charges by June 2024, the Party has every reason to hold an emergency vote to field a replacement choice.

Trump Can Win It All If: he cheats. Again. If he can get the Russians to meddle like he did in 2016, if he can get the FBI to spring another October Surprise like Comey did on Hillary weeks before the general election, if he can get Red state legislatures in states voting for Biden to nullify the Electoral count like he wanted to in 2020, if he can get a Republican-controlled branch of Congress to refuse a Biden Electoral win... Then it's chaos. And trump is ALL ABOUT THE GODDAMN CHAOS.

Among these choices, I dare not make a recommendation. My track record predicting these things have been horrendous: Backing Edwards in 2008 (before knowing his adultery), Backing Harris (and then Warren) over Biden in 2020), Thinking Romney had the nomination in 2008 (instead of McCain, whom I did favor but didn't think would win primaries), Thinking Walker had it sewn up in 2016 (he didn't even make it through the 2015 debates).

If I can say anything, it's that above all DO NOT VOTE trump. He's not worth it. He's going to get convicted one way or another and it will - fairly - drag the rest of the Republican ticket down with him. In general, I've been screaming to NOT VOTE REPUBLICAN at all for decades now, but you've seen how little influence I've had there (grrr).

In the meantime, don't watch any of the debates. They're boring and dull and the highlight reel on YouTube easier to digest. Gnight, krewe.

P.S. Cmon Tampa Bay Rays reclaim the AL East lead into the postseason!!!

Russia Rushing Toward Collapse (w/ Update)

Holy shit things are moving fast. 

Last night, the head of the mercenary Wagner group turned against the Russian military they were working with in Ukraine, seizing a key command HQ and twisting the knife into Putin's corrupt rule. The early hours of the turning created a lot of chaos, as Adam L Silverman the Intel expert at Balloon Juice tried to make sense of the early reports, conflicting stories, possible staged grievances, and other picture postcards:

As  I write this Prigozhin, supposedly leading Wagner, has announced that he’s moving on Moscow to deal with Minister of Defense Shoigu and the senior military staff/leadership who have failed Russia, the Russian people, and Vladimir Putin with both how they’ve prosecuted the reinvasion of Ukraine and how they’ve misled Putin. Not a coup, just a long overdue violent annual performance eval. In response the Fortress Plan – the security crisis action plan for municipal defense – has been activated for Rostov on Don and for Moscow. And the FSB, the Russian successor to the Soviet KGB, has either opened a criminal case or actually charged Prigozhin for violating the laws regarding not disparaging the military during the Special Military Operation and/or calling for armed rebellion. I’ve also seen reports that the St. Petersburg Police and/or Russian Special Forces have raided Wagner’s St. Petersburg offices.

Silverman adds among the Twitter feeds he's relying on for commentary that:

Other than videos and some audio released on social media THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE THAT THE RUSSIAN MOD BOMBARDED A WAGNER REAR BASE OR THAT WAGNER, LED BY PRIGOZHIN IS MOVING OUT OF THE DONBAS, THROUGH RUSSIA, AND TOWARDS MOSCOW!!!!!

(This is presented in the BOLD CAPS LOCK mode that he's working with)

In Silverman's opinion, if Prigozhin was triggered by something it wasn't any kind of attack. Personally, my money is on the likelihood that the Russian military wanted to take direct control of the Wagner units to counter-attack Ukraine's counter-attack currently underway, and Prigozhin didn't want to deal with their sorry asses anymore (Update: I was kind of right. Prigozhin was refusing to sign contracts with the Ministry of Defense that would have taken away his control over his private army).

Silverman then spools together a Twitter thread by Tatiana Stanovaya, Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, which I'll copy here:

Here are a few insights into the situation surrounding Prigozhin:

1️⃣ For a long time, Prigozhin has been out of direct contact with Putin, yet he’s believed he was acting in Putin’s interests “by default”. His significant contributions in the war enhanced his sense of exclusivity and privilege.

2️⃣ The President’s administration maintained the stance that unless explicitly directed, it wasn’t feasible to openly confront Prigozhin, despite a strong inclination to do so. In fact, they had even convinced themselves of his usefulness.

3️⃣ As I’ve previously stated, the atrocities of war can drive people to the brink of sanity. Even the most loyal players, who are dependent on the Kremlin (which doesn’t imply complete manageability), can lose their sense of proportion. This is especially true when there appears to be no response to the continual attempts to escalate the situation.

4️⃣ Now that the state has actively engaged, there’s no turning back. The termination of Prigozhin and Wagner is imminent. The only possibility now is absolute obliteration, with the degree of resistance from the Wagner group being the only variable. Surovikin was dispatched to convince them to surrender. Confrontation seems totally futile.

5️⃣ The impending end of Wagner has satisfied many in power. He had become excessively anti-state, which is intolerable during a war. However, a significant number of those outside of power now lament the loss of a character like Prigozhin, who had begun to appeal due to his daring and audacity. Consequently, political repercussions are expected.

A crucial point to note is that many within the elite will now personally fault Putin for letting the situation escalate to such extremes and for his lack of a timely, adequate response when to many it was evident that Prigozhin was pushing the limits of Kremlin’s tolerance. Therefore, this entire saga is also an undercut to Putin’s standing...

Even if Putin puts down Prigozhin's betrayal/coup attempt, this weakens Putin's own standing. He'll also be eliminating one of the few effective fighting forces he has in Ukraine, as the Wagner mercs will either flee or refuse to fight under the command of Russian generals they know are corrupt and inept.

The flip-side of that - as I was waking up to this morning as Prigozhin's attempt is still ongoing - is if Wagner succeeds in overthrowing the Russian military command or even Putin himself, utter chaos reigns. A demoralized army - already broken by a meat-grinder war in Ukraine - will have no idea who's truly in charge. Unless Prigozhin is primed and able to assume full command - and show any tactical and strategical skill needed to maneuver a large-scale military offensive - he's simply going to take over a bad job and make it worse for Russia.

The political implications of this coup are enormous. As long as Putin is in charge of anything, Prigozhin won't be able to dictate terms to the government (the "legislature" and "courts" however legitimate they are). There's also the reality of the oligarchs allied to Putin, and determining which way they'll jump (which will always be to favor their own pockets).

When I woke this morning, this was the current reporting from the international newswire Reuters: TANKS - okay, maybe just one so far - ARE ROLLING ONTO MOSCOW.

ROSTOV-ON-DON/VORONEZH, Russia, June 24 (Reuters) - Russian military helicopters opened fire on Saturday afternoon on a convoy of rebel mercenaries already more than half way towards Moscow in a lightning advance after seizing a southern city overnight.

President Vladimir Putin vowed to crush an armed mutiny he compared to Russia's Civil War a century ago.

Fighters from Yevgeny Prigozhin's private Wagner militia were in control of Rostov-on-Don, a city of more than a million people close to the border with Ukraine, and were rapidly advancing northwards through western Russia...

Prigozhin, whose private army fought the bloodiest battles in Ukraine even as he feuded for months with the top brass, said he had captured the headquarters of Russia's Southern Military District in Rostov after leading his forces into Russia from Ukraine.

In Rostov, which serves as the main rear logistical hub for Russia's entire invasion force, residents milled about, filming on mobile phones, as Wagner fighters in armoured vehicles and battle tanks took up positions.

One tank was wedged between stucco buildings with posters advertising the circus. Another had "Siberia" daubed in red paint across the front, a clear statement of intent to sweep across the breadth of Russia.

In Moscow, there was an increased security presence on the streets. Red Square was blocked off by metal barriers.

"Excessive ambitions and vested interests have led to treason," Putin said in a televised address, comparing the insurrection at a time of war abroad to Russia's revolution and civil war unleashed during World War One.

"All those who deliberately stepped on the path of betrayal, who prepared an armed insurrection, who took the path of blackmail and terrorist methods, will suffer inevitable punishment, will answer both to the law and to our people."

Putin's saying this while on Twitter - instant news whether you want it or not - the observers are chortling "Moscow in 3" (either hours or days, they haven't agreed on which) as an ironic echo to Putin's 2022 decree of taking Kyiv in 3 days.

Kiev in 3 days has become Moscow in 3 days.

— Darth Putin (@DarthPutinKGB) June 24, 2023

This is all still chaos. Meanwhile in Ukraine, the fighting hasn't stopped. Russian troops are still holding their defensive positions in the Donbas and southeastern half of that country. Unless Putin decides he needs his troops back in Russia to stay in power, or if Prigozhin takes control and orders them back to consolidate himself, this war isn't going to be over anytime soon.

But if Putin does indeed fall from power, this seriously changes everything. He has tied himself into so many elements of Russia - the political corruption and the economic corruption and the religious corruption and the cultural corruption - that there is no idea what could rise up to fill that void.

Putin's dream of empire is still a nightmare for the rest of us, even as it crashes down around him.

Update: Not more than six hours after I blogged this, there's a tentative peace deal between Putin and Prigozhin. Via Reuters:

Heavily armed Russian mercenaries who advanced most of the way to Moscow began turning back on Saturday, de-escalating a major challenge to President Vladimir Putin's grip on power, in a move their leader said would avoid bloodshed.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, a former Putin ally and founder of the Wagner army, said his men reached within 125 miles (200 km) of the capital. Earlier, Moscow deployed soldiers in preparation for their arrival and told residents to avoid going out.

The Wagner fighters captured the city of Rostov hundreds of miles to the south before racing in convoy through the country, transporting tanks and armoured trucks and smashing through barricades set up to stop them, video showed...

The office of Alexander Lukashenko said the decision to halt further movement of Wagner fighters was brokered by the Belarusian president, with Putin's approval, in return for guarantees for their safety.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Prigozhin himself will move to Belarus under the deal. Peskov said Lukashenko had offered to mediate because he had known the mercenary leader personally for around 20 years...

To have Putin's puppet regime in Belarus broker this deal is merely one part of the overall humiliation brought to Putin's table. 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.

Despite all the assurances between the two sides ("We ARE struggling together!"), how can there be any trust now between Prigozhin and Putin? Prigo's gonna have to watch every drink handed to him and sleep with one eye open and avoid tall buildings for however long Putin's on this Earth. Putin is going to have to deal with the consequences of a failing military that may still mutiny themselves if he cracks down too harshly on them for this failure, and worry that Prigozhin's popularity with a Russian population that worships basic competence can still undermine him.

It should be noted that making any kind of deal like this is a mug's game. A deal with a Russian is no deal at all. The question is, which Russian is going to break it first?

DeSantis' War On the Mouse Escalates to Desperation

Ron DeSantis simply cannot give up his war against The Mouse.

Even as Ft. Lauderdale struggles to recover from this weekend's flooding, DeSantis is laser-focused on bullying Disney World Orlando through threats and demands to break that corporation for their pro-Gay policies.

DeSantis is throwing out there every suggestion he can think of, from getting the state legislature to undo the Law Against Perpetuities that Disney used to block DeSantis' incoming hand-picked board of interlopers to proposing the construction of unwanted projects and buildings in the Reedy Creek district to worsen the tourism value of Disney's parks. Dylan Abad at WFLA has the story:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis teased the possibility of erecting a new state prison near Walt Disney World’s Orlando resort while speaking at an event in the park’s district on Monday.

While the press conference centered around DeSantis’ ongoing feud with the company, the governor took a moment to acknowledge the board’s control over district-owned land...

“People said maybe create a state park, maybe try to do more amusement parks,” DeSantis said with a grin. “Someone even said, ‘Maybe you need another state prison.’ Who knows? The possibilities are endless and that is now going to be analyzed to see what makes the most sense.”

The idea of placing a state prison inside the vast district stems from the political expectations that local communities do not WANT a state prison within running distance of their neighborhoods. The threat of prisoners escaping tends to get an HOA screaming NIMBY, and DeSantis wants to alienate Disney World from the cities - from Polk, Osceola, Lake, and Orange (maybe Seminole) Counties - within that range. DeSantis thinks he can get the locals to blame Disney for the new prison, but everyone can see the idiot proposing this is himself.

Building other amusement parks within the Lake Buena Vista area could go against the land-use agreements for Disney itself, and that's arguably a fight that the courts will side with the corporation vs. the state in every regard (Capitalism cannot be denied).

Thrown into this is DeSantis' open bullying, where he announced his effort to get the state legislature to re-write the safety inspection laws so that ONLY Disney parks undergo special inspections, while the similarly sized theme parks in the area - Universal Orlando, Sea World, and LegoLand - retain the exceptions that large-scale parks have been getting. This kind of intentional focus on just ONE company while letting other similar businesses in the same area avoid it is so obvious a punishment that Disney's lawyers ought to overturn it in federal courts as an unfair restriction on business (Again, Capitalism cannot be denied).

DeSantis keeps digging this foxhole, thinking he can win this war against a corporation that's already shown to have the legal smarts and firepower to punch back in ways to make DeSantis bleed on-camera even more.

I dunno who's more delusional about winning an unwinnable war: Putin or DeSantis.

And having said all that, if Princess Lilibet of Sussex does use her powers under the Laws Against Perpetuity to decree it, we can well see Disney World building their own state prison to counter DeSantis' corrupt version, only this state prison will be the most enjoyable, fantastic prison in the World (the prison with the most water slides wins)!

THE TOP TEN RIDES GETTING BUILT IN DISNEY'S SING SING PARK:

10. The Bitcoin Pirates of Silicon Valley

9. Elsa's Frozen Lesbian Blanket Party

8. It's a Small Cell Block After All

7. TRON's Lightcycle Breakout

6. The Black Hole (aka Solitary)

5. Hall of Alcatraz Escapees

4. Haunted Electric Chair

3. Mickey's House of Pain

2. That Spinning Teacups Ride (EVERY park should have a teacups ride)

And the NUMBER ONE RIDE OF DISNEY'S SING SING PARK:

1. DeSantis' Wild Primary Ride (Closed for Repairs)

The Mouse Knows How to Play (w/ Updates)

Well, there's actually been a lot going on in the war between Bully DeSantis and The House of Mouse (aka Disney Orlando) since last I wrote about DeSantis going after Disney for their pro-gay stances. 

After DeSantis' November re-election - and the establishment of super-majorities in both houses of the state legislature - DeSantis carved out a more humiliating law that took complete power of the Reedy Creek Improvement District away from Disney's corporate kingdom, and planned to stack the incoming board with lackeys and anti-gay wingnuts that would look for any excuse to dump their Culture War bullshit on everything Disney runs (even dictate company policy - straight-up censorship - outside of Florida!).

Part of me remained a little shocked by what DeSantis was attempting. I've grown up - my life since my family moved to Florida in 1977 - with the belief that you do not fuck with Disney. They go after day care centers, for God's sake. And yet it seemed to me that Disney - this massive, multi-billion dollar entertainment entity, this behemoth that has enough money it can buy nations if it had to - was rolling over and playing dead to let this godless tiny bully have his way with them. I was wondering when the fabled army of Mickey Mouse lawyers would show up to sue DeSantis and the Florida GOP back to the stone age.

Well, it turns out that army of lawyers already scorched the Earth before DeSantis' lackeys could grab the keys to the Magic Kingdom. Skyler Swisher at the Orlando Sentinel has more:

Gov. Ron DeSantis’ handpicked board overseeing Disney World’s government services is gearing up for a potential legal battle over a 30-year development agreement they say effectively renders them powerless to manage the entertainment giant’s future growth in Central Florida.

Ahead of an expected state takeover, the Walt Disney Co. quietly pushed through the pact and restrictive covenants that would tie the hands of future board members for decades, according to a legal presentation by the district’s lawyers on Wednesday...

I was hoping more along the lines of giant dragons melting everything DeSantis owned into a scrap of metal, but this might work.

The previous board, which was known as the Reedy Creek Improvement District and controlled by Disney, approved the agreement on Feb. 8, the day before the Florida House voted to put the governor in charge.

Board members held a public meeting that day but spent little time discussing the document before unanimously approving it in a brief meeting.

DeSantis replaced those Disney-allied board members with five Republicans on Feb. 27, who discovered the binding agreement the previous board approved.

DeSantis and Disney clashed over the corporation’s opposition to what critics call the “don’t say gay” law, which limits classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in public schools...

Among other things, a “declaration of restrictive covenants” spells out that the district is barred from using the Disney name without the corporation’s approval or “fanciful characters such as Mickey Mouse.”

That declaration is valid until “21 years after the death of the last survivor of the descendants of King Charles III, king of England,” according to the document.

A development agreement allows Disney to build projects at the highest density and the right to sell or assign those development rights to other district landowners without the board having any say, according to the presentation by the district’s new special legal counsel...

So what happens here is that DeSantis and his cronies can't interfere with Corporate Disney's power to sell and develop the land in the special district and... and... wait a minute. Back up to that earlier bit.

Valid until “21 years after the death of the last survivor of the descendants of King Charles III, king of England”???

It's a Rule Against Perpetuities, an ancient English Common Law practice that applies to modern law - even in the United States - in obscure but powerful ways. Not all states observe it... but Florida DOES.

Did Disney just tie their Magical Kingdom to the fates of the British Royals of the United Kingdom?!

(Taps one of Charles' son on the shoulder) "Yer a Disney Prince, Harry!" (yes, Disney is stealing this from a Warner Bros. franchise... which has a theme park at Universal just up I-4.)

This is where it gets tricky. Are the rules only counting the current descendants of Charlie, which would mean the grandkids under William and Harry both? Or does this extend to future generations, which technically implies the rules are upheld until the Windsor bloodline is officially done (which could take centuries)? (Update: see below)

Either way, the Disney lawyers have set up a situation where DeSantis can't demean or devalue or bully or break the House of Mouse in any way. Even the legal battles over this arrangement could take years to resolve - the delaying tactics alone could take five to ten years to hurdle past - and those are years DeSantis can't afford to slip away.

DeSantis is campaigning now - technically off-the-radar, because Florida laws require him to resign from his current office if he's running for another - for the Presidency, and he's doing it by pandering to the worst parts of Culture War hysteria the Far Right enjoys. Hammering at an "evil pro-gay company" like Disney would have been cheap easy points to score. But if he can't impose his will on Disney's corporate policies - if he and his lackeys can't make Disney change their tune about gay rights, if they can't force Disney to dispose of gay/trans characters on their cartoon shows and streaming service, if they can't compel Disney to shill Christianist bullshit as they hoped to - then he's got nothing to offer the GOP voting base this 2024.

This may not stop DeSantis and his allies in Tallahassee. They can arguably come up with more laws to hammer at Disney's corporate rights in order to humiliate them further. But all that does is expose the hypocrisy of the modern Republican ideology. You'd think a pro-business political party wouldn't do this, but the GOP is no longer pro-business. They're an authoritarian religious cult, obsessing over absolute loyalty to their dogma and themselves, and they will undercut businesses - even ones as profitable and powerful as Disney - as well as people to get their way.

I do hope the Disney lawyers unleash that broom army to drown DeSantis' team of lawyers. Wash 'em all away, Mickey.

Quick update: If the deal holds, if Disney is able to stave off DeSantis' upcoming legal fight, the youngest "current living descendant" of King Charles III is Princess Lilibet of Sussex, Harry and Meghan's daughter born 2021. 

Current British life expectancy is 80 years. Given she will have access to the best doctors and care, we could expect Lilibet to live at least 85 years, after which those 21 extra years added on would mean 106 years before DeSantis' hand-picked board of Culture War meddlers can even order office supplies on the Reedy Creek dime. And by then, the 2024 primaries will be LONG over.

BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Plus, the Magic Kingdom FINALLY has a REAL Disney princess to celebrate. It's all yours, Lilibeth Diana of House Windsor. Start working on your singing skills for the inevitable three-musical-picture deal with the studio.

Update 3/30/23: There's a detailed report with the Disney Tourist Blog that keeps up with the parks. Even the blogger Tom Bricker was caught off-guard by the company's sleight-of-hand here:

In terms of commentary, I don’t really know what to say. Throughout the Reedy Creek battle, every effort to predict specific outcomes based on legal analysis has proven futile. In our most recent article that touched upon the RCID takeover, I conceded that this was not how I expected the saga to play out.

With that said, there’s one way I’ve been right on the money all along: that this is not about the law, passing meaningful legislation, or the tough and thankless work of local governance. It’s about political theater; scoring a “win” in today’s era of ‘politics as team sports’ and the ongoing culture wars. The goal isn’t to govern; it’s to grab headlines and dominate the news cycle.

Serious analysis isn’t appropriate here because these aren’t serious people with sincere motivations. That’s likely why Disney opted against fighting this previously and instead put out deferential and conciliatory statements. The company’s calculus was that it’s not as easy to “fight” a one-sided culture war. The satisfaction (my note: for DeSantis and his Culture Warriors) was in the struggle...

This was never about reform. This was about control. And Disney is doing everything they can to deny DeSantis any control.

Just a Few Things To Note this February 2023

Still working on the -Isms book at the moment, but I needed to take care of a few items.

The big story - almost literally - over the past week or two has been the Chinese spy balloons flying over North American airspace. The developments getting out are that 1) this has apparently been going on for years, 2) our NORAD alert system has only recently been able to target these balloons more effectively, and 3) our habit of calling these balloons "unidentified" are mixing them up with actual non-terrestrial UFOs flown by innocent aliens looking for a concert hall to play in.

via GIPHY

A lot of this is playing out in the national media as yet-another-attempt by the Far Right to embarrass President Biden for cheap political points. It didn't matter what Biden did or didn't do to respond the minute it got out we had a big-ass balloon floating over Montana. At first the wingnut Republicans were screaming Biden was weak towards China for not shooting down the balloon. Then when the balloon flew over the safety of the Atlantic Ocean and Biden ordered the balloon shot down, those same wingnut critics started screaming about the balloon being a Chinese bioweapon and Biden was foolish for exposing us all to COVID death. /headdesk

As for other things that really matter, donald trump is facing growing pressure in Georgia's grand jury looking into his electoral interference as well as the likelihood of facing criminal charges in New York over the Stormy Daniels bribery affair. This weekend however revealed more damaging revelations that one of trump's PAC workers had a laptop with classified documents saved to files, hinting at the possibility that trump did share Top Secret materials in violation of espionage laws and increasing the odds that trump will face federal charges soon (HURRY IT UP, SPECIAL COUNSEL).

And for personal consideration, Infidel753 blogged an insightful article about "the exhausted majority" which may help with my -Isms book when I get to writing about the Moderate factions within American political dynamics. 

Oh, and I woke up this morning to yet another goddamn mass shooting, this time on the Michigan State University campus. Three dead so far, more wounded. Goddamn this nation for our Angry Guy With Guns bloodlust.

Some Notes in December 2020

Just to get a few thoughts in:

After weeks of him stumbling across the nation from legal carnie show to legal carnie show, Rudy Giuliani finally tested positive for COVID-19, and it's serious enough that he's had to check into a hospital.

Because he'd been in Arizona recently meeting in person with Republican legislators, he's essentially forced the state lege to close down for quarantine.

Oh, by the by, Rudy and his fellow fraudsters have yet to convince an actual courtroom to buy their fake "voter fraud" scams.

The numbers of COVID infections have skyrocketed since Halloween, and Thanksgiving did us no favors as a massive number of fellow Americans decided "fuck it, we're family gathering." 

Instead of coping with the pandemic, trump is threatening to veto a defense spending bill unless Congress revokes a Section 230 of the that gives private social media companies - Twitter, Facebook, etc. - the power to self-monitor any offensive, deceptive, or outright fraudulent posts (like trump's own BS tweets). he wants to punish Twitter for adding corrective claims to his lies.

Oh, and he's still setting up the likelihood of staging a coup d'état before Saturnalia, that bastard.

Oh, and as a follow-up, here's Julie from October meeting Julie from June. The visit from December Julie is gonna be lit:

 

Here Come The Pardons: The Beginning of the End for trump

(Update: Thanks this weekend to Tengrain for including this article in Crooks&Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! Have some pardoned turkey while you're here...)

And no, this is NOT the annual pardoning of the turkey I'm talking about. Per Ryan Lucas at NPR:

President Trump has pardoned his first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who spent years enmeshed in an often bizarre legal war with the government that sprang from the Russia investigation.

Trump announced the news Wednesday on Twitter as Americans prepared to observe the Thanksgiving holiday this week.

So, yeah, he just... tweeted it out. Again. Back to Lucas:

Flynn pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador and then cooperated extensively with prosecutors. But he ultimately reversed course and accused the government of trying to frame him.

Flynn went so far as to withdraw his first plea of guilty and substitute a second plea of not guilty, even though he'd acknowledged the underlying conduct that was against the law and been close to receiving a sentence...

The Justice Department was not consulted about the Flynn pardon in the way it often takes part in the preparation of presidential pardons, a department official said on Wednesday. The official described the situation on the condition the person not be identified.

The Justice Department did get a "heads-up" on Wednesday, the official said, and the person said "this is obviously an appropriate use of the president's pardon power."

Justice Department leaders would have preferred, however, for Flynn's case to have been resolved in court, where federal Judge Emmet Sullivan still had not ruled on the government's request to abandon its prosecution...

It's that ongoing matter that may still be an ongoing matter even with this pardon. It all depends on the exact wording that will end up in the paperwork. For more, let's head over to Emptywheel who's been covering the Michael Flynn case for the past few years and (catches Emptywheel finishing off a once-full bottle of scotch) uh let's give it a minute, okay here we go:

None of the outlets reviewed how complex successfully pardoning Flynn will be, without making Trump’s — or Flynn’s son’s — fate worse. That’s true because the posture of the Flynn case before Judge Emmet Sullivan is such that Sullivan has multiple possible options for holding Flynn accountable, depending on when Sullivan moves and when Trump does.

If Trump pardoned Flynn for the crimes to which Flynn pled guilty, false statements, today, a Foreign Agent of Turkey pardoned right alongside a Thanksgiving turkey — then DOJ’s motion to dismiss the prosecution for Flynn’s false statements charges would likely be mooted. But there’s still a pending motion to withdraw Flynn’s plea before Judge Sullivan, which by itself mooted DOJ’s promises not to prosecute Flynn for hiding that he was working for the government of Turkey rather than just a foreign business in a FARA filing in March 2017. Plus, when Flynn pled, it was understood that would end the investigation, but given that he reneged on his plea, there’s nothing stopping DOJ from investigating Mike Jr for his involvement with Turkey, if Flynn were pardoned.

But that’s still not adequate. Flynn made multiple materially conflicting statements before Judge Sullivan and the grand jury. When directing amicus John Gleeson on what he should consider, Sullivan asked whether he should hold Flynn in contempt. Gleeson said that, instead, he should consider those additional lies when sentencing him on the charged crimes. DOJ argued that Sullivan should, instead, refer the charges to DOJ. Even if Sullivan referred those charges today and Bill Barr declined prosecution (as DOJ made clear in hearings they would), Biden’s DOJ could reopen the case. So to get Flynn out of trouble for his efforts to blow up his own prosecution, Trump would have to pardon those crimes as well. But if Trump pardoned Flynn today, Sullivan could wait and ultimately hold Flynn in contempt; while Trump succeeded in freeing Joe Arpaio of criminal contempt with a pardon, it’s not clear whether that could work preemptively.

Assuming Trump does pardon Flynn for some or all of these crimes, it would add several overt actions to obstruction charges against himself. So unless he’s sure that Mike Pence would give him a last minute pardon (or certain that his own self-pardon would withstand legal review), then pardoning all Flynn’s crimes would pile up his own exposure.

Then, if Trump does pardon Flynn, it will surely become a matter for a hearing before one or the other of the Judiciary Committees into Trump’s abuse of the pardon power. Flynn will have no Fifth Amendment privilege and Biden’s DOJ will have the ability to enforce contempt motions from Congress. As I have noted, in the process of attempting to blow up Flynn’s prosecution, Ric Grenell and Sidney Powell and DOJ have released documents that will make it far harder for Mike Flynn to sustain his claim not to remember what Trump’s involvement in the “collusion” with Russia was. Public testimony (or even depositions run by staffers) might elicit evidence that would subject Trump himself to conspiracy charges or might result in new false statements charges...

Not that any of this matters to trump. What's happening here, since there's little Flynn can do for trump personally anymore, is that trump is starting to clean up as much evidence of his criminal misdeeds that he can. For all of trump's bullshit about the 2020 election results - that Biden "stole" the win from him - he can't avoid the facts that Biden honestly won the Popular and Electoral votes and that no matter what Biden is getting sworn into office January 20, 2021. trump has a deadline now, and even he knows it.

This pardon is one in a long line of expected moves involving many of trump's handlers - Manafort, Stone, etc. - designed to "pay off" or confirm the loyalty of these corrupt people to the corrupt lord for whom they've done the dirty work. Even with the arguments about the Fifth Amendment and what these crooks may face in future criminal investigations, this is trump's way of making sure they remember they are all in the same boat and that they'll need to keep their damn mouth shut, any investigations and legal systems be damned.

This is all for show, political kabuki, trump giving these men a "clean bill" that they can then use to crow to trump's base. You can see it already with other Republicans hailing Flynn as a "victim" of wanton librul witch-hunting. This is trump playing to the cameras, not to the legal system or the history books. 

But like everything else trump does, as Emptywheel is pointing out, it's being done in a haphazard way, without much thought or care into the process. Meaning that, despite all of trump's hopes, his pardon power doesn't have the reach he thinks it has. Flynn is still vulnerable to jail time. Prosecutors are bringing up their arguments that Manafort should face his state charges - which had been dismissed earlier - because the federal ones he's been convicted for are about to get washed away.

And has been noted before, any pardons trump thinks he can make for himself isn't going to save him from New York's legal system: Rumors abound that both the criminal and civil investigations into possible tax evasion and fraud are set to go out the second trump is no longer in office.

trump's faithful can yell and scream all they want. The media punditry chiding Biden into offering trump a pardon so "we can put this behind ourselves for the good of the nation" need to recognize that JUSTICE should matter more than their fantasies of bipartisanship (THAT ship sailed the minute Mitch decided to obstruct Obama 24/7 back in 2009). trump's caused too much damage to our political norms, trump has committed too many crimes in office and beforehand to be so easily forgiven.

trump is at the end of his last big con. This is all just him flailing about as he falls into the deep pit he deserves. It's now a question of how many deluded souls fall in with him.

This is 2020 Friday the 13th Edition

Just throwing this out there.

After 87,000 turkeys exploded in fire, Greenberg shuts down for holiday season (via Dallas Morning News)

The newly-elected Senator for Alabama, former football coach from Auburn Tommy Tuberville, doesn't know who the United States fought against in the Second World War (via Political Wire). Yeah, Tuberville is pretty much going to be the DUMBEST Senator in toady's Congress (and in a field containing Marco Rubio, that takes some effort).

trump is threatening to start his own trump-flavored Far Right media empire (via Bloomberg). Considering how every other trump-promoted endeavor has turned to ash, Fox News shouldn't worry...

Oh, and we're seeing massive spikes in COVID-19 infections meaning an equivalent spike in the number of deaths within the next week.

GODDAMMIT WHERE IS OUR LEADERSHIP?

I've Dwelt Among the (Almost) Humans: A Quickie About Some Squickies

My college dorm roommate at UF was dating this one girl for a few months who shared a story about something a crazy in-law did over the holidays.

She had come across one of her in-laws, the brother to her sister-in-law, while the rest of the family was elsewhere in the house prepping for the holiday meal. The brother-in-law was lying on a guest bed, pants unzipped and stroking himself and looking right at her the whole time, as though what he was doing was somehow enticing or seductive. She fled the scene as soon as she could.

So I was a college-aged male, mostly no different from other hetero men that age intrigued (or obsessed) with sex and pretty girls (I admit to having a stash of Playboys in my college years), and even I was going "what an idiot!" that brother-in-law was. It made no sense to me, exposing himself to another woman (related by marriage) stroking off in a spot where any other relative could catch him and embarrass himself to the entire clan, acting as though the stuff he saw in pornos really worked out in Real Life.

I mean, I know guys are pervs. We shouldn't be, but we are. I know I'm not the cleanest person to pass judgment on others here, but even I knew there were limits, boundaries, proper behavior under all circumstances. I know we all need to live up to the admonition "don't be a Guy, be a Man." 

In short: Showing off your Pocket Rocket (i.e., your One-Eyed Bishop, your Trouser Snake, your Action Jackson, okay I'll stop) - especially in public, especially unsolicited - is/was/will be a bad idea.

And yet... We keep getting these stories of sexual harassment in the workplace, men exposing themselves in uncalled-for places and times, guys taking selfies of their self and forwarding them across the Intertubes as though ALL would bow in awe of their turgid-ness. Christ, even Captain America got caught with nude selfies in the mix, and he sent that out by accident (part of a photo dump he should have taken a closer look-see before he pressed the Send button).

This week alone two weird-ass storied dropped on the public newsfeeds.

A political pundit with the New Yorker, Jeffrey Toobin, got caught on a live Zoom chat with his... personage showing and it appeared he had been masturbating during a chat session (reportedly about election results). His excuse ultimately ended up being "sorry, I thought I had muted the video feed," as though that cleared him of beating off to 270towin maps. The HELL?

It does not help Toobin that he's faced previous accusations of illicit and unsavory behavior towards women - an extramarital affair here, unwanted advances there - that underscores the likelihood he's been into pervy activity whenever he thought the cameras were turned off.

And speaking about cameras being left on, here comes - gross - Rudy Giuliani, who meets up with Sasha Baron Cohen's character Borat in a sequel film released this weekend. In a case of setting Rudy up for a filmed prank, he gets talked into meeting a cute "reporter" (an actress playing Borat's daughter) in a hotel room for a drink. Before you know it, Rudy is lying down on the bed shoving one hand into his pants before Borat has to bust into the room (with Cohen staying in character) to stop the scene from getting any sicker. 

Giuliani's excuse - when the movie came out and everyone suddenly realized how much of a perv he is - is that he was merely "tucking in his shirt."

I'm a guy. Don't fucking lie to me, Rudy. You stand up to tuck in your shirt, not lie down (because standing up after you've reclined will untuck the shirt anyway).

Rudy was lying down ready to jack off in front of a woman where he thought it would be safe to do so - a hotel room - in some primate-like need to show off his tallywacker. It was reading the reports on this that triggered my memory of my roomie's then-girlfriend sick experience with that in-law.

So what do you think Giuliani does in situations where the guys catching him on film AREN'T there to prank him but compromise him?

After all these years of hearing the stories, reading about the unwelcome spread of dick pics, and all the real-world acts of exposure as part of the harassment habits of men in the workplace, I'm still unsettled (no, more like horrified) that my fellows among the male persuasion are so obsessed with their dicks that they are driven to act like dicks.

And this is why I do not laugh at Werner Herzog in Rick & Morty, where he reveals his sad, woeful tale of what we humans have exposed to him during his time studying us:

I've dwelt among the humans. Their entire culture is built around their penises. It's funny to say they're small. It's funny to say they're big. I've been at parties where humans have held bottles, pencils, thermoses, in front of themselves and called out, "Hey, look at me. I'm Mr. So-and-so dick. I've got such-and-such for a penis." I never saw it fail to get a laugh...

It's not a throwaway gag, folks. Werner Herzog is indicting male humanity with an unhealthy obsession with our own fucking dicks. It's an obsession that doesn't help us in any way, and it causes more stupidity and reckless disregard for women - and even other men - than needs to be in our world.

Christ, guys. Learn better discretion. Learn some manners towards other people for every occasion. KEEP IT IN YOUR FUCKING PANTS.

Don't be dumb-ass dick-obsessed guys. Be men.

Deranged and Raging

I didn't watch the debate Mental And Moral Collapse of the United States last night, but I followed the Twitter feed and read the postscripts, and by GODS it was a true nightmare.

To quote James Fallows at the Atlantic:

Start with the supposed moderator, Chris Wallace. It became obvious five minutes in that Donald Trump’s strategy was to interrupt, yell, insult, and disrupt as often as he could. This is a strategy that can work only if no one gets in the way of it, and Chris Wallace just let it go on. Maybe Wallace was caught by surprise by Trump’s bellicosity and primate-dominance. (But—c’mon.) Even so, two or three minutes of this should have been enough to adjust. He didn’t adjust. And he let Trump roll over him...

I recorded a whole detailed minute-by-minute annotation of the debate as it unfolded, but I’m not going to dignify this disaster with any details. It was a giant mess. Did the spectacle change any votes? Who knows. Maybe some people were revved up for Trump by his assertiveness. Maybe other people—I’d guess a larger number, but it’s just a guess—were repelled by his bullying tactics...

But for tonight I’ll say this was a disgusting moment for democracy. Donald Trump made it so, and Chris Wallace let him. I hope there are no more debates before this election. If they happen, I won’t waste another minute of my life watching them.

The modern presidential debate was invented in 1960. We may have seen the end of its useful life this evening.

This was about the most judicious review of the night I found. Everything else ranged from how chaotic and demeaning trump's behavior was right down to the most blunt "It was a shit show" takeaway from CNN's Dana Bash.

The post-game narratives coming out of trump's camp - his debate handlers Rudy Giuliani and Chris Christie were out quickly trying to perform some form of ass-covering afterward - was trump planned to disrupt the debate and interrupt as often as he could to throw Biden off-balance and cause Biden to stutter. trump's intent was to make Biden look weak. It never occurred to trump - or anyone in his circle - that a lot of people who stutter learn to control themselves through focusing on their statements and staying calm. It does make Biden appear placid, emotionally flat, and unable to deviate from script while speaking in public, but it also means that he's actually less gaffe-prone on the stage than when he's in meeting rooms and pre-rally gatherings.

The end result of trump's gameplan was that he showed himself the bully, the screaming rage-monster, the control freak husband/ex-boyfriend of women's nightmares.

As David Frum at the Atlantic put it:

President Donald Trump arrived at the first debate with a theory and a plan. The theory was that American voters crave dominance, no matter how belligerent or offensive. The plan was to hector, interrupt, and insult in hopes of establishing that dominance.

His theory was wrong, and his plan was counterproductive...

Trump yelled, threatened, interrupted—and changed nothing. All he did was confirm the horror and revulsion of the large American majority that has already begun to cast its ballots against him.

Correction: Trump did one thing. On the Cleveland stage, Trump communicated that he will seize any opportunity to disrupt the vote and resist the outcome. He communicated more forcefully than ever that the only security the country has for a constitutional future is that Biden wins by the largest possible margin...

The only ones who did cheer as trump vomited his rage upon the international stage were the Proud Boy/White Supremacist factions whom trump refused to denounce when asked by the moderator Chris Wallace. Worse, trump rallied those wingnuts with the words to "Stand Back, Stand By", a call for them to await instructions for when trump clearly wants them to disrupt voter turnout on Election Day (and worse, to riot in county Elections offices afterward to prevent any clean ballot counts).

To say this was America's Worst Night for Democracy undersells a lot of other bad nights - actually the nights of November 8-9, 2016 when this motherfcking Shitgibbon won the Electoral count are the Worst Nights - but it's the big red flag we've all been waiting for signalling that the chaos of 2020 is going to get worse.

There's only one way out of trump's Hell, America. GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT AND ELECT EVERY DEMOCRAT TO EVERY OFFICE YOU CAN.

trump's derangement and raging ways are getting worse. If he steals this election as he's promising to, we can't survive four more years of this crap. We just can't.

You Don't Have to Be Crazy to Work for trump... But It Sure As Hell Explains A Whole Lot

So under the categories of "Florida Man," "Republicans Are Insane," and "Baker Acted," we have this report coming out of Ft. Lauderdale (via the Sun-Sentinel):

President Trump’s former campaign manager Brad Parscale was taken from his Fort Lauderdale home by police Sunday afternoon after his wife reported that he was armed and threatening suicide.

The police, called by his wife, went to the house in the Seven Isles community, an affluent area in which houses have access to the water. They made contact, “developed a rapport” and negotiated his exit from the house, the police said in a statement. He was taken to Broward Health Medical Center under the Baker Act, which provides for temporary involuntary commitment.

My dad worked as a legal guardian and I studied for it as a profession for a bit (didn't go anywhere, wasn't any good at it) when I was unemployed, and let me tell you the Baker Act is a huge step, if the doctors find out he's got serious issues Parscale is going to get wrapped up in a whole slew of legal issues and intense treatment that will take him out of circulation for a good while (for example, he will likely - for his own safety as well as everyone else's - lose his rights to own or keep any firearms if this happens).

The thing you gotta remember about Parscale was how... intense he was regarding his work as trump's campaign manager this 2020 election cycle. Right up to the point where all of Parscale's financial mismanagement - and self-indulgence - got out in the open. Along with a disastrous attempt to host a campaign stop at the height of the COVID pandemic in Tulsa - poorly set up, rife with flaws that were exploited by Korean boy band followers for God's sake - Parscale quickly lost favor with his boss and quickly lost his campaigning top job.

Everything since then was probably not a fun ride for Mr. Parscale. A public object of ridicule, likely not finding many allies, and also facing the possibilities of investigations into how he managed the 2020 campaign, he had to have been under massive emotional pressure.

But don't expect me - as a fellow half-mad Florida Man - to offer any sympathy to Parscale, who willingly signed up for this job with all the warning signs about trump. I only wish well to his wife, friends and/or family members in case Parscale's madness doesn't go away.

This is what you get with trump, when you think about it. Given trump's history of being a demanding bad boss with his own obsessions, narcissism, and paranoia, you'd have to be as crazy as Parscale to willingly work for that Shitgibbon in the first place. The question is how much sanity you'd still have once you get kicked to the curb.

(Glances at half of trump's ex-employees showing up on Dancing With the Stars) Well, maybe that question's been answered anyway...

And to think: This isn't even the most embarrassing story coming out of trump's world tonight.