Again, the Men of Power Fail Us

There's a lot going on, so I'll be brief. Angry, but brief.

JFC, guys. AGAIN? (via Andrew Solender at Axios): 

It's a stunning reversal of political fortunes in just 24 hours. Swalwell was among the frontrunners in the race, but his campaign is in free fall due to allegations of rape, sexual assault and misconduct, which he denies.

His page on the Democratic fundraising website ActBlue and the endorsement tab on his website have been pulled down, his ad buys are being pulled back, at least one fundraiser has been scrapped, and he is reportedly hemorrhaging staff.

It doesn't end there: Swalwell is under investigation by the Manhattan district attorney, and Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) plans to force a vote to expel him from Congress.

Swalwell said in a video posted to social media Friday: "These allegations of sexual assault are flat false. They are absolutely false. They did not happen, they never happened..."

It's hard to keep up that defense, Swalwell, when your victims are coming forward with witnesses, evidence, and receipts.

Considering how consistent a scandal this is - elected officials abusing women, especially the women working for them, and that they won't stop until confronted in public and a court of law - across both Republican and Democratic candidates, we are honestly at the point where we shouldn't allow men at all to run for any elected office or get appointed to administrative roles. I'm a guy, and I can't trust any of these guys for God's sake.

We need to flush out this corruption, this twisted mindset among men of wealth and power that they can hurt and control anybody they like. /rage

The Problem With Liberalism

(This is, by the by, NOT an April Fools prank. Sorry about the timing, I've been working on this for a month...)

(also wik, this is my 2,500th blog post. It's a question if any of us will be here for the 3000th...)

With all of the current chaos in the United States - with trump and his Far Right MAGA brownshirts rampaging through our federal government - there's discernable alarm among the Democratic faithful wondering why the hell their own party leadership - who ought to be opposing trump's smash-and-grabs more forcefully - is publicly playing nice with a conservative Republican party that keeps punching Dems in the metaphorical (and sometimes literal) face.

There's a number of theories why the modern Democratic Party seems so apprehensive in the face of historic destruction by Far Right Wingnuts. I'll throw this one hypothesis out here to give me the excuse to discuss yet another political philosophy (those -isms) of how Liberalism - as a core foundation of modern Democratic Party world-view - is the source of this seeming inaction and timidity.

Liberalism I would argue started as the American world-view, back when it wasn't confined to just one political party. If you look up the term in the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (3rd ed, 2009), liberalism "is the belief that it is the aim of politics to preserve individual rights and to maximize freedom of choice." (p. 306) As a philosophical response to the shifts in the United Kingdom from absolute monarchism - the Divine Right of Kings argument that had led to Charles I's execution and then the end of Stuart rule with James II's expulsion in 1688 - the emerging Enlightenment thinkers like John Locke and John Stuart Mill developed ideologies justifying the actions against the British kings that didn't want to play nice with others.

Locke in particular had a major influence on American political (liberal) thinking. In Locke's First Treatise of Government, he directly countered the Divine Right of Kings - posited in Sir Robert Filmer's Patriarcha - as a form of slavery (from York University's PDF archive):

To make way for this doctrine, they have denied mankind a right to natural freedom; whereby they have not only, as much as in them lies, exposed all subjects to the utmost misery of tyranny and oppression, but have also unsettled the titles and shaken the thrones of princes... However we must believe them upon their own bare words, when they tell us, “We are all born slaves, and we must continue so;” there is no remedy for it; life and thraldom we entered into together, and can never be quit of the one till we part with the other... (p.8)

Locke made this point, against the ill intents of absolute rulers:

The great question which in all ages has disturbed mankind, and brought on them the greatest part of those mischiefs which have ruined cities, depopulated countries, and disordered the peace of the world, has been, not whether there be power in the world, nor whence it came, but who should have it. The settling of this point being, of no smaller moment than the security of princes, and the peace and welfare of their estates and kingdoms, a reformer of politics, one would think, should lay this sure, and be very clear in it: for if this remain disputable, all the rest will be to very little purpose; and the skill used in dressing up power with all the splendor and temptation absoluteness can add to it, without showing who has a right to have it, will serve only to give a greater edge to man’s natural ambition, which of itself is but too keen. What can this do but set men on the more eagerly to scramble, and so lay a sure and lasting foundation of endless contention and disorder, instead of that peace and tranquility, which is the blurriness of government, and the end of human society? (p.69)

Having argued against Divine Right in the First part, Locke dug into the Second Treatise (same PDF source):

To this purpose, I think it may not be amiss to set down what I take to be political power. That the power of a magistrate over a subject may be distinguished from that of a father over his children, a master over his servant, a husband over his wife, and a lord over his slave. All which distinct powers happening sometimes together in the same man, if he be considered under these different relations, it may help us to distinguish these powers one from another, and show the difference betwixt a ruler of a commonwealth, a father of a family, and a captain of a galley... Political power, then, I take to be a right of making laws, with penalties of death, and consequently all less penalties for the regulating and preserving of property, and of employing the force of the community in the execution of such laws, and in the defence of the commonwealth from foreign injury, and all this only for the public good... (p.106)

To understand political power aright, and derive it from its original, we must consider what estate all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of Nature, without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other man. A state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another, there being nothing more evident than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages of Nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another, without subordination or subjection, unless the lord and master of them all should, by any manifest declaration of his will, set one above another, and confer on him, by an evident and clear appointment, an undoubted right to dominion and sovereignty... (p.106)

That is where the basic element of classical liberalism - the rights of an individual compared to the power of the state - takes root. Locke does care to set limits:

But though this be a state of liberty, yet it is not a state of licence; though man in that state have an uncontrollable liberty to dispose of his person or possessions, yet he has not liberty to destroy himself, or so much as any creature in his possession, but where some nobler use than its bare preservation calls for it. The state of Nature has a law of Nature to govern it, which obliges every one, and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions... (p.107)

There's arguably a lot more I can quote from Locke, but I'll stop here because this is the point where we can see Locke's influence on Thomas Jefferson, whose work on the Declaration of Independence is the keystone of American political philosophy: From which we derived the belief "that all men are created Equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness."

You might notice Jefferson switches out "possessions" or "property" for "happiness", because that created back in 1776 a rather sticky moral conflict with America's UN-Equal system of chattel slavery on Blacks. Which does point to a more subtle yet still potent problem with liberalism as a political -ism that refers to the main problem overall.

What Locke - and Jefferson, and the rest of the liberal movement of the late 18th Century - aimed for was the establishment and reinforcement of the idea of The Social Contract (edited/cited by Alex Tuckness at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy): 

Locke used the claim that men are naturally free and equal as part of the justification for understanding legitimate political government as the result of a social contract where people in the state of nature conditionally transfer some of their rights to the government in order to better ensure the stable, comfortable enjoyment of their lives, liberty, and property. Since governments exist by the consent of the people in order to protect the rights of the people and promote the public good, governments that fail to do so can be resisted and replaced with new governments...

The most direct reading of Locke’s political philosophy finds the concept of consent playing a central role. His analysis begins with individuals in a state of nature where they are not subject to a common legitimate authority with the power to legislate or adjudicate disputes. From this natural state of freedom and independence, Locke stresses individual consent as the mechanism by which political societies are created and individuals join those societies...

Into all of this Locke and other liberals built up the the concept of "The Rule Of Law": 

The Rule of Law comprises a number of principles of a formal and procedural character, addressing the way in which a community is governed. The formal principles concern the generality, clarity, publicity, stability, and prospectivity of the norms that govern a society. The procedural principles concern the processes by which these norms are administered, and the institutions—like courts and an independent judiciary that their administration requires...

In this, Liberalism subsists on a structured, procedural form of governance where the people as is their right elect leaders, the leaders create laws and enforce them, and the courts balance things out by defining the laws. If that system breaks down in any way, liberals - if any were in charge - would make changes to the laws and realign the administration and argue for judicial decisions to keep the system going.

This is how the Founding Fathers - balanced between more "conservative" world-views of business and class culture, with the "liberal" world-views of democratic/republic principles and legal stability - worked themselves from makeshift state-level confederations into a "strong" federal Constitutional system designed to provide the individual freedoms promised by their liberalism while guaranteeing that chaos/anarchy and the threat of European monarchism (the Absolutism of the day) did not threaten the American way of life. 

This is why when arguing about the nature (well, the sins) of Conservatism I disagreed with Frank Wilhoit's contention that Conservatism was the only American -ism. Wilhoit believed Conservatism - the modern, twisted version of it - had driven all other -isms out of the political landscape. My contention is that Conservatism - obsessed with seizing and maintaining political/economic/social control for the elite few - exists today as a counterpoint to Liberalism - the guarantees of individual rights within a shared community - which persists as a primary American ideology because the institutions it built - our entire Constitutional system of checks and balances - remain standing.

The problem with our modern Liberalism is how it has blinded itself to the perpetuation of that constitutional system, even as it is collapsing on itself from Far Right conservative misrule.

That Rule of Law that liberals insist on - believe still functions normally - is under attack as trump and his underlings both in the Executive and Legislative branches work to undo all of it: Either through attacking civil liberties of Americans and legal residents, or dismantling/shutting down federal agencies without following procedure or getting legislative consent as Locke intended. I've said this before: A lot of our constitutional federal system relied a lot on Good Faith, that all parties involved were acting for a common purpose or at least with genuine conviction to do the right thing. Without that, without the "unwritten rules" of governance that our nation's relied on for centuries to make things work within both the letter and the spirit of the law, the system's falling apart.

And yet, our current Democratic liberal leadership - that should be in active opposition to the damage trump and the radical Conservative Far Right are inflicting on that system - are still acting - almost deluding themselves - as though the political norms can still be upheld. They're so beholden to the Liberal ideology of the Social Contract that they're opening themselves to manipulation by their Conservative opponents to accelerate the constitutional system's collapse.

The likes of Minority Leader Schumer, and half the state governors planning to run for the Presidency in 2028 - as though a corrupt trump won't shut down elections altogether to seize power permanently - are going through the motions like the political norms they're used to will still be there after trump and the wingnut conservatives have burned it all down. They don't see the urgency or dangers of the moment, because they want to believe the liberal foundations of our nation will somehow survive even without action or defense on their part. They don't want to act in ways that would upset their understanding of that Social Contract: those unspoken norms, those natural rights.

The other problem with adhering to those norms of The Social Contract - that individual rights are upheld through the law, and with justice for all - is how uneven how unequal the enforcement of that Social Contract can be. Even as liberalism as an ideology demands equality for all as a right, in practice our liberal systems have a hard time enforcing or even defining those equal rights because even liberalism desires stability - a status quo - over change. 

You have to remember, even the liberal Founding Fathers compromised on the American system of Black slave labor to get the Declaration approved and the Constitution enacted. The liberalism of early American politics, business, and culture allowed slavery to thrive and spread to where it threatened our nation's well-being by the 1850s, and did little to stop the steady march towards Civil War when the spiritual and political harm of slavery could no longer be tolerated. It became the breaking point of the Social Contract, one that required a full Reconstruction and amendment reforms to repair... and which was left unfinished by the 1870s once the Social Contract (between White leaderships) was reimposed, leading to a century of Jim Crow inequality requiring another round of Civil Rights reforms by the 1960s to achieve even a modicum of justice under the Rule of Law. (All now threatened by a very anti-liberal trump regime undoing every Civil Rights act and social shift of the last 60 years)

Even as that Civil War allowed more left-leaning progressives among the liberal powers to enact major reforms involving education, agriculture, business, and law, and even as the Civil Rights movement attempted even further reforms, those reforms were not equally enforced to ensure the liberal system lived up to its own ideals. This is Liberalism's darkest flaw: It relies on a shared agreed-upon social order that bends too much to the corrupt world-view of more conservative, self-serving ideologues.

This is why there's a power struggle between traditional (classical) Liberals and more progressive (socialist) elements of the Democratic Party pushing for radical reforms and stronger equality for all to undo the damages of conservative elites eager to bring back Divine Right of trumps Kings to dominate us all: Liberals are wary of even incremental changes to the political system if it throws their understanding of the Social Contract into chaos.

There are other elements of Liberalism - such as the early adoption of Capitalism as an economic reform against the authoritarian corruption of mercantilism, without realizing how greed undermined Capitalism like any other economic -ism - that would require more discussion, but I've spent too long trying to hammer this essay out and I need to refocus on other outrages and observations of the current train wreck(s) we're enduring.

In short: Liberalism's problem isn't that it's weak, or vacillating when confronted by conservative or even fascist opposition. It's a genuinely well-informed, well-founded -ism compared to the other more destructive political beliefs that rise and fall with the cycles of history. Liberalism's problem is that it holds too much faith in a Social Contract that's too easily shredded and requires the same repatching over and over. At some point, our modern system of liberalism (neoliberal, I think) has to reposition itself on the chessboard and realize a more profound, truly just system of equality and opportunity has to be forged.

I've Taken The Crazy Pills, Haven't I: July 2024 Edition

WHAT DID I JUST SAY?

Jesus. Even in the moment of donald trump's self-crowning - with an oversized bandage on his ear and every lapdog at his feet - at an overtly racist and sexist RNC, the Democratic Party cannot get out of their own way.

WaterGirl over at Balloon Juice is feeling the same frustration I am about the Dem party leadership buying into the mainstream media freakout and getting caught in more rumor-mongering to force Joe Biden to step down from the 2024 re-election bid:

I am heartsick at the spiraling anxiety, and angry at the own-goals.  This madness needs to stop – if not in the media, then at least in Balloon Juice threads that I put up.

So until something changes, this will be my last post related to “Biden, will he or won’t he, should he or shouldn’t he”.

We are wasting so much time and energy on this, at a time when there is so much work to be done. There is so much work to be done.  So much work, and so little time.

I’m sure there will still be plenty of Balloon Juice threads where anyone who wants to can continue to endlessly hash this out, with both sides endlessly repeating the same things, over and over, sincere people and trolls, alike.  But I’m done.  And I’m pretty sure the other side is laughing...

This panic - which echoes a lot of the Dem panic from 2004 when they worried Howard Dean was more vulnerable than John Kerry all because Karl Rove made them second-guess themselves - isn't doing them any favors. It's feeding into the Beltway narrative of "Dems In Disarray" and is going to upset / discourage millions of primary voters who already sided with Biden as their choice.

If anybody is thrilled to the idea of an "open convention" this August, please punch yourself in the face. This 2024 primary season didn't present the party with any strong alternatives to Biden, and such a convention between up-and-comers like Governors Newsom or Whitmer or some third person suddenly flush with questionable dark money will turn bloody and divisive, which once again favors the goddamn trumpsters.

Anybody thinking that things will get easier if Biden steps aside for his Vice President Kamala Harris need to remember just how racist the mainstream media let the Republicans play it when it was Obama as the candidate in 2008 and 2012, and will just as easily allow trump and his cohort to attack Harris over the same goddamn racist dog-whistles bullhorns. And Harris is going to face the same kind of sexism that Hillary faced in 2016, by the same mainstream media that cannot overcome their own misogyny when dealing with "ambitious women" as candidates. You know how many reporters are itching to jump on the stories that came out during 2020 about the bad blood within Harris' primary campaign back then, eager to pull that same shit if she becomes the ticket headliner?

We've gotten 81 million voters to side with Biden in 2020 and a supermajority (90 percent or more) of primary voters to stick with Biden against the likes of Dean Phillips (a conservative congresscritter who got talked into undermining party incumbancy), and yet the Democratic party leadership is getting brow-beaten by a hostile Beltway media desperate to keep their horserace and "Dems in Disarray" narratives going until November.

There's a reason why I've got "Democrats Are Cowards" as a blog label, and you're watching it as it happens. Goddamn them.

Man up. Support Biden, here and NOW. Get the vote out. Get those 81 million voters back. Get every man and woman who supports abortion rights. Get every man and woman who opposes even one tidbit of that hideous Project 2025 agenda. Get every American voting for a unified Democratic Party.

For the LOVE OF GOD. Turning on each other now does not help.

The Beltway Freakout

Talent is a wonderful thing, but it won't carry a quitter.
-- Duma Key, Stephen King

I had to block Stephen King today.

Biden won the primaries in convincing fashion. An overwhelming majority of Democratic voters support him then AND now. But here you are, listening to a panicked biased media having a meltdown over one bad debate. You're not paying attention. And I'm blocking you for this.

— Witty Librarian 2024 (@PaulWartenberg) July 8, 2024

What the hell happened?

Well, that CNN debate I didn't want to watch ended up being a down performance for Biden, which unfortunately flared up all the damn "he's too old" takes between the New York Times and every other media outlet.

It's gotten to where the mainstream media - and then slowly a number of backbencher Democratic congresscritters, and then the avalanche of social media names like King and Rob Reiner - kept calling for Biden - who has already secured the 2024 Democratic nomination - to drop out of the Presidential race "for the good of the country."

Which is, of course, a total bullshit move.

This is after Joe Biden's campaign fund-raised far more than what trump's did. This is while Biden's polling regained their numbers - and upticked in several battleground states - after the immediate aftermath of the debate.

I've complained about this rump media - sitting in judgment of the Democratic Party and never focusing on the public sins of the Republicans - before. They get a narrative going in their own circles - such as this "Biden is now too old and will lose to trump" and there's no shaking it. Worse, they start digging for "sources" to reinforce that narrative using anybody they could claim is "inside the room when it happens" such as a "former senior official" who probably was a six-month intern in the West Wing washroom two years ago. And when they get any facts wrong, these pundits refuse to re-evaluate their mistakes and double-down on the scalp hunting.

Remember in the modern journalism era among the Beltway elites, there is no punishment for being wrong. There may be punishments for the low-level elected figures in the Democratic ranks buying into the media-inflicted panic, but that may have to wait until this election cycle is over.

Everything Biden has been doing the last two weeks post-debate has been to stay on-message and campaigning, even as a group of self-appointed "saviors" in the papers, cable shows, and congressional back rooms dreaming of their own fantasies are trying to kneecap him. They're going so far as to convince the upcoming convention delegates to toss aside Biden's primary victories - where Biden won with full support of the Dem voting base - and force an open convention.

Never mind the chaos and destruction that move would inflict on the entire Democratic Party, weakening themselves by alienating an electoral base fully backing Biden. And all of this much to the delight of both the Republican Party as well as the media elites who push the decades-old "Dems In Disarray" narrative.

While the media and the party leadership distract themselves over this noise, the same Beltway talking heads can avoid discussing more relevant and vital matters, such as the fact that the Republican Party's presidential candidate is a convicted felon and confirmed sex offender. Even as the GOP's platform is coming up before their convention next week, with a horrifying "Project 2025" agenda just barely getting on the radar for the voting public to recoil from it.

This shouldn't be a distraction. This shouldn't even be an issue.

Most Democratic voters may have these concerns, but they've overlooked them to focus on the reality that Joe Biden's administration has been mostly a success for the nation. The Dem voters may worry about Biden's age, but they understand there's an existing system in place - the 25th Amendment, and VP Kamala Harris - that will take care of it.

What worries most Democratic voters I know is the fact of donald trump's entire existence, and the real threat he poses should he get anywhere near the White House again. In spite of the polls which we've learned are skewing too rural (and too Republican) - in spite of all the fearmongering that the mainstream media is spewing for their own enjoyment - there is still a fighting mood with the party base to stick with a candidate in Biden they know beat trump in 2020. They're not about to abandon a good incumbent now.

This is - for anyone who lived through 2016 - the same kind of concern-trolling bullshit we got out of the New York Times and the rest of the Beltway when they freaked out over Hillary's private server and fretted over "but her emails." Back then, they begged for her to step aside for - get this - Biden. This is also the same freakout we got out of the mainstream media when Obama suffered a bad debate night against Romney in 2012, and they begged Obama to step aside for someone better like - get this - Hillary.

The Democratic voters - and the indy voters who sided with Biden in 2020 - need to get past this noise and get the damn vote out. The election still matters: OUR VOTES STILL MATTER. We had 81 million people turn out for Biden and Harris in 2020 and we can do that again this 2024.

Dark Days for Florida in 2022

I woke up to a gray day.

Not only because of an incoming Hurricane in mid-November - remember when hurricane seasons ended in October? Thanks to climate change, not anymore! - making it a dreary rainy day.

It was a gray dreary day because here in Florida for the 2022 midterms, I woke up to news that Republican Governor Ron DeSantis - that racist, immigrant-bashing, blasphemous moran - not just won re-election but he won in a blow-out by nearly double digits over Charlie Crist.

There was a similar result with Marco Rubio - that wet noodle of a Senator who barely shows up and only for television interviews - winning big against Val Demings for the U.S. Senator seat.

It was basically a massive blowout statewide in Florida for Republicans, while at the national level the GOP suffered with poor results, failing to flip the Senate (so far, some states are undecided but the Democratic incumbents are holding on) and barely winning the U.S. House despite poll predictions having them win 25-plus seats to wreak havoc on President Biden's hopes.

So today was me sitting around waiting for a hurricane to hit muttering to myself "What the hell happened?"

Previous midterm elections - with Florida's Governor races as part of the ballots - were never this bad for Democrats. In 2018, DeSantis eked out a win over Andrew Gillum with 4.07 million over 4.04 million votes. In 2014, Rick Scott won against Charlie Crist with 2.86 million votes over 2.8 million.

But this time, 2022 with DeSantis facing Crist who was running his second chance as a Democrat (Crist was a Republican Governor 2006-2010 but switched parties when he lost favor with a growing extremist GOP), the results were 4.6 million for DeSantis and 3.1 million for Crist. The voter turnout for the Senate race was pretty much the same: Rubio at 4.6 million and Demings at 3.1 million. 

Democrats just... lost over a million Florida voters somewhere. In a midterms where Democratic voter turnout saw moderate or better gains across most of the nation. What the hell happened?

In my darkest, angriest mindset, I'm going to the conspiracy angle of hard voter suppression happening. Republicans didn't gain voters all that much between 2018 to 2022, but the Democrats obviously lost them. I would be screaming about somebody somewhere blocking Democratic voters in likely Blue districts... except there's been no reports of that on social media or regular media.

Hey, if QAnon can run around screaming "stolen elections," I have a right to scream the same thing. It's just... dammit, where's the evidence of it? Alas.

The only other rational explanation was voter disinterest. All those Democratic voters just... refused to vote for the party this year. There's two reasons why that could be the culprit.

One of the bigger voter suppression stunts DeSantis pulled this election cycle was aggressively redoing the U.S. Congressional districts with extreme Republican-friendly gerrymandering. It was so blatantly partisan a gerrymander it ought to have been voted down by even the Republican legislature, or at least stricken down by the courts. And yet, nobody fought it.

Worse, the Florida Democratic party failed to challenge for every district in spite of that gerrymandering. Several districts had no Democratic congressional candidate, increasing the voter disinterest to turn out for the other important races for Governor and Senator.

Study after study shows that extreme partisan gerrymandering affects voter turnout. When DeSantis redid the Congressional map, he not only improved the odds of state Republicans winning extra U.S. House seats, he also improved his own odds to win re-election by depressed Democratic turnout.

The second reason for the drop in Democratic voter turnout? There had been complaints before - and this time around seemed to prove it - that the Democratic voting base just didn't like or trust Charlie Crist. Due to the fact he used to be Republican, the fact he still stood as a more Centrist moderate candidate to a base that would prefer progressives, and the fact he just didn't seem to reach more people this time around all hurt the overall ticket. How this affected Val Demings - who had a better rapport with the Democratic base, and should have seen better results - still doesn't make sense outside of the anti-Crist factions just refusing to show up at all.

And for all the evidence that the Democratic Party is failing to reach Hispanic voters - especially here in Florida, where the Cuban and Puerto Rican voting blocs are heavily social conservatives - I don't think that is a major reason for the missing voters from 2018: If the Hispanics were flipping parties, we'd be seeing an increase in Republican turnout this 2022 over 2018. Still, the failure by the Democratic Party at both the state and national level to appeal better to Latino voters is a major setback that the Dems have to address.

My mood is not lightened by the reports of Democratic gains elsewhere, especially in Midwest states where Dems gained control of state legislatures in Michigan and Minnesota. There may be a chance that the Democrats keep control of the Senate - only with gaining one extra seat, which may not be enough to break the filibuster/cloture stranglehold - but the Republicans are about to gain control of the House (due in strong part to DeSantis' gerrymandering, damn him). The reports are that the GOP will have a slim lead in the House, but that a schism between more hardcore wingnut factions could undercut the fight for Speakership. I doubt it: Republicans will unite even if it's behind a spineless cur like McCarthy if there's a chance to get their Cruelty agenda passed.

So here I sit, waiting for another storm to hit Florida, praying that at least this hurricane can well hit Mar-A-Lago like a bullseye and wash it all into the sea.

I've been raging and fuming ever since 2010, ever since sanity failed my state when the Republican voters eagerly put into office a documented Medicare Fraud. It's only gotten worse since then: The cruelty, the failures of leadership, all to "own the libs" even as the state literally falls apart bit by bit, disaster by disaster.

I'd like to move away, I'm at that point of giving up on the state I've lived almost my whole life. But I'm too old to go job-hunting across states anymore, and damn it all the rent is too damned high.

Gods help us.

Year 2021 As Tragedy And Farce

(Update: With many thanks to Driftglass for including this article at Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! Please do me a favor and review my best articles of 2021 for submission to Florida Writers' Association's annual Royal Palm awards!)

As the year ends, today becomes a moment to look back and wonder at how we survived it at all.

(Christ. As I type this I just got word that Betty White passed away. FUCK YOU, 2021, DIE IN A FUCKING FIRE WILL YA)

Ahem.

The tragedy of the year stems from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, now rolling into its second year. Even with a vaccine program in place, even with all we know about how to fight COVID and how to reduce the risks... we're ending this year with a dangerously effective Omicron strain that's threatening to force shutdowns of workplaces and schools in spite of the Far Right forces obsessed to ignore the risks to stick to their own crazed Narrative.

The tragedy of 2021 got worse as donald trump - stinging from his Electoral losses in 2020 - refused to play by the rules of the Constitution and sent in mobs of insurrectionists into the halls of Congress to force that body from confirming the vote counts. For all the digging into the events of January 6th, we're barely seeing major arrests and serious punishments of the rioters and the culprits that we know so far who planned the whole attack.

If there'd been anything major going on all year long, it was the war of attrition between the madness of the Pandemic and the madness of trump's Big Lie. A lot of other crazy things happening in 2021 tended to tie into either ongoing crisis.

If there was any saving grace to this past year, it was how much of a farce the trumpian War On Reality could become.

The arguments trump forced his handlers to take - in arguing over stolen votes that were never stolen - led to those handlers and lawyers getting taken to the woodshed by judges who cut through every gaslighting lie they offered. These were lawyers who showed no sign of understanding the Constitution or election laws from beginning to end. The next sight we need to see of these inept lawyers should be them losing their license - like Giuliani - to practice law.

Everything coming out about how trump's inner circle coordinated and planned the January 6th Insurrection would be pure comedy if it didn't involve serious crimes. The very idea that they created a PowerPoint presentation to show trump how they planned it - and a sloppy PowerPoint at that - would be the crowning moment of funny whenever future Hollywood producers film the streaming miniseries about the riots.

As for the efforts in 2021 to fight the Pandemic, trump's early drum beats to push an anti-vax agenda to humiliate Biden and keep the nation in chaos led to the growing realization that trump's actions were literally killing off their own Far Right voting base... forcing trump's more recent calls to vaccinate falling on deaf - even hostile - ears.

Both nightmare and comedy at the same time in the same crises.

No wonder 2021 feels like a bad dream refusing to end.

Gods help us in 2022. 

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.

All I Want for Saturnalia 2021

'Tis the season for wishes and hopes as the winter solstice brings 2021 to a close.

And I look out upon this world with all this going on:

• A new COVID variant unleashed upon us all just as the Holiday season for traveling everywhere to visit loved ones is kicking into high gear, meaning lockdowns are next to impossible to enforce and so we're going to see Omicron kicking our butts well into 2022;
• trump dumping on American Jews, accusing them of controlling Congress, and claiming Christian Evangelicals love Israel more;
• One Democratic Senator - Joe "The Grinch" Manchin - is nuking Joe Biden's social spending agenda ("Build Back Better") in ways even Republican Senators wouldn't get caught doing, all in the name of some aimless attempt to "moderate" the bill but actually destroying it all because Manchin cannot abide any aid to poor Americans (even ones in his own poverty-stricken state!);
• China is still committing genocide / torment against the Uyghur population, all the while prepping for a Winter Olympics that by all rights should be boycotted by athletes out of human compassion for the oppressed; 
• Republicans suppressing any intellectual debate over racism in the U.S., with goddamned Florida jackanape Ron "Pander Forever" DeSantis pushing a bill to allow wingnuts to sue any teacher/school for thousands in damages if any of them teach "Critical Race Theory" or ANY kind of history exposing America's sinful past much in the same way Texans will be able to accuse and sue other people for abortions;
• Fox Not-News raising more of a stink over their fake Christmas burning down due to a crazy homeless guy as a "War On Christmas" then they are raising any concern over families devastated in the Kentucky area hit by winter tornados;  
• There's a massive refugee crisis happening across Europe and Asia fueled by ongoing civil wars like Syria's, stirring up political anger between nations like Poland and Belarus, and there's no global solution in sight;

And I just wanna wish the Roman God Saturn for a simple little thing:

SANITY. FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT'S HOLY, SOME GODDAMNED SANITY FOR THIS FCKING COUNTRY AND THE WORLD.

I wanna wish for a safe and safe Saturnalia to come true just for once, can't we all agree to that, someday...? 

Too Little Justice Or No Justice At All (w/ Update)

Update below:

You'd think the legal system under a Biden administration would be fighting harder to punish both the liars and thieves that made up trump's administration, or at least go after the January 6 Insurrectionists with more fervor.

Alas on both counts. Although some justice is served for one of the rioters, it still doesn't seem like eight months is enough does it? (via Ryan Lucas at NPR): 

A Florida crane operator who walked onto the Senate floor during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol has been sentenced to eight months in federal prison and two years of supervised release.

Paul Hodgkins' sentencing is the first in a felony case stemming from the deadly assault on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters. It is viewed as a potential bellwether for how other Capitol defendants charged with similar offenses are likely to be treated.

Hodgkins pleaded guilty last month to a single count of obstructing an official proceeding. On Jan. 6, he marched from then-President Donald Trump's rally near the White House to the Capitol, where he walked inside and onto the floor of the Senate while carrying a red "Trump 2020" flag...

You could argue that Hodgkins by pleading to a felony does some measure of mercy, but dammit there are still too many who participated in that attempted coup who haven't even been caught yet, and there are too many trumpian supporters eager to try another takeover. We ought to be seeing more felony charges against these rioters, more than just the single indictments of Obstruction that our Justice Dept. seems to think sufficient enough.

Another act of injustice reported today relates to trump's corrupt Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who was facing the possibility of Perjury charges relating to false testimony he gave before Congress during his tenure. Due to legal chicanery, Biden's Attorney General Merrick Garland decided not to press the matter further, stirring up commentary like Paul Waldman's at the Washington Post (likely behind paywall):

There’s a temptation to view what Ross did as simply politics, which in a way it was: When he repeatedly made false statements to Congress under oath about the administration’s efforts to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, Ross was operating in the service of a broader lie being repeated by multiple Trump officials and advocates. But that makes it worse, not better...

I can’t say why they decided Ross’s case did not warrant prosecution, though it’s true that people are not often prosecuted for lying to Congress. That doesn’t mean it’s unheard of, however. Michael Cohen, Trump’s former factotum, pleaded guilty in 2018 to lying to Congress on Trump’s behalf. Figures in the Watergate and Iran-contra scandals were also indicted for that crime.

Upon taking office, the Trump administration decided it wanted to add a citizenship question to the census for the first time in 70 years. The reasons were plain: The administration was doing its best to intimidate immigrants, both documented and otherwise, and a citizenship question would make them fearful about answering the census. That would make their communities look smaller, which would then deprive them of resources and political power.

But the administration couldn’t just come out and say that. So it came up with one of the dumbest cover stories in an administration that was full of them: adding a citizenship question to the census, they said, was necessary for the Justice Department to properly enforce the Voting Rights Act. It made no sense at all, and nobody believed it for a moment.

But on two occasions, Ross was questioned under oath about it and made specific factual assertions — assertions that were false. Ross testified that his department (Commerce has authority over the Census Bureau) only pursued the citizenship question because it was asked to do so by the Justice Department.

But emails obtained in a lawsuit revealed that not only was that false, but Ross and his aides had pressured a reluctant Justice Department to essentially create a bogus paper trail that would give support to the lie that the whole thing was the department’s idea...

In a sane and just world, it's that kind of deceit in government that ought to trigger warrants and court trials. But why not, why allow one of trump's biggest corrupt cronies to skip merrily away from ANY accountability? Back to Waldman:

It wouldn’t be too surprising to hear that the department figured it wasn’t a serious enough crime to justify indicting someone so high-ranking. But that’s just the trouble: When you communicate that you can perjure yourself before Congress with impunity, the result will be more perjury.

And it reinforces the idea that in politics, anything is justified — manipulating the system, lying to the public, lying under oath, anything — and you might well get away with it. At this particular moment in our history, is that a message we want to send?

It's as though there's a strain of cowardice within Democratic ranks that pursuing justice against partisan and corrupt Republicans could stir up more trouble for themselves rather than push back against the lies that break our nation further into pieces.

The only way we can rebuild America is to return to our efforts to build towards justice. We need to hold the likes of Ross - and William Barr, and Steve Mnuchin, and trump himself - accountable for the lies they spewed that warped our reality.

I just wish Biden and Garland and other Democratic leaders realize that, and act soon. trump's lies keep spreading every day that we don't do anything about that.

Update 7/20: It turns out myself and the other Paul - and other commentators - jumped the gun on this. The decision to NOT go after Ross for perjury was done under Barr's watch, not Garland's.

An update on the Wilbur Ross story from yesterday: Turns out that the decision not to prosecute him for lying to Congress was made during the Trump admin, so everyone who said "Damn you Merrick Garland!" was jumping the gun a bit.

My updated story: https://t.co/xMYcZHuHix

— Paul Waldman (@paulwaldman1) July 20, 2021

So, apologies to Merrick Garland.

(beat)

Um, why isn't Merrick Garland reversing Barr's bad call here and prosecuting Ross anyway?! CMON MAN.

The Game Of Politics Where You Shoot Your Own Party In the Foot

There is nothing more dangerous to the American body politic than a self-absorbed self-destructive Senator. Forget Representatives, forget Governors, forget corrupt judges, forget most Presidents (Nixon, Harding, and trump are the exceptions, and remember Nixon and Harding earlier served as Senators).

Via Allan Smith at NBC news:

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., said Sunday that he will not vote for S.1, known as the For The People Act, the massive elections and ethics reform package Democrats have proposed.

The announcement immediately imperils the bill, which is universally opposed by Republicans and would require elimination of the Senate filibuster to be passed. The legislation was passed in the House this year.

"It's the wrong piece of legislation to bring our country together and unite our country, and I'm not supporting that, because I think it would divide us more," Manchin said on "Fox News Sunday." "I don't want to be in a country that's divided any further...

In an op-ed published Sunday in the Charleston, West Virginia, Gazette-Mail, Manchin argued that any federal voting legislation must have bipartisan backing, and he said he would not vote to kill the legislative filibuster, as some have said is needed to pass voting reforms.

"The truth, I would argue, is that voting and election reform that is done in a partisan manner will all but ensure partisan divisions continue to deepen," he wrote. And in speaking to West Virginians, "I cannot explain strictly partisan election reform or blowing up the Senate rules to expedite one party's agenda."

So because the Republicans are the sons-of-bitches who refuse to be bipartisan and work with Democrats to pass meaningful legislation, Senator Manchin has decided... to side with Republicans and screw the Democratic Party.

And he's going to get away with it because the Democrats can't secure enough votes to hold a simple majority vote to get rid of the Cloture/Filibuster rules to make it harder for Republicans to obstruct, and because the nature of the Senate makes it difficult for party leadership to rein in the "mavericks" who enjoy making a mess without having to pay the consequences.

You might understand why a lot of Obama-hating Republicans despised John McCain when he killed their effort to nuke ObamaCare back in 2017. But in that situation, those same Republicans failed to give McCain - or the rest of the country - any sane alternative to replace what they were about to destroy.

What Manchin - alongside Arizona Senator Sinema who also doesn't seem to get the crisis - is allowing to happen here: He's preventing the Democratic Party from passing laws that would override and stop the Republicans at the state level from suppressing voter turnout that would otherwise favor Democrats. He says he'll support the John Lewis Act which is also up for consideration, but he doesn't seem to get that the Republicans will pull the same obstructionist stunt against THAT bill and talk Manchin into dismissing it as "too partisan" as well.

All it takes is one Senator holding up the whole thing. Where a President is a singular office and thus answerable to the national voters, where the House is so large a body with a basic majority vote policy that trouble-makers most times either quit after a few terms or have little impact on stopping things, just ONE fucking Senator can filibuster or hold or delay everything and never face any punishment because the state they're from won't hold them accountable for their sins.

And so we're back to where things won't get done. Again. Things like alleviating college loan debts or raising the federal minimum wage or job protection laws or anything that would actually HELP Americans here and now.

We're also back to the high risk of Republicans rigging the 2022 midterms, making sure that just like in 2010 they are able to seize at least partial control of Congress and ensure a Biden Presidency enjoys no further success. Denying "victory" at the expense of people's lives.

Only this time, it's the entire electoral process at risk, one thing that could directly affect the Democratic Party - Manchin's own fucking party - in the near future. It won't be to another era of inertia, it'll be to a darker round of Republican misrule with even harsher tax cuts for the rich, even harsher anti-abortion laws to hurt women, and more attempts to kill off any affordable health care.

And if the Republicans have their way - without Manchin and Sinema or any other self-serving Democrat stopping them - the Democrats the American people will never see an honest and fair election ever again.

Goddammit. This is why I can't go full Democrat. There's too many fucking cowards running the party that's also ruining the country.

With Warren Out, Seeking Shelter on This Thin Raft

I think I know why I'm having a problem blogging lately.

It's that, more and more, I am not writing anything remotely close to good news to share with the rest of you. The same overwhelming nightmare of crazy trumpian disasters day after day, combined with a paltry and thinned-out sense of relief we need to find at the end of all this madness.

The craziness of the Coronavirus pandemic notwithstanding, the thing that's been troubling me since last week - something it's taken me this long to write about - has been Elizabeth Warren's ending of her Presidential campaign.

It's heartbreaking for me. Above all, she was the only major candidate I viewed as an Active-Positive character with Adaptive and Gameplanning (all those plans!) skills. She showed better organizational skills than Bernie or Biden or Harris - Warren's campaign had events in Florida months ago, something I still haven't seen out of the remaining two big names - and she was giving inspirational speeches and appearances wherever she went.

As the candidates thinned out across a large - was it like 22 or 24 people running at one point? - stage, Warren remained one of the few who represented a shrinking diversity for the Dem party to support. We went from a number of Black candidates (Harris, Booker, even Deval Patrick) and Hispanic (Castro) and Women (Harris again, Klobuchar, Williamson (yeah I know), Gabbard (sigh), Gillibrand (yes for like one week), and Warren) among the White Men (Biden, Bernie, Beto, Inslee, Bennet, Hickenlooper, Bullock) and even a Gay White Man (Buttigieg) as the most diverse field ever to... well, almost no minorities and two (okay if you include Gabbard which you shouldn't, three) women candidate alongside the White Guys Biden Bernie and Buttigieg. Still...

The Democratic field even included the one ethnic group Democratic voting base doesn't like: Rich White Guys with Steyer and Bloomberg. Granted, Steyer is reasonably okay (he actually donates to charities!) and Bloomberg *is* still willing to put his money where it matters (helping the down-ballot races), neither of them were going to win over a party base that wants those billionaires to STFU and pay their damn fair share of taxes.

When Bloomberg finally made a debate appearance just before the Super Tuesday vote he had put all his hopes into, Warren was the one who gutted him onstage and finished him off Mortal Kombat style with a Flawless victory. It should have made her more popular with the Democratic voters, it should have translated into more support...

And yet when the actual primary voting happened, Warren could barely get enough voters from enough Democratic voters to qualify for delegates. Super Tuesday alone she couldn't even get past third place in her own state of Massachusetts (given how I ragged on Rubio in 2016 for being perpetually in third place, this was a painful karmic blow).

Unable to gain enough traction to play dealmaker at all for the Dem convention, Warren had no choice but to drop out. And it was just... hard to accept.

And it's not just me. My circle of friends - the socio-political bubble I admit I live within - both online and at work were mostly Warren fans, and they were broken up by it as well (is it telling that nearly every librarian I knew was cheering Liz forward?).

One of those in the circle was Emily L Hauser, who's been a published writer/pundit here and there over the years. She'd been the biggest fan for Warren since the start of her campaign, practically lived for every daily tweet and motivational message. The day that Warren announced the end of her campaign, Emily wrote this op-ed for the Chicago Tribune. It's a must-read, people, please check it out.

When Elizabeth Warren announced her 2020 candidacy, I was immediately all in, because she was the single most extraordinary candidate I’d ever seen. I’ve been a Democrat and activist my whole life, volunteering, protesting and organizing since high school, around myriad issues and across countless election cycles. I had been deeply moved by the opportunity to vote for Clinton.

I can’t say, however, that I found Clinton particularly inspiring. Warren, on the other hand, brought to American politics both a depth of knowledge and what race studies and constitutional law authority Kimberlé Crenshaw has termed “intersectionality” unlike anyone I’ve ever seen. Able to identify and articulate the ways in which, for instance, racism informs maternal mortality rates and sexism informs student debt, Warren understood that the problems facing our republic didn’t begin with Trump, and the aftermath of his presidency will require careful policies that grapple with all of it, all at once. She had a plan...

But Warren’s campaign — for which I have canvassed across state lines, made calls, live-tweeted speeches and raised more than $10,000 — faltered and finally ended Thursday. Despite her wisdom, compassion and proven success in establishing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, unseating an incumbent Republican in Massachusetts and destroying the campaign of a billionaire with a history of sexual harassment complaints (bye, Mike Bloomberg) — Democrats, the ostensible party of progressive values, have decided they prefer one of two near-80-year-old men: Joe Biden, who oversaw the shameful railroading of Anita Hill in the 1991 Clarence Thomas hearings, or Bernie Sanders, a man who was unaware that his 2016 campaign had been roiled with complaints of sexual harassment and gender pay disparities and when later asked about it by Anderson Cooper, responded that he hadn’t known at the time because he was “a little bit busy running around the country...”

But as we attempt to salvage our republic from the destruction wrought by a president actively seeking to unspool our democracy and placed in office by an electorate that didn’t care that so many women have reported suffering at his hands, I am consumed with grief and anger that my party rejected a woman of such unassailable caliber as Elizabeth Warren...

I'm with Emily on this. Warren was a great choice. She was intelligent, articulate, motivational, charismatic, humorous, focused, dedicated. The worst scandal on her was that she mislabeled her ethnicity as Native American in her college days, and she'd already explained that and apologized for it (of course, Republicans and trump especially still take to calling her "Pocahontas" as an insult). She took every policy issue seriously, she took every greeting and selfie line with grace, she did everything you'd expect from the candidate that ought to win the damn nomination.

And yet it was still not good enough. As hard as she worked at appealing to the Democratic voters, she still had to work past the problem of "she."

There is a stark realization as the Democratic nominating process narrows down to two main choices of Biden (Old White Male moderate) and Bernie (Old White Male socialist) that no matter what the Dems are bound to put an Old White Male at the top of the ticket. Having broken the barrier of African-Americans reaching the White House with Obama, the Dems are now terrified of "diversity" against arguably the worst Old White Male of all time in donald trump. As though the Dems are convincing themselves that Old White Men are the only offerings to win over enough American voters to win in November.

Never mind the reality that a woman Hillary Clinton WON the Popular Vote in 2016. Never mind the reality that Democrats are going to need voter turnout among minorities AND women to exceed last cycle's numbers.

I'm a guy, White Male, getting to be 50 years old, and yet goddammit I have no problem with a woman as President. I've worked alongside enough women, had women bosses as much as men bosses, met women smarter than me (my high school valedictorian and salutatorian were both women!) and met women more spiritual than me. Women have brains and souls and heart and ambition just like men. Why the hell aren't other White Guys able to accept that?

And yet the horrifying thing: The Democratic base might be right. There's still far too much misogyny in the mainstream media, still too much fear of women in power across our culture and boardrooms and homesteads.

It's just... it's painful to watch a party that's SUPPOSED to stand for diversity to succumb to that pressure and not fight the good fight. I understand the fear: trump is too dangerous to gamble on appealing to the better angels of our nation's nature right now.

But it's going to prolong the problem. We're going to run into this roadblock NEXT election cycle, and the one after that, and so on. At some point, we as a nation HAVE to address the reality that women can be capable as men when it comes to leadership.

Emily argued this too:

Anyone who hasn’t had those experiences, or known what it’s like to plan an entire day and an entire life around the possibility of sexual assault or harassment, or what it’s like to be the only one of your gender in a room marked by power, or what it’s like to have your reproductive freedom legislated by people with different reproductive organs — simply brings a different sensibility to the issues that shape the lives of 164 million Americans. It matters that women are so often absent from the halls of power, and it’s well past time for one to be in the White House.

At some point, the legacies of Victoria Woodhull and Margaret Chase Smith and Shirley Chisholm and Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris and Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren ought to lead to a woman candidate standing there on Election Night celebrating the broken glass ceiling to end all glass ceilings.

I'm tired of the heartbreak. I'm tired of running into stuff like this. I'm not the only one, I know, and this isn't going to hurt me the way it's hurting millions of women still lacking that representation. Where would my compassion and hope and humanity not be while there is something as painful as this still happening? This doesn't help me (other than competent leadership for the United States again), it would help all of them, and that would have been something happy to root for.

I wish I had better, happier things to write about anymore.

Brief Thought On the Current Primary Status of the Democrats

What the fuck Dems, why isn't Warren doing any better?

More detailed thoughts next month.

Damn this Leap Day.

Kamala Harris Withdraws From 2020 Presidential Campaign. WHO THE HELL AM I GONNA ROOT FOR NOW?

Seriously. She was the only one in that pack of candidates most likely to throat punch that Eternal Shitgibbon trump first chance she got.

But after the resignation of one of her operations managers - who pretty much firebombed everything on the way out the door - it looked like Harris couldn't find any other personnel or resources to justify going forward.

This falls under the categories of Damn, Goddamn, and What The Fuck.

Sigh.

The immediate impact of her departure is that the field of major candidates dropped to three - Biden, Sanders, and Warren - while showing no sign of any second-tier candidate - Booker, Buttigieg, Castro, Klobucher - being able to step up (unless one of them can appeal quickly to Harris' now-stranded fanbase). There's every likelihood several of them may drop out soon - joining recent departures from Bullock and Joe Sestak (who?!) - narrowing the field even more to the headliners (B S and W) and pretenders (Gabbard and Yang, neither of them gaining with voters but neither of them going anywhere).

Harris - who was relatively Centrist but no fan of the banks - is leaving as the field receives more billionaires and Wall Street types (Bloomberg and Deval Patrick). The candidate choices are now down one less woman and one less ethnic minority, increasing the odds that the next Democratic candidate could be a Boomer-aging White Guy. It's been noted that unless the rules change or someone like Castro or Booker get a huge fundraising boost, the next Democratic debate is going to be just white people (four guys and two women).

I was rooting for Harris this primary season: Primarily on her opening positions of improving education and paying teachers better, but also because of that "throat-punching trump" hope I had. This kind of leaves me in the lurch now about who to root for next... although like the Tampa Bay Bucs fan that I am, I'm dreading the possibility that when I root early for a candidate I somehow jinx them... /cries

I could root for the other high-profile woman candidate in Elizabeth Warren - and yes I need to get that Character profile done on her soon - because her push for reforms resonate well with me, but again I worry I might jinx her if I do.

I could root for Amy Klobucher as well, because I truly want America to have another chance at electing a woman to the office of the Presidency, and goddammit it shouldn't have to be this hard, guys, just let go of your misogyny for God's sake... but again I worry I might jinx her if I do.

There is no goddamn way I am backing a fringe candidate like Williamson or a compromised candidate like Gabbard.

I could throw my support to Julian Castro or Cory Booker... but again I worry I might jinx them like all the candidates I rooted for the last time (2008) until it all came down to Obama vs Hillary back then.

If I really am a jinx... hmm... okay, BernieBros, ready to accept me BHWHAHAHAAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHeeeeheheh... Okay I guess not.

And to Steyer and Bloomie: Screw you, rich boys. PAY YOUR FOOKING TAXES.

I shall contemplate all this on a tree of woe uh actually at a Dunkin' Donuts. I'll let you all know later.

Fricking campaign fundraising... sigh...

As We Get Closer to 2020, the Democrats Get Closer to Having Rich White Men Panic

You might remember me all the way back in January of this year railing against the foolishness of a rich white man with no political experience trying to pull that stunt with Democrats the way trump did with Republicans.

A lot of that had to do with party ideologies. Republicans are thrilled to have amateur CEOs run for office because they believe those CEOs are their betters. Democrats tend to root for candidates who, you know, actually know what they're doing in office. Dems want politicians who speak to the actual majority of Americans who are NOT rich greedy white assholes. Just sayin.

It still hasn't stopped Rich White Men(tm) try to insert themselves into a Democratic primary stage in obvious desperate attempts to control the debates and stop such dangerous talk about raising wealth taxes or revoking the GOP 2017 Tax Cut from Hell. Just look at Thomas Steyer who jumped in back in July and has gotten nowhere even with 47 million already spent on his campaign.

Just look at Michael Bloomberg: he's not ready to run and yet there he is. And he's making poor decisions that ought to drive him to shut down already (via Bill Scher at RealClearPolitics):

Bloomberg’s late-entry strategy is more ludicrous than what Clark, Thompson and Perry cooked up. Bloomberg plans to completely skip the first four contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, and begin competing on “Super Tuesday,” March 3, when 15 states will hold primaries.

There is superficial logic to this plan. The billionaire former Republican isn’t a great fit for the college-educated liberals of Iowa and New Hampshire, nor for the union workers of Nevada, nor for the African Americans of South Carolina. Winning any of those four small-state contests involves much retail campaigning, and Bloomberg is very late in assembling high-quality, locally sourced, get-out-the-vote operations. So, he might as well pass on the ground game and go straight to the air war — dumping millions into a Super Tuesday TV and online ad blitz.

But red flags are everywhere. The last person who tried to circumvent multiple demographically unfriendly early states was Rudy Giuliani in 2008. After he performed poorly in Iowa and New Hampshire, he declared he would skip the next three contests and focus solely on Florida. But having already been weakened by defeat, he never found his footing in the Sunshine State and fizzled out.

Bloomberg wants to avoid this problem by never giving the first four states a chance to weaken him. But the fact that Bloomberg can’t easily compete is, in and of itself, a sign of weakness. If his natural constituency isn’t liberal college grads, working-class laborers or African Americans, then just who is it...?

Bloomberg's already had to apologize for his obsession to defend a flawed Stop-And-Frisk police policy that was overtly racist as well as ineffective in stopping drugs or other lawbreaking. Bloomberg's still arguing against marijuana legalization (which is insanely popular with Dem primary voters). As Scher points out and as others have added, Bloomberg has terrible optics when dealing with a voting bloc - Black voters - that's key to winning the primaries in battleground states.

And yet Bloomberg is throwing himself into the inferno, as though he alone can save the Democratic Party from itself.

That's because as the primaries move onto the first true stages of voter choices, Bloomberg (along with other billionaires) is convinced the Dems are moving in the wrong direction when it comes to things like Medicare-for-All (which would mean massive tax increases), a serious Wealth Tax on the One-Percenters, and the likelihood of forcing corporations to - gasp - pay workers by boosting a $15 federal minimum wage.

This isn't because these Rich White Men(tm) are honestly opposed to trump and to his destructive policies (although these RWM do loathe trump as a pretender con artist).

This is because these Rich White Men(tm) are terrified that a Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren Presidency means an end to their cushy wonderful super-big tax cuts that let them be triple-digit-billionaires instead of single-digit-billionaires.

The good news is that Steyer (who oddly has offered a wealth tax plan... it's just weak compared to Sanders and Warren's plans) and Bloomberg and (and latecomer Deval Patrick who has ties to Wall Street that would make Hillary seem an outsider) are polling in single digits nowhere near to winning any primary votes.

If Bloomberg and Steyer, either or both, were legitimately serious about helping the Democratic Party stop trump, they wouldn't campaign: They should be setting up SuperPACs and funding every Congressional, Senate, and State-level Dem campaign across the board. If they do THAT, then we might see victory against Republican corruption and stupidity this election cycle.

Just focus on that, rich guys. Fight the fight that NEEDS winning, and worry about your godless tax breaks later.

Honest Bumper Stickers 2020 Part I: The Pantsing Menace

So there I was minding my own business, working on my NaNoWriMo project for this month of writing, when out of the blue we get a new wannabe candidate running in the 2020 Democratic Primaries.

So here comes Mike Bloomberg, doing nobody but billionaires any favors hopping into the campaign cycle ostensibly to run on a Centrist, pro-business platform but most likely doing whatever he could to stop the Progressives like Bernie and Warren taxing the ever-loving shit out of Mikey and his billionaire buddies.

So here I am rolling my eyes at Bloomberg's tone-deaf needless sacrifice to take one for the rich white guys, because the last type of person who is going to win over enough Democratic primary voters is going to be someone who promoted anti-civil-rights BS like Stop and Frisk while encouraging Wall Street to rip off homeowners by the truckload. Christ, look at the polling already. Wassisname, the Starbucks guy he didn't even survive the first wave of Twitter outrage. There's already this hedge fund manager Tom Steyer doing his best to get over 2 percent polling (and failing). If Bloomberg thinks he's gonna cut into Warren's - or even Biden's - lead, he's let his campaign advisors rip him off for millions with bad advice.

Here's the dark secret, billionaires who may harbor non-Republican values enough to be Dems: Most of the Democratic voting base hate rich guys who refuse to pay their fair share of taxes. If you wanna do Dem voters any favors, help fund the state-level candidates who need the fcking money to break the stranglehold Republicans have on too many state legislatures.

But no, the worst part of Bloomberg's rollout had to be this:

Yeah, I know. I couldn't stop laughing for three minutes.

Sadly, it turns out the marketing logo is actually a fake, but for a day or two I was haunted by this terribly designed logo: This cluttered mess of trying to make Bloomberg's name 'exciting' by putting in two 2020s and capping it with a lame motivational "OWNING IT TOGETHER." Whoever did design this fake logo knew how bad it could get. Seriously, this looked like something that would have wowed the crowds... back in 1973.

Ah, and this kind of thing stoked my ire back in 2015/16, when all the bad campaign ad work popped up on BOTH sides of the political primaries. All of that questionable logo design - all because Obama's people figured out early the big letter O for Obama could get used artistically for genuinely eye-catching logos - struggling to try and match Obama's marketing success.

It drove me to make Honest Bumper Stickers for 2016, and now here I come for 2020, revved up to mock the ever-loving hell out of candidates I will support for the Democratic ticket (I am not at the moment in any mood to make mocking bumpers for trump: All I will make for him is IMPEACH THE FUCKER, indeed).

So here I come, walking down your street, I get the funniest looks from, everyone I meet... HEY HEY IT'S HONEST BUMPER STICKERS! ...what?