Let the GOP Backstabbing Begin (w/Update)

I'm not entirely in the mood to discuss the Shitgibbon's attempt tonight to use the excuse of a Presidential campaign to avoid DOJ prosecution, so I'll discuss the entire act of party implosion happening for the Republican Party this post-midterms.

While the Republicans reaped huge gains in Florida thanks to DeSantis' gerrymandering and the state Democrats' ineptitude, the national party didn't do so well. High expectations of a "Red Wave" - bolstered by historical trends of the President's party suffering in midterms (at least since the 1960s) - turned into a self-immolated debacle of bad Far Right candidates losing key races. Instead of gaining 25 seats in the US House, Republicans are looking at either missing control (there are still two-three seats that can favor Dems) or gaining the House with the slimmest margin in modern history (which would embolden the wingnut factions to make impossible demands on the Speakership).

It got worse in the Senate, where the GOP were expecting to break the 50-50 deadlock - which favored Democrats with Vice President Harris as the tiebreaker - by flipping Senate races in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada to their favor. Instead, they lost those races leaving the Dems at that 50-50 advantage, with one outstanding recount for the Georgia race where Dem incumbent Warnock ought to outgain the hypocritical and addled Republican challenger in Herschel Walker. Dems should count on having a 51-seat majority in 2023 that should improve their ability to free up legislation from Senatorial gridlock.

There's a lot of anger among the Republican ranks, with finger pointing and accusations in every direction. Even their standard bearer trump got attacked because he pushed a number of extremist candidates who mostly flamed out, killing the "Red Wave" narrative. Other factions are lashing out at the existing party leadership, using this opportunity to seize the reins of power for their own greedy ambitions.

This is where Rick "Medicare Fraud" Scott enters the picture. He is openly challenging Republican stalwart Mitch McConnell for party leadership in the Senate. Via Brian Slodysko and Mary Clare Jalonick at AP News:

Florida Sen. Rick Scott said Tuesday that he will mount a long-shot bid to unseat Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, opening the latest front in an intraparty battle between allies of McConnell and former President Donald Trump over the direction of the GOP following a disappointing showing in last week’s midterm elections.

The announcement by Scott, who was urged to challenge McConnell by Trump, came hours before the former president was expected to launch a comeback bid for the White House. It escalated a long-simmering feud between Scott, who led the Senate Republican’s campaign arm this year, and McConnell over the party’s approach to reclaiming a Senate majority...

It should be noted that Scott is a junior member of the Senate, having been elected into the seat back in 2018. There are a number of other Senators with more seniority some of whom aren't in Mitch's corner on this, and part of me wonders why they're not making this move.

Because Rick Scott is a goddamn hypocrite on this challenge. Scott was the one in charge of the campaign financing this midterms, and he's the one who failed to keep a lot of those Senate campaigns afloat, squandering money on his own self-promotion. If anyone among the current GOP Senate ranks deserves most of the blame, it's Rick "What Part of Fraud Did You Overlook" Scott. I mean, I wrote this back in August:

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...

Rick Scott is quickly showing his true nature: A self-serving creature looking to put himself above others at their expense. Granted, you can say that about half the Senators who ever served in that capacity, but Scott is making himself far worse - well, okay, he's at par with Ted "Cancun" Cruz now - than any of them.

None of the other Senators should back Scott on his power play, because all it will do is expose them to the dangers of allowing this fraud to keep ripping them off for his own benefit.

And yet they will, because donald trump is backing Rick Scott, and for all the blame and public denouncing trump's been getting, the second he demands the party fealty he will get it because they dare not antagonize the MAGA voting base still in love with that con artist.

If Mitch McConnell has anyone to blame, it's himself. Through his long game of obstruction - to ensure a packed Federalist Society judiciary and a twisted conservative Supreme Court - McConnell pandered to the Far Right elements of the GOP that's now turning on him. He may not be at fault for the Republicans' failures to retake the Senate this cycle, but he did little to stop the avalanche of disaster to roll over them in the first place.

It will be interesting to note how this coup attempt in the GOP Senate plays out, who will side with Scott - and allow a known fraud to take over their entire Senatorial operations - and who will side with McConnell - who is honestly aging out and ought to step aside for "younger" leadership to assume a new direction - for the upcoming acts of obstruction and cruelty the GOP can inflict on the nation.

Personally, I'm rooting for that comet we keep hoping will hit the Far Right wingnuts and wash their toxins into the sea.

Update (the very next day!): Well that was quick. McConnell squashes Scott's coup attempt with a quick vote 37-10 with one abstaining. Now the fun is going to be watching how Mitch kicks Rick Scott off every committee and isolate him from every GOP fundraiser for the next four years.

Update (11/21/22): Thanks to Batocchio for adding me to this Monday's Mike's Blog Round-Up at Crooks & Liars! But Bato, my man, my brah, my mentor, you gotta give me a heads up if you want to add me to a Round-Up. I need to set the table and bake a cake! (also places the Silver trophy for Nonfiction Blogging on the table)

(I gotta crow a little...)

The Day When Women Become Second-Class Citizens

We knew this day was coming.

We knew it when Anthony Kennedy retired from the bench, leaving his own abortion ruling Casey vulnerable to the Far Right candidate - that drunkard Kavanaugh - willing to overturn it and Roe V. Wade.

We knew it when Justice Ginsburg died back in 2020, allowing Mitch McConnell - that hypocrite - and trump to put onto the Supreme Court a radical Far Right candidate to skew the Court so far against abortion rights that overturning Roe was pretty much a done deal.

We knew it when Justice Scalia died back in 2016, when Obama was still in office and still President of the United States able to nominate a replacement - Center-Left - Justice, only for McConnell to stonewall Obama's nomination in the hopes that a Republican win that November would give him the chance to replace Scalia with another Far Right Justice.

We knew it when donald motherfucking trump won the Electoral College in 2016, in spite of losing the Popular Vote, all because enough Democratic voters refused to support Hillary out of partisan spite (yes, to every so-called Leftist or Progressive who thought Hillary Clinton didn't deserve your vote, go fuck yourselves, this IS on you as much as the goddamned Far Right wingnuts). When Hillary got only 65.8 million votes whereas Biden got 81.2 million votes four years later, where the hell were those 15 million or so voters when the nation needed them???

We knew it the minute all those Red states began passing laws specifically designed to attack Roe and to criminalize abortion, laws so harsh that even rational exceptions - for rape, incest, or the health risks to the mother - were denied. We knew it every time a Republican moronically claimed pregnancies were safe, or that rape wasn't a problem, just so they could believe their lies that abortion was a greater sin.

We knew it the minute Red states like Georgia and Texas and Missouri passed anti-abortion bills that sought to punish women - and anyone who helped them - who fled their states to get abortions in states where it's still legal. We knew it when Texas added an insane bounty law incentivizing the wingnuts of their state to hunt down and accuse others of committing abortions or helping women get an abortion. By making it financially safe to accuse others without punishment for being wrong, that law is bound to get innocent women - and any of their friends and family members - accused of something they didn't do and forced to pay out of their own pockets fines that they cannot afford. Can YOU afford paying $10,000 to some lying Bible-thumping wingnut accusing YOU of helping a friend with an abortion for a pregnancy they never had?

We should have known all this since 1992, when Pat Buchanan went before the nationally televised Republican Convention and declared a "Culture War," beginning the partisan divide between Red State and Blue State, the purge of Moderates from a Republican Party to ensure only the pure anti-abortion racist sexist haters were the ones in charge. 

We knew this, we've always known this: This was never about the fetus, this was always about punishing the women. This was always about the power to control what women can do for themselves, not just their health care choices but their rights to vote, their rights to earn fair wages, hell their right to have a career and live their own lives.

What is about to happen now - as Politico leaks the rough draft of Justice Alito's decision to overturn Roe and Casey and apparently a number of other civil rights victories over the decades - is that we are going to watch this conservative Supreme Court deny women any rights they have under the 9th and 14th Amendments. We are going to see not only the legal excuse to deny women their right to an abortion to save their own lives, we are going to see the devaluation of women, period.

Let me point this out: Alito is crafting a decision that will protect the rights of the Proud Boys gun nut ready to shoot up the nearest Planned Parenthood clinic, but if you're a 13-year-old girl that's just been raped by your college-age cousin you are shit out of luck.

Welcome to the Republican Wingnut Utopia of Women Suffering in Hell.

This is why I've been screaming for the past TWENTY YEARS to my fellow Americans to FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STOP VOTING REPUBLICAN. 

This day was coming.

And now millions of women are going to pay for the wingnuts' cruelty.

One Sentence Thought About Biden's Chance for a Supreme Court Pick

With Justice Stephen Breyer finally (!) announcing his retirement, giving President Biden the opportunity to select a honorable and qualified Supreme Court Justice to affect our jurisprudence for the next 20-30 years, we need to understand this won't put a dent in the 6-seat majority the wingnut conservatives have on a Court that's set to roll back 50 years of women's rights and civil rights, but it will at best provide better diversity on a bench that's supposed to represent ALL of the United States in terms of having more women AND more Blacks when Biden selects a woman African-American - who WILL be qualified, suck it you haters - to perform much-needed acts of Judicial Review: As well as providing a foundation that hopefully Biden will fill other upcoming vacancies (Thomas and Alito are both close to retirement age) as long as there's no goddamned obstruction out of that goddamned Mitch McConnell and his Republican cronies in the Senate so please for the LOVE OF GOD AMERICA vote more Democratic candidates into the Senate this 2022 election cycle because THE GODDAMN ELECTION RESULTS MATTER (hi, 2016! /cries).

Whew.

And So Manchin Burns the Nation

I've said this before: There is nothing more dangerous and destructive to the United States than a self-serving arrogant tone-deaf Senator.

Yes. This means Senator Joe Manchin out of West Virginia just shot his own Democratic Party in the collective foot again. From Russell Berman at The Atlantic (paywall): 

With a few short sentences on Fox News, Senator Joe Manchin today dashed the dreams of Democrats by coming out firmly against President Joe Biden’s signature legislative proposal. “I’ve tried everything humanly possible. I can’t get there,” Manchin said of the $1.75 trillion bill that the House passed last month.

His opposition after months of negotiations adds to a hellish winter that followed a brutal autumn for Biden, who is presiding over yet another resurgence of the pandemic, stubbornly high inflation, and an electorate that has soured on him. Now, Manchin has seemingly demolished the centerpiece of the president’s economic agenda in Congress, validating the warnings of progressives who for months held up the passage of a bipartisan infrastructure bill because they feared the West Virginia centrist—who, in a 50-50 Senate, essentially wields a veto pen among Democrats—would do exactly what he did...

Anyone wanting to blame Progressives in this fight ought to punch themselves in their own faces. The Far Left held up their end of the bargain only to have Manchin - posing as a Centrist but in reality he's a crass opportunist hiding his personal greed behind the excuse of bipartisanship - pull his card out of the castle to let it all tumble down.

I'm a self-proclaimed Moderate (not a Centrist) and even I can't understand why Manchin is pulling these stunts other than to keep his own pockets lined with lobbyist cash while his own state of West Virginia slides deeper into poverty.

I have to refer to West Virginia resident John Cole at Balloon-Juice, who has long seen Manchin up-close in action and has loathed the corrupt Senator's behavior for years:

Yes, Manchin knocked bunch a bunch of beers on his houseboat last night, woke up this morning and drove his Maserati to the tv studios, and opened his piehole. It’s more of the bad faith bullshit, and I don’t know how much of it he will walk back or if he even will, or he is just setting the stage for his colleagues and the WH to shit on him so he can peace out and join the Republicans or go Independent. I don’t know, and I don’t really care any more, the man is dead to me...

I don’t know why this is so hard for Joe to explain. I’d think it would be pretty easy to explain extending the child tax credit, black lung benefits, lowering prescription drug prices, expanding medicare, providing home health care for the elderly, and so on to West Virginians. Especially considering that West Virginians are some of the poorest, sickest, and oldest Americans, as well as having a large community of miners with black lung...

The only ones profiting from Manchin's stubbornness has been Mitch McConnell and his fellow upper-class warriors of the Republican ranks. They're reveling in the self-immolation between Democrats all the while making sure that our nation never does ANYTHING to address poverty, hunger, suffering of families, and reconnecting millions to the American Dream of good jobs, safe communities, and a future for our children. And they don't even have to lift a finger: Manchin is doing all of the dirty work for them.

There is still a chance the Democrats will go back and repackage the major parts of Biden's "Build Back Better" agenda, and still a chance they could pass something short-term to placate the likes of Manchin, but I doubt it. Manchin is strutting here like a god-emperor Corrupt Senator of the Gilded Age, unconcerned with the damage he leaves in his wake while heading to his expensive racecar en route to his personal yacht.

Gods help us. This is how we're rolling into 2022.

The Moment Democrats Must Simplify This Nation

(Update: Thank you again to Batocchio for including this blog on Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up!)

Riddle: How do you know when Democrats have slim majority control of both Houses of Congress?

Answer: When Republicans are happily playing a game of Chicken with the national debt ceiling. Again.

More details from Kelsey Snell at NPR:

Congress has fewer than 10 days to pass legislation to prevent another partial government shutdown, and Democrats hope to use the deadline pressure to force Republicans to help them pass a critical suspension of the federal borrowing cap.

Republican leaders have flatly rejected that plan, leaving Congress in a familiar political standoff over spending and debt that could have serious economic consequences...

The House voted on the bill Tuesday evening, passing the measure on party lines — 220 Democratic votes in support and 211 Republican votes against.

Democrats had sufficient votes to pass the legislation without Republicans in the House. But the fate of the bill is far less certain in the Senate, where GOP leaders have vowed to oppose it over objections to Democrats' broader spending ambitions...

Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has said Republicans would support a spending bill that includes basic government funding paired with disaster funding and money for Afghan refugees — but not if the bill addresses the debt limit.

"We do not have divided government. Democrats do not need our help," McConnell said in a statement. "They have every tool to address the debt limit on their own: the same party-line process they used to ram through inflationary spending in March and already plan to use again this fall..."

Mitch however is making a subtle Lie of Omission here: What he's NOT telling the media is that the Senate Democrats may have a 51-tiebreaker vote with VP Harris, this debt ceiling and budget vote currently both fall under the Cloture rules where the Republicans are threatening to filibuster and deny a straight up-or-down vote.

Back to the reporting from Snell:

This latest political fight over the debt is infuriating Democrats like Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York. Democrats voted to increase the borrowing cap under then-President Donald Trump even as the debt ballooned when Republicans approved costly tax cuts and partisan spending priorities.

"It is quite rich coming from a party, and the party of Trump, who did $1.5 trillion in tax cuts and didn't pay for a penny of them," Gillibrand said in an interview with NPR.

Democrats have said Republicans need to take ownership of the debt they helped create — both through partisan legislation and when Congress voted for bipartisan COVID-19 relief spending under Trump...

There IS one way the Democrats can get around McConnell and his GOP Senate buddies' obstructionist plan: They could amend the budget they're trying to pass along with this debt ceiling hike through the Reconciliation process, which avoids the Cloture process and allows an up-or-down vote. However, it would force the Democrats to give up their biggest agenda items, it would limit the time frame any tax increases would work, and it would alienate the Progressive caucus in the House to where they could refuse to vote for the Infrastructure bill that had passed the Senate and needs passage in the House. 

There is an even easier way the Democrats can get around the GOP obstruction: Just fucking kill the Filibuster and the Cloture rule that forces these shenanigans every fucking time the Republicans are in minority the last 15 years. Sadly, if the Democrats try to do that, there are two self-serving "Centrist" Dems - Sinema and Manchin - who would refuse to do that because without that filibuster their lobbyist buddies are screwed they lose their importance as "independent Senators" in that august body.

McConnell is pretty much trying to force the Democrats to turn on each other just when they need to unite.

And the Democrats are letting him.

We're facing another Long October Shutdown. And while it WILL BE the fault of McConnell and his wingnut buddies, the Democrats are going to be the ones forced to pay the costs.

Simplify your world, Democrats. Get rid of the fucking Filibuster. Stop letting Mitch pull his obstructionist shit.

Just Kill The Filibuster

So that bipartisan investigatory commission into the January 6 Insurrection died a partisan death thanks to just enough Republican Senators to say NO and just enough Democratic Senators to not give a f-ck. Via Steve Benen at MSNBC:

It was emblematic of how the process unfolded. Republicans said they were open to the creation of an independent commission, but only if their demands were met. Democrats, willing to pay high prices in the interest of governing, met those demands, only to have House GOP lawmakers balk anyway.

Today, Senate Republicans did the same thing...

I can appreciate why the procedural details may seem boring and unimportant, but it's worth emphasizing that this was technically not the vote to create the Jan. 6 commission. Rather, this was a procedural vote on something called a motion to proceed -- which in practical terms means Republicans blocked a Senate debate over whether to create the Jan. 6 commission.

For those unfamiliar with congressional procedures, it's probably also worth noting that the gap between the opponents and proponents was less important than it might appear: proponents of the bipartisan plan needed 60 votes. Period. Full stop. The fact that most senators supported the proposal is, thanks to the filibuster rules, irrelevant. In fact, if only 60 senators showed up for today's vote, and 59 of them voted "yes," the one "no" vote would prevail...

This procedure basically forms part of what's known as the filibuster, an internal procedural process wherein just one Senator of either party makes clear their intent to delay a vote by talking as long as possible to prevent a bill or an appointment being made (certain votes have deadlines attached to them). The talking itself isn't even necessary: All the Senator has to do nowadays is THREATEN to filibuster, and a Cloture motion has to be voted on it, and that requires that bloody 60 votes.

And this is where I bitch about the Democrats being cowards, because they have the means of rewriting Senate procedures right now and can easily get rid of this debate blocker, to get rid of filibustering altogether and require simple basic majority (51 out of 100) votes on everything so they could end Republican obstructionism here and now... and they won't.

/headdesk

I've been complaining about the filibuster all the way back to 2009, when this was a different blog: 

Worst of all is the filibuster rule. What was once an obscure rule is now an impediment on getting anything passed in the Senate (the House has no filibuster and so can pass laws by majority vote more quickly) because the filibuster can't be stopped (Cloture) unless two-thirds of the Senate votes to, which means you need 60 votes nowadays to ensure Cloture. Problem is where the Republicans are organized to a fault to where their own party is consuming themselves, the Democrats are disorganized to where each Senator can (and does) act like their own party and vote however they want...

And I wrote that back when the Democrats had 59-60 seats and could have overridden every Cloture procedure and forced the Republicans to eat their own failures. Instead, they kept faltering over passing major legislation that could have shortened the economic recession during Obama's tenure, all because enough Democratic Senators wanted their egos as "Centrists" stroked. And not enough Democrats pushed to end the Filibuster/Cloture rule altogether to ensure simple majority votes. Gods, it was frustrating then and it's frustrating now to watch the Democrats shoot themselves in their own cowardly foot rather than get rid of an unwanted and self-damaging rule.

Ezra Klein wrote this at Vox back in 2015: 

Today's filibusters simply paralyze the Senate until the majority either finds 60 votes to proceed or gives up and moves on to another piece of business.

The filibuster is no longer about ensuring that minorities can make themselves heard on the floor of the Senate; rather, it's about forcing the majority to find 60 votes to pass anything...

Some political scientists argue that the idea of individual filibusters has become outdated; they say the Senate now operates under the filibuster's 60-vote requirement as a norm, and it's anything that requires a simple majority that's the exception. In other words, in the modern Senate, almost everything is filibustered...

This speaks to a crucial fact about the filibuster: though a filibuster can only be broken with 60 votes, the rule that powers the filibuster can be changed, or even eliminated, with 51 votes. The filibuster is a minority protection that exists at the pleasure of the majority.

This is the fundamental tension of the filibuster: it gives the minority the power to obstruct the majority, but if the minority pushes that power too far, the majority can end the filibuster entirely...

That last part is something that the Senate Democrats - clinging to a super-slim majority of 50-50 with VP Harris as the 51st tiebreaker vote - can do, they could vote on eliminating the debate procedure and shut down filibustering as a tactic. They could break the Minority Rule the Republicans have been forcing on the United States for 20-plus years.

The Democrats could vote to end a filibuster process that has routinely been used as a racist override of legislation: The filibuster is a "Jim Crow relic" interfering with Civil Rights and voting bills, and above all blocking anti-lynching bills that we haven't been able to pass as far back as the 1920s. Christ, Rand Paul filibustered against an anti-lynching bill just last year!

We ought to have seen an end to the filibuster the minute the Democrats gained control this February 2021... and they didn't because the likes of Joe Manchin (WV) and Krysten Sinema (AZ) still think there's some personal value to be had in stopping our nation's legislative body from passing meaningful reforms and much-needed budget deals.

Because of that cowardice in the party ranks, the Senate doesn't belong the Democratic majority: It belongs still to that goddamned obstructionist Mitch McConnell. And because of all that, our nation is still screwed.

Just kill the filibuster, Democrats. SAVE THE DEMOCRACY YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO REPRESENT.

The Self-Dug Graves of donald trump

A lot of holes in the desert, and a lot of problems are buried in those holes. But you gotta do it right. I mean, you gotta have the hole already dug before you show up with a package in the trunk. Otherwise, you're talking about a half-hour to forty-five minutes worth of digging. And who knows who's gonna come along in that time? Pretty soon, you gotta dig a few more holes. You could be there all fuckin' night.

-- Nicky, Casino

When I began writing this article on Saturday morning the impeachment trial was still ongoing. But then the day turned sideways, a vote on allowing witnesses turned into a debacle that I STILL can't figure out, and it ended with a vote in the U.S. that went 57-43 in favor of removing trump for his Incitement to Insurrection... which did not clear the 2/3rd supermajority needed to make it happen.

We knew it going in that the cowardly Republicans in the Senate would not rise above the gross partisanship of their own party's base, but there was still a slim hope that enough facts and evidence of trump's misdeeds would get out to convince enough Republicans to put country ahead of party. In the end only seven - Mitt Romney (UT) who had previously voted against trump over the Ukraine scandal, plus Richard Burr (NC), Susan Collins (ME), Bill Cassidy (LA), Lisa Murkowski (AK), Pat Toomey (PA), and Ben Sasse (NE) - realized the danger trump's riot posed to Congressional safety and our Constitution's integrity.

Mitch McConnell attempted to have it both ways: Blaming trump for causing an insurrection, but then voted to protect trump's ass from removal. Mitch's hypocrisy is damning and two-faced, and it will likely get more Americans killed as trump uses this as an excuse to continue his lying campaign to overturn an election he lost.

The only good news out of this day is threefold: One, it exposes how broken our Impeachment system is to where it needs to go away; Two, it proves we should hold sitting Presidents accountable to arrest on serious federal felony charges (so SCREW that OLC memo); and Three, it leaves trump still exposed to the civil and criminal charges he's facing already.

Let's go to Lloyd Green at The Guardian:

In case anyone forgot, the US attorneys’ office for the southern district of New York previously treated Trump aka “Individual-1” as un-indicted co-conspirator in Michael Cohen’s case. As a result, the confirmation hearings of Joe Biden’s pick for attorney general, Merrick Garland, will certainly be interesting.

Already, prosecutors in Manhattan have the Orange Don and his crew in their cross-hairs. According to court filings and published reports, Cyrus Vance Jr, Manhattan’s district attorney, is investigating the truthfulness of the Trump Organization’s financial reporting and the company’s relationship with Deutsche Bank...

In addition, Trump’s recent bouts of wrath have given lawyers in Washington and Georgia plenty to ponder. Local authorities in the Peach state are weighing a criminal investigation into his failed efforts to browbeat Brad Raffensperger, the state’s secretary of state, into submission. Trump telling Raffensperger to “find” 11,779 more votes and interfering with election certification may have been a step too far...

Green wrote that article back in January 20. That Georgia case just went to Hyperactive this week (via Stephen Fowler at NPR):

The Fulton County District Attorney's office has launched a criminal probe into former President Donald Trump's attempts to overturn Georgia's election results, including a call pressuring Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "find" enough votes for him. The county includes Atlanta, Georgia's capital.

In a letter sent to state officials and obtained by Georgia Public Broadcasting, newly elected Democratic District Attorney Fani Willis said the investigation will look into several potential violations of state law, including "the solicitation of election fraud, the making of false statements to state and local governmental bodies, conspiracy, racketeering, violation of oath of office and any involvement in violence or threats related to the election's administration..."

The letter from prosecutors asked several state officials to preserve all records from administering the 2020 election, with "particular care" given to those that "may be evidence of attempts to influence the actions of persons who were administering the election."

In the hourlong call obtained by Georgia Public Broadcasting, an angry Trump alternately cajoled and castigated Georgia's top elections official, seeking to have him toss out the November election results, which was counted three separate times, and "find 11,780 votes" to declare Trump the winner.

trump cannot accept the reality that he lost, he clings to his own lying narrative of "stolen ballots" to keep alive his slim hope of regaining political power, and worst of all he's got a literal mob of followers willing to riot for him to make those lies become a bloody "truth" at everyone else's expense. The cost of letting trump off the hook to keep these lies going will lead to more riots, more anger, more bullshit that won't go away until trump goes away.

This is the only hope for sanity our nation has left: That someone, either in Manhattan or Atlanta or DC, puts it on the line to file credible criminal charges that will convict trump for the damage he's done and remove him from the political stage for good.

There is, for example, the possibility that Biden's Justice Department could reopen the Mueller Report findings and use that to file Obstruction of Justice charges that Mueller determined could be done once trump is out of office. These are serious charges and everything about them should already be lined up and ready to go.

The civil courts are a different matter: trump was already facing a number of civil charges especially a sexual assault/defamation trial from E. Jean Carroll. Any damages, and loss of life, that happened during trump's Insurrection could be charged in civil courts as well. trump has been delaying these trials over and over as he usually does (it's the only true way he's ever won in court, outlast the plaintiff until they quit or take a lesser deal) but he's running out of room to dodge these cases. Sooner rather than later, trump's got to face his accusers before the law.

The legacy of the donald trump post-White House years will be spent in the courtrooms. he will be dealing in cases that won't settle out of court, that won't sign off on any plea deal where he walks away without admission of guilt.

trump does have a terrifying habit of wriggling his way out of ANY accountability, but for the LOVE OF GOD he's broken so many laws and ruined so many lives, the bill for his sins HAVE to come due now. The grave that needs to get dug now is for his future, a future that ought to be trump sitting in a SuperMax jail cell wondering if his con jobs were ever really worth it.  

Democratic Gamemanship, Also Known as Competency

If you're not following Balloon Juice website you should, it's magazine-quality blogging at a fraction of the price and with 150 percent more "OH HELL YES" you can enjoy reading.

Blog overlord John Cole is a rare poster but he will provide input from his frozen corner of West Virginia, where like myself he's stuck in a deep Red state praying for sanity to rain down and wash the Far Right wingnut madness into the ocean. One thing he's aware of is his state's major Democratic figure, Senator Joe Manchin, who likes to play throne-maker as a conservative Centrist holding the keys to Senate control to keep his more liberal party from doing much to actually benefit the nation. So this happened recently for Cole to cheer about:

There are two easy ways to fail as a Democratic politician. The first is to listen to the bobbleheads in the media, and the second is to listen to the online left on twitter and elsewhere. The Biden campaign famously ignored both of them, including yours truly, who consistently lobbied for him to not run. So when you see the Politico writing that Biden and Harris fucked up by having Harris speak to West Virginians, or you see the dumbest man in American politics call it a mistake, ignore it.

There is a reason VP Harris spoke directly to West Virginians, as I noted the other day, and here you have the fruits of that labor:

“Well, first and foremost, I wish we’d all come together,” Justice responded. “But, on the flip side of that, we’ve got a lot of people in West Virginia that are still struggling with paying their power bill because they got laid off because this pandemic just swept their job away from them.”

Justice continued: “What we need to do is we need to understand that trying to be, per se, fiscally responsible at this point in time, with what we’ve got going on in this country, if we actually throw away some money right now, so what?”

The governor added that “we have really got to move and get people taken care of and get people back on balance. I want to work with the Biden administration, just like I worked with the Trump administration, and I want us to move forward...

That was Republican governor Jim Justice, when asked by the state’s biggest political radio guy, Hoppy Kerchival, whether or not the COVID stimulus needs to be bipartisan. The only people who give a fuck about Joe Manchin and whether or not this was a mistake by the Biden team are Joe Manchin and the beltway morons. Governor Justice and the people don’t give a fuck about process or procedure or whose feelings were hurt, they want results. They don’t give a shit about bipartisanship or Rand Paul’s feels about the budget, they want to feed the kids and keep the power on and make sure grams doesn’t die from the ‘rona...

And you know what? Pelosi and Schumer just did this:

As President Joe Biden attempts to pass his $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief proposal with Republican support, Senate Democrats are working to move ahead without the GOP using an obscure, but powerful, procedural tool known as reconciliation.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced Monday that they have filed a joint budget resolution — the first step to potentially enacting a budget reconciliation bill.

“It makes no sense to pinch pennies when so many Americans are suffering,” Schumer said in floor remarks Monday. “The risk of doing too little is far greater than the risk of doing too much.”

Pelosi and Schumer would not do this if they did not have the votes, so what you can bank on right now is that Manchin is one of those 51 votes in the Senate. So no, Biden and Harris didn’t fuck up by going directly to the people of WV and Arizona. They got Manchin and Sinema in line.

Much like Cole, I'm getting good vibes from this. If the Democrats in Congress are serious about getting things done, they have to bulldoze their way past any obstructionist efforts that McConnell can toss up in the Senate, and the powers in Reconciliation allow them that chance. That much of what needs to get done to resolve our pandemic woes fits the parameters of budgeting - the spending needed to keep people housed and fiscally safe, to keep businesses in the black on their spreadsheets, to help hospitals and medical suppliers - is something that the Republicans can't stop.

Oh, the Far Right - especially in the media - will try to push a "bipartisan" argument that Biden and the Democrats need Republican votes to make any pandemic aid package work, but what the Republicans have brought to the table so far - a miniscule package that only pays for a third of what's proposed, and doesn't include any stimulus checks most Americans need - is pretty much a joke.

The Congressional Democrats can push ahead with their stimulus package of $1.9 trillion dollars without ANY Republican votes, which would - guess what - make the Republicans look bad because a majority of Americans will see the Democrats claim this win while the GOP is pouting in a corner threatening to take their toys home (see if they care).

This is a moment where Biden can sign a much-needed and much-welcomed relief bill to the benefit of his own party, and where Biden can tell Mitch McConnell - bastard that he is - to go sink into the deepest pit of hell where Mitch belongs.

Have at it, Democrats. Get the sh-t done that a competent, well-versed political party can get done for America.

The Good News

(Update: Thanks again to Infidel753 for including this article in Crooks&Liars' Mike's Blog Round Up. I should mention this article is the twin article to a Bad News article that you might want to read to get a sense of balance on what's happening right now, thank you. Here's hoping things improve after January 20!)

After what needed saying earlier, here are the Good News: 

Despite all of trump's bluster, bullying, and open intent to disrupt the Electoral College count... and despite the Congressional Republicans' attempt to object to the results... The 2020 elections are finally done and Joe Biden will be the next President of the United States on January 20, 2021.

No matter what donald trump will attempt next to avoid what's coming for him - another coup attempt, another riot in Washington DC or elsewhere so he could declare martial law and suspend the whole government, declare war on Iran and impose emergency powers through that (even if that could work) - on January 20 he is officially out of office and can get dragged out of the White House by his diapers if need be. Anything trump could try to do to retain power - or embezzle, or straight-up steal from the federal coffers - will end the second Biden puts hand to Bible and swears the Oath of Office.

Granted, this means that between here and now trump can and will do anything like that to make sure he squeezes out the last penny he can get, but the odds already are that most of the Executive agencies are putting holds on any actions until the incoming Biden administration can sort things out.

In other news, the confirmation means Kamala Harris is the next Vice President. She will be the first woman elected on the Presidential ticket, albeit as the Veep. Harris will be the first woman President of the Senate, which has great significance which I'll get into later. She is the first bi-racial Veep, making her both the first Black American Veep (and second Black American winning the ticket since Obama) and the first Indian (Asian, not Native) American at that high an office.

The incoming Biden administration means we will be getting in 10 days a President who will take the COVID-19 Pandemic serious, and with luck control our nation's response in a more effective, swift manner than the incompetent trump.

In other political news, the seditious riot in Washington overwhelmed the news that Democrats in Georgia won both Senate race runoffs. Not only are two potentially corrupt Republican Senators out of office, but this means the Democrats hold a 50-50 split with Republicans for Senate control... which Kamala Harris makes a 51-vote "majority" as Senate President (the official title/duties of the VP).

This means that a more liberal agenda can get considered and even passed through Congress that otherwise would have been shut down by obstructionist Mitch McConnell had he retained a one-seat majority. It does depend on how the most conservative Dem left in the Senate - Manchin from West Virginia - will set the rules for the rest of his party to accept, but a lot of reforms to the existing health care system, voting rights, wages and employment help, student debt relief, energy and environmental policies, police reforms and social justice, and financial systems can get passed through the House and squeaked through that Senate.

It does depend on what happens to the filibuster and cloture rules - something that Manchin views as tools he still needs to hold influence above his fellow Senators - but the urgency in getting those bills passed during this pandemic crisis would make it likely a lot of it will get done.

Before I get any further, what happened in Georgia was historic and epic in their own ways. Raphael Warnock will be the first Black man elected to the Senate from that Deep South state (the first Black Democrat as well, although not the first Black Senator from the former Confederacy because Mississippi sent two during Reconstruction, and South Carolina has elected Republican Tim Scott in 2014 in a special election). Fellow Democrat Jon Ossoff is the first Jewish Senator elected from the Deep South since 1879.

Their victories matter a lot because they represent a significant shift in the voting demographics in Georgia. Ever since the party shifts of the Republicans going full Conservative since the 1990s, when they became dominant in the state and federal elections, this is the first crack in the Republican political control of the Southeastern U.S. region (AKA the Southern Strategy). Granted, Florida has fluctuated as a battleground state to where Dems have a chance to win, and the Republicans have lost Virginia since 2006. But Florida hasn't been considered a Deep South state since the population boom of the 1980s brought too many Northern liberals and Midwest moderates into the state. Virginia is now so much a part of the DC metro area - heavily liberal suburbs dependent on Federal largesse expanding into the northern counties - that the Conservative power base in that state can't compete. Getting a seriously Deep South state (from Louisiana through Mississippi and Alabama and Georgia and South Carolina) to flip Blue in major elections after 25-30 years of Red Conservative dominance is a sign the Far Right control of a heavily-populated region is about to collapse. That it's Georgia - the next-largest Electoral state behind Texas (which is divergent enough to be its own political ecosystem) and Florida - means the Republicans can plan on losing future Presidential bids for the 2020s decade and beyond.

The Georgia results is also major vindication for Stacey Abrams. Denied a win of the Governor's seat in 2018 due to ethically-questionable behavior from the Republican winner Kemp, Abrams took her national profile from that campaign and turned it into a voter-registration drive to break the GOP's voter suppression efforts and return more favorable results for her fellow Democrats. In the process, she demonstrated to the national Democratic leadership - which at times refuses to organize and recruit in states they felt were lost to them already - that YES it does matter to fight for every vote in every state, and has likely established to other state party leaders how to organize their own efforts to win in other hard Red states.

There are thousands of others in Georgia who worked hard to get the voters registered and motivated, and to her credit Abrams congratulates them as much as everyone else is congratulating her. Her celebrity stock among Democrats is sky high right now, she's proven herself a major player, and with luck she's converting her credibility among the leadership to expand the voter effort and seat challenges everywhere she can. If anyone can work to get more states to turn Blue, it's her.

Speaking of the DC Metro, one of the Democratic party agendas can well get passed within the first month of Biden's tenure: Statehood for DC and Puerto Rico. While these aren't popular issues with the nation at large - and heavily despised and dreaded by Republicans - these are key issues with Democrats looking at the big picture of Senate control. Right now, too many small population states - mostly in the Midwest - are heavily conservative and unlikely to consider Democratic choices for election. These small Red states have few residents, but will have outsized representation in a Senate that constitutionally grants every state Two Senators no matter what. This means roughly 30 percent of the nation's population gets 60-70 percent control of the Senate (another element of Minority Party Rule at the federal level). the demographic and geographic advantage of such skewed representation can hinder the American majority's needs to get things done (at all, given the GOP's obstructionist ways).

The recent trumpian assault on the nation's Capitol is another reason to expect Democrats to push for DC statehood right away: That lack of state-level control prevented the local authorities from aiding in either crowd control during the rally as well as stopping them from protecting the Capitol when the Capitol police got overwhelmed. DC's National Guard doesn't answer to the city, they answered to the DoD (which meant trump and his people benefited from them standing down: Congress had to get National Guard aid from Virginia and Maryland, and even then trump's Pentagon delayed Maryland's response). You can expect the Dems to proceed on granting DC statehood - that the local citizenry need to establish their own law enforcement and protect their own rights - on those grounds alone.

But what will happen with DC - and Puerto Rico - statehood is the expansion of the American charter to more diverse populations. DC is well-known as a Black-majority metropolis (although in truth the ethnicity is more even between Blacks and White in the last ten years of gentrification). Puerto Rico would become the first true Latino-majority state (98 percent!) in the U.S. (New Mexico would be closest at 42 percent). Entering both into the ranks of statehood would be major historical achievements for any Presidential administration (and we haven't done so since 1959).

Ironically, these moves for statehood might not resolve the Senate control in the Democrats' favor: Latinos in 2020 voted in surprisingly high numbers for Republicans, even in spite of the Republicans' harsh anti-immigration stances towards their very ethnic group. That's because the Latinos do not vote on any one singular issue, and are socially conservative on enough matters that Republicans still appeal to them. This would be interesting to witness down the line, but still this coming event should be considered good news for the betterment of the United States' soul.

We're also looking at the good news of Democrats pushing for voting rights laws to fill the void created by bad Supreme Court rulings and by decades' worth of Republican suppression. One thing I'm personally hoping for is a dedicated effort to kill off the Gerrymanders - used by battleground Red states to skew results and corruptly maintain Minority Party rule - and make more states competitive in elections. The Democrats need to, otherwise they run the risk of losing control of the House again like what happened in 2010.

Other good news to consider is that the United States can get back on good terms with our allied nations in Europe and Asia after four years of chaotic and harsh trumpian meddling. We can see the United States resume normal relations with Mexico - and see about undoing the ecological damage that trump's wall obsession had caused. We'll be rejoining the Paris Climate Agreements. We should see more efforts to spread high-speed Internet into rural areas (this would be a big deal where I live). 

We should see a lot of work done to investigate the horrors committed on immigrant and refugee families under trump's draconian rule. We can pray that many of the families pulled apart - and as many children wounded by trump's policies can be recovered - can be mended as best as possible under a more humane immigration system. Depending on if trump and his lackey Stephen Miller haven't blown it all up before Biden takes office.

A lot of this is still speculative. We have to see how things turn out on January 20 and from then on.

But we're facing a better future now than the chaotic uncertainty and violence of the trump regime.

Hope still matters.

In The Year 2021, Will a Just and Shining Future Finally Be Won

The year 2020 is officially ended, although much of the madness and dread that permeated that long long soul-sucking period of history - such as a trumpian administration sinking faster into corruption before Biden's inauguration - still awaits a future purging.

I still need to make a reckoning of that year - part of me wants to write up a Winners/Losers checklist but it's difficult to finish while the chaos is slipping to and fro - but in the meanwhile we do need to look ahead as Infidel753 does at his blog: 

1. When 2022 and 2024 arrive, most of the Democratic voting base will judge Biden and the Democrats in Congress mainly by results.  Has the pandemic been vanquished?  Have jobs and wages (not "the economy", which takes in all kinds of things, but jobs and wages specifically) recovered?  Has federal legislation to protect voting rights from state-level gerrymandering and vote suppression been enacted?  Has Medicare access been expanded or some other kind of public option been provided?  Have DC and Puerto Rico become states?  If the Democrats achieve results, our voters will care only that it was done, not how it was done.  Conversely, if little or nothing is accomplished, nobody will much care about whatever reasons or excuses are offered...

You need to go to Infidel's blog and read the whole article: It's not so much a checklist of a Liberal To Do List as it is a manual (and warning) of what to expect in the coming political cycle.

Much of what's coming is a pattern of destruction and obstruction we've already seen: The Republicans have already made it abundantly clear they will NOT respect the legitimacy of Biden's Presidency and will do everything to break it (and break the nation in the process). The Far Right media will obviously beat the "Impeach Biden" war drums within a day of Biden's swearing-in: for example, pinning the fault of 350,000+ Americans dead of COVID on his shoulders rather than on trump whose actual malfeasance in the affair was - and still is - the primary culprit in that tragedy.

The Republicans are going to spend 2021 - all of the 2020s decade - doing everything they can to hold onto the corrupt Minority Rule powers they wield. They've gotten to the point of Rule Or Ruin in their world-view, they no longer believe in the ebb-and-flow of power cycling between the major parties like it's done for much of the 20th Century. They're at the point that Republicans are terrified of the future... because the path forward from here follows the Democratic/Liberal ideals, not their own.

Half of what Infidel discusses on his article can only occur if the Democrats hold slim control of both halves of Congress, so with the Senate still on the edge with two Georgia Senatorial runoffs we can't be certain how far the Democratic agenda can go. All of what Infidel suggests is where it SHOULD go, such as the needed inclusions of new states to grant those regions - a broken Puerto Rico in particular - the legitimacy of statehood to stabilize their communities and promote better public service. A lot of what Infidel lists are things that should have been happening for ages, denied or blocked only because a calcifying Republican Party refused to see the merits of such efforts (has it ever occurred to Republicans that a habitually conservative Puerto Rican population could go Red and NOT Blue in future federal elections?) to even compromise or provide bipartisan effort to achieve them.

But Republicans can't and won't compromise any more: Politics is officially a Zero Sum game to them, so it's left to the Democrats to get things actually done anymore.

Which is where this coming decade offers so much potential for getting things done. While the Game of Demographics - the shift from older white conservative voting blocs to younger ethnically open liberal blocs - is still not really there yet for liberals to feel safe about achieving results - in health care reforms, civil rights, wage and employment rights, better education, a more just and loving world - the signs are aligning towards it.

What Biden, Harris, the Democratic leaders in Congress, the GOTV leadership of Democrats in battleground states -not just Stacey Abrams but thousands like her - what they can achieve this first year in a Biden Presidency is the foundation of a Liberal (not yet Progressive, sorry BernieBros) era that ought to repair not only the damage done by a vandal-plagued trump Era but also build past the roadblocks that Republicans have been throwing in our nation's path since 1994.

A lot of this still depends on those Georgia Senate races - the early voting on that (with huge numbers) wrapped up and the official election day for that is coming up next - to where none of us can feel safe about what's ahead. If Republicans can keep a slim 51-seat lead in the Senate, that means Mitch McConnell remains in power and can wield every obstructionist tool at his disposal to delay the Democrats' agenda for another two years at least.

If it comes to that, if Congress becomes a pit of McConnell's hellish desires, Biden and the Democrats can still try to rebuild as much of the federal system they can - while still wary of the conservative Judiciary trump and McConnell have built to oppose the oncoming Blue Path - with a dedicated effort to undercut the corruption the Republicans have been operating with at the state level. 

The long-term objective of breaking the Republican Minority Rule needs to focus on the insane level of Gerrymandering the Republicans commit at the state level in battleground states - Texas, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida especially - and that the Far Right will keep deploying to suppress future Democratic voter turnout. There have been successes in weakening the Gerrymander efforts, but our nation has yet to find a way to kill those damn things outright. With the chaos trump infused into the 2020 U.S. Census efforts, it's likely the Republican-controlled states will use skewed numbers to Gerrymander even more to prevent Democratic majorities - even slim ones - in those states to elect honest proportional representation.

That's just one thing I can think of that Biden and the Democratic Party needs to be doing. Infidel's list of To Do's - again, go to that link - lists a whole lot more. Every one of them a necessary act to recover from this pandemic, from this economic malaise, to repair this collapsing edifice we know as the United States of America.

We should see an end to the trump years like the fading nightmare it's all been.

We are going to wake up to a busy decade of hard work. That shining future is just the morning sunrise. Get some coffee if you need it.

What If: Think Of the Future Heading Into Bidenworld

(Update 12/27: Many thanks again to Batocchio for promoting this blog through both Crooks&Liars as well as his Vagabond Scholar site, where he hosts the annual Jon Swift Memorial Annual Roundup. Happy New Year to you all!)

I have my concerns about polling, I know the numbers may look good but they're not the actual voting that has to take place on November 3 (and I should be working on my Florida Ballot coverage this weekend because Early Voting is in ONE week).

But damn, the current numbers for Joe Biden beating the tar out of trump (now in double-digits!) are so enticing to look at.

From FiveThirtyEight.com on October 9 2020

And if we go by 538's state-by-state projections, we're looking at this for the November results:

Now 538 is not exact, nobody can predict the future, anything can happen in the next three weeks, etc. But the trends do not favor trump, all the trends are favoring Biden. So we gotta start thinking about what the world is going to look like the day after November 3, 2020.

For starters, it's going to be as chaotic as hell.

We've known for months now that trump will attempt to subvert, block, and deny the vote-counting in key battleground states to throw their Electoral College votes into a bind. He's primarily looking to do that by claiming massive voter fraud through the mail-in ballots, even without evidence that such fraud can happen (hint, it doesn't). 

The point of this would be to convince the state legislatures in those states - especially the ones controlled by Republicans - to nullify the popular vote and substitute their Electors instead. And if they can't do that, have the legislatures deny any Electors at all to where nobody clears the 270 EV needed to win. And when the Democratic Party sues in those states to count the votes, force the lawsuits up to a Supreme Court packed with eager Republican justices willing to throw the election in favor of trump (this is coming from trump himself). And even if that all doesn't work out, as long as they can prevent Biden getting over the 270 hurdle they can force the election to the House of Representatives where the GOP hopes to control enough DELEGATES (each state gets one vote, not each Representative) to give trump the "win" anyway.

The good news is, this isn't all guaranteed to go trump's way. There are not a lot of states in play that trump can obstruct/deny the popular vote against him: right now that would be Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, maybe Wisconsin, Arizona. and/or Pennsylvania. If Georgia's popular vote goes against trump, then throw them into the mix. But that's a lot of states at play, and trump would have to steal all of them to pull his con game off.

trump would have to ensure the state legislatures play the game to his/their advantage. Problem is, not everybody votes a straight party ticket down the entire ballot. Not everyone voting against trump will also vote against the local Republican candidates on the ticket. So if they try to go out of their way to toss anti-trump votes as invalid, the local Representatives run the risk of tossing votes THEY need. So they may not be positioned to do that for trump. Those local Representatives also have to live with the consequences of denying the voters their say. If the state legislature refuses to certify a Biden victory where a clear majority - say Biden wins Georgia with 51 percent to trump's 44, a six-point difference - is in place, there is going to be a lot of outrage and anger. All the police curfews and beat-downs in the world would not be enough to curtail the non-stop protests that would overwhelm the state capitals from that point on.

So trump's game can only work if the votes are too close to call, or within margin of error to where people can't be expected to protest (although the rage will be there, trust me). Which is where the voter turnout is a must for Democrats: And there's a lot of evidence the turnout for 2020 is going to be 8 to 15 percent higher than 2016. And if the turnout is similar to the midterms in 2018, it benefits the Democratic Party, meaning good news for Biden.

So say we get past November 3 with Biden getting clear majority leads in most Blue and battleground states to where trump can't claim victory (he'll try, but nobody but his rabid base will believe him). Say we go through November and December with trump trying all the legal - and illegal - stunts he and his cronies can think of (and some of the illegal things trump could try would throw the country into immediate civil war. My God, people war-gamed this shit so thoroughly there's a Wiki page for it!). We get through all of that and Biden still gets about 52-54 percent of the popular and 352 Electoral Votes, clearly winning the Presidency.

trump and other Republicans and especially a lot in the Far Right media still will never accept it.

That's where the next worry begins: What trump would do to burn everything down as he exits the Oval Office.

If trump and the Republicans can't rule - by minority power - they will certainly try to ruin, from petty acts of sabotage through intentional destruction of documents and evidence to hide any criminal mischief that happened in trump's administration. trump is facing and will face lawsuits and criminal charges the second that Presidential Immunity no longer applies to him, and he and his handlers will try to destroy every piece of evidence they can - however they can get the Justice Department to clean up for him - to avoid a slam dunk case against him.

trump will definitely do everything in his power to ruin the economy however he can, through massive increase of his tariffs that we've already seen cause damage to our own. He could well attempt Executive Orders to gut things like Social Security and Medicare in ways that would take months for a Biden administration to repair.

I even dread some of the worst things trump could do as he gets pushed out the door: Create chaos on the international stage by violating our treaties, shredding diplomatic norms he hasn't yet touched, and probably even trigger a war or two - likely Iran, if you watch what Pompeo is doing - that could tie up Biden for weeks after the inauguration.

(Also: I dunno if anybody else has been talking about it, but one thing trump could do if forced out of office would be to remove the United States from NATO. It would be a boon to trump's idol Putin, it would cause massive foreign policy chaos here at home, and if he pulls it off - depending on the circumstances with the Senate - there might not be a way for Biden to rejoin that alliance)

(Also Also: One of the worst things I can imagine trump doing if he's forced out is literally burning everything down as he leaves. I'm talking arson from the White House to every other government building he could bust out. I have had honest-to-God nightmares since January 2020, the ones I can remember waking up from going "Shit, he WOULD do that wouldn't he, like the mob boss he is...")

And none of that is covering the most likely response to a Biden victory: the likelihood trump will call on his White Supremacist foot soldiers to "Stand Up" and go on bloody warpaths. Those wingnuts are triggered and ready to roll, some of them are already jumping the gun.

Still, with all the chaos we're facing, we need to consider the possibility Biden will win the Presidency. What will he face as he takes the Oath of Office in 2021?

We already know the crises facing this nation: A pandemic that needs curtailing and curing; A healthcare system still in need of upgrade and protection from Far Right lawsuits trying to gut what we already have; A growing climate change disaster in need of immediate attention; Massive federal budget deficits based mostly on reckless Republican tax cuts for the super-rich; Genuine infrastructure projects; The need for better wages for part-time and full-time workers; A housing crisis alongside a returning banking crisis that threatens to echo the damage done in 2007-08. There's a lot of shit to handle.

And any response from Biden to all that depends on if Democrats have control of BOTH Houses of Congress. The U.S. House is currently Democratic - and there is no sign, even WITH trump's threats to cheat, that the Republicans can claim the House - but the Senate is currently Republican and under the control of "Moscow" Mitch McConnell. Currently, the odds favor the Democrats flipping about five states - Maine, Colorado, Arizona, maybe Iowa, maybe Montana - while the Republicans have a shot at one - maybe Alabama - meaning the Democrats could win the Senate 51-49 (there could be Democratic wins in South Carolina (!), Texas (!), maybe one seat in Georgia (!), and maybe Mississippi (!!!), so there's a lot at play here).

However, if the Republicans retain control of the Senate (and McConnell stays as Majority Leader), you can forget about anything Biden could try to implement. McConnell is a master obstructionist, having denied Obama most of Obama's agenda in order to keep Republican minority rule intact from 2009 onward. McConnell will be in position to block any attempts to repair the damage trump has done to the political landscape, and McConnell will definitely do everything in his power to stop Biden from realigning the judicial system that McConnell has spent the last four years filling with Federalist Society, Far Right judges.

Remember how McConnell denied Obama the right to nominate Merrick Garland for the Supreme Court to fill the vacancy left by Scalia's death claiming it was an election year (and please note the hypocrisy when Mitch rushed to fill the vacancy for Ginsburg's seat while the seat was still warm)? If he's still Majority Leader in 2021, we can expect McConnell to deny Biden his right to nominate ANYONE to any Senate-approved position (please note, the GOP threatened to do that to Hillary). McConnell could prevent Biden from filling Cabinet positions needed to oversee rebuilding of agencies either raided by trump and his cronies or agencies left to rot by those cronies' mismanagement. It would fulfill the Republican dogma of "Government is BAD" by keeping the Executive branch understaffed, unmanaged, unable to serve the public trust.

One can hope that Biden - with the zeal of bipartisanship he carries with him - could appeal to his colleagues in the Senate to allow him at least the right to staff the Executive Branch as he needs. But Biden needs to remember he has to give his own Democratic Party the chance to fill those roles to ensure a Progressive-leaning agenda in the first place (If Biden caves to McConnell and fills too many administrative and judicial positions with Republican-leaning centrists, the Democrats will implode).

A better future path to Bidenworld would require not only Biden winning the Electoral College, but also entering into 2021 with a Democratic majority in Congress (with the likelihood any McConnell/GOP attempt to gridlock the Senate with Cloture/Filibustering negated with removal of the Filibuster rules).

That would usher in a quick period of action: Democrats taking care of the immediate crises - fixing the nation's pandemic response and overseeing a healthy win against COVID-19 - and setting up the agendas they have to get the economy regaining jobs at better wages, fighting climate change, et al.

The thing about a Biden Presidency all depends on how his Passive-Positive Congenial nature will engage with the needs of the Democratic Party as well as the needs of the United States. One of the boons of Passive-Positives is the open way they approach their job: Appeals to friendship, appeals to shared values, an overall appeal to our better angels. In a way, Pass-Positives are great at building and maintaining "The Big Tent" where a multitude of party factions can gel and get along.

Whether this means the Passive-Positive temperament will lead to effective leadership choices depends on how Biden handles the immediacy of the crises confronting him. One thing he has already done is absorb the agendas and plans of other Democratic figures - Warren's bold ideas, Harris' incentive to work hard towards reforms - that can well carry into his administration. Much in the way that Reagan entered his Presidency to fulfill some of the ambitions of the Goldwater/Far Right conservatism of the Republican Party (Reagan's malleable leadership ended up curtailing some of that Far Right agenda, you'd be amazed how many Far Right pundits curse Reagan's name today), Biden could enter his administration seeking to fulfill some of the ambitions of the Far Left progressivism (especially on climate change and employment/wages). 

There's still a lot of factors at play. There's still too much risk out there regarding trump's efforts to sabotage the election this November.

We can war-game out 2020 as much as we want. But what we really need to do is commit to the one act we CAN commit: VOTE. We need to vote and vote Democratic across the board, we need to get the vote out for the 2020 Blue Wave. We need to send trump out the door and into a New York State criminal docket. We need to vote for every Democratic candidate for the Senate to kick McConnell out of power and into the deepest pit of Hell he deserves.

Vote for your lives, America, this 2020. And for the LOVE OF GOD, VOTE BIDEN. For the LOVE OF YOUR FAMILIES AND GRANDPARENTS AND CHILDREN, Don't vote for trump or McConnell or for any Republican misrule.

Oh No. Ruth Bader Ginsburg Died.

No No No is literally trending on Twitter.

WE ARE BACK AT DEFCON-1, AMERICA.

This is like Scalia's dying except it's a MILLION TIMES WORSE BECAUSE MITCH MCCONNELL IS AN EVIL FCKING BASTARD.

Okay, if we can go to a calmer voice like Russell Berman at the Atlantic about this:

The death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg today represents a devastating loss for feminists who held up the 87-year-old as an icon of women’s rights, and as a bulwark protecting abortion rights and a wide range of other progressive ideals on a conservative Supreme Court. The Brooklyn-born jurist became one of the nation’s foremost advocates against gender discrimination as a lawyer for the ACLU, decades before President Bill Clinton appointed her to be the second woman to sit on the high court.

But her passing less than two months before the presidential election also tosses one more lit match into the tinderbox of national politics in 2020: It will surely inflame a deeply polarized country already riven by a deadly pandemic, a steep economic downturn, and civil unrest in its major cities.

In Washington, the vacancy fight could ratchet up tensions to a level unseen even in the tumultuous Trump era. President Donald Trump will be eager to fill Ginsburg’s seat immediately, seizing an opportunity to rally his base before the election and to cement his legacy in the event he is defeated in November. He could also become the first president since Richard Nixon to install three justices on the high court in a single four-year term. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has already indicated he’s ready for another confirmation battle, either before or immediately after the election. Republicans might be hard-pressed to consider and approve a Trump nominee in the eight weeks before November, but even a victory by Vice President Joe Biden and a Democratic takeover of the Senate might not prevent Trump from successfully appointing another justice. Republicans would still control both the White House and the Senate until a new Congress takes office in early January...

...McConnell has insisted that the precedent he created to deny former President Barack Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland in the final year of Obama’s term—in a vacancy that occurred nearly nine months before the 2016 election—no longer applies, because the same party controls both the White House and the Senate majority. “Oh, we’d fill it,” the Kentucky Republican promised in May 2019, more than a year before Ginsburg announced the cancer recurrence that took her life. Never mind that the rationale McConnell gave at the time—that voters should have the chance to weigh in on their next Supreme Court justice—would seem to apply even more strongly during an election in which the first ballots have already been mailed...

McConnell will break the rules he himself made because his main objective - Republican political rule even in spite of a majority of Americans opposing Republicans - is all that matters.

You know Mitch is going to summon the Senate back this Monday and push through a trump nominee of some 30 year old with maybe three weeks worth of legal work but with the farthest Far Right ideology spewing out his mouth to get voted to Ginsburg's seat by the end of next week.

We are looking at the reality of a 6 conservative - 3 liberal skewed bench ruling on banning abortion (plus birth control because the Patriarchy demands it), ending affordable health care, voter suppression, immigration torture, and every other legal matter starting this October.

We are so very royally fucked.

I know, I know. We are coping with the passing of a lioness in American jurisprudence in Ginsburg, a feminist icon whose legal rulings were of high importance and foundational.

But we're also in the gravest national crisis of political gridlock and self-inflicted destruction since 1860. We're being led by crooks and corrupt bastards who do not care for justice or equality or the law itself.

The Darkest Timeline has gone full dark.

Anyone Remember The Year 2010 And How It Seemed So Crazy Then

I am suddenly nostalgic and in the mood to look back ten years to 2010 and try to remember what the hell the world looked like back then.

Back then this was under a completely different name - Amendments We Need - and the blog's focus was supposed to be on political reforms and high-minded philosophizing. But even then the postings were sliding into weekly (and then daily) words of outrage over the partisan nightmare the Republicans were creating during the Obama years, so I changed it (and busted a lot of links to earlier articles in the process, sigh).

I realize looking back the amount of writing (85) was minimal compared to recent years where I break 100 easily, although the years 2015 (205) and 2016 (307) are outside the norms. Back then I was still finding a voice, and coping with a lot of bad stuff in the Real World.

2010 was the middle of my lost years, between late 2008 when I lost my full-time job as a librarian before regaining a new librarian post in early 2013. Roughly four-plus years of career searching, thanks to the Great Recession that killed off the civil service job market: A lot of city, county, and state revenues relied on property taxes, and the collapsed housing market cut into those revenues well up to now.

Best I could find were part-time jobs, inventory checking here, temp Census taking there, unable to hold either for long while I kept hunting anything in editing (Journalism), research (Libraries), or tech (Computer skills, and studying for A+ certification on a job-hunting grant).

In terms of what I was writing on the blog, it bounced between the serious endeavors - lamenting the failures of mainstream media and such - and the quick posts - thus and so - in order to keep myself engaged with writing while the real world was bumming me out.

Man I was pretty depressed back then (and sadly that depression is chronic and not far from my mind)

I notice I was linking a lot to Glenn Greenwald back then... and that faded away in favor of Ta-Nehisi Coates at the Atlantic as well as the general team of misfits at Balloon Juice, upon which a lot of my current blogging is based. I also started linking to David Frum and Conor Friedersdorf as kinds of counter-balance of conservative viewpoints, because I try to accept the larger scope of things (even as I got to find conservative viewpoints skewing further to a vicious extreme).

I was also taunting Erik Erickson often because the SOB threatened to shoot census workers at a time I was enumerating. Grrr.

If there were any personal bright spots, my brother Phil took me to a Rays game that ended up the team's first No-Hitter. WOOHOO!

Looking back, I'm finding something that had me looking forward: I wrote an article "Daddy What Did YOU Do During the Republican War on America" projecting all the way up to the far-flung year of 2020 (oh, hi). Oh good God, re-reading this article is breaking my heart. Not just the fanciful idea that I'd actually be married with kids by now (looks forlornly across an empty house as a Florida thunderstorm rages outside), but that ten years ago some form of sanity would prevail. That somehow, the crazed Tea Party efforts by the Far Right - the media, the GOP Congresscritters, the Birthers that would metastasize into QAnon nuts six years later - would implode on itself, that enough Americans would rise up against the tax-cut obsessions and racist/sexist bullshit.

Now I know why I was looking back now. Why I'm in such a mood. Part of me remembered this, remembered the hope I had for brighter happier days in the 2010 decade. All to see it come crashing down thanks to Mitch and trump and 62 million insane neighbors.

That was 2010, ten years gone.

Are we going to let 2020 ruin everything between now and 2030?

Are we even going to see 2030?

All This Outrage Must Lead To Action Against Republican Corruption. IT MUST.

So as I recover from surgery, the rest of this week has mostly been watching the Republican-controlled Senate avoid even the pretense of holding a fair Impeachment hearing, which previous versions in 1868 and 1998 both allowed for witness testimony. This time around, Mitch McConnell has lined up enough of his fellow GOP buddies to ignore evidence and just vote on what will likely be a partisan acquittal over donald trump's attempt at extorting Ukraine into creating a fake investigation into Biden's family to hurt Joe Biden's 2020 chances in the general election.

All we can say for certain now is the Republicans are not interested in Truth.

The Republicans are not interested in Justice.

The Republicans are sure as hell not interested in the American Way (no, they are interested in the White Racist Greedhead Way).

All that remains now is the Voter Outrage towards Republican Corruption.

Because a vast majority of Americans wanted witnesses to be heard at the Impeachment trial. And when it came time to be a representative body towards the needs of the American majority... the Senate Republicans shrugged and said "so what."

This is what we are down to, fellow Americans.

Republican party leadership has made it very plain: They will side now and always with a corrupt trump who seeks to abuse the powers of the Presidency to achieve any crooked gain.

Republicans do not care for the rights and wishes of the nation's citizenry. They are kicking each concern to the curb, laughing to their cushy incumbent jobs in the belief that the voters back home will NEVER hold them accountable.

It is far past time to hold Republican officials accountable for the crimes they commit as well as the crimes they allow.

It is well now the time to find every Democratic challenger to every Republican Senator up for re-election this 2020 and it is damn well the time to support each Democrat to victory this November.

Find your Democratic Candidate for the Senate and aid them every way you can.

Update: Doug has added a weblink to the Indivisible's Payback Project.

Keep the House in Democratic hands, make sure the popular vote majority that fills that half of Congress remains Blue and Angry.

AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, SUPPORT THE DEMOCRATIC NOMINEE FOR PRESIDENT THIS 2020 AND VOTE THAT GODLESS SHITGIBBON OUT OF OUR WHITE HOUSE.

Nobody is coming to save us from the wingnuts, America. It's up to us. Make government accountable again. Make the Republican crooks flee for their lives.

Get the vote out this 2020.

What the Impeachment of donald trump Means

Tuesday - tomorrow - the Senate trial of donald j (aka The Shitgibbon) trump begins regarding two articles of Impeachment:

trump, of course, wants it all to go away and pretend he's vindicated (via Jessica Hullinger at The Week):

President Trump's lawyers filed a brief on Monday urging the Senate to dismiss the impeachment charges against him and calling the House's impeachment process a "perversion" of the Constitution, The Associated Press reports.

The 110-page brief calls the House's impeachment case "flimsy," insists Trump did "absolutely nothing wrong," and says he has "been the victim of an illegitimate partisan effort to take him down," The New York Times reports. The House filed two impeachment articles against Trump — abuse of power for withholding aid to Ukraine in order to pressure that country to investigate his political rivals, and obstruction of Congress for blocking the House's impeachment inquiry.

The brief "does not deny that Mr. Trump pressured Ukraine to open investigations into Democrats," the Times writes. Instead it argues that this was within Trump's rights as president. As to the obstruction of Congress article, the lawyers say the president has a right to confidential deliberations.

The "President Can Do What He Wants" defense is pretty much the only one trump and his lackeys have. Problem is, legal precedent says FCK all to that. Let's refer to Jonathan Chait at New York Magazine for more:

The first problem with this argument is that it rests on incorrect facts. At the time President Trump was withholding military aid to Ukraine, officials inside his administration worried that he was breaking the law by refusing to allocate spending that had been passed by Congress. But the legality had not been officially settled at the time, which is what allowed Trump’s supporters to insist that he had not broken any laws. But last Thursday, the Government Accountability Office formally ruled that withholding the aid did violate the law.

This ruling doesn’t mean Trump is a criminal who needs to be impeached. But given the weight his supporters have placed on the lack of a formal legal violation, it is quite significant. When you rest your defense upon a technicality, you’re in trouble when the technicality turns out to be technically wrong.

Second, as a historical matter, there is no evidence that impeachment was designed to deal solely with violations of federal law. The framers debated impeachment and the record suggests a broad range of concern, ultimately leaving the definition of “high crimes and misdemeanors” to Congress to decide. Alexander Hamilton defined it as “the abuse or violation of some public trust.” Historically, less than one-third of impeachments of federal officials have charged a criminal violation.

Finally, as a constitutional principle, the notion that a president cannot be removed for abusing his power, but can be removed for a criminal violation, however small, would turn impeachment into a ludicrously ill-fitting solution for the problem it was designed to solve. It implies Trump could not be impeached for promising to pardon anybody who murdered his political rivals, but could be impeached if he resold a mattress that was missing its tags...

Simply put: trump and his legal puppies are trying to set up an environment where abuse of power isn't real unless a President commits a by-the-book crime except for the fact they're also arguing that no President can be charged with a crime so why even bother.

/headdesk

The thing is, Impeachment is now set to go in the Senate, and it's looking like Senate leader Mitch McConnell will try to do everything to block the proceedings from public view. Considering how the cable news channels - Fox and CNN - of the day covered Clinton's trial, this is hypocrisy of the highest order. Republicans are hoping to God that "Out of Sight" means "Out of Mind."

This is all part of McConnell's hopes to quickly kill the whole proceeding before enough damning testimony is allowed to air in the first place. There is a genuine fear that if enough critical information about trump's actions blocking Ukrainian aid and then covering up those attempts got out, it would make it harder for the Republican Senators to blithely vote Not Guilty and walk away.

Even with the slight majority the GOP has in the Senate, this IS an election year and a third of the Senate is under voter review: There's at least three Senators in the crosshairs of angry voters back home - Collins in Maine, Ernst in Iowa, Gardner in Colorado - that they could refuse to play Mitch's game. And there's a few more Senators - maybe Murkowski, maybe even Mitt Romney now in a Utah with his own base of support - who may be safe enough from any trumpian retaliation to deny McConnell an easy ride. Mitch can't afford to lose two of his coalition: three or more and the Democrats can vote to have every last document tracing trump's misdeeds and a column of witnesses testifying submitted as evidence.

Granted, there's a lot of hope riding on that last paragraph. We're still looking at the most obvious end of the Impeachment process: trump gets acquitted because there's not a two-thirds supermajority to find him guilty of even one charge for removal.

But accountability still matters: Voters are going to remember how the Republicans behaved during all this. The GOP brushes this off, gives trump an easy acquittal, and enough angry voters back home supporting Impeachment will blame the Senate for ignoring their duty. The Republicans are going to have to play this just right: Show enough concern and handle the process as serious as required, pretend to listen to enough evidence to convince the media they're not faking, and then acquit trump and have a huge party at his Doral resort.

But I doubt it. These Republicans have shown little care of how they're viewed by the American majority. They'll be sloppy and reckless with the rules like they've been for decades.

And the only way this ends well for the United States is that each Republican bastard failing in their oath of duty gets kicked out of power for good.

In the meantime, here's hoping for a big show of witnesses backstabbing each other in ways to make the surviving afternoon soaps look like Disney Junior cartoons.

#ImpeachTrump